An abandoned mine in Finland is set to be transformed into a giant battery to store renewable energy during periods of excess production.
The Pyhäsalmi Mine, roughly 450 kilometres north of Helsinki, is Europe’s deepest zinc and copper mine and holds the potential to store up to 2 MW of energy within its 1,400-metre-deep shafts.
The disused mine will be fitted with a gravity battery, which uses excess energy from renewable sources like solar and wind in order to lift a heavy weight. During periods of low production, the weight is released and used to power a turbine as it drops.
That’s so cool!
This is one of those ideas that in hindsight seem so simple and obvious that it makes one wonder how nobody thought of it prior. Absolutely brilliant.
They have done this before, only instead of using a big weight, they use water. Lookup “Dinorwig Power Station” for a good example.
Yes, and they use lakes of water to have enough mass to make it worthwhile. No weight down a mineshaft is worth it.
Banks Lake in the US has been doing it for quite awhile too.
That’s similar but different in a lot of meaningful ways. Hydro pumping like that requires a relatively large body of water next to a large geographical height right nearby. This new system doesn’t require any water, and it uses a man made hole in the ground that’s already been created and which otherwise would be simply unused
It’s what we call a double whammy. Paid to remove the metals and then paid for the hole you’ve made.
Sounds like a double win, not a double whammy
Oh interesting, I can see how whammy could be considered negative, but I’ve always heard it used in a positive way.
Huh, definitionally it’s always a bad thing, i wonder why people around you use it that way
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/whammy
It was definitely a bad thing in “Press Your Luck”, the game show where the term was coined. The “Whammy” was a little monster who took all your money.
Even from your link there’s someone using it in a positive way so clearly not mate lol.
Bonus, it starts fully charged since the weight is inserted at the apex of the battery instead of having to be lifted.
I read of another it was the same physics but different scenario. I think it was like excess energy moves heavy carts up a hill. When energy is needed, these carts get released and their potential energy from hill and the basic idea of regenerative breaking to repurpose it’s kinetic energy.
Because it’s super inefficient
Is it more or less efficient than a derelict mine and an unstored energy surplus?
Got this it’s definitely a great application - I think what he was referring to is that it’s very inefficient if you don’t have a perfect mineshaft for it right next to renewable energy.
Not if the energy would go to waste. This is a mechanical battery to store surplus power generation from things like wind and solar.
That’s the whole point of grid energy storage. Even if there are losses, it’s acceptable considering that otherwise you would need to burn fossil fuels in a peaker plant to keep the grid balanced. You aren’t supposed to recharge a battery like this with fossil fuels.
It wouldn’t go to waste if we were to use “gravity batteries” that have existed for centuries: hydropower
No it’s not.