Comment on ‘A very Finnish thing’: Big sand battery starts storing wind and solar energy in crushed soapstone
lime@feddit.nu 1 day ago
this is an interesting idea if building a home as well. the resistive heating element could easily be swapped for something like a wood stove.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 day ago
It could be interesting in a smaller scale or off grid purposes, but you’d still need solar panels as a source.
I doubt it’s worth saving heat from a wood stove. It’d be better to burn less wood to begin with. Some of the modern pellet ovens are very efficient for that.
They use this system to convert excess renewable electricity to heat for storage to be used in the district heating system. There’s probably a lot of loss in comparison to a regular battery, so the point is to utilize excess the electrify. It makes perfect sense in Finland because their electricity is a lot cleaner than their heating.
lime@feddit.nu 1 day ago
depends. wood stoves put out a metric shitton of heat, no matter how hot their surroundings. the more of it you capture, the less wood you need. we have a massive old stone oven that takes a week to heat up but then keeps above ambient for like two-three. it’s several m^3^ in size, the house is built around it. it also keeps the house cool in summer by absorbing heat.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 day ago
Oh sure the technique of storing heat in stone is valid. Again, the Finnish have used it for long time in oven design. It’s possible to get modern soap stone ovens for this purpose.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry_heater