Blog – Page 5037

A startup from Finland called Polar Night Energy has developed an energy storage system based on sand. The idea is to store excess energy generated from clean electricity sources such as Wind, Solar, etc., to be reused days or even months later.

If it works, it will help solve the primary pain point of intermittent clean energy sources by making their final energy output more predictable and, therefore, more reliable.

But how does it work, and why sand? Polar Night Energy’s solution is straightforward and elegant. They use clean electricity to heat a large mass of sand well insulated from the outside. It could be in a silo or even buried underground.

Blue Planet Energy has successfully deployed this first-of-its-kind project to support the residents of Shungnak, a remote community above the Arctic Circle in Alaska. The microgrid was designed to address the numerous challenges of operating in extreme conditions and break the community’s dependence on its expensive and polluting diesel generator power plant.

The resilient microgrid consists of a 225 kW solar array that can offset much of Shungnak’s energy needs. The system is integrated with 12 cabinets of 32 kWh Blue Ion LX battery systems, each storing excess energy for later use. In addition to reducing the village’s carbon footprint, the system also greatly decreases the high fuel and maintenance costs associated with running diesel generators in remote Alaska.

The microgrid system is uniquely designed to enable a ‘diesels off’ operation. Featuring Ageto’s ARC microgrid controller solution, the system can automatically coordinate between solar and energy storage to ensure the lowest cost power and communicates with the AVEC power plant on the best times to turn diesel generation off. When the sun shines less during the winter months, the batteries can still be recharged from the generators if necessary.