In 2021, the Grohnde nuclear power plant in Lower Saxony on the Weser River was shut down. Now, immediately next to it, the Emmerthal energy cluster is growing with three very large battery storage systems, ground-mounted photovoltaic systems, and a new substation for several 380-kilovolt high-voltage lines.
What would also be great: Solar power produces a surplus of energy on summer days, and summers are becoming hotter. One can use seasonal heat storage and bidirectinal heat pumps to cool buildings and store that heat, and use it to heat homes in the winter. Seasonal storage turned out to work well.
How would you store the heat/convert to electricity?
Hot sand stores a huge amount of heat, and the bigger the storage, the less heat it loses. With modern insulation, even the cheap options, it lasts months. Circulate water or some other fluid through pipes embedded in the sand, and you can introduce or extract the heat.
Just a large water tank with a thick layer of insulation. Could also be sand or even the ground which is used for some heat pumps.
Interesting, thank you for sharing
Personally, for long term storage, I’m more a fan of simple solutions because they scale better, such as using the excess electricity to pump water up a hill, then using generators in the winter to convert it back to electricity (pumped storage).
Unfortunately, the potential for pumped hydro storage is very small in Germany :/
Not sure if that’s a problem though, the German power grid is connected to many European countries including France, Switzerland and Austria.
Heat storage is much simpler and cheaper than electricity storage.
Both are needed, but storing electricity when all you need is heat is overkill, and unnecessary expensive.
I think the pumped storage is more used when there is an excess of electricty, for example when wind power plants produces large amount of electricity and the prices goes toward zero, or sometime negative.
Molten salt can also be used for heat storage. I’m not sure what the advantages are of molten salt vs water vs sand and what is most realistic.
I don’t think any of those alternatives are used in large scale.
As a side note, some ski resorts are saving snow during the summer to be able to open earlier in the season.