Sand Battery

Who would have thought that sand – yes, sand – can be used as a battery!

But that is precisely what some companies have succeeded in doing.

How do sand batteries work?

Firstly, a battery does not always mean that it stores electricity the way the conventional batteries do – which is in an electrochemical form.

Electricity can also be stored as heat – and that is what sand batteries do.

Sand can retain heat quite well, and for a long time – for months if you wish! By converting electricity to heat, and then by storing the heat in a mixture that comprises mostly sand, you get a sand battery.

The sand in these “batteries” can reach a temperature of 600 degrees.

How do we recover the energy back? In many cases, the stored heat can be used for a variety of heating purposes. It is also possible to use the stored heat to generate electricity back again using advanced turbine-based power generation solutions.

Sand batteries could find near term applications for storing renewable energy such as solar or wind power, providing an attractive avenue of storing excess energy generated from these infirm power sources.