A startup from Finland called The Storage officially put into operation its first thermal storage system on an industrial scale, installed in a local brewery and the numbers are striking, up to 70% reduction in energy costs and 90% less carbon emissions in processes that until today depend heavily on gas and oil.

The system works in a straightforward but ingeniously efficient manner. Converting renewable electricity into heat, storing that energy in heated sand, and releasing the heat on demand for industrial heating may sound simple, but the impact is huge. Today heat production accounts for about a fifth of all global energy consumption and about 80% of that still comes from fossil fuels.

It is one of the largest sources of industrial emissions and also one of the most difficult to replace. The Storage solution was designed precisely for that bottleneck. During charging, renewable electricity, preferably used when it is cheaper and more abundant, heats the sand up to 800º. This hot sand is stored in highly insulated thermal silos, where the energy remains stable for long periods. When industry needs steam or heat for its production lines, the sand is circulated through an external heat exchanger, releasing energy with up to 10 times greater efficiency than traditional static thermal storage systems.

In addition to being efficient, the system is highly scalable. It can operate from smaller installations with around 20 MWh to giant industrial systems reaching 500 MW h of storage and charging powers of up to 20 MW. The beneficiaries are heat-intensive sectors such as food, beverages, chemicals and industrial processing finally gain a real alternative to gas boilers, solving energy is the first step.

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