The world's biggest sand battery is heating homes in Finland. Can it solve industrial heating too?
4 sep. 2025
16:22
The world’s largest sand battery was recently put into operation to provide district heating to a small town in Finland.
The technology is now being lauded as a potential blueprint for storing renewable energy worldwide – also for industrial use.
"It's simple, but it's a very clever way of doing it," says Sauli Antila, investment director at CapMan Infra, which owns local district heating provider Loviisan Lämpö.
The technology is now being lauded as a potential blueprint for storing renewable energy worldwide – also for industrial use.
"It's simple, but it's a very clever way of doing it," says Sauli Antila, investment director at CapMan Infra, which owns local district heating provider Loviisan Lämpö.
Filling up a massive silo with sand may not sound like a particularly modern way of storing renewable energy in this era of high-tech AI solutions.
But for a small Finnish municipality, the world’s largest sand battery is proving to be a profitable and green way of providing district heating thanks to its unique capacity for storing heat for several weeks.