One of Europe's deepest mines is being transformed into an underground energy store. It will use gravity to retain excess power for when it is needed. Contact online >>
One of Europe''s deepest mines is being transformed into an underground energy store. It will use gravity to retain excess power for when it is needed.
The remote Finnish community of Pyhäjärvi is 450 kilometres north of Helsinki. Its more than 1,400-metre-deep zinc and copper Pyhäsalmi mine was decommissioned but is now being given a new lease of life by Scotland-based company Gravitricity.
The firm has developed an energy storage system that raises and lowers weights, offering what it says are "some of the best characteristics of lithium-ion batteries and pumped hydro storage".
When there is excess power - from wind turbines on a windy day for example - weights would be winched up the Pyhäsalmi mine''s 530-metre auxiliary shaft. To generate energy these weights can be released. This turns the winches into generators, creating either a short burst of electricity or a slower trickle depending on what is needed.
A study published by a team of international researchers last month found that gravity batteries in decommissioned mines could offer a cost-effective, long-term solution for storing energy as the world transitions to renewable power.
Scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) found that the world''s abandoned mine shafts could store up to 70TWh of power - roughly the equivalent of global daily electricity consumption.
The local community in Pyhäjärvi has set up a development company to promote regeneration at the old mine. It has just signed an agreement with Gravitricity to transform the old mine shaft into the first full-scale prototype of the company''s technology.
They "anticipate this could become Europe''s first Gravistore deployment", according to the company.
"This project will demonstrate at full scale how our technology can offer reliable long-life energy storage that can capture and store energy during periods of low demand and release it rapidly when required," Gravitricity''s executive chairman Martin Wright said.
"This full-scale project will provide a pathway to other commercial projects and allow our solution to be embedded into mine decommissioning activities, offering a potential future for mines approaching the end of their original service life."
Wright also adds that the project will hopefully provide "low carbon jobs" in an area suffering significantly from the end of mining operations.
The mine was opened in 1962, extracting more than 60 million tonnes of ore over its lifetime. Once a major employer in the region, it closed in August 2022 leaving many unemployed.
The gravity battery is one of several community-driven projects at the mine aimed at breathing new life into the area. It includes a solar farm, tech startups and an underground 5G network.
Gravitricity, a Scottish company, has set its sites on turning a closed Finnish mine into a giant storage battery for renewable energy. The GraviStore gravity energy storage system (GESS) is the first commercial-scale deployment of such technology in an underground mine.
The GraviStore system raises and lowers heavy weights in shafts. When a renewable system produces surplus power, the surplus is used to raise the weight. And when more power is needed than can be generated, the weight is lowered – thanks to gravity – to produce additional power which is fed into the distribution system.
Power can be released either in a large burst or more slowly as the weight lowers. A 530-metre-deep auxiliary shaft has been selected for the location of the GESS. It will provide up to 2 MW of storage capacity.
Gravitricity has chosen the former Pyhäjärvi mine, Europe''s deepest copper-zinc mine. The mine was opened in 1962 by Outokumpu, sold to Inmet Mining in 2022, and acquired by First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM) in 2013. The mine was shuttered in 2022, but the refinery will remain active until 2025.
The nearby community of Pyhäjärvi, 450 km north of Helsinki, has 5,000 residents. Energy storage has the potential to provide new low-carbon jobs to replace those lost when mining ceased. And this is not the only location where the strategy can be employed – think of closed coal mines as society evolves its low-carbon lifestyle. Ideally, the GESS system would be built into any mine during decommissioning.
The deepest metal mine in Europe, unused since 2022, is set to host a giant underground gravity battery.
Pyhäsalmi Mine, located 450 kilometers north of Helsinki in Finland, runs deep into the Earth – 1,444 meters, or around 0.9 miles, to be precise. With its copper and zinc deposits depleted, Pyhäsalmi has a lot of vertical space sitting unused that''s perfect for capturing the energy of heavy weights being dropped down a shaft, which is precisely what Scottish energy storage tech firm Gravitricity plans to use it for.
First reported by Glaswegian news outlet The Herald, Gravitricity''s intent for the Finnish mine isn''t, sadly, a mile-high gravity battery, but a smaller one in a 530-meter (1,738 ft) auxiliary shaft. Once complete, the battery will apparently be able to achieve two megawatt-hours of storage capacity.
"This project will demonstrate at full scale how our technology can offer reliable long-life energy storage that can capture and store energy during periods of low demand and release it rapidly when required," Gravitricity executive chairman Martin Wright told The Herald.
A gravity battery is just what it sounds like: Excess energy generated by power plants is used to move a material upward – in Gravitricity''s case it''s heavy weights in a mine shaft raised by winches – and when there''s an energy shortage the load is dropped and the energy is harvested.
Gravity batteries aren''t a new idea, and Gravitricity''s weight-cable-winch design isn''t the only one out there. Liquid pumped between reservoirs at different elevations, loaded-up train cars pushed up and down hills capturing energy with regenerative brakes, and large buoyant cylinders pulled underwater and returned to the surface have all been proposed or tested over the years.
The idea with all the various gravity battery designs is to supplement energy systems in times of shortage – a need becoming doubly important as the world attempts to transition away from fossil fuels toward renewables like solar and wind, also known as variable renewable energy sources.
That''s not to say gravity batteries don''t have their detractors. Scaling remains difficult, and the amount of energy generated by a gravity battery is minuscule compared to traditional batteries, though it is far cheaper per megawatt-hour.
We were unable to reach Gravitricity for comment, but the firm told The Herald that it had signed a deal with Callio Pyhäjärvi, a special development firm set up to develop reuse projects for the Pyhäsalmi Mine, for the prototype. The project''s timetable isn''t available (we''ve asked), nor is it clear whether Gravitricity plans to build additional batteries in the mine if the prototype proves successful.
Nonetheless, "this full-scale project will provide a pathway to other commercial projects and allow our solution to be embedded into mine decommissioning activities, offering a potential future for mines approaching the end of their original service life," Wright said.
While many gravity battery systems have been designed to operate on the surface, putting them underground could have a massive effect on energy shortfalls. According to research published in early 2023, the number of abandoned underground mines is growing globally as fossil fuel usage decreases, pollution concerns grow and resources dry up.
It''s challenging to estimate the total number of abandoned mines globally, the paper''s authors admit, but they say there are more than half a million in the US alone, many of which could be repurposed with gravity batteries.
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