Vantaa Energy, one of Finland’s largest city energy companies, has commissioned seasonal cavern thermal energy storage in the city of Vantaa, Finland, from engineering company AFRY. The contract is to provide engineering, procurement and construction management.
It said the energy storage will be the world’s largest. It will store energy produced from industrial waste heat, waste-to-energy processes and electric boilers powered by renewable electricity. The energy storage facility has volume of around approximately 1.1 million cubic metres, including process spaces excavated into the rock. The storage facility’s thermal capacity is 90GWh.
The system will store excess waste heat and surplus heat generated from waste-to-energy. Jukka Toivonen, CEO of Vantaa Energy, said: “We can store excess heat generated during periods of low heating demand and release it to the district heating network during cold spells, thus avoiding the use of expensive fossil fuel imports. Additionally, we can produce heat with electricity when the electricity prices are low.”
AFRY said the contract value is Skr170 million ($16 million) over five years.
