Technology

34996 readers

194 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.

Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.

Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

366

Europe’s deepest mine to become giant gravity battery (www.independent.co.uk)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

94 comments fedilink hide all child comments

An abandoned mine in Finland is set to be transformed into a giant battery to store renewable energy during periods of excess production.

The Pyhäsalmi Mine, roughly 450 kilometres north of Helsinki, is Europe’s deepest zinc and copper mine and holds the potential to store up to 2 MW of energy within its 1,400-metre-deep shafts.

The disused mine will be fitted with a gravity battery, which uses excess energy from renewable sources like solar and wind in order to lift a heavy weight. During periods of low production, the weight is released and used to power a turbine as it drops.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 138 points 9 months ago (37 children)

holds the potential to store up to 2 MW of energy

2nd paragraph and he's already lost me. It would be nice if tech columnists had the equivalent of even a single semester of high school physics.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 9 months ago (12 children)

I googled Pyhäsalmi Mine gravitricity "2 MW" and EVERY article covering this has also cited 2 MW.

Now, under Occam's Razor, what's more likely:

Absolutely none of the article writers have any clue what the difference between a MW and a MWh is because none of them remember any physics
Some of them could suspect that it's wrong, but an authoritative source of the claim wrote/said 2 MW capacity when they meant "2 MW peak generation" or "2 MWh storage" (I'd presume Gravitricity, but I'm struggling to find such a source, myself)
One writer miswrote/misquoted as per 2, and everyone is mindlessly recycling that original article's contents with no attribution or care.

I don't know which one it is. But I'd generally lean against 1.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago (8 children)

#2 is certainly food for thought. So the idea is that from a journalistic fact-checking point of view, it is more important to convey the information exactly as it was presented than to verify its accuracy?

This would explain why science/engineering-based articles are so commonly inaccurate or missing in critical details. The journalist can fall back on saying "I have a recording of an interview with the expert after we downed a few pints at the pub, and I'm just parroting back what he said. Don't shoot the messenger!"

[–] neutron 1 points 9 months ago

Then there's the issue between scientific jargon that is different from general public use. A scientific theory has a specific definition, but it's easy for general population to dismiss them as "just a theory".

load more comments (7 replies)

load more comments (10 replies)

load more comments (34 replies)