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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.

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[–] [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!"

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

Just FYI, you need an escape backslant (\) preceeding the octothorpe (#) to not have your entire first paragraph bolded.