Plans have been announced to repurpose a disused shaft at the Pyhäsalmi Mine in Finland into an underground energy storage, using technology developed by Gravitricity.
The Pyhäsalmi Mine, owned by Canadian mining corporation First Quantum Minerals, is located 450km north of Finland’s capital, Helsinki. It’s one of Europe’s deepest zinc and copper mines descending 1,444 meters into the earth.
The local community in Pyhäsalmi, together with Edinburgh-based energy storage firm Gravitricity, has established a development company called Callio Pyhäjärvi to drive regeneration projects at the mine.
The partners kicked off their collaboration by signing an agreement to transform a 530-meter-deep auxiliary shaft into a full-scale prototype of Gravitricity’s technology.
Gravitricity’s energy storage system, GraviStore, involves raising and lowering heavy weights in underground shafts, combining characteristics of lithium-ion batteries and pumped hydro storage.
The system will be used to deliver up to 2MW of storage capacity, thereby providing balancing services to the Finnish network.
Gravitricity’s executive chairman Martin Wright commented in a statement: “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.
“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.
“It will also provide vital new low carbon jobs in an area which has suffered significantly from the end of traditional mining operations.”
The Pyhäsalmi Mine was opened in 1962 with above-ground operations scheduled to continue until 2025. According to Gravitricity, over 60 million tonnes of ore have been extracted over the lifespan of the mine.
The mine, once a major employer in the area, closed in August 2022, leading to significant job loss. However, this storage project is part of a greater initiative to breathe new life into the mine and the region. To this end, global initiative Callio is now driving various projects at the mine, including solar farms, technology startups, mining technology testing facilities, and an underground 5G network.
