In a quiet facility outside Hamburg, Germany, a salt-based thermal battery is turning heads—and transforming the conversation around renewable energy storage. Built by the innovative German company Kraftblock, this zero-emission thermal system is part of a broader, fast-growing international movement to unlock long-duration, sustainable heat storage using molten salts.
Unlike conventional lithium-ion batteries, these systems don’t rely on cobalt, lithium, or other environmentally taxing materials. Instead, they use recycled industrial salts stored in insulated steel tanks, where electric heating coils raise the material to temperatures over 1,000°C (1,832°F). This stored thermal energy can be preserved for days, weeks, or even entire seasons with minimal heat loss—then released on demand to power industrial processes or heat buildings through district heating networks.
Germany’s system, already supplying clean heat to a steel plant, is not alone. Around the globe, similar technologies are gaining traction as countries confront the twin pressures of climate change and energy security.
Finland: Polar Night Solutions
In Finland, energy startup Polar Night Energy has developed a “sand battery” using silica—another abundant and heat-retentive material. Their commercial pilot, installed in the town of Kankaanpää, stores clean heat for use during long, dark winters when solar production drops. It’s a sibling to Germany’s molten salt battery in function and spirit—low cost, zero emission, and designed for the long game.
India: Solar Heat for Industry
India, one of the world's fastest-growing energy consumers, is investing in molten salt thermal storage to support Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) projects in the Rajasthan desert. These projects use mirrors to concentrate sunlight, heat molten salt, and generate power well after sunset—a crucial feature in regions with high evening energy demand. The Indian government’s National Solar Mission includes targets for CSP with integrated salt storage as a path to firm, round-the-clock renewable power.
United States: Salt and Scale
In the U.S., companies like Malta Inc. and Sandia National Laboratories are working on next-generation salt-based storage technologies that pair with solar, wind, and even nuclear sources. Malta’s system uses molten salts and antifreeze-like liquids to store energy as heat, then reconvert it to electricity with a heat engine—making it a contender in the grid-scale energy storage arena. Meanwhile, research at the Department of Energy continues to refine Phase Change Materials (PCMs) like salt for use in industrial decarbonization.
China: Scaling Up Fast
China, the world’s largest energy consumer, has already built gigawatt-scale molten salt storage facilities in tandem with its CSP plants, such as the Delingha project in Qinghai Province. The system can store energy for 15 hours or more, ensuring solar generation becomes a reliable, dispatchable power source. China’s long-term plan includes molten salt as a backbone for its renewable grid resilience strategy.
Why Salt Matters Globally
Salt-based thermal storage offers critical advantages that are hard to ignore:
• No degradation over time (unlike lithium-based batteries)
• No fire or explosion risk
• No reliance on rare or geopolitically volatile materials
• Massive scalability for both heat and power
And perhaps most important of all: these systems turn seasonal abundance into year-round reliability—a kind of energy time machine, storing surplus energy in summer and releasing it in winter.
The Global Energy Puzzle
As countries aim for net-zero carbon goals, one puzzle remains stubbornly unsolved: how to store and dispatch clean energy when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Chemical batteries have their place, but they’re expensive, short-lived, and unsuitable for industrial heat needs.
That’s where molten salt systems shine. Whether it’s a salt tower in China, a sand battery in Finland, or Kraftblock’s recycled salt tanks in Germany, the world is converging on an answer hidden in plain sight: heat is power, and salt can store it.
This is not just an energy storage revolution—it’s a reinvention of how we think about time, seasonality, and sustainability. Molten salt isn’t just melting—it’s reshaping the global energy landscape.
Further Reading and References
• Kraftblock: www.kraftblock.com
• Polar Night Energy (Finland)
• International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) – Innovation Outlook: Thermal Energy Storage
• National Solar Mission (India)
• Malta Inc. (USA)
• Sandia National Labs – Thermal Energy Storage Research
• Nature Energy – “Decarbonizing Industrial Heat”
• Energy Storage News – Global Thermal Storage Reports
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