Euronews.green writes that the Pyhäjärvi mine is located around 450 kilometers north of Helsinki and it is over 1.400 meters deep. Originally, it was used to mine zinc and copper, but now it could be part of the ample energy transition going in Europe thanks to efforts from Scottish company Gravitricity.

Some experts believe that by filling old abandoned mines with gravitational batteries, we could power the entire planet for 24 hours, which could be useful for when renewables can't produce enough power.

Scientists report that during ideal conditions, wind turbines and solar panels generate more power than we can use, meaning that unless stored, that excess energy goes to waste. Researchers at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis suggest that abandoned mines could provide the answer we're looking for.

As far as abandoned mines are concerned, they believe that those could provide us with as much as 70 TWh of power in the form of gravitational batteries.

The total energy storage capacity offered by the Finnish mine can reach 2MW of power and it can be integrated into the local grid, helping with its decarbonization.

The community in the small town of Pyhäjärvi also wants to offer a new life to the abandoned mine and they signed an agreement with Gravitricity, so that the Scottish company can implement and test its technologies at a larger scale.

Gravitricity’s executive chairman Martin Wright said that "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", he added.

Opened in 1962, the Pyhäjärvi mine allowed the extraction of some 60 million tons of copper and zinc until its closing in 2022. Among other projects used to breathe new life in the mine are an underground 5G network and a solar farm.