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Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly the kind of thing government is for, even though it's missing the other half: subsidies. At the very least buying heat pumps for the next 5 years should be tax deductible. Even better: a $2000 or similar rebate.
The subsidies and rebates are a scam. The installers just jack up the prices until they capture the entire value of the rebate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The subsidies and rebates are a scam. The installers just jack up the prices until they capture the entire value of the rebate.
This assumes the consumer doesn't know and can't look up the price of the hardware.
I would love to see a bus-sized version for year-long temperature moderation. Like, drop house heat into it during the summer so it can re-heat the house over the winter, and pull all the heat out of it by Spring so that it can cool the house over the summer. Bus sized because that amount of thermal mass is bound to take up a lot of space, but capable of being buried so that it doesn’t actually take up property space…
You seem to be describing ground sourced heat pumps. If you wanted, you could insulate a a chunk of foundation or earth to avoid heat loss. But just the ground under your building seems to work well enough.
And being on an alluvial plain, if I filter out all the rocks larger than a pea, a good 90+% of what is dug out can immediately be trucked away.
I would love to see a bus-sized version for year-long temperature moderation. Like, drop house heat into it during the summer so it can re-heat the house over the winter, and pull all the heat out of it by Spring so that it can cool the house over the summer. Bus sized because that amount of thermal mass is bound to take up a lot of space, but capable of being buried so that it doesn’t actually take up property space…
So…geothermal? I wish this was possible too but I don’t see how it will work scientifically. Water is one of the chemicals that have one of the highest thermal mass/specific heat (maybe 1/3 of salt hydrates). Even then, you have to bury a crapton of water underground. This design mentioned in the article is more for short term, like 12 hours storage (since they’re accommodating for solar in nighttime)
And being on an alluvial plain, if I filter out all the rocks larger than a pea, a good 90+% of what is dug out can immediately be trucked away.
I would love to see a bus-sized version for year-long temperature moderation. Like, drop house heat into it during the summer so it can re-heat the house over the winter, and pull all the heat out of it by Spring so that it can cool the house over the summer. Bus sized because that amount of thermal mass is bound to take up a lot of space, but capable of being buried so that it doesn’t actually take up property space…
I ran the numbers for this a while ago. I live where we have proper winters (currently -22c). I wanted something simple just with solar thermal and water pumps (no heat pump). Sand batteries work at an industrial level, but for domestic use you want something simple so that means just water. A 100m3 (100,000 litres or 26,500 gallons) cylindrical water tank (approx 5x5m) buried and insulated with 50cm of XPS could pro…
• The centigrade is capitalized when used after a number. There is also a singular glyph for the entire degree-centigrade convention: ℃.
• There are also superscript numerical characters to use with volumes, without having to use formatting: m³.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electrical upgrades are almost always required, and price is more like 7k-9k around here. It's going to be seriously painful for a lot of people.
If you were in the market for an resistive electric heat pump, you likely had the service for it already. A heat pump version will almost always require less power.
Perhaps I am missing something; this product already exists as the Sunamp Thermino. https://sunamp.com/en-gb/hot-water-solutions-thermino-range/
It also exists, as described in the headline, as a tank of heated water. The phase change stuff has positives like taking up less physical space but it's also a much less mature tech than storing hot water.
There's heat storage as discussed here.
Or you can store cold water in a reservoir as a giant battery, pumping it up high when you've got excess power, and letting it back down to generate hydroelectricity from it later.
Or you can boil water to make steam that spins a turbine and use it to convert anything that can heat water (coal, oil, nuclear...) to electricity.
So it's a large version of those rechargeable hand-warmers?
With the adoption of sodium batteries, I wouldn’t be surprised if solar panel + sodium battery would outperform this system by a lot.
There’s also solar thermal panels that heat up a liquid circulating in the system and cut out the need for a battery - and can just store the heated liquid.
Similarly, in mild weather, it is more efficient to burn hydrocarbons and turn it into electricity to run a heat pump than use that hydrocarbon for it's heat energy directly.
Pumping heat is more efficient than making it.