Who has experience in "HEATING WITH ICE" ?

[germ]

Has anybody got experience with heating a house with ice via a heat exchanger.
I think it could be an interesting way of storing the excess PV-Kwh produced during sunny days for the winter, seeing the export is a mere 3.1 Pence and once smart meters are installed one might get stung for exporting in excess of 50% with a hefty tax bill.
I've seen something like a large underground storage tank which is filled with water and has a coil of plastic pipe in it which is connected to a heat exchanger.
This draws the heat out of the water till it freezes and beyond, heating the house. Then in the summer months the tank is unthored by reversing the heat exchanger, which then could also cool the house.
Sound plausible to me, just don't know how big it would have to be.
Regards
germ

 

[markfxy]

sounds bonkers to me how do you heat a tank large enough to heat the house all winter with a few PV panels?

 

[germ]

you don't heat the water for the winter, you just help melting the ice!
So no loss of stored energy and subsequently no insulation required.
Still bonkers?
germ

 

[Earthstore]

It's just a Heatpump, instead of having a "collector" or network of pipes buried in your garden, you put them in a tank of water.
The flaw with your idea though is what size tank to have?
If your heating demand is more than you calculated for, then you exhaust your "heatstore", in addition to this, when your "heatstore" starts to freeze, the heatpump has to work harder making it very inefficient.
The only part PV could play in this is running the heatpump.

Hope this helps
Earthstore Energy

 

[zeljuga]

Other end of particular Heatpump collector needs to be at OZZY land.

 

[Markc]

I know of a client who has his own stream on his property and has built his own hydro heat pump. (He is a air con engineer) This heats his entire house and very very well. He has built in further collectors in case his demand out strips his source however one factor different to your suggestion is that his heat source (the stream) is unrestricted, free flowing. Even this freezes around the collector. Apparently water has a better co-efficient than air or ground source. I'm not entirely convinced a trapped, limited source will be as efficient but still an interesting idea. How PV would work into this would be to help support the electrical needs of the compressor.

 

[germ]

Hi Mark,
thanks for your reply.
where does he get his steam from, out of the ground?
My idea was to use the little energy the PV system produces in the winter to drive the compressor and then in the summer the excess produced could be induced via heat elements to thaw out the tank.
And the heat exchanger could be used in reverse to cool the house if wanted.
Regards
germ

 

[Markc]

Hi Mark,
thanks for your reply.
where does he get his steam from, out of the ground?
My idea was to use the little energy the PV system produces in the winter to drive the compressor and then in the summer the excess produced could be induced via heat elements to thaw out the tank.
And the heat exchanger could be used in reverse to cool the house if wanted.
Regards
germ

?????Arh just read my post back. Steam I meant STREAM. Sorry!

I will see if I can edit!

 

[germ]

Ah,
thought steam was a bit hopeful in this country!
Shame I live on the hill, but at least I don't get flooded.
Tamo

 

[bumcrack]

I have always thought the best use of excess PV power would be to chuck it into batteries. But I seem alone in this as they only seem to do it remote off grid locations!

 

[Earthstore]

The problem with batteries is they are expensive, have a limited life and produce poisonous gas when charging, oh and it's explosive too.

 

[germ]

You can't store energy in batteries for a long time, it'd be ok if you wanted to run your lights at night but I don't think it'd be good for much else.
Also would you need a lot of them I think and that would not be sustainable as Earthstore already correctly mentioned
Long term storage is my issue, I've got to much of it in the summer and to little of it in the winter!
Regards
germ

 

[bumcrack]

It depends what you want to do with them. A bit of clever battery charging kit could follow a transducer to ensure zero export in the day.

What you then need is an inverter that can cope with paralell operation, and drop out when the batteries are exhausted...

 

[germ]

right, but I think water is still a lot cheaper than a bank of batteries in the long term and much more suitable for long term storage.
The nice thing I like about the idea is that one doesn't try to store energy which consequently means trying to prevent excessive loses which naturally occur in time.

But instead store the spent energy (the ice in the tank) till there is enough energy available in order to neutralize it (to thaw it out).

Regards
germ

 

[bumcrack]

So the thermal store ' ice vessel ' will live underground ? Ok in principle, but your insulation would need to be mahoosive to prevent the summer underground ambient of what,10 degC ? From transferring its heat to the ice store.

 

[bumcrack]

Sorry, forgot to say, cold doesn't travel. It just absorbs heat. Like us, molecules always want more, they rarely give energy away...

 

[JohnBoyZ]

How about using any excess power during the summer to run an electrolysis plant to generate hydrogen and then compress this into liquid form for storage in large pressure vessels. then in winter the stored hydrogen can be used to run fuel cells to generate electricity for heating and powering the house. Simples!!! I cant see any reason this shouldn't be widely adopted LOL

 

[Earthstore]

I find all of this very interesting, in simple terms we are tring to change one form of energy into another so we can use it when we need it, right?
The problem is
A; loses, every time we change the form of or try to store energy, it incures losses.

B; The cost of building or running a system outways the benifits.


My belief is that soon, somebody will come up with a great idea, things are moving fast, when I was a boy, if you had told me that we could heat our homes with just air going through a fridge that works backwards, or you could have these glass things on the roof that produce electricity, I would have said you were barking, but here we are!
My original interest in this industry was water, watching a waterwheel actually, it is one thing in this country that we have plenty of, and it's constant, 24 hrs a day 365 days of the year,springs, streams, brooks, rivers, a reliable energy source that just flows away.. hmmm

 

[germ]

Right,
In order to store energy for use at a later point we need to store it, which rightly comes with the problem of storage and the attempt the preserve as much as we can.
That's why I find the idea of turning it upside down and restore spent energy when there is plenty about so attractive.
It means you don't have to think about storing the energy!

germ

 

[bumcrack]

How about using any excess power during the summer to run an electrolysis plant to generate hydrogen and then compress this into liquid form for storage in large pressure vessels. then in winter the stored hydrogen can be used to run fuel cells to generate electricity for heating and powering the house. Simples!!! I cant see any reason this shouldn't be widely adopted LOL

You are totally over complicating things. It would be much simpler to divert the excess PV energy to a high power laser, and then use this laser to cut MI5 agents in half, and knock satellites off their orbits axis, possibly from a small tropical island. Your installation will need approval to local standards by a Mexican plane spotting dwarf.

When you have done this, and taken over the world, you can increase the export value for PV to something like 12.5p, thus negating the need for inefficient and complicated power storage systems.

Job done.