SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
GreenTechMedia.com covers why we need Thermal energy progress and adoption, and the barriers to said adoption..
A vital technology for securing deep greenhouse gas reductions exists and works well, but still hasn't achieved widespread deployment.
[...] Thermal storage has been around longer than advanced battery storage, but it has never broken out of a niche segment. Only a handful of companies install this in the U.S., compared to the dozens now chasing the battery storage market.
Cultural predilections play a role here, Ice Energy's Hopkins said. Battery storage only became popular in the last few years, in large part thanks to Elon Musk's knack for capturing the public imagination. That newfound awareness could be transferable.
"Because they know about lithium, when you talk about other forms of storage, it's not so foreign," he said.
Thermal storage, though, lacks a celebrity evangelist, and it can't charge a sexy sports car.
"The thing about thermal storage is it's invisible to the occupants," said Calmac CEO Mark MacCracken. "The people who go into these commercial buildings expect the building to be cool. They have zero understanding of how it's being cooled."
Companies seeking to displace conventional heating and cooling have to reach customers when they need that equipment, because it's not an everyday purchase.
New-build homes could be a promising market, but for existing homes, the time to buy a new AC unit typically comes as soon as the old one breaks. At that point, the customer has strong incentive to go with what's fastest and easiest, which probably isn't a wonky cooling technology they've never heard of.
Setting aside the consumer awareness challenge, there are technical limitations to be conquered.
One is getting into the design workflow for major building projects. Typically, MacCracken said, the architect designs a building and asks the engineers to cool it. They look at the peak cooling power needed to cover the hottest day of the year, add a margin for safety and call it a day.
Thermal storage requires a different kind of analysis and carries a perception of risk, even if it ultimately costs the same and delivers the same safety factor, MacCracken said. It takes time to break into that industrial workflow on a broader scale.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Thursday September 07 2017, @01:22PM (3 children)
I'm not sure how this is newsworthy. It is quite common for heat-pump systems to use (instead of the outside air) a field of pipes laid in the ground. Put them a meter or two down, which is easy when you're first building, and the temperature is pretty constant. This works for heating in the winter, and cooling in the summer. Ground temperature, depending on your location, is likely 10C to 15C, which work well both for heating and cooling. Basically, the whole earth is your thermal mass.
I know a guy here who did something similar, but took it one step farther: He had a massive water tank put in the ground, and the heat-pump works off of that. Over the course of the winter, the tank fills with ice. Over the course of the summer it melts. Hence, his heat-pump is always working off of a base temperature of 0C (32F). That's maybe a disadvantage for heating (lower temperature), but it was a renovation, and a lot less expensive that burying a field of pipes in the ground. And still a lot more efficient that working with the outside air.
I think it is a McDonnell Douglas building in St. Louis that does this on a commercial scale, using a couple of enormous, decorative ponds in front of their buildings. Fountains in the ponds keep the water cool in the summer, and heat pumps use them as a heat sink for the air conditioning.
Using an insulated tank only makes sense if you have a long-term, free source of heat or cold. Collecting solar energy during the day, for heating at night - that's also old news. Not sure where you get the free source of cold for A/C during the day.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Thursday September 07 2017, @02:08PM
Did you read the articles? If not, maybe you should as it would inform you more about this. Stored thermal energy as discussed here is NOT the same as geothermal or groundwater heat pumps. I have an array of pipes in my pond. They're connected to a heat pump that is used to cool my house in the summer and heat it in the winter. During the summer the water is maybe 20 degrees and in the winter maybe it's 4 at the bottom of the pond.
This article is talking about taking an insulated water source, and pre-heating/cooling it for later use. For example:
- Use solar energy during the summer to heat an underground tank of water that can then be used to heat a building in the winter.
- Use off-peak electricity to freeze a water tank, which can then be used to cool a building during peak electrical rates (which also happen to coincide with higher time-of-use rates).
The articles go through when and where these scenarios might, or might not, be appropriate.
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Thursday September 07 2017, @02:11PM
Sorry, I didn't properly read and comprehend your whole comment before posting mine.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 08 2017, @02:42AM
I've always worried about large water tanks freezing and not maintaining their structural integrity. Otherwise, water chiller heat transfer systems are pretty cool.
🌻🌻 [google.com]