PV Thermal Battery

Concept

• Photovoltaics and other renewables are not gaining traction like they should be because of intermittency - what do you do with PV if there is no sun at night?
• Batteries are expensive. To store enough energy, say in winter when there is little sun - for 5 days - would require a tremendous amount of storage. About $50k [1]
• But here's how we do it - store the heat in thermal mass - water - not battery storage.
• Water is less expensive than batteries. In fact, about 100,000x less expensive per kg. [2] - 1/20 cent vs 2500 cents
• What if we just store water? Yes!
• You can use a heat pump to heat water. Hot Water Heat Pump costs $6k for 60k BTU. More than enough for hot water, whole house heating.
• How it works: during day, heat pump uses PV energy to heat water - or cool it in summer. This water is stored in [[IBC Toesl

Try 2

Detailing the scenario, 20 sq meters of IBC totes 2 high, raised only 30C from 20-50C - or in the negative direction in summer - stores heat/cool for 12 days, and takes 6 days to produce that heat with PV! 1 MWhr of heat stored.

https://chatgpt.com/c/685b1c5e-83c8-8010-a0e4-bbd8923c8845

Initial

See in https://chatgpt.com/share/6858a32a-d328-8010-8c0b-3268127ba2f1

Result 1:

Result 2:

Internal Links

• Power-to-Heat
  • Power-to-Heat-to-Cooling
    • Via Absorption Cooling
• Power-to-Heat-to-Power
  • Also known as Pumped Thermal Energy Storage