abusing Time Of Use rates

[JRH]

I’m not commenting at all on the merits or non-merits of “32volt boaters“ideas,
but at least he trying for a better/ different way… that should always be encouraged , as that how everything begins.
Throw it at the wall , see what sticks.
Even if they are wrong, I admire people that think outside the box… To converse with a turtle is not very challenging . (although I love turtles) …

Wilber and Orville and countless others took a lot of flack too.

When searching for answers ,try to create an “elegant problem.” which hopefully fosters the processs of finding an “elegant solution..”…

That’s the best anyone can hope for..

Good luck to all thinkers and dreamers .…

J.

 

[BillSF]

Just heating/cooling your home during the day while solar is active stores quite a bit of energy inside your home without using batteries. If you have excess solar production, just increasing the thermal mass inside your house will let you store more energy
with day-time solar heating or cooling. Choosing heavier furniture, add a decorative fireplace mantel made of bricks, etc

With batteries in hot weather, you can fire up the air conditioning before the sun rises to create room in the batteries and convert stored electrical energy into stored thermal energy

Even for off-peak rate arbitrage from the grid, depending on when the cheap off-peak rates end, you can pre-heat or pre-cool your home at 5am or 6am (or an hour or two before cheap rates end). I actually watched a YouTube video to that effect.

For an ice box cooling, have copper lines with antifreeze running through ice box and into some sort of heat exchanger in your living area. Turn on a pump when you get home to collect heat from your living room and dump it into the ice box. The cold metal on the heat exchanger will condense water out of the air on your house, lowering humidity and helping to make the room feel cooler (dump the condensate down the drain).

Alternatively, you might just have some sort of cold stone you sit on, or built into the floor in front of your couch. Have the circulating fluid cool (or heat) the stone (maybe poured concrete with the tubing inside instead of actual stone). Sit on it or put your bare feet on it to cool yourself down. Probably removes the condensation problem. Functionally this is more about cooling/heating yourself instead of all the air in your house.

 

[Danke]

Before AC, everyone hung out in cool basements during hot days in summer.

 

[OzSolar]

Over the years I've heard of a few projects where was ice storage was used to increase the size of the cooling plant because there simply wasn't enough electrical service available at the facility. EG: You can turn a 500 ton chiller into a 800 ton chiller for a few hours using thermal energy banked the night before.

Keep in mind these are chillers so the ice is supplementing the chill water loop via a heat exchanger so even though that might sound complex it's actually simpler to add ice storage to a facility with a chiller than it would be your typical home or small business.

One project was designed that way from the start. The Lawrence Welk Theater in Branson, MO uses ice storage to get them through thier daily 2 hr. shows then spends the rest of the day recharging the ice storage.

 

[l00semarble]

If anyone were thinking about tinkering with a flywheel setup there is something in the marine industry that could be of interest. Seakeeper stability gyros come in several different sizes and have a high angular momentum, precesion ground flywheel and shaft enclosed in a vacuum sealed sphere with low friction bearings.

Obviously it is not built to transfer rotational energy back out but if someone were interested in tinkering with a system a used/broken Seakeeper could offer some useful parts to get started.