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Simultaneous Heating & Cooling (SHC) Chiller for Solar Applications?

DisabledVet

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Dec 10, 2019
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Has anyone played around with heating and cooling water with solar? There is a unit you can purchase by Multiaqua (https://multiaqua.com/index.php/chillers/mhrc-ae) but I have also seen some videos of folks trying to build their own from scratch. How hard can it be? People have been using thermal batteries for decades and I imagine all us older folks heard the stories from our grandparents about storing ice.

Has anyone tried building a thermal battery? Use the sun to heat the water during the day and use the water to heat your home during the night?

How about the opposite - use the sun to chill water / make ice during the day and use the ice to cool a home?
 
I cant believe I watched that whole video and he never even says how he heats the water. ??
 
Ok, so he's using solar thermal panels. Water moves through a maze in the panel as the sun heats it.

 
I've been looking around and it seems abhorrently expensive to set up.
 
I think he says in another video that if the batteries are full, he dumps any additional electricity into heating up the tank as well.

I'm no HVAC expert, but from what I understand, chillers are twice as efficient as residential A/C. Breaking it down logically in my head, it makes a lot of sense.

You have 5-6 good hours of solar during a summer day. You maximize that by using solar panels to cool a large tank of water, preferably turning it into ice, while also charging batteries. You then use the power from the batteries to pump water through a coil in the chilled tank and through a radiator ... while also taking hot air from the house and using a fan to blow it across that radiator. Seems pretty straight forward to me.

For heating, you have the opposite. You get a good 4 hours of solar in the winter. You pump the water from a hot storage tank through solar water heaters on the roof AND use electricity to heat the water in the stored tank at the same time. You heat the house by pumping water through a coil in that hot water storage tank and through a radiator in the room and/or tubing in the flooring.

For the Multiaqua solution, it looks like they are trying to take a commercial system and downsize it to a large residence system - something that is going to still be very expensive. Just looking at the logical physics of it all, I think David Poz might be onto something with a DIY solution ... but trying to use his videos as a source of how to do it yourself are painful (Sorry, David, if you read this...). His videos are amusing but the signal to noise ratio is nowhere near what we get from Will's videos.
 
I think he says in another video that if the batteries are full, he dumps any additional electricity into heating up the tank as well.

I'm no HVAC expert, but from what I understand, chillers are twice as efficient as residential A/C. Breaking it down logically in my head, it makes a lot of sense.

You have 5-6 good hours of solar during a summer day. You maximize that by using solar panels to cool a large tank of water, preferably turning it into ice, while also charging batteries. You then use the power from the batteries to pump water through a coil in the chilled tank and through a radiator ... while also taking hot air from the house and using a fan to blow it across that radiator. Seems pretty straight forward to me.

For heating, you have the opposite. You get a good 4 hours of solar in the winter. You pump the water from a hot storage tank through solar water heaters on the roof AND use electricity to heat the water in the stored tank at the same time. You heat the house by pumping water through a coil in that hot water storage tank and through a radiator in the room and/or tubing in the flooring.

For the Multiaqua solution, it looks like they are trying to take a commercial system and downsize it to a large residence system - something that is going to still be very expensive. Just looking at the logical physics of it all, I think David Poz might be onto something with a DIY solution ... but trying to use his videos as a source of how to do it yourself are painful (Sorry, David, if you read this...). His videos are amusing but the signal to noise ratio is nowhere near what we get from Will's videos.

Agreed, and he takes too long to get to the point. That's the best thing about Will- BAM right to the point. This is interesting, but seems very cost ineffective. I'm looking at a much smaller solultion; a 12 volt timer and a 12 volt water heater element. Not as high tech, but I know my system well enough to know when to set the timer for (after batteries are charged).
 
Missouri wind & solar shows a simple setup:
. That's for heat. I'm still looking for a chiller i can suggest for cheap. In the meantime, i got a 24v fridge. Not cheap.
 
Chilling is something else, you need a compressor. Solar world is still in the dark ages. But, hot water is free for the taking. You can't even imagine how much PV energy is wasted each day by charge controllers sitting around figuring out what to do. I get all my hot water from existing PV panels in my system. I just added another 40 gallon tank in the garage just for the clothes washer. Who cares about efficiency of PV when all that energy is just going to be wasted. Abandon all hope those who listen to David and the other youtube goobers on how to heat water.
 
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