My project is to develop a high temperature thermal collector that still generates respectable voltages (and thus maximized watts) for electrical service.
Sometimes I have to "game out" imagining how my new kind of collector would behave, once installed into the economic and energy ecosystem of today and tomorrow. And I find crazy (surprising) implications all the time. It makes communicating to people presently in the solar business tricky. They have a pretty darn good grip on what IS (to the detriment of seeing what could be.)
Take the title of the is post. In a thermal system the storage tanks are the batteries. Which is a fine analogy. Might not even be an analogy as battery is a word for storage and we've only recently confined it to electrical storage. Anyhow, storage is tricky. It is good if you gain (whatever it is) slowly and then use it in bursts. But there are losses in the movement to and from storage. The longer the storage the greater the losses. There is probably a law somewhere about the loss factor in storage and academics cranking out ways to reflect that loss factor into larger calculations. But first and foremost amongst the losses in storage systems is the cost of the container and collection system itself. What if you could do without? Then for the life of the system you don't have that cost (or the losses.) You get to skip buying it, financing it, disposing of it in the end, maintaining it, securing it, even thinking of it in some cases. This is the wisdom behind Just In Time ______ (fill in the blank.) It is trickier to manage in most cases but cost cutting on something you didn't really need is a big win if you can swing it.
That is an obvious thing these days right?
How does this apply to my hot hybrid? Well, if the coolant can run up to a high temperature then those BTUs can drive a chiller right away. No need to store the heat - put it to work immediately. This does two things:
1) Chops down the size of the storage requirements in the summer since the work is extracted as it becomes available.
2) Reduces the size of the thermal storage required in the winter (as the temps are higher the same energy can be stored in a smaller space.)
It gets better.
This same "higher temp is better" and "use it now" approach can be used in the winter as space heating support. High performance buildings might need to store the energy in classical tanks and "sip" the BTUs overnight but still others could load that heat into thermal mass within the building envelope and let it radiate through the night. By now you know I like dual purpose things so walls that store energy on the cheap (another value of mine) are winners in my book.
The big win on this immediate use is in the summer, however. Many solar thermal systems have to be downsized to prevent summer stagnation and blowouts. But an immediate, high value use for those BTUs changes the game for what the solar specifier would pitch:
1) Less storage - AKA overhead.
2) More collection area with over-heat worries gone and a "more is better" model - AKA new income.
I wonder what else we don't have to buy if we re-imagine with abundance in mind. Nobody wants any of this gear - they want what it produces: service. Are there other services heat can do beyond the HVAC world?
Also, are there better deals for a grid tied system owner than selling to the grid? This is part of the future we need to think about. If the generation during the day grows and subsidies go away it might be better to use the energy than sell it for too cheap. What if your house was smart enough to hold back electrical loads for some functions until the PV array was going full tilt? Or your system predicted the production and ran a mini-auction for the juice? (I'm starting to sound like an Enron Exec so I'll stop there) ugh.
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