I wish I kept better records. . .
Why? Because this is related to an idea I actually corresponded with a solar panel manufacturer about, 15-16 years ago, AND another idea I'd always wanted to put into practice if I ever got to build a home.
This is the "this" that I refer to. (Sorry - I could have linked it in the last sentence but this is worth reading so I broke it out into this separate paragraph.) And my idea was related - oh, so related - to it. I'll bring out the significant sentence in the article:
"A heater with a 300-litre tank can store about as much energy as a second-generation Tesla Powerwall – at a fraction of the cost."
The UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures study found that a HWS (Hot Water System) can store energy in low usage periods of the day and not hitting the grid with HWS demand during peak periods. That's actually supposed to happen by offering cheaper energy between 3AM and 5AM but - I'm in Australia and while our electric meter has a separate circuit for the hot water system it isn't used to advantage.
How Off-Peak Is (And Isn't) Working:
The two ways off-peak offerings are supposed to work are to 1) offer tariff incentives by making energy rates cheaper during off-peak periods and 2) with smart meters, being able to time-control devices (such as hot water systems) that store energy already to use the electricity during those off-peak times. Optionally a third way would be to 3) demand-control these devices.
How It Works:
The first two are things that should be happening but I've never actually had an energy supplier that offers off-peak rates. This would have been super handy in the past and might have slightly reduced fossil fuel use and maybe made energy bills for consumers cheaper. But it seems that in practice it was all too hard, and the only concession to offpeak load levelling I've ever seen is that meters here offer that timed circuit for the hot water system...
I actually tried doing this manually in WA by operating the breaker for the HWS because it was freakishly expensive at my rental to keep the hot water hot. It was a tiny HWS out in the elements and must have had the insulation soaked through and as a result insulating nothing. All I know is that it would switch on 4-6 times a day and this was pretty expensive to deal with.
It proved cheaper to a) make a free-standing insulating enclosure around it and b) turn it on before I went to bed and off in the morning before having a shower, then on again 30-60 minutes before the evening shower and doing dishes. A difference of about $40 per month in fact.
So - I've never been offered incentives and 2) the timer method must be a pain in the ass for energy companies as the (just in my State of Victoria alone) 2.8mln houses in the State that have electric HWSs switch on at 3AM. I'll be generous and say that 20% have boosted solar HWS, 40% have gas, and only 40% are pure electric but that's still over a million systems that these stupid meters switch on at the same time every night.
How It Should Work:
With the stupidly large numbers of these "smart" meters that are being insisted on, you'd think that energy companies could have phased in a system where the smart meters gradually load up with random HWSs during sags in demand during the day and then offer reduced tariffs during the night time offpeak and just switch in the HWSs that hadn't been activated during the day and then 20 minutes later those latter ones as well, which would stop this huge demand spike and spread it out.
As far as I've been able to work out, that was one of the original ideas behind smart meters, to be able to level demand out. But oh yeah - it doesn't pay our CEOs and shareholders any more so we won't waste time and money implementing it.
My Take-out From This.
Energy companies will never give the customer a break when they can gouge them instead. In the Fossil Fuel Cartel's (FFC) postcapitalism period, they are going to gouge until they get stopped by government regulation. Yes, they are experiencing what it'll be like when their product is devalued and yes, I know our current Labor government are making some efforts already to muzzle their gorging instincts. It all needs to happen faster.
Grass Roots Activism. It's going to take a surging tide of people like you and me to write emails and letters and petitions and more posts like this one.
Now How That Article Was Nothing Like My Idea
The first idea, the one I wrote to a solar panel manufacturer about, was to put water-cooled heatsinks on the back of solar panels and use the coolant water with a heat pump to heat the home's hot water. The heat pumps were already available, all they had to do was put a stamped aluminium watercooled heatsink on the bottoms of their panels. I remember they were all like "interesting idea, but . . ." and they obviously saw the energy advantages to it but weren't prepared to be the first one on the market with it.
How ALL Of This Relates To My Second Idea:
My second idea was that if I ever got the opportunity to build, I'd put two sets of cisterns under the house under the concrete pad, thermally insulated and with recirculation pumps and use solar energy to heat the water in one set of cisterns and cool the other, and then use those to control the temperatures of sub-floor heating along with ceiling fans. Had the advantages that a) you collected heat from solar panels using my other idea, and also solar HWS collectors, and electric heating elements to use up excess solar electric energy, and save almost all the climate control costs.
There are now several public buildings that save energy by using geothermal and/or natural heat/cooling and use it to climate control the space.
I'm not claiming I was the first for any of those ideas but I am saying that such ideas are a natural outgrowth of existing tech and keep getting 'discovered' over and over before they finally land on fertile ground. I'm hoping that some person reading this will either be that fertile ground or will know someone else that will be.
Once again - all these things need action. Take action, share this post, write to a member of government about their part in cleaning up our energy system, write to newspapers or CEOs and make your viewpoint known, support organisations that are making a difference, make donations, talk to people, share links.
Please don't do nothing. It'll take a majority of us to make a difference.
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