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| ▲ | Nition 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's funny how useful water is for power generation. There's heat storage as discussed here. Or you can store cold water in a reservoir as a giant battery, pumping it up high when you've got excess power, and letting it back down to generate hydroelectricity from it later. Or you can boil water to make steam that spins a turbine and use it to convert anything that can heat water (coal, oil, nuclear...) to electricity. |
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| ▲ | themafia 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > It's funny how useful water is for power generation. It's gravity that does the generation. Water is convenient because it's weight per unit of volume is very high. Higher than most things we can get our hands on and it's also exceptionally safe. Since water isn't perfectly clean the main problem you face is corrosion. Which can take a great system and turn it into a nightmare of buried leaks and sudden problems. As far as our options go it _is_ really convenient. |
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| ▲ | DrScientist 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Indeed. In the UK there was a unfortunate trend of ripping out these energy storage devices and replacing hot water tanks with on demand electric hot water heating ( only heat the water you need ). And new builds often have no tanks ( as it saves space in the new tiny homes ). Very short sighted in my view - a very simple way to store energy and everyone uses hot water directly. |
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| ▲ | coryrc 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They don't work well with heat pumps. Heat pumps lose efficiency as the differential increases, so if you try to store heat in a tank, you quickly drop capacity and efficiency. Versus resistance, which is exactly as efficient at 0°C and 1000°C, and why those storage heaters used to make sense. (And storage is directly proportional to temperature differential above interior ambient) | |
| ▲ | Xylakant 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | it also reduces peak load - you can heat water up slower with a lower powered heater. I have a 35 liter warm water tank in my garden shed that pulls about 3.5kw - an equivalent on demand heater would need 14kw or more. | |
| ▲ | a_better_world 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | My hot water tank once fell off the wall. On Christmas day. Expensive repair. Hot water tank was in the basement, which was not insulated. So the mass of hot water contributed very little as a heat reserve for the house. House was in a northern clime. | | |
| ▲ | manmal 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Those are great for buffering only a few hours though. That would help avoid the expensive electricity price peaks. |
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| ▲ | vee-kay 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| You are right in your analogy. Earth's oceans and seas act as giant heat sinks. And that means more trouble as global climate change impacts.. https://www.earth.com/news/ocean-warming-broke-records-for-4... |
