Heat storage
The first thing you think of when someone speaks about batteries is the electrical variant. But It is also possible to store heat in water tanks to use it for showering or radiators or floor heating.
There are in general 2 ways to put heat in a tank. By burning wood to heat water or by using the sun. The sun can directly heat up water or it creates electricity via solar panels.
We have to mention the heat pump. It creates hot water by using electricity. A heatpump has a limited water temperature of about 60 degrees. To get the buffer tanks at 95 degrees you need thermal elements (electrical heaters) or a wood burner.
Temperature control
In the picture below there are 3 thermal elements and 4 active temperature sensors.
The cold water is entering the right tank coils and then the left tank coils. Then the water is hot and ready to use.
The temperature sensors RED, Blue, Orange and Green detect how much of the thermal battery is filled up.
The picture shows the top of the left buffer is heated up first, then the lower part (blue) follows. As the buffer tanks are setup in series the Orange one follows and leastly the green one follows. This is how the thermal battery is heated up when used in a water circulating system like a wood burner.
This shows heating up the buffer tanks with themal heaters. We decided to heat up the top (element 1) of the first buffertank (red) because we needed hot shower water. The lower part of the tank (blue) does not heat up.
In the second buffer tank there is only one thermal element in the bottom. This shows that it heats up slowly bottom to top equally (orange and green).
As you can see there are some sudden drops in the lines. This is when someone took a shower.
In a thermal battery it is important to design for the correct use. If we have too much electricity it is dumped in the thermal elements. Depending on the temperature and if we need radiator heating or shower water we decide which thermal element will receive the electricity available. At BeOffgrid we are specialized in controlling these processes by means of industrial software applications.
We create a software interface for you to make your own decisions and to be able to monitor the system. You can access the software interface any time on your phone where ever you are. So yes as we say energy in ownership.
