Time shifting of existing needs is probably the most effective use.
Do you have hot water storage? Time it to run down and recharge when you have excess. There are commercial products that do this semi-automatically. You can also get hot water taps that replace tea kettles that work on a similar principle.
If you have air-con or electric heating then run it to store heat and/or cool in a thermal mass.
Organise your day to run washing machines etc. at those times.
Phase change of water to ice can shift cooling loads if you have warm nights.
Plus electrify anything you have that currently burns fuel.
I'd love to see way more effort and subsidies going into thermal batteries. We don't need to invent any new technology since it already exists. Thermal batteries can use pretty mundane, low impact materials, so the downsides of mining and manufacturing scale of chemical batteries don't apply. Thermal batteries can't solve the problem on their own, but we can build them now at huge scale pretty cheaply.
Comments
Time shifting of existing needs is probably the most effective use.
Do you have hot water storage? Time it to run down and recharge when you have excess. There are commercial products that do this semi-automatically. You can also get hot water taps that replace tea kettles that work on a similar principle.
If you have air-con or electric heating then run it to store heat and/or cool in a thermal mass.
Organise your day to run washing machines etc. at those times.
Phase change of water to ice can shift cooling loads if you have warm nights.
Plus electrify anything you have that currently burns fuel.
I'd love to see way more effort and subsidies going into thermal batteries. We don't need to invent any new technology since it already exists. Thermal batteries can use pretty mundane, low impact materials, so the downsides of mining and manufacturing scale of chemical batteries don't apply. Thermal batteries can't solve the problem on their own, but we can build them now at huge scale pretty cheaply.