I am planning to turn my home into a little energy test laboratory so I can experiment with Off Peak Synergy Module concepts at the domestic scale. I have installed a 500 litre insulated stainless steel tank to store hot potable water. I will install a further 1000 litre insulated tank to store central heating water. These tanks mean that I can store enough hot water for one day for both washing and central heating.
I will install a large solar panel to heat the water in both tanks. I will supplement this solar heating with a water to water heat exchanger which will be electrically operated using off peak energy. In the winter this heat exchanger will take heat from a glass covered swimming pool. In the summer, after both tanks are full of hot water any surplus heat will be transferred to the swimming pool.
Karen and I bought this house nearly two years ago and it has oil fired heating which I will now replace. Living in the country, I have access to waste timber so I bought a wood burning stove and installed it in our living room. In return for some work this will give about another 5kW of heat for evenings where the heat pump cannot cope with very cold weather.
It takes 1kW to raise 1 litre of water one degree C in one second. Therefore a 3kW output heat pump would require 167 seconds to raise the temperature of the water in the tank by 1 degree C. This means that a 3kW energy supply would require about 2.5 hours to raise the water in the tank by 50 degrees C. Therefore this potable water tank can be seen as a 7.5kWh energy storage device. Our larger water tank for heating can be seen to store 15kWh of energy.
I drive a Toyota Prius car. I am interested in various articles that talk about plug in hybrids and I plan to purchase a kit to convert my hybrid to a plug in. I then expect my Synergy Module to charge my car each night with low cost electricity.
As Ireland has an abundance of sites for commercial wind energy exploitation, I see no ecological advantage to installing a wind turbine at my home. However if PV solar panels drop in price I am hoping that my Synergy Module may trade some high cost day time electricity for low cost night time electricity and reduce my overall energy bills.