Comment by IshKebab
11 hours ago
1. The device is just storage. It would be paired with an air or ground source heat pump.
2. With good insulation you can easily store heat for a day which is all you need. You're never going to get close to storing summer heat for the winter. That's not impossible but not feasible for something this scale (and not cost effective at any scale).
3. You just heat it up and cool it down. There are no fancy chemical processes happening other than the phase change. It's exactly like a phase change hot/cold pack you can buy on Amazon.
4. I'm pretty sure this is designed for domestic heating...
It's kind of an obvious idea tbh. I don't think they've done anything super innovative... They made an aluminium heat sink..
> With good insulation you can easily store heat for a day which is all you need. You're never going to get close to storing summer heat for the winter. That's not impossible but not feasible for something this scale (and not cost effective at any scale).
This is ground basically. How deep varies but few meters underground you basically have average yearly temperature. You could pump heat from house to the ground to take it out from the ground during winter.
the only new thing- no matter how they do it- is putting it on residential instead of commercial or industrial installs.
my childhood public school took us to some big commercial building- I think it was Sears' HQ- and they proudly showed us the huge blocks of ice providing chill during the day.