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Electrical energy storage

Just visited a friend who showed me his old electrical heat large storage unit, located in a cupboard which reheats with cheap power overnight and it uses air fans to distribute heat around his home. I was aware of small wall mounted storage heaters but not this size. Also the amount of  stored heat in hot water cylinders being removed for combi boilers. i wonder if it would make a comeback in this age of green energy?
  • Warm air heating is very good as it works quickly to warm a house when turned on. It can distribute dust though, and some air fans can be noisy. But overall it is a good idea. The smaller night storage heaters work on a similar principle but one is needed in each area to be heated.


    Perhaps a system could be designed to store heat from "green sources," perhaps in a big brick storage unit under a house or in spare area of a house.


    I have seen a stored heat system that stored the heat in a large tank of water heated by several immersion heaters. It was a wet system to radiators. They appear to be rare though.


    Z.
  • My old flat, now let out, is heated with not-ancient, but dumb, individual storage heaters. Now it's let for many years, I'm very much aware of the really quite large cost/hassle advantage, compared to GFCH, which needs much more regular maintenance, safety checks, and suffers failures during life, before probably conking terminally after a dozen years. The storage heaters bang on for decades, with a five yearly safety check. But, the heat control for the tenants is awful, cooking bedrooms overnight, and limp by evening. By comparison, one place I lived had a giant central storage heater, and it was much more effective, because it was able to keep the heat until needed. My deduction is that beside perhaps usefully being smart (err, unreliable), a storage heater needs heavy insulation to reach good functionality.


    So yes, bigger is better, IMHO.
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Back in the 80s I was busy ripping out loads of off-peak central warm air units and either replacing with wet central heating systems or gas-fired units. The main issues with any form of storage heating were poor control and high cost.