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POWER Supplies when the wind is not blowing.

CliveS

Power stations are struggling to keep the grid on when the wind drops. See www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php

Looking at gridwatch I can see that they are encouraging waste disposal plants to burn more rubbish to help fill the gap.

There was a scare report last week about possible problems at peak hours 4 till 8 in evenings which hopefully resulted in hospitals and Data centres who have generators being encouraged to run them just in case.

There was also some talk of offering special high peak rates for smart meter owners with lower normal off peak rates.

A more satisfactory way would be to install electronic switching on water heaters via the smart meter. What do you think??

CliveS

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  • I have been thinking about this in connection with getting a PV array installed.

    Heating 200 l of water from 10 deg C to 60 deg C takes 200 x 1000 x 50 x 4.2 = 42 MJ ≈ 12 kWh so this is an excellent way of storing energy in the spring/summer/autumn. Instead of using gas, we could use the immersion heater.

    What this plan needs is a device which knows when to turn the immersion on and off so I shall be interested to hear more. I don't think that it needs to involve the smart meter, but it does need to know how much energy is available. It would save nothing to have 50:50 PV and grid.

    Is something based upon a light meter available?

  • in reply to Chris Pearson

    There are devices that monitor the household consumption and generated power and divert any excess power  to an immersion heater, e.g. https://solarimmersion.co.uk

    I have no experience of this device but an internet search came up with several.

    David

  • in reply to davidwalker2

    There are also devices that charge EV's the same way.

    David

  • in reply to davidwalker2

    The grid just needs a way of ditching water heaters at peak times probably for an hour or 2 only on some winter evenings maybe a dozen or so times a year.

    For solar heating of domestic water it could be more efficient to install vacuum tube or plate heaters on your roof as PV,s are only 20% efficient 

  • in reply to CliveS

    Well, yes, if the object was only to heat water.  This is a way to use excess electricity generated rather than feeding it into the grid for a pittance, use it to heat water for free that you would have to pay full price for at a peak time.

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  • in reply to CliveS

    Well, yes, if the object was only to heat water.  This is a way to use excess electricity generated rather than feeding it into the grid for a pittance, use it to heat water for free that you would have to pay full price for at a peak time.

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