How Water Heaters Have Evolved into Grid-Scale Energy-Storage Devices (2014)

Re:How Water Heaters Have Evolved into Grid-Scale Energy-Sto... by mrfusion on Sunday January 27, 2019 @10:41AM (#19012057)

A chest freezer might also work well. Lower the temp to -5 or so when power is available and let it creep up to 20f or so when not.

I assume that’s not bad for the food as long as you’re staying below freezing?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Water Heaters Have Evolved into Grid-Scale Energy-Sto... by thatcat on Sunday January 27, 2019 @11:03AM (#19012170)

Ice changes densities at different temperatures. I'm not exactly sure what that would do to food, but you can add water jugs as a thermal mass to reduce the temperature swing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Water Heaters Have Evolved into Grid-Scale Energy-Sto... by pofilat on Sunday January 27, 2019 @11:34AM (#19012342)

Great question.

There's some debate, apparentl, but the basic result is that temperature variation has side-effects, but superfreezing (keeping temp below < -20F, or below 0F, depending on the studied and what is studied) avoids the problems.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ie50464a017

[ Parent | on HN ]