Re:Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumpt...
by dahfizz on Friday March 26, 2021 @07:24PM
(#26598204)
I agree it's not _hard_, but your original assertion was "All I need to make that work is variable rates". Now, you're talking about installing additional HVAC equipment and spending $$$.
In the summer, even if you cool your house down to 60F, it'll be back to 70F in a couple hours max. Electricity rates from renewable overproduction do not vary on the timescale of hours. It's not a solution without new equipment to "store" the hot or cold that you produce when electricity is cheap.
Re:Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumpt...
by WalterBright on Friday March 26, 2021 @08:37PM
(#26598663)
A couple of hours still substantially reduces your demand during peak rate hours.
(Besides, I grew up in Arizona, and was comfortable up to 78 or so.)
It is. There is no single comfortable temperature, it's a range. The first step is when electricity is cheap, cool the house to the low end of the range.
The next step is to cool a tank of water. People already have a hot water tank, it doesn't seem like much of an engineering or cost challenge to have a cold water tank, and using that to cool air.
A further step is to increase the thermal mass of the house, which means it will take longer to heat up. Thermal mass can be simply adding a big pile of rocks in the basement and blowing air through it.