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Bunk. A water heater is a purely dissipative device. You cannot regain the energy, and it dissipates or is wasted if not put to good economic use. At best, i
by aj7 8y ago
Bunk. A water heater is a purely dissipative device. You cannot regain the energy, and it dissipates or is wasted if not put to good economic use. At best, it can be turned off when demand peaks, as lack of hot water won’t kill anyone. At worst, it dissipates during excess supply. What inefficiency is that highlighting?
- IndrekR 8y agoLooking from the grid side it looks the same, you just shift the timing of the consumption. This can be done to limited extent.
- gwbas1c 8y agoLoad balancing. The grid cannot react quickly enough for a certain kinds of changes in load and demand. This goes both ways, sometimes there isn't enough electricity, and sometimes there's too much! So, turning on everyone's water heater to heat up the water an extra degree or two helps when there is too much electricity. It's considered storage, because now everybody's water heater is already hot if you need to turn them off temporarily when there is too much load. I think the main point is that this particular system is cheaper than installing grid-scale batteries.