Mixergy Water Storage. Smart technology for grid stability.
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- Опубликовано: 12 июн 2021
- Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are here to stay, and their dominance on global electricity grids is growing every day. But for them to work, grids also need energy storage and the ability to respond instantly to fluctuations in frequency. Lithium batteries provide a lot of that functionality today, but now a new smart domestic hot water storage tank has been developed that not only heats water 20% more efficiently, but can also use electrical energy when it's free or even negatively priced. Plus it can talk to the grid and store energy when renewables are producing too much. Edward De Bono would be proud! (look him up).
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I saw it on Fully Charged Plus, but this video on JHAT made me understand it.
Yeah. I''ve known about this for years (and researched stratifying tanks since 2008) and this is the first thing that has properly explained how this one works (including mixergy's own website).
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This thermal time shifting reminds me of an MIT project from the 70s. There were some unused tennis courts behind a gym and in the winter they would spray water over them to create a giant snow hill. When the weather warmed up they would use the melting snow to cool off the gym using some pipes that ran under the snow hill to the AC unit for the gym. As I recall the hill used to last almost all summer, providing (nearly free) cooling.
Princeton University tried it the 70s, only lasted about half the summer, too far South
Very interesting as usual, I have a heat pump hot water and I must say my energy usage is way down, and I would also like to thank your patrons for keeping these talks add free,
All the best Jules
These technologies are really very good. I've seen Mixergy on Fully Charged as well. I can't help but think that with all of this smart technology there will be no cheap electricity overnight within another 5 - 10 years as energy demand will flat line.
Thanx once again for your time, energy, and commitment to the cause 💖✌️💖✊💖
Yes but midday sun will be cheaper than cycling batteries.
ArthursHD I'm not sure I follow you. Are you talking about daytime solar heating? This is clearly advantageous but not a straightforward option for a lot of people, hence the design of the technology...
For me personally fluctuations in unit price for electricity are irrelevant as I live off grid and anticipate paying around £1000 every ten years or so. This is not an option for most people though...
Finally, an adequate reason to network an appliance.
I'd still be an awful lot happier if I could just get the pricing information from a service and run the heating optimisation software locally. Having your hot water tank be dependent on a third party that could disappear at any time is not a desirable feature.
@@xxwookey Do you use grid electricity and water company mains water? If so, you're already third-party reliant, if not, then you don't need a grid-aware tank. ;)
@@hrford There is more than one utility company that can supply the service, and regulators to ensure continuity of service in case of failures. That's quite different from one-off proprietary providers of services like this where there are already several examples of companies going bust or discontinuing services and the gadgets turning into e-waste.
@@xxwookey I agree with the principle. But does this tank stop working if they went bust?
@@hrford if the software relies on the cloud, then absolutely yes. Many appliances will allow you to use a cloud based service without an Internet connection for some time (I've seen from 3 days to 1 month) and then disable themselves until connectivity is resumed
Yes, I have the 150 litre Mixergy tank in a new high performance home in Christchurch, New Zealand after seeing it on Fully Charged years ago. Still the only one outside the UK I imagine. Works a treat at only 30% heated for two adults and the odd visitor.
There is also a fridge designed to only come on when there's excess power and it freezes a big block of ice to last up to two weeks without power.... Much cheaper than battery storage!
have u a link or a product name? i cant find anything..
I mean you could do this with a chest freeze and stick a huge tank in the bottom full of glycol along with a smart plug to turn it on and off!
@@Furiends Google it and you'll find that someone has done this already.....the electricity cost was like .40c for the entire year! It just shows how inefficient most systems are these days compared to their theoretical maximum.
@@garry8390 do you have a link please?
@@lukeelliott4368 I posted a link already but it's disappeared for some reason. Surechill is the company anyway
I would love to see heat pumps and aircon all put into complex loops where heat and cold can be applied wherever is necessary from other parts of the house. Maybe if you're fortunate enough to own a swimming pool a heat exchanger in there would make use of any excess heat produced.
Even a tumble drier can make use of a heat pump to make venting it to atmosphere absolutely minimal.
Closed loop heat pump/aircon systems would be fantastic in places like leisure centres where you need to keep different rooms warm and cool simultaneously.
I'm planning on building that into my own house, to a lesser form. Heat pumps and air-con are too expensive for me, but I hope to be able to monitor temperature and use a system of vents and fans to achieve some not-quite-as-good temperature control on a fraction of the energy use.
This isn't viable in warmer climates though. It's no substitute for real air-conditioning.
@@vylbird8014 you can put heat sink in your house, I have a massive fire place from the previous owner and it absorbed heat and releasing them at night when I leave the rooms ventilated. Bricks and stones soak up heat well.
It's already been done .
ruclips.net/video/N3Em64OBGqI/видео.html
And combining that system with this type of AC and Solar heat would make a highly efficient product .
fahrenheit.cool/en/products/hybrid-chillers/
But then Oil and Gas prices will drop and a Certain Country doesn't want that .
@@madsam0320 No space for a heat sink, but otherwise I'm going for the same idea: Run the fan at night to draw in all that nice cold air. Then stop the fan and seal all the vents as soon as the temperature outside is hotter than inside, keeping the heat from entering.
@@vylbird8014 It depends on how clear your nights are. In the desert the night sky can actually cause water to freeze even in the summer if it is insulated from the ground and shielded from surrounding hills. In the 70s I saw a house that had water bags built into the roof, covered with moveable insulation panels. In the summer the insulation would be moved at night so the bags would get cold, and the insulation would be moved back in the morning. All day long the cold water would chill the ceiling cooling the house.
Google Radiant Cooling.
Love your work, Dave!
The external heat exchanger you refer to was being installed in Ireland more than 30 years ago! We used them rather than replace a direct cylinder to an indirect one. Sometimes we used them if we had two sources of energy a solid fuel back boiler along with an oil boiler installation. They were very successful heat exchangers that could save a lot of time money and energy.
Azelio a company in Sweden, use a thermal storage in an aluminium alloy. And they can charge the storage in 6h, a good combo with solar cells or wind power. And then store that electrisity as heat. Then they use a stirling engine too convert that heat to electrisity again. And a bi product off the stirling engine in 60C temperature and there u can heat your water or you can heat your home. When you have charged the storage you can use the stirling engine at 13kw (its the max effect) for 13hours and if u use less than that you can use it for more hours. A damn good solutions, look it up! And uppon that its cost effective😊
*WOW* that was about 100X more interesting than I thought when I reluctantly clicked...
Glad to hear it :-)
I have solar hot water and have never switched on the electric heat element.
Four years on now and it should be paid off by the end of this year, best investment I have ever made.
So fantastic that companies are bringing these devices to market. Thanks for sharing all this great info and bringing this knowledge to the world.
This is gonna be really great for winters
Especially for wind power during winter
@@hyric8927 In the UK we actually make quite a bit of use from wind in the winter as you say but also there is a lot of solar pick up from excess PV during the summer - so well hedged all year round we'd say ;)
Very clever use of technology. Real world example of common sense design 👏👏👏
Thanks William! A lot of work has gone into getting this to market so we appreciate the feedback :)
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This is HUGE thanks Dave!!!
I can only give a 'thumbs up' to the Mixergy Smart Tank.
The Mixergy tank seems like a brilliant device, if the price is right and the reliability is there. It will not, however, make any difference in how long it takes to get hot water at the tap, compared to a conventional tank. That depends entirely on the volume of water in the pipe between the heater and the tap, and on the heat capacity of the pipe material, as well as the insulation around the pipe. The worst case scenario is a long, large diameter metal pipe. The best is a short, small diameter non-metallic pipe, with insulation. Using a 3/8 inch (9.5 mm) diameter PEX pipe about 30 feet in length, I get hot water in 5 or 6 seconds. I really appreciate fast, energy efficient hot water, so I wouldn't put an on-demand heater or combi-boiler if you paid me. Dave gave a good description of the problem with those.
he was talking about huge tanks first having to heat up before they're able to provide actualy hot water. i.e. after a vacation
that aside, you're right
@@TheyCalledMeT Dave was talking about the time to heat up the storage. @IncognitoTorpedo was talking about the time to get the hot water out of the tap (slightly off topic but obviously interesting given the upvotes).
According to www.pexuniverse.com/pex-tubing-technical-specs, the volume of 3/8 inch PEX pipe is 0.5 gal/100 ft or 0.15 gal for your 30 ft pipe. Thus, the flow rate seems to be 0.15 gal/5 s = 0.9 gal/minute = 3.4 liter/minute, which would be ok for me (showering, not bathing). According to the same source, the pressure drop at 1 gal/minute is 7.5 psi/100 ft = 0.57 bar/10 m, also ok for me (4 bar water supply) but close to flow-limiting for a two-storey building supplied with 1 bar.
The water saving component of this is also worth considering. The waste of waiting for the shower/kitchen sink water to heat up etc.
"The electricity supply price goes negative" ! Amazing - Here in South Africa they just turn off the entire country for five hours a day and then put the price up by 15% for the rest of the time.
Have you considered going solar? Does the government give you any subsidies for solar?
@@heinuchung8680 Subsidies? You must be joking! You aren't even allowed to put excess power back into the grid.
@@Beevreeter During my time in SA I experienced a few outages. The issue is the lack of power, caused by a very poor maintenance of the power system and insufficient investments into the system by Eskom for decades. The damage caused by the Zuma administration (and his Gupta friends) is tremendous.
Nowadays, Eskom tries its very best to block solar energy on residential and C&I rooftops because every PV installation would reduce the profits of their coal fired power plants.
What happened to the tax incentive? and what is the status of the feed in tariffs for small Photovoltaic (e.g. in Joburg and Cape Town)? Did they cancel that?
When I bought my home it had a hybrid solar/gas hot water system which reliably delivered hot water with very modest gas consumption, but had other problems, including that the supply charge for gas in my city (and I suspect most of Australia), is about $1 per day on top of my modest consumption. As part of a household solar electricity project I replaced it with a highly efficient heat-pump storage hot water system, PV solar panels, household battery and disconnected the gas. I've set the water heating to be active between 10am and 3pm, of which it only uses a fraction, so it rarely places any load on the battery and I it almost never uses mains power. (The hybrid system was well into it's anticipated life span, which when combined with other issues meant that I didn't feel too guilty replacing a functional system as part of the bigger sustainability project.)
Great video again, and again, and again. World class!!!
Something similar was done in the northern US, years ago, where the utility company would supply a large, highly insulated water tank, along with solar panels, in exchange for the ability to manage the output from those panels for the consumer. Customers of this service received "free" hot water and the utility company was afforded a great deal of flexibility, in terms of generation and storage of energy.
Great video - especially the animation showing the cold being pumped to the top of the tank as it heats up to maintain the stratification. I've never seen this animation before even on Mixergy's website, but it makes the operation of the tank much easier to grasp. We are moving into a new-build house later this year and I have asked for a heat pump with a Mixergy tank instead of the combination boiler that the builder would have fitted. They have been happy to do this and I think they want to use our place as a way to promote this to future customers if the government follows through with the promised ban on gas in new-builds. We will have solar PV and eventually a domestic battery, so one of the things I am looking forward to is experimenting with the Mixergy and heat pump timing to try to optimise our use of solar energy and time-of use tariffs for hot water, space heating and other loads. This is a bit of a hobby for me as well as my job (as an academic) but eventually the complexity of all this will have to be hidden from consumers and they will be expected to trust their utility company (or landlord...) to control this stuff for them in a way that provides heat, saves money and reduces emissions. A tricky balancing act!
Thank you!
Thank you . Great video
Once again great show!
very very good Dave. Thanks
Cheers Brian. Much appreciated :-)
Great Idea which you have shared. Thank you very much
Your lighting looks great.
I'm seriusly considering hot water as energy storage. This video is very informative, thank you.
Appreciate your effort to educating people on decarbonizing. It’s a personal goal to lower my personal connection of carbon in the atmosphere. And I to try to show people why it important.
You might be interested in this vid by Kurtis Baute; ruclips.net/video/bvhXtOps4MM/видео.html . Watch till the end.
@@dmsaintrain I was gonna talk about how BP invented the carbon footprint to misdirect and stuff but that video did it better.
I got my combined gas and electricity bill down to £24 per month. OK I used nearly every trick in the book but I'm looking at reducing it further.
I've been impressed with the Mixergy tanks and they are on my to-fit list in our home.
Thanks John, do reach out on www.mixergy.co.uk/contact-us/ or 01865 884 343 if you'd like to learn a bit more from us directly
Has been on my list for a while too and I’m looking forward to having ours installed next month to make good use of our surplus solar PV. Will let you know how it performs.
@@richardwaller7721 good luck with your installation and yes please an update would be fabulous.
I enquired about these when I saw them on Fully Charged. I'm waiting for a quote for installation along with an air source heat pump. The business development manager, James Hoople said a medium sized tank was around £1,000, which for a smart system like this which will save you money seemed very reasonable to me, and with a short pay back time.
We have not long had to replace our combi, a unit that was 'so old' that it still had that plastic film on it to prevent scratches in transit. That cost us about £2500, and you only get about a 5 year warranty, which you can bet will expire just before the boiler does much like our last one. I had a quick look at the prices for Mixergy tanks and wow! For what we have to pay out at least once a decade for a combi we could have sufficient Mixergy storage for several houses, and it would last significantly longer. I want to see some user reviews though.
Thanks Alan, we have worked hard with UK manufacturers to make delivery the Mixergy tank at a sustainable price - all the best with your new heating system install! If you do choose Mixergy, we'd like to hear about your experience with it.
@@mixergyltd6286 Definately going with your system. Just waiting for your reply with a quote. Emailed James again yesterday as I think my original reply might have not been recieved.
@@garysmith5025 that's really cool, pardon the pun.
@@TheGodlessGuitarist here you go fullycharged.show/episodes/mixergy-hot-water-tank/
Mine was fitted in January and I am very pleased with it so far.
Great to hear this Fred! Many thanks for letting us know : )
Happy to see that somebody has created fully functional technology like this. I was thinking to add just some control on the power plug that would allow electric flow in certain hours that would match with my habits and best electricity prices. I would get hot water when I need it without spending energy when it is not needed or when it is more costly.
Thanks, Dave🙏🏽😃
Amazing work💪🏽👍🏽❣️
This is genuinely very clever, Thi will fast become a norm I think. Good video :-)
This Video Is Amazing
Thanks James. Much appreciated :-)
Nicely explained. I saw the Fully Charged interview but didn't really get what it was about.
Great video. All the US needs is a economic philosophy shift and passage of an intelligent infrastructure bill and we'd be ready for this brilliant technology.
They need a civilised culture which understands and respects the role of government. That could be easier if they de-federalise so each state can have its own policy; the Red States are angry when there's a Democrat President, and the Blues angry when there's a Republican; let each state have its own President.
But of course, America wants to remain a superpower to have global hegemony.
@@Moses_VII interesting take. I see the right of profit held above all else as the focus of our current economic state and community has fallen by the wayside. We need to respect our resources as a common property to be managed for the good of all. That's is the path forward.
@@Moses_VII No. The United States of America is designed and determined to remain united.
We live in hope Matthew :-) Let's hope Uncle Joe gets it fixed!
Thanks for this great explanation of this great idea. I've been harping on about water thermal storage being the cheapest form of energy storage for a long time. I'm sure I've commented this before, but you could also store cold water for air conditioning. In South Africa this makes sense, as a lot of places are ~25C on an average summer day. With a 1000l tank, you could run at 12000BTU for 3 hours and 40 minutes to get the water temp from 5C to 16C. That's not brilliant, but a low pressure storage tank can be made really cheaply. Edit: An application is if you use solar power to cool the water.
Sunamp thermal battery uses a phase change gel to store the heat. It has an even lower standing heat loss.
Congratulations to these folks for a much needed technology! Here at the Seeger Institute for Global Regeneration we are employing a much simpler version of the same idea that works, all be it not as well, in the same manner. Anyone off-grid might consider what we are doing. We employ a tankless water heater set at an optimal temperature for a nice shower. This enables us to only use the hot water when showering, leaving the cold water valve idle for the most part. Therefore, next to the shower we have plumed in two 8-gallon , 110 volt electric water heaters in series. These water heaters are on timed switches set one our apart. They are set to go on when on sunny days the battery bank is fully charged, generally by 10:30am. This enables extension of the solar panels utility by providing 16 gallons of solar energy stored as hot water. Not perfect, but most of the time it provides “free” hot showers for one to two people in the afternoon and into the evening. We generally don’t use hot water for other purposes - doing laundry and washing dishes in cold water.
A very interesting development 😃👌👏👏👏❤️
We can vouch for the effectiveness of these tanks. They perform as advertised.
Thanks C Bromley, really appreciate the feedback from customers and glad to hear your system is working well.
love your channel and video. this tech seems trite, even a commercial, compared to your other videos
Did anyone else not quite "get" this? I need to watch again. I'm not blaming Just Have a Think; he's great. I'm blaming the thickness of my Sunday Morning brain teflon. Maybe after another coffee?
I got the first half, trouble is, I thought gas hot water systems always worked that way.
Fully Charged interviewed these guys, maybe watch that one too and it may drop into place. took me a few watches to get preconceptions out of my thinking.
He wasn't as clear as he could be. The cylinder bcan absorb excess power when needed. That means it won't need to heat the water later when there might be too much demand.
It can smooth out demand for power helping the grid remain stable
Totally not seeing the video referred to about monitoring grid frequency (because I'm watching on my "smart" tv). The technicals presented here are currently beyond me, and I'm looking for that aha moment.
edit: found the video of 26 July 2020 called "How energy storage will kill fossil fuel".
At 3:26, the first moment where he lost me. Being a visual person, and after re-watch examination, I now see the cold water from the pump pouring out of the pipe at the top creating churn. I understand the need for a "diffusor." Curiosity piqued.
If everyone had a Mixergy tank that ran when costs were negative then everyone would be using electricity at the same time and the costs would not be negative anymore. The more successful it is the less benefit owners will get.
That childish dream of earning without working 😂. Same as with interest.
If it gets to that point, wouldn't it mean that the grid's usage would then be perfectly averaged out. This could then be used to reduce the cost of electricity during peak hours as there would no longer be a reason for the surcharge.
If everyone wins, it's also a win for you.
With a green grid, the cost of electricity is determined by sun and wind rather than the traditional grid which is determined by demand
Then there's more incentive to add more renewable energy sources to the grid which are cheap to maintain but sporadic in their delivery of power. Everyone benefits except shareholders of fossil fuel companies.
@@rupert274 I'm not sure what you are saying. If people spend a lot of money to install a Mixergy tank in order to make money or, spend no money on energy, that benefit will disappear fast.
Good presentation, Back in the 1970's there was an effort to advance the "Integral Urban House" ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Urban_House ). The goal was to make homes more self-sufficient. Granted, it was "Hippy Culture", but a more modern revisit to the concept may have a chance today.
I used to have a great book from the seventies that showcased a variety of houses constructed in various ways from different materials. My go to book for years was The Whole House book by the Centre for Alternative Technology. It's a little dated now but an excellent read.
This goes deep into the American core of DIY. However the future of effective renewable energy is unlikely to be DIY. The most success solar has had is with rich people taking advantage of tax breaks to put panels on their roof. That won't scale to everyone else. Then there's large scale development projects which combine systems into a small scale grid.
@@Furiends You speak the truth.
Ever notice how the intro for this channel is so fitting? Dystopian stormy night with flickering intermittent power? Yeah... he knows exactly what the future holds.
I don't think we will have intermittent power. I hope every house can have battery backup
I live in a flat by myself with a small 50 litre standard HW system. The mains and HW on/off switches are in my hallway inside and I save up to 45% off my electricity bill by just turning it off when I don't need it. The small HW tank only takes 15 minutes to heat up enough to shave, shower and/or do the dishes and wash some clothes.
Obviously, absorbing excess electricity makes sense for pumped hydro, because the potential energy will be used later. Using the same trick to overheat your water tank could simply turn into unwanted heat in your home (even worse, possibly triggering your AC to come on). This channel is so eager to describe new products that it sometimes leaves out important information.
This appears to be an excellent idea. There are heat losses from the cylinder to the tap, but this is a big step forward. I changed my hot water cylinder to a Sadia Megaflo about 8 years ago, with hindsight I wish that I'd waited for Mixergy to be developed, bad timing as usual.
I wonder if there is some way of making my existing cylinder much more efficient? Maybe an Eddi controller to control the immersion heater and several thermostats up the side of the cylinder to allow different amounts of water to be heated together with some kind of raspberry pi app to control the primary hot water valve. I can see a little project coming. Thanks for the inspiration Dave!
Ive a megaflo too also about 8 years old.
Best channel on the internet!
Even though many others are almost as good! 😁
Cheers Ezra. I really appreciate that :-)
Mixergy and DualSun combination would be interesting to test out.
Whilst I think that the water tank heater by Mixergy & the Surechill fridge / freezer mentioned in the comments below, are both great ideas & products, they both come at a heavy price premium. You're now going to tell me of the cost benefits over time mitigating these significant capital costs, yes?
My solutions are old / existing technology & way cheaper. Solar PV, Immersun units, battery x2, pure sine wave inverter. The Immersun heats a 7-litre insulated water tank (Redring WS71) & gives me enough lovely warm water for a shower at zero electricity cost. The Immersun also heats electric storage radiators during the day to release their stored heat during the evening & night.
The PV generates excess power during the day to power the fridge freezer directly, I then switch the plug over to the battery powered inverter for the evenings which could run all night until the sunlight of the next day is sufficient to power the FF directly again. But what I choose to do, is to power the FF via a timer during the night when I have economy 7 tariff available at much lower cost per kwh, Obviously the battery is recharged every day via a simple car battery charger. So day=solar, evening=battery, night=econ7. (This saves the battery life significantly).
I've employed this for most of the last 9.5 years since I had solar PV installed, so the proof is in the eating of the pudding. My home is mega insulated & total average electricity usage is a mere 120 kwh pa (no gas connected or coal / wood, just all electric). This 120 kwh is the imported electricity from the grid, the rest is supplied from my solar PV system. So it runs house heating, cooking, hot water & fridge / freezer. Imported electricity cost of a zero standing charge tariff is around £25 pa in total. The PV system output is uploaded to the website PV Output every Sunday if anyone wishes to view it, just search for JohnnyK's PV on that website.
Mixenergy & Surechill are great if you can afford to spend a whole lot of money to buy & install them, but many of us have to live on quite challenging personal budgets; I sort of do, 'green-living on a dime'.
Best regards to all, JohnnyK.
What sort of batteries do you have? It sounds like you've rigged up a similar setup to what we've got. We used batteries from a scrapped electric forklift truck (it doesn't hold power very well since the batteries are pretty old now, but it works for overnight at least)
And yeah it's pretty amazing the heat you can get from thermal solar panels, even a dark hose pipe on the roof does a good job in summer!
@@willdbeast1523 Hi, I'll try to answer your comment.
I don't have solar thermal panels, but I have solar PV panels that generate just under 5,000 kwh pa. on average.
I've got three systems to utilise the solar PV power generated:-
a). Immersun units x2, that supply any excess power to heat shower unit, kettles, storage radiators. They work very well & prevent most excess power being exported to the grid.
b). 2x deep-discharge-SLA batteries just to power my big fridge freezer during the evenings. They are charged daily via a 12v battery charger during the day when excess PV power is available. I had ordered & paid for a solar charge controller for these, but it was never delivered & I had to take Ebay to court to get a refund for undelivered goods, so I continue to charge them just with a car battery charger.
c). SMA Sunny Island hybrid inverter with a BIG battery backup of 4x 220wh 12v AGM batteries. I normally keep this disconnected, as the Sunny Island unit doesn't agree with the Immersun units; they are rather incompatible. However in any potential grid-down scenario, this enables me to continue to operate my PV panels completely off-grid.
Regards, JohnnyK.
The best heater is a coil which heats the water as it passes through. Had one when I had gas cylinders.... saved heaps!
Here In Brisbane Australia, we have the opposite problem. In summer millions of litres of water are wasted waiting for the water coming out of the tap to get cold. There is so much latent heat in the roof space that any water in the pipes gets heated to about 40-45°C. A clever fellow in Perth came up with a Thermostat type device that rerouted that wasted water into the hot water system. However I’ve never seen any commercial versions of it
I have done something similar in my home by having several smaller tanks. I can even switch one off (from an app) when not needed.
At 11:08, the shower drainwater heat exchanger is so new, I saw it in Epcot Center at Disney World in Orlando some 25 years ago. To be fair, that exhibit was named "Project Tomorrow".
I make twice as much electricity as I use. I use regenerative agriculture to sequester about 10,000 kilos of carbon per hectre per year on my farm.
Snap
Carbon offsets are not "making twice as much as you use" it is saying that you're footing the bill for someone else too, but conservation is not virtual production, just like reducing your expenditure is not saving.
Good for you, mate. Keep up the good work!
I have solar collectors that produce more electricity than I need. But I am not counting this in my carbon capture. Carbon capture is from soil microbiology which converts atmospheric carbon dioxide to soil carbon through a process called photosynthesis. This is now getting the attention of thousands of farmers worldwide. Farmers are saving money because they don't purchase fertilizer or other poisons. They save money by not tilling and they increase the organic matter in the soil to hold water so it cuts down on irrigation. There are farmers making money with no irrigation on 7 inches of rain a year.
Australia runs its off-peak water storage like this since the 1960. Grid control of the load for load balancing nationwide
Thermal micro-grids are exciting. When these tanks can be linked together to your neighbours and work collectively.
Did you use all of OUR hot water again?
Everyone uses hot water, setting it up as a public utility in densely populated areas and using water’s huge heat capacity as energy storage is a great idea, warranting attention on a global scale!
I think you should also mention the ‘evacuated tube’ water heating technology which is proving popular in Australia.
In ≈1980 I did some experiments with gray water heat recovery and published an article in Solar Age. For my own home (ground water temperature 7° C) the system provided about 25% of the energy used to heat water. Cost was about $150. No moving parts. Commercially produced systems are now available from several companies.
@glennelson502.
I used to subscribe to Solar Age, your post was the first time I've came across it being mentioned in well, a solar age.
Thanks for showing this type of product, I enjoy watching this video.
I would like to introduce the system that i make myself for my family house in spain. There are few equivalences with this system.
My family house use a diesel boiler that heat a hot water thank throw a heat exchanger.
Here I install a 2600w electrical resistor (on the botton ) then when spanish electricity price is lower that the cost that i consider that it is produce by diesel electrical heat is ON.
If water temperature is high is turning OFF.
In spain there is other factor to consider that it is maximum instantaneus power that you can use. For that if many other charges are ON ( for instance oven) this system is automaticaly off.
Next steps are installing PV system and programing for turning on automaticaly when balance of house power is produccing.
Mixergy sounds like a good solution.
That would be a great clever way of storing energy, and you can solve 2 problems, distribution of water and energy storage
But solution that always heats enough water and doesn't needs an gas boiler
Electric showers
I know British Gas are working closely with Mixergy. They install the range of cylinders and waiting to hear our their Evolve tariff will work with these cylinders.
Thanks Anthony, we do indeed work with British Gas - if you'd like to find out more from us do reach out on 01865 884 343 or via www.mixergy.co.uk/contact-us/
I would love to see a combi heater made more efficient, because the space saving plus not running out of hot water quickly (as with a necessarily small tank) would make it much better for small spaces. I guess ideally, we'll be more efficient in water usage, and in everything really.
Some combi boilers work differently than this, they have a small tank set aside for more instant response, before kicking in and heating up when that small tank goes cold, but at that point it operates like a regular combi boiler to allow far more than just the tank capacity of hot water.
Nice system. I however already have free hot water (at least from spring to autumn) with my solar water heater.
Technology connections had a video on heat pumps a while back that got me brainstorming ways to improve our energy efficiency using hot water, and there's actually quite a few. For just an individual you can make quite a few useful improvements, but there's huge potential if we could have separate incoming and outgoing pipes for hot water into and out of the home. Waste heat from energy plants, server farms, warehouses, could be used to heat either heat the building, or go back out to the main lines. Additionally you can convert the heat to electricity using the Seebeck effect. It's not efficient, but it is a useful backup.
Really thermal systems just need adequate insulation which is often the problem....
there's an alley in Boise ID that has a geothermal line running down it. Free heating. It allowed one developer to get LEED diamond on his renovation.
He said it turned out to be cheaper to remodel with LEED methodologies than it would have been standard.
Great show. Is anything like this available in USA
An interesting idea I heard of years ago was to have a cellar sized, well insulated tank beneath a house, filled with pebbles. Solar heated hot water was to be circulated through it during the warmer months. The stored heat could be utilised at cold times of the year. Perhaps spare capacity electricity could be used. New build or garden, and, certainly, not cheap to install.
This is allot like the newer designs for nuclear plants work. These plants have high temperature reactors that store heat in large molten salt tanks. The heat is then used to generate power when it is most needed. This way the nuclear plant can take advantage of greater returns from times when electrical prices are high.
01:52 I feel this is only the case in countries where a hot water storage tank is commonplace due to either the existence of abundant cheap energy or the constant need for hot water. In most countries I would think neither case is true and only the amount of hot water needed is produced and consumed there and then - which makes more economical and ecological sense. The only type of hot water storage system that does make economical/ecological sense is one that stores heat which is available at a time when it cannot be consumed and unless stored somehow, it will get lost e.g. waste heat from power plants or industrial plants, solar energy etc. If the energy source can be tapped at will to produce hot water, I don't think it makes sense to have a hot water storage system most of the time - it's largely just an extra convenience.
I live in SE Queensland where we have a sub-tropical climate. Just under two years ago I had installed a roof mounted solar thermal hot water system. This is of course dead simple old technology and may not be suited for colder, less sunny climates but for me its reduced my hot water heating bill from around $700pa to less than $5.
I live in cold Canberra. We installed a roof mounted evacuated tube solar thermal hot water system. Only after four months we discovered the installer forgot to light the gas heater (it ran cold when guests resulted in extra usage)!! Like you we have found it is virtually FREE hot hot water.
I remember when me and the family lived in Britten, we were amazed at how badly energy was managed. There was no insulation in the houses, single glassed windows, and the hot water tank was covered 11 mm of madras foam that was beginning to disintegrate. Being a son of the first generation of renewable engineers, this was quite shocking to us. Alot of research has been made in energy optimisation, and swapping one tank with a better managed and insulated one is a step in the right direction.
The problem is that you are solving a problem at the wrong level. This needs to be addressed at energy production or grid level. Not household layman, students and drunks.
In Britain, things are marginally better now, with most properties having double glazing and better insulation.
But the building and plumbing industry is very slow to adopt change. My 1972 built property , along with others of that era, was originally just as you described. 25mm insulation in the loft and no insulation on any hot water pipes .With milder winters and previously cheap gas there was less incentive to adopt the better insulation techniques being used elsewhere.
Great insight into Mixergy.can you advise if using a mixergy with an ASHP still makes use of stratification as the heat exchanger is down at the bottom of the tank and mixing the water conventionally.
I have a bunch of candle wax I plan on using for thermal storage. Right now I have off peak with steffes brick heaters. This candle wax tank would have large rolls of tubing to transfer heat to and from the circulated water and the wax. Latter on I want to add solar troughs.
a couple things,
1st i love your videos they're pretty much always very well done. so with that out of the line:
2) intelligent usage of energy peaks isn't energy storage, it's reducing fluctuations and make the grid more stable but it's not storing energy as in batteries which release this energy back into the system if needed what people understand as energy storage
3) careful with studies which are funded by a company whom's product is part of the study .. those studies are done as a marketing tool .. if the "competitor" in that study also did one and came to the same conclusion .. so to a negative outcome for themself .. THEN it's pretty likely correct.
I'm just learning that the energy companies will pay you to use electricity at certain times. I know this would only be credit but I would love to find out more about that.
Same approach can be used in many other applications such as freezers, airco's etc. I think the absolute killer app would be with reversible fuel cells in cars etc. In daily use most will only require a fraction of the fuel capacity, if charged above that fraction the car could make money by stabilizing the grid. Not just with adaptable demand, but also by delivering electricity back to the grid.
It's great - I have one but nobody to install it properly. That's the problem with it. Even now that there is a local installer, a couple of years later, he won't come and finish off the electrical/computer side of it. So I'm heating full tanks of water and no networking.
I’m having my Mixergy tank fitted next month. It’ll be initially paired with a gas boiler but I’m hoping my utility will offer a time of use tariff soon so I can use excess renewal electricity in the future to heat the water more frequently, as described in the video. I’d love a heat pump to replace gas, but not sure it’s practical with my radiators.
Hey Mattcbinns - good luck with your install and thanks for choosing Mixergy -
Heat pumps certainly need close attention to the wet heating system and building fabric before installing... If you do get to the point where you're house is ready for a heat-pump, don't forget your Mixergy tank is heat-pump ready! Just get in touch again and we'll sort you out with the heat transfer module to interface with the system you decide to go with.
Thanks for the first actual description of how Mixergy works , rather than what it does. If you can't afford a £1300 new tank Could you get a some of benefit with a standard tank by connecting a pump & motor valve between the bottom input & top output, because most standard immersion heaters only heat the top.? But it all depends on cheap off peak electricity , will EV charging & H2 production will really flatten the off-peak?. Un-Vented Cylinders are more expensive than vented too , both in the purchase & the requirement to have a safety check regularly.
I must compliment you in your presentation. The is an absence of horrible background music and your delivery is well presented. I am retired now so my dynamics of living are different to a daily work routine. Wow what a question to reduce our carbon foot print. We have to live differently but I don't want to as well. I think about this a lot. I already live in a Mediterranean climate. First I would move where its slightly warmer but my family would have to move as well and that wont happen because of jobs and education. Already one son lives a 3 hour plane ride from me. Live closer to a town so I can walk to it for all my services. Its a 2 hour walk one way up hill and down dale and on some hills its a real slog. I could use some kind of cart to haul produce home. Or use perma culture to grow more of my own food but I would need to be in an area where there is good underground water. Or a water source nearby. Position the house so that air can be heated by the sun in winter and in summer eaves keep the house cooler or even live in the ground where the temperature is even most of the year. Make my own alcohol to use as a fuel too or use solar energy to make and hydrogen. For the tractor and back hoe. So many options.
Hey nothing wrong with a nice bit of Chumbawumba just as a soothing message enhancer.
Ingenious British engineering ☺️ cool
The other, better option for folks not city bound: compost pile water tank heating: cover an enclosed reservoir like a water tank with material that will decompose, with the heat from that process heating the tank continuously without any outside energy inputs.
Yes agree. Could anyone tell if Mixergy has any knowledge about combining their tank with a compost pile heater system? Maybe it is possible to even include a compost pile in the bottom of the tank itself as an additional product that transfers the heat to the water above?
Check out: www.permaculturenews.org/2017/07/19/make-compost-water-heater/
This works for a while, until composting completes, then back to square one. Also you need enough stuff to compost! Get a horse!
I have a very simple method of saving energy by reducing hot water requirements. In summer, I switch to pure cold showers. The extra benefit is that it doesn't transfer lots of heat and humidity into the house, which would otherwise have to be removed by an air conditioner, which are notoriously large consumers of electrical power. Lastly, one is not all sweaty when the clothes go on.
I’ve not gone EV because I cycle too much for the relatively small number of journeys by car I make for it to be remotely economically viable until vehicle to grid can make it work. This is the hot water version that could work right now.
These were on my radar but this is good timing. We are about to get some final building work done on our home and I’m keen to update and future proof it as much as we can. Our old combi boiler is getting less reliable so now may be a good time to revisit the whole plumbing and get our architect to find space for a tank (and maybe air source heat pump). It’s been very confusing knowing where to start but this combined with improved insulation and windows as part of the work could be the answer.
(Plus we might at last get decent water pressure from a tank for a good shower)
I would turn off the hot water tank until I needed a shower in 15 minutes, I would use that time to wash the dishes and whatever other need I had for hot water. That's 23 hours a day without the tank maintaining hot water. Of course this is the bachelor method. :D
Nothing wrong with simplicity when it works for you.
Hey Dragon,
The problem with doing this is that a regular tank is heating the entire content of the cylinder! This makes it way slower than it needs to be and at the same time more heat is lost than necessary.
With the Mixergy tank, you are literally stratifying the amount of heat that's required. This makes is quicker and more efficient.
@@mixergyltd6286 I moved from that apartment in 1996 cuz the neighbor was using his girlfriend head as a football every time he got drunk. Now I moved to an apartment that has hot water included with the rent. Problem solved.
@@dragonskunkstudio7582 It would be more like "problem created" for me. Now I can do something to have hot water with less carbon footprint. With hot water included it would like "dear landlord, have you heard about our saviour clean energy?(...)"
@@szkielet137 I get my electrical energy from a clean source hydro. Problem solved.
One of the things I've that comes to mind that can save energy to heat water is when ever we wash our hands, shower or wash clothes or dishes which is nearly everything we use hot water for, we turn on the hot water and then add cold to bring it to the right temperature. Companies that sell hot water heaters sell them on the basis of how hot the water is their heaters produce and as a result most households have their heater set to a temperature too hot to hold your hand under. If you want to save energy dial the heater back so you only need the minimum amount of cold water to get the right temp. I know it sounds far too simple but you would be surprised how how many households have their water almost boiling. You'll also be surprised at how much you save on you water and energy usage.
Interesting stuff, essentially it's a domestic hot water tank with a variable capacity and some smart time shifting controls. Not sure I understand though how a non-constant load such as Mixergy, could participate in frequency response? FR is a quick response generation or load shedding service to help the grid cope with sudden loss of generation capacity, this is usually provided by quick turn-up generators such as pumped storage, batteries, gas and diesel. Also temporary load shedding by switching off constant loads, such as large scale refrigeration & industrial furnaces, and/or disconnecting large users with onsite backup generators such as Data Centres and Hospitals. So to participate in FR you need either quick response generation, or removal of a large constant load to make a meaningful contribution to instantaneously reducing demand. Time of use tariffs are a slightly different, market based mechanism, so are not contracted reserve services as such, but could certainly help to balance supply and demand to reduce curtailment of renewable generation.
What amazing tech. My only slight concern here would be Legionella. Where water sits at ambient temperatures for days it presents an opportunity for colonising bacteria to form. How do they manage this in the tank?
I'm long-winded in Patreon… as usual!
Catch ya there :-)