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Caldera heat batteries

Does what it says on the tin
Mike4
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Caldera heat batteries

#419239

Postby Mike4 » June 13th, 2021, 12:39 pm

Caldera heat batteries have been mentioned in a thread on DAK but as they are wildly off topic for that thread, I'm starting a new one here.

Still not sure if this is the right place as I find them interesting on two different levels. Firstly they seem like a viable green alternative to over-complex solutions like heat pumps and hydrogen boilers. (They also make a good partner for solar panels.) Secondly as an investment opportunity, it's in a field I have some familiarity with so I can hopefully see the potential and at least some of the trip-ups, but I'm not sure how to pick apart the company to estimate the risk and the opportunity. They seem to be crowd funding but quite a serious proposal. Which would be the right board for that?

Technically they are an electric thermal store with a capacity of 100kWhrs, heated using cheap electricity available to people with a smart meter at times when wind or solar have excess capacity, and used to heat central heating and domestic water instead of an oil or LPG boiler. I can see this really catching on.

Shortcomings strike me as the risk of the govt fiddling with leccy tariffs, their energy capacity being too small for long periods of no cheap rate (in deep mid winter for example), and the price (£12k supplied and fitted). There are one or two other shortcomings I've forgotten now I've started typing this post. Just posting this to start off the discussion.

https://www.caldera.co.uk/

https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/cal ... hes/Z1norb

Midsmartin
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Re: Caldera heat batteries

#419266

Postby Midsmartin » June 13th, 2021, 2:04 pm

That's interesting. My first thought is what the carbon footprint is due to the manufacture, transport and installation of these things? What's the carbon payback time for someone with oil heating?

csearle
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Re: Caldera heat batteries

#419293

Postby csearle » June 13th, 2021, 4:36 pm

Mike4 wrote:They seem to be crowd funding but quite a serious proposal. Which would be the right board for that?
Maybe Other Investing but I'm not sure. C.

csearle
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Re: Caldera heat batteries

#419296

Postby csearle » June 13th, 2021, 4:43 pm

One of the FAQs is ca.: does a power-cut mean no heating? They suggested the circulation pumps are mains powered, and so yes. That got me thinking that 12V circulation pumps might be quite useful so they could run off a trickle-charged battery thus bridging any power outages. C.

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Re: Caldera heat batteries

#419306

Postby quelquod » June 13th, 2021, 5:29 pm

Almost off-topic - I have a relative in her md-90s who’s house is heated by an off-peak thermal store, effectively a giant storage heater or in more modern lingo heat battery. Built in with the house so a bit over 60 years old now. It occupies a cupboard in the middle of the ground floor and is about 7 feet high and 2and a half feet square plus copious amounts of insulation around it and uses warm air circulation to heat the house with the fans switched in 2 stages by thermostats and a timeclock. It actually performs very well and has been troublefree aside from a couple of fan failures. Sounds like things are maybe going full circle.

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Re: Caldera heat batteries

#419310

Postby csearle » June 13th, 2021, 5:46 pm

quelquod wrote:Almost off-topic - I have a relative in her md-90s who’s house is heated by an off-peak thermal store, effectively a giant storage heater or in more modern lingo heat battery. Built in with the house so a bit over 60 years old now. It occupies a cupboard in the middle of the ground floor and is about 7 feet high and 2and a half feet square plus copious amounts of insulation around it and uses warm air circulation to heat the house with the fans switched in 2 stages by thermostats and a timeclock. It actually performs very well and has been troublefree aside from a couple of fan failures. Sounds like things are maybe going full circle.
That is exactly what I have in my flat. The warm air is able to take the temperature from outside to toasty warm in just a few short minutes.

The main downside as I see it is that the distribution of warmth is achieved with manually operated louvres. This pretty much defies automation. I installed a portable hive thermostat and a relay to switch the fan on and off, so at least I can regulate the temperature where I am rather than just the living room. This of course wouldn't be a problem with the Caldera heat battery.

Chris

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Re: Caldera heat batteries

#419323

Postby wilbobob » June 13th, 2021, 7:12 pm

Looks like reinventing the wheel. We had a similar system in a house built about 25 - 30 years ago. Made by GEC if my memory serves me right. A unit in a cupboard about 2foot square and about 6 foot tall. The top 5 foot being stacked with bricks that were heated overnight, with an air circulating fan that passed hot air from the stack into an air-water heat exchanger with a standard hot water circulating pump, controlled by conventional room stat and timer, passing the hot water through standard panel radiators around the home.
It made sense to install when the house was built, as there was no mains gas in the village at the time, and we had no problems with it in the few years we had it in service. The thing that was always a worm in the back of my mind was the knowledge that if there wasn't enough energy in the pile, then the system would draw electricity at day rates to heat the house and that prospect really worried me.
When I eventually took the thing out piece by piece as it was too heavy to pull out in one go I was very impressed by the quality of the materials that it was made from, and no doubt it would have worked for many more years. But we put in a gas boiler hooked up to the existing radiators and enjoyed a warm house with no worries about running out of cheap rate heat.

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Re: Caldera heat batteries

#419346

Postby JohnB » June 13th, 2021, 9:41 pm

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:Myself, I can't see it going mainstream. But a niche technology, quite possible.

In the winter, at night, the partnership with the photovoltaic panels on your roof is "a difficult one"? I can see the attraction of replacing a coal or oil boiler with one. But it's going to run on a cheap overnight electricity tariff, is it not? Once everyone is charging their electric cars and heating their heat storage devices, the need to offer a cheap overnight tariff will likely disappear. Off peak will no longer be so. Will it not?

RVF


"cheap" may not be overnight in future, it may occur on stormy or sunny days, but there are always likely to be arbitrage opportunities for home scale thermal storage unless grid-scale energy storage systems like liquid air or molten salt can smooth demand. The advantage a domestic system has is that it is lossless, at least for electricity to stored heat, even if the heat release is not optimal. Grid scale storage has round trip inefficencies electricity-heat-electricity.

I don't think one-way use of electric car batteries will flatten demand enough, so they will have round-trip losses, so cheap periods will always exist, but the consumer might not be have access to them.

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Re: Caldera heat batteries

#419634

Postby sg31 » June 15th, 2021, 11:08 am

quelquod wrote:Almost off-topic - I have a relative in her md-90s who’s house is heated by an off-peak thermal store, effectively a giant storage heater or in more modern lingo heat battery. Built in with the house so a bit over 60 years old now. It occupies a cupboard in the middle of the ground floor and is about 7 feet high and 2and a half feet square plus copious amounts of insulation around it and uses warm air circulation to heat the house with the fans switched in 2 stages by thermostats and a timeclock. It actually performs very well and has been troublefree aside from a couple of fan failures. Sounds like things are maybe going full circle.


Back in the late 80's/early 90's I renovated a 17th century cottage in Lincolnshire which was heated by a similar system. It had a massive brick chimney in the middle if the property. A fire would heat the chimney and give off heat for a day or two afterwards. By the time the flue gasses exited the chimney they were barely warm. It certainly made the most of the heat produced by the fire.

As an added bonus there was a hatch in the bedroom that gave access to the flue. You could hang meat in the flue and smoke it thus no need for a freezer.

No windows on the north side to cut down heat loss and windows on the south side to maximise gain from the suns rays.

It was an interesting property.

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Re: Caldera heat batteries

#422569

Postby jaizan » June 26th, 2021, 1:04 pm

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote: Once everyone is charging their electric cars and heating their heat storage devices, the need to offer a cheap overnight tariff will likely disappear. Off peak will no longer be so. Will it not?


1 Once everyone has electric cars, surely the smart technology will ensure the cars are carged overnight, or at other times of low demand. So I agree, there should be less need for cheap tariffs.

2 A heat store is a very poor solution compared with a heat pump. The heat pump might get about 3~4kW of heat output for every 1kW of electric input.

3 I do wonder where all this electric will come from. If cars go electric and domestic heating is forced to go electric, there will be a dramatic increase in demand for electric. We're shutting coal fired power stations and only building 1 nuclear plant to replace all the old nuclear plants. Wind power is notoriously unreliable.
What happens when we get a winter cold spell with high pressure over the UK for a couple of weeks and almost no wind ?

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Re: Caldera heat batteries

#422894

Postby malakoffee » June 27th, 2021, 4:37 pm

jaizan wrote:3 I do wonder where all this electric will come from. If cars go electric and domestic heating is forced to go electric, there will be a dramatic increase in demand for electric. We're shutting coal fired power stations and only building 1 nuclear plant to replace all the old nuclear plants. Wind power is notoriously unreliable.
What happens when we get a winter cold spell with high pressure over the UK for a couple of weeks and almost no wind ?

Well once the penny drops . . . . .. . . . . . . .
Our expectations about Energy Usage have been formed ( aka hideously distorted ) by the decades of fossil fuel burning.
- F.F.s are satisfying all our needs - from the bottom of Maslow's triangle : the basics, . . . all the way to the top : i.e. fulfilment of every possible whim.

Take away - from us - the ability to use billions of years of stored solar energy and we are left with what we can gain or store from direct & indirect solar activity - pretty much day to day.

When the penny drops, the race will be on to derive as much useful performance for every joule of energy.
Hopefully vital activities will continue to be served while every-possible-whim will die out or be severely curtailed ( cos there won't be any energy left for such ).

e.g. Out with the SUVs : In with electric bicycles and scooters.
e.g. Out with the hugely energy intensive holidays ( using any sort of motorised travel in big metal boxes ). Go and grow yourself some food to eat.

etc. . . . blah . .
We have had thirty years to get ready for this but STILL we are heading in the wrong direction.


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