Storage Heaters

[Oldgreybeard]

These high temperature storage heaters have been around for decades. I remember a friend having one in their house in the 1970s, big thing built in to a cupboard that used electric heating elements to heat up iron blocks internally to somewhere around 1,000°C I think. It pulled heat from those blocks and ran a pretty normal central heating and hot water system. Not sure how it got the heat from the blocks to the water, though. It was a beast of a thing, with a three phase supply. Made by GEC, I think.

[Joeboy]

Bit bigger and hotter than Joe’s SH, but, I suppose, using the same principle of storing cheap rate energy.

https://interestingengineering.com/inno ... ck-toaster

Presume it could be adapted to the domestic setting as a water heater - suppose the Tepeo Zeb is using this approach.

https://tepeo.com/

I like the ZEB, that's a neat solution IF the tariffs can be put in place to match. Sad about the loft restriction.

[Bugtownboy]

Does appear to be a viable alternative (if your heat demands are within 12000 kWh per year) to a HP, especially if overnight tariffs are favourable.

Looks potentially less disruptive than a HP installation, almost being a direct replacement for a gas boiler, utilising existing radiators etc.

I know this has been raised before on the forum - will be interesting, though, to see how much of the market they take.

[Oldgreybeard]

Out of curiosity I've been digging around and found the original unit from 50 years ago, when these were fairly common in new builds. The unit was called the GEC Nightstor and looked like this:



This company seems to have a fair bit of info about them: https://www.ewjenkinsandson.co.uk/about ... or-boilers

The Gec Nightstor dry core electric boiler was originally produced for new or existing housing as a direct replacement for oil fired and solid fuel boilers. A range of boilers was produced with capacities up to 250 kwh for applications from a small house to large commercial or industrial situations , in addition where large heating demand needed a bigger storage capacity several dry core boilers were used in tandem .

A dry core boiler operates on the off peak storage principle. Heat is stored during the night when electricity is much cheaper . Heat can then be drawn off when required, by a fan to drive the air around a closed loop within the brick core and over a heat exchanger through which water is passed. The heated water serves a low pressure heating system in the normal way

GEC boilers are at point of use up to 97% efficient as their is no combustion process to which the heat can be lost to . If the electric supply comes from a green form of generation the whole process is carbon free. Being built by GEC a major electrical engineering contractor & later by APECS run by ex staff of GEC the quality of the engineering was such that boilers now over 25years old are still as good as the day they were first installed. The GEC Nightstor Dry Core boiler in our opinion is the best electric boiler ever produced in the uk. A smaller boiler called the Compact was developed from the 60+ boiler which was originally developed as the first under worktop unit by GEC . The first compact boilers used a internal flow boiler to top up the system if the dry core store became low, most of these were however modified to exclude the flow boiler in preference to using the dry core for top up. Most Compact boilers were installed on the new day time top up tariffs such as Economy 10.

With low running costs, clean and very efficient operation the GEC Nightstor dry core boiler remains the most successful electric boiler ever produced in the UK

The ZEB looks to be a copy of the Nightstor, most probably any patent protection by GEC ran out years ago, so anyone can copy the idea now.

[marshman]

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[Oldgreybeard]

Already been discussed here - post 19 onwards

https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/view ... &start=120

I can't see any mention in the earlier part of this thread that the link refers to. Is it possible that this is the wrong link?

[nowty]

Already been discussed here - post 19 onwards

https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/view ... &start=120

I can't see any mention in the earlier part of this thread that the link refers to. Is it possible that this is the wrong link?

It was in a different thread, An alternative ‘community’ energy store.
https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/view ... =20#p14480

[Oldgreybeard]

Already been discussed here - post 19 onwards

https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/view ... &start=120

I can't see any mention in the earlier part of this thread that the link refers to. Is it possible that this is the wrong link?

It was in a different thread, An alternative ‘community’ energy store.
https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/view ... =20#p14480

Good spot! Seems my little grey cells are ageing, as I didn't remember that thread. Learned something new this morning, though. The iron oxide blocks these things used was called feolite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feolite

[marshman]

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[Joeboy]

On a much smaller scale, 13 hrs since last power to the unit and It is still emitting at 95 degs. I did see 98.something but this will do!

That particular heater is centre of house and that space is at a very nice 21.6 and pushing out in all directions. Not too shabby for old tech that people rip out and throw away.