Thermal storage in large scale ?

[Externet]

What would it take to store all that lack of heat from tons of snow and cold days to be released later in the summer; and all that heat from the summer to be released in the cold of the winter ?

 

Dreaming to eliminate the heating/air conditioning costs on dwellings.

 

A basement or a large room filled with thermal masses ? With some 'magic' material with a huge heat absorption coheficient? Plain rocks ? Scrap metal ingots ?

 

The subsoil, at around 40 feet deep, the temperature is a nearly stable all year to somewhere by 55 F. There is no chambers with thermal insulation walls in there; nature works fine.

Injecting some fluid in there? Geothermics works. But not everyone has the backyards, the drilling$ ...

 

Any alternatives to make a large thermo ? Dream of how all the snow from city sweepers can be kept until august :-)

[CaptainPanic]

A material with a huge heat capacity (or specific heat) is the well-known substance called "Water".

 

It is also non-toxic, and if stirred a little it will have quite a decent heat transfer coefficient.

 

 

An alternative is to dig some piping into your garden, and run some heat pumps. You use your own garden as cold sink (a place to "dump" your cold), and you heat the house.

[insane_alien]

mm, but if you constantly use the ground as a heat sink/source for a heatpump then you need to be careful to vary the load over time. constantly dumping 'cold' there can freeze the ground and ruin your heat pumps ability to transfer heat from there.

 

dumping heat constantly can have the same effect but without the freezing.

[SH3RL0CK]

mm, but if you constantly use the ground as a heat sink/source for a heatpump then you need to be careful to vary the load over time. constantly dumping 'cold' there can freeze the ground and ruin your heat pumps ability to transfer heat from there.

 

dumping heat constantly can have the same effect but without the freezing.

 

Or you need to be sure the size of your system is sufficiently large that the heat transfer from the surrounding ground can keep up with the heat transfer to/from the house.