Institute for Renewable Energy (IEO) in cooperation with an international consortium is starting a project called ComBioTES concerning the demonstration in Poland, France, Denmark and China of compact heat storage for buildings using RES-based electro-heating. Buildings belonging to prosumers are considered, as well as those using dynamic tariffs for green electricity or heat purchased from the grid. The project is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, coordinated by the Research Centre for Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies (CEA) of Grenoble, France.
The project brings together research centers, industrial designers, and technology suppliers in a single consortium to combine skills to build an improved thermal storage system designed to enable lower energy costs for single-family homes and the "commercial" sector. The solution exploits the properties of phase change materials and intelligent energy management to better link the energy production or supply profile to that of heating, cooling and domestic hot water preparation.
Electricity heating (space heating, domestic hot water, cooling) based on increasingly cheap energy from RES accounts for a major part of electricity consumption in Europe, but periodically causes peaks in consumption, often when electricity is expensive. Normally, only domestic hot water is stored (in a boiler). Space heating and air conditioning are seasonal loads and unfortunately are not stored at the building scale to save electricity consumed by occupants during peak periods. This indicates the need for the development of heat storage suitable for buildings to reduce end-user electricity bills. The ComBioTES consortium will develop a modular, compact thermal energy storage (TES) solution for CO, DHW and cooling, fully adapted to the electricity price change profile.
The ComBioTES solution, consisting of two heat storages, allows to take advantage of the high volumetric density of the latent energy of the heat storage (≥ 100 kWh/m3) using organic (bio) materials with phase change PCM, while having the ability to respond immediately to heating or domestic hot water demand, thanks to the storage capacity (TES).
The ComBioTES consortium and its associated External Advisory Board (Idex, Danfoss and Passive House) includes all the major key players in energy storage and management and the integration of the heat and power sectors.
More information: combiotes.eu
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