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Comment by fpoling | Hacker News Reader

Somebody calculated that a home in UK needs 1 Megawatt-Hour battery to backup solar energy during the winter. I suspect in 10 years that may cost below 25K, a small fraction of the property cost.

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But is it really 1 MWh of _electricity_, or could you replace a good chunk of that with a huge tank of boiling water? In the winter, about half of my electricity consumption goes to my heat pump, to produce 45-50C water for heating and tap water. But if we could increase the reservoir temperature to 95C (or even go superheated to 160C at 6 bar), then it could supply the 45-50C flow temperature much longer without needing to recharge.

In cold places district heating solutions with seasonal storage, like this one, make a lot of sense:

https://www.vantaanenergia.fi/en/about-us/projects/varanto-t...

That's probably assuming a solar system sized to cover typical summer energy usage. You can simply over-provision solar until you have wasted capacity in summer and little to no storage requirement in winter. Then it's just a tradeoff between battery and solar costs to find the best price point.

Also this calculation probably assumes no baseload power imported from the grid, where means such as wind and tidal power work year-round and help offset the need for batteries.

The UK is very far north and very windy. I suggest a smaller battery and a wind turbine.

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