Domestic electrical space heating with heat storage

Abstract

Electricity consumption varies greatly during the day and the night. Any effort made to shift the use of electricity from the peak period to the off-peak period by applying some heat storage for space heating will be beneficial. In this paper, underfloor electrical heating has been studied using computer simulation. The objective is to investigate the potential of using a phase-change material placed between the heating surface and the floor tiles to increase the thermal mass of the floor. The same principle may be applied to the walls or ceiling of the house. It was found that a 30 mm layer of a phase-change material having a melting point close to 40 °C is sufficient to provide heat storage for 1 day under the ambient condition investigated. The simulation also showed that a compact storage heater, using phase-change materials with higher melting temperatures, could be an alternative to the underfloor heating investigated. In both methods, the heater may be operated for only 8 h during the off-peak load period, while the heat stored in the phase-change material is sufficient to provide reasonably uniform heating throughout the whole day.