Pretty soon, heat pumps will be able to store and distribute heat as needed

Related, TIL the US is effectively banning residential electric resistance water heaters in 2029, with heat pump water heaters being the only type that can meet the new standards. Users will see a 2-3x in cost difference and a 3 to 8 year payback on savings.

I wonder if this can store any heat or just heat pump heat. If it can store any heat, it would help a lot to further reduce heating costs in our modern energy efficient house.

Sometimes, in the winter, we get too much solar forcing, so if we don’t heat all, it can be 85F in the day in the house, but 60-65 at night. (We open the windows during the day, and don’t always close them at exactly the right time at night.)

With the adoption of sodium batteries, I wouldn’t be surprised if solar panel + sodium battery would outperform this system by a lot.

This is similar to nighthawkinlight's videos on phase change materials. It was very cool to see how his Ziploc bags of homemade goo helped regulate temperature.

So it's a large version of those rechargeable hand-warmers?

Starting to get more optimistic about our energy future. Things seem to be tracking pretty good

I would love to see a bus-sized version for year-long temperature moderation. Like, drop house heat into it during the summer so it can re-heat the house over the winter, and pull all the heat out of it by Spring so that it can cool the house over the summer.

Bus sized because that amount of thermal mass is bound to take up a lot of space, but capable of being buried so that it doesn’t actually take up property space.

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