Domestic electrical space heating with heat storage

Electricity consumption varies greatly during the day and the night. Any ef fort made to shift the use of electricity from the peak period to the off-p eak period by applying some heat storage for space heating will be benefici al. In this paper, underfloor electrical heating has been studied using com puter simulation. The objective is to investigate the potential of using a phase-change material placed between the heating surface and the floor tile s to increase the thermal mass of the floor. The same principle may be appl ied to the walls or ceiling of the house. It was found that a 30 mm layer o f a phase-change material having a melting point close to 40 degrees C is s ufficient to provide heat storage for 1 day under the ambient condition inv estigated. The simulation also showed that a compact storage heater, using phase-change materials with higher melting temperatures, could be an altern ative to the underfloor heating investigated. In both methods, the heater m ay 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 un iform heating throughout the whole day.