I am a software engineer and have hobbyist understanding about electronics, so this is something completely out of my scope. Just need to understand if my idea of thermal storage is practical at all.
So, I have a basement in my apartment building and I have renovated and insulated it. But of course it is not heated. Winters here get quite cold. I'v made the basement nice enough to be my home office and workshop. Temperature in there is not comfortable, in winter 10-15°C so of course I need to heat it electrically.
With current electrical prices it is quite expensive. But I was thinking could I use electricity at night when it is 2-3x (tonight it is 30x) cheaper, to store the heat?
I have seen people store solar heat in water barrels so as a layman it makes perfect sense to me. Of course I understand that I probably don't even have the means to understand how wrong I am.
So to get more concrete my question is - would it make economical/practical sense to heat 200-400L of water during the night to redistribute heat back into my 60m3 basement. Instead of heating it with a regular electric heater during the day.
Some downsides I can see:
- I can heat the basement more precisely with regular heater, just when I need it and as long as I need it.
- Need to insulate the storage device so it won't redistribute heat when I don't need it.