Warmer Wedge Thermal energy storage

GOOD NEWS for hard pressed households. DIT academic, Dr Michael McKeever (above right), has come up with a way of saving up to 50 per cent on hot water bills.

McKeever’s big interest is thermal energy storage and he has come up with Warmer Wedge, an energy storage device that attaches to domestic hot water cylinders and keeps the water warmer for longer. He is about to spin his idea into a commercial venture and is looking for potential investors.

Development to date has been supported by Enterprise Ireland through the DIT Hothouse initiative.

The Warmer Wedge unit will be made in Ireland and will be sold as a DIY product retailing at around €15.

The unit sits under the cylinder’s lagging jacket and up to 10 units can be attached to maximise energy retention.

A domestic tank would typically need six wedges and a household could expect to see pay back in less than a year.

“To date, energy efficiency initiatives have focused on improvements in space heating but hot water heating with dual-tariff electricity has been overlooked,” says McKeever.

“The Warmer Wedge system makes it possible to heat all the hot water needed daily at night. It uses phase change material (PCM) to absorb and hold heat and the product’s novel design maximises the transfer of heat from tank water to PCM and back again.”

PCM absorbs heat when it liquifies and emits the heat back when it solidifies.

Up to now, most PCM materials have been too expensive or hazardous to be sold as DIY products. This was the issue the DIT team set out to crack.

Warmer Wedge is patent protected but McKeever says its real strength is that its development is tied into an extensive knowledge of energy storage built up over years of research.

Warmer Wedge can be used with any shape or size of tank, including solar thermal tanks. McKeever sees the export market as the main potential for the product. “Although designed to bring maximum cost savings to homes with SMART meters, it delivers savings when used with any metering system, e.g. nightsaver meters or standard utility meters,” he says.

“There are 120,000 nightsaver power users in Ireland but there are over six million in the UK. Solar powered tanks are still a novelty here but there are over 3.5m of them in Germany.”