Rock Bed Thermal Storage
Specialist rock bed thermal storage design and modelling.
Offered Services
Greenplan Consultants offer the following services regarding rock-stores /thermal storage: • Designing and Sizing a rock store • Modelling the performance of a rock-store
What is a Rock-Store
A rock store is a pile of loose rocks. It is easiest to understand how it works by thinking of it as a rechargeable battery. For example, if you live in a region with hot summer days and cool nights, at night when the outdoor temperature is low you can draw air from outside through the store. The store will be “charged” to this temperature. Then, during the day, you can blow air through the store, where it will be cooled down (thereby “discharging” the store), and feed the cool air into the building. Alternatively, in winter, you could reverse day-night operation so that the store is used to capture heat during the day and then use that for heating a building at night. The advantage of this simple system is that it reduces – and in some cases can almost eliminate – your need for air-conditioning systems, which require more energy to run and need more advanced technology to maintain. It can usually be constructed with local construction materials and the most complicated item necessary for basic operation is a fan. It is however dependent on the climate – if you live in a region with minimal diurnal temperature change, then it is not a good option. While the concept is simple and has been used for a long time, it is not necessarily easy to size the system and predict its performance. We have been involved in the design, construction, and measurement of a number of rock stores over the years and have a lot of experience with the thermal modelling and performance prediction.