Everyone likes to have a warm home with hot water. What some might not realize is that more than 80% of energy used in Canadian households goes to providing this heat. This can be challenging in northern and remote communities, where fuel oil or other combustibles are often the only option.

And while renewable energy is a vital part of the fight against climate change, it causes grid stabilization issues. Have you ever driven past a field of wind generators and noticed only a few of them were turning? That’s because power demands weren’t high enough to have them all whirling away. There is nowhere to store power not being used, and so some or most of the generators are shut down.

Saskatoon based TESS Research has developed a solution a method of storing surplus renewable energy as heat at the household level, which is then used for water and space heating.

Instead of shutting down wind or solar generators when they’re making more than the grid needs, the surplus power can be sent into TESS energy storage units.This means that the wind and solar energy can be harvested when its available, and save utility companies money that would otherwise be spent turning high voltage switches off and on again.

Right now there is a rush for grid storage to stabilize power generated by renewables. While several competing grid storage technologies are practical, most if not all rely on large multimillion dollar systems paid for by utilities and/or industry. They replace the cost of shutting down and spooling up renewable generation with the cost of installing and maintaining large banks of batteries, or compressed gasses, or pumped hydro. This means hundreds of million dollars of investment by your local power company, which is passed onto you through your electricity bill.

Most if not all convert from electricity to storage medium to electricity again with multiple steps of losses along the way. If you’re going to use surplus energy for heat, why not convert it once into heat, then store it?

TESS is a thermal battery. Instead of a cabinet full of lithium ion batteries that can freeze in winter or burst into flames, a TESS unit takes in the surplus renewable electricity and stores it as heat energy. Then that heat is released back to warm the house and hot water.

TESS units can also take surplus heat from other sources – e.g. waste heat from manufacturing, computer servers, or even compost heaps – and store that heat for later, controlled deployment as hot water or warm spaces as required.

TESS systems are single-building; you put one in your house like a furnace or hot water heater, and it provides the heat. Because TESS units save the power company the money they’d spend building expensive storage, or the money they’d spend turning generators off and on again several times per day, the electricity to heat the TESS units could be deeply discounted or even free, and using one can eliminate the household heating bill.

TESS Research was founded by former military enginee D’Arcy Mann who has lived in northen and remote communities, witnessing the supply chain difficulties and environmental costs of using fuel oil for heat. Mann intends to license his patented TESS design to HVAC manufacturers so existing manufacturing, distribution, and installation expertise is used to make the best possible product for consumers.