When you turn on a room light, TV, or anything else wired into your home power comes from the generating plant to your device in an instant. Sometimes a group of people want more power than the generating stations can provide; this is what can cause brownouts. But the opposite is also true; sometimes generating stations make more power than people want at that time. What happens to the extra power?

This is a case where power created by burning fuels has an advantage. Natural gas or diesel generator systems can take some of their generators offline or ramp down the speed of the generators until demand goes back up again. But these combustion sources produce greenhouse gasses that contribute to air pollution and global warming.

Wind and solar power generation stations can also switch off wind generators and photovoltaics, but this isn’t as easy as throttling down a diesel generator. It means stopping a wind generator or switching off banks of photovoltaics entirely. Believe it or not this is expensive and power companies like to avoid it where possible – so much so that sometimes they actually pay others to take the surplus power rather than taking renewables offline!

This is why several companies are developing solutions to store power from renewables for use later, when it’s needed.

Some store the power for hours, others for days; from large banks of lithium ion batteries to pumped hydro to superheated salts or compressed air. All of these systems have their merits and can smooth out those peaks of power when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing but power demand is low, and deliver the power back hours later when demand is back up again.

But these systems require large amounts of exotic metals, just the right terrain, or high pressure tanks and cost millions if not billions of dollars to install, making power companies reluctant to make the investment except where demanded by very large communities.

While there are large grids servicing large cities and the towns in between, remote and northern areas sometimes use their own micro grids to provide their smaller populations with power. These micro grids are even more sensitive to power demand peaks and valleys, making it more difficult to implement renewable energy.

USING SURPLUS POWER FOR MORE THAN 80% OF HOUSEHOLD ENERGY NEEDS

Canadians spent about $30 billion a year on household energy. Most of the energy (81%) is used for heating homes and water, and the top heat sources are natural gas, electricity and home heating oil. Burning fuels contributes to global warming.

Our TESS units replace burning fuel with renewable electricity instead.  We direct the surplus power from the grid and store it as heat in TESS units, topping it up whenever the grid needs a load to reduce surplus power. Throughout the day some of that heat energy is used to maintain the hot water in the house and, when needed, uised to heat the home living space as required.

Imagine replacing space heating and water heating with a low cost, or free, source!

By diverting surplus power to the TESS units and helping to stabilize the grid, the TESS system makes the installation of small and medium wind and solar stations more economically viable for power companies, which can make their installation into microgrids far more likely.