Interview with Tom Lowe: The importance of Smart Thermal Storage
Tom Lowe is the Founding Director of Thermal Storage UK, a not-for-profit trade association promoting the use of smart thermal stores. Thermal Storage UK’s key focus is the interaction between power and heating systems and the importance of heat flexibility when warming homes and using renewables.
Heating is one of the largest carbon dense industries with 90% of homes being heated with fossil fuels.
Tom explained one way to decarbonise is mass electrification and for mass electrification to be successful we need storage to decrease peak demand. Increasing the use of storage in the electricity grid could lower the cost of building the network and reward customers for being flexibility providers.
When discussing the different types of storage, Tom made it clear that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ storage solution. Different properties will require different storage solutions depending on the cost of the storage asset, size of the property and space for the storage asset. The question that needs to be asked when installing storage assets is ‘How can we utilise the asset to be as flexible as possible?’
Increasing flexibility is key to decreasing mass network investment. From now and until 2050, investment in the electricity grid is estimated to be between £100billion-£300billion of additional spend.
However, the more flexibility you have, the more you can decrease peak demand. With peak demand decreased, the less you need to invest in the network. The less you need to invest in the network, the more you can reward customers for using flexible assets.
Network investment is inevitable to decarbonise heat, transport and industrial processes but reducing overall costs can utilise renewable generation upstream.
It is not just government action and spending that is important in supporting network decarbonisation. British manufacturers are also key to this and Thermal Storage UK have supported innovation companies to be a part of the solution. Three examples include:
- Sunamp have won the King’s Award for enterprise due to building products to decarbonise domestic heating.
- Tepeo have received £10million of funding for future heating projects.
- Caldera are developing projects focusing on electrifying industrial processes.
Tom is speaking at Solar and Storage Live at 10:50 in the Everything Installer theatre on a panel titled ‘Solar in the Delivery of the Future Homes Standard 2025’ and at 16:00 in the Solar Innovation and Technology theatre on the panel titled ‘Developing Low Carbon Thermal Storage for Domestic Heating’.
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