The EU building stock has a great potential to increase its energy efficiency with solutions that can be integrated into existing dwellings and through different measures. One of them is optimizing the use and management of thermal energy by allowing its storage, leveling peak demand and increasing the use of renewable energies affected by intermittency, such as solar energy for heating. The MiniStor project aims to design and produce a novel compact integrated thermal storage system for sustainable storage of heating, cooling and electricity that can be retrofitted to existing systems in residential buildings. It is based on a high performance thermochemical reaction of CaCl2\/NH3 (calcium chloride\/ammonia) materials combined with parallel hot and cold phase change materials for year-round flexibility of use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also stores electrical energy in a Li-ion battery that responds to grid signals and can sell to the power grid. The system is managed by a Smart Energy Management System that connects to the Internet of Things. The system can have as input, energy obtained from a variety of renewable energy sources such as hybrid photovoltaic energy from thermal panels. The system provides stability, performance and usage of at least 20 years, an estimated volume of compact storage material of 0.72 m3, the net energy consumption of a building is reduced by at least 44% and a return on investment is obtained over a period of 6.7 years, using high energy density storage materials that reach storage densities up to 10.6 times higher than water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n