273. STORING ENERGY WITH ICE
Ice is an often overlooked way to store energy. Here's a neat idea that's been around a while:
The oldest form of energy storage involves harvesting ice from lakes and rivers, which was stored in well insulated warehouses and sold or used throughout the year for almost everything we use mechanical refrigeration for today, including preserving food, cooling drinks, and air conditioning. The Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest is still air conditioned with ice harvested from Lake Balaton in the winter. Quite an impressive system, which I was able to visit last summer.SourceIt makes you wonder about other possibilities. How about saving city ice and snow from the winter, and using it in the summer for air conditioning? Or towing bags of water up to higher latitudes to freeze, and towing them back again?
Of course, that's just brainstorming. In practice, ice energy storage is rapidly growing as a new way for homes, factories and commercial facilities to slash costs by shifting their cooling load to the night-time hours. In Japan, the technique is called "Eco Ice". In America, the "Ice Bear" from Ice Energy is one popular system (click to enlarge):
These systems can also reduce CO2 emissions and fossil fuel dependence in areas where nighttime base load is provided primarily by nuclear and hydroelectric.
-- by JD