We plan to team up with Sunamp to provide Ripple customers with a green, smart heating solution. This means you’ll be able to power your heating and hot water with electricity from your wind turbine!
Sunamp is the first and only heat battery manufacturer in the world to be awarded A Grade RAL Certification, the independent quality mark and the only global standard for Phase Change Material (PCM) and PCM products. Sunamp’s award follows a rigorous test programme, which involved heating and cooling the batteries for 10,000 cycles to demonstrate the material’s performance levels and working life. Sunamp’s own laboratory testing of UniQ batteries has so far reached 40,000 cycles, the equivalent of fifty years full use, with minimum signs of PCM degradation.
What is it?
Sunamp designs and manufactures thermal reserve units, sometimes called heat batteries. They are compact and flexible in that they can be powered solely by electricity, and work well with heat pumps that can pre-heat the water going into the system, reducing the amount of electricity needed. They will also work alongside your existing gas or oil fired boiler, with the boiler just providing top-up heat if needed, for example during severe cold snaps in winter. Sunamp heat batteries are already replacing hot water cylinders and cutting fuel costs and carbon emissions in thousands of homes across Europe.
You could eliminate your gas or oil bill entirely by using Sunamp’s thermal reserve units for all your heating and hot water needs. If you use it alongside your existing gas or oil boiler, you will still significantly reduce your gas or oil use. You can also save money by charging the battery during off-peak times. Once charged, it will release heat whenever you need it.
The battery provides a clean, efficient and cost-effective alternative to traditional hot water tanks and gas and oil fired boilers. Special non-toxic phase change material (PCM) inside the battery stores large amounts of energy and releases it as heat (or cooling) when it changes from being a solid to a liquid. Water flows through the unit, just like water flows through a boiler, being heated as it goes. Except nothing gets burnt and no CO2 is emitted.
What are the benefits?
Compared with traditional hot water cylinders/thermal stores, Sunamp’s heat batteries are:
- Zero carbon – if powered by electricity from your wind farm
- Trustworthy – RAL certification is evidence of a reliable and very durable product
- Quicker and cheaper to install
- A means of significantly reducing your gas or oil bill
- Low maintenance – no moving parts means few (if any) engineer call outs
- Compact – typically 2 – 3 times smaller than the equivalent hot water cylinders
Where can I get one?
Sunamp heat batteries will be available to purchase on Ripple’s website later in 2020.
