CAT can stop Global Warming

Currently Available Technology (CAT) is the latest thinking to stop global warming. Many experts have added up all the CAT and say "No pie in the sky energy discoveries are needed to stop global warming", just implement CAT and we can eliminate the need for the burning of fossil fuels. Therewill also be a boost in the economy when the import of foreign oil is eliminated.

Global warming is the slow temperature rise of our planet due to mans' burning of fossil fuels. Nobody knows the eventual outcome. We can only model and speculate. So, what's the worst that can happen? Well, this slow temperature rise is already killing off some species. Maybe the extinction of an unnoticed little plant or animal could cause a biological chain reaction that would cause the extinction of man. Or, perhaps this slow temperature rise will start to thaw the earths' frozen methane and cause it to be released. Since methane is a super greenhouse gas, all the earths' frozen methane would quickly be released in a chain reaction. This big jump in heat and methane would definitely extinguish life on earth. There is another chain reaction happening today. 8 years ago there was internet talk of carbon credits for growing trees. Trees are great at consuming CO2 and storing carbon. Unfortunately, with just a little temperature rise, more forests are ablaze. This is one chain reaction that has to be stopped, quickly.

Do a Google search of "thinking the unthinkable" and you will find a range of things from your computer crashing to burning in hell for an eternity. The extinction of man and many other innocent species is truly at the top of the unthinkables list.

Now is NOT the time for contemplating the odds of the unthinkable happening. Now is the time for ACTION.

Heat Exchangers NF Inc. (HENF) has developed several technologies that can help eliminate global warming. Rather than sit on these technologies for future use, HENF has decided to give them away for free. Probably not a good business decision but the alternative is unthinkable. HENF will continue to direct all efforts to manufacturing and selling its' main product, the shower smart faucet.

The following technologies are offered freely by HENF for others to use: Hopefully others will develop and deploy these technologies in a much more timely fashion
1. A Smart Control Switch for the electric hot water tank
2. Vacuum Insulated electric hot water tank
3. Vacuum Insulated hot water pipe.

1. A Smart Control Switch for the Electric Hot Water Tank
Articles have been written about using the battery of a plug-in hybrid as an energy storage device. This is a good idea but plug-in hybrids are scarce and their batteries are small and expensive. There is a much better solution. There exists today, a huge, untapped energy storage device. It is the residential, electric hot water tank.

HENF compared the electric hot water tank to the lead acid battery to calculate the "best buy" for storing energy. Sears sells both of these so their prices and warranties can be used in the comparison. The electric hot water tank is 20 times better than the lead acid battery when product price, product life and energy storage capacity are used in the calculation for storing energy.

The problem with the current electric hot water tank is that it is not smart. The heating elements turn on during expensive, peak power time and therefore the usable storage capacity is reduced. Adding a smart switch to the electric hot water tank maximizes usable energy storage and solves two big problems for the Power Company. The Power Company can then make wind and solar a bigger percentage of their generation capacity with these two problems solved.

The Power Companies' #1 problem is peak power. Their daily power output curve has two big peaks and two big valleys. The big peaks are at 8:00am and at 5:00pm when everybody is showering, eating, washing dishes etc. If a Power Company has 1 million smart switches on electric hot water tanks they have 8,000 megawatt-hours of storage capacity. By using this storage capacity, the Power Company can wait until a valley before they heat all the water in the tank. This delay in turning on the heating elements takes the tops off the peaks and puts it into the valleys. The daily power output curve of the Power Company has now become a flat line. They no longer need maximum generating capacity to meet peak times.

The Power Companies' #2 problem is balancing the electricity supply to equal the demand. When wind and solar generators are constantly coming on-line and going off-line, the Power Company must take fossil fuel generators off-line and on-line to balance the electricity flow to equal the demand. It is a delicate balance to bring one generator on-line and take another off-line. It is not as easy as just throwing a light switch. With the smart switch for the electric hot water tank, the Power Company can now also control demand. Turning on or off one million smart switches on electric hot water tanks is just as easy as throwing a light switch. Not all one million at a time will be turned on or off but enough to balance the generator going off-line or coming on-line. One million smart switches on electric hot water tanks is equal to 3,500 megawatts of electricity flow.

HENF calls this switch "smart" but it is only smart because it is controllable from the central computer at the Power Company. The smart switch includes a high amp relay (either solid state or electro-mechanical) and communication chip. The cost of a smart switch is very reasonable. HENF has estimate that each switch, installed and remotely controlled would cost less than $20 each for 1,000,000 switches. This cost includes the switch, amortized R&D costs, the central computer at the Power Company and installation.

The smart switch is Currently Available Technology (CAT). Many companies have the technical ability to build the smart switch but Quebec Hydro is probably the best. They have done a lot of R&D in the area of communications over their power lines and they are presently, looking into supplying the internet over their power lines. It is very likely that Quebec Hydro already has "off the shelf" technology to build these switches and to set up the computer control to control thousands of hot water tanks, individually or in manageable groups

The smart switch will save the homeowner money because they will be using the less expensive, off-peak power to heat the water in their electric hot water tanks. The homeowner would be unaware that at times their tank is only half full of hot water because the central computer at the Power Company would anticipate their needs.

Start of technical section
This new technology, the smart switch will help the wind and solar industry expedite the deployment of their renewable generation by helping the Power Companies control supply and demand. The control solution is easy. The Power Companies should be controlling demand as well as supply. The main complaint the Power Companies have against installing renewable generation like wind or solar is the intermittent power generation and the resulting difficulty of maintaining the control balance between supply and demand.

This new smart switch would be developed, owned and controlled by the Companies because it is definitely part of their business
The smart switch has two purposes

1. It cuts the tops off their peak power load times and puts it into the valleys. This will flatten their peaks. It adds off-peak, energy storage, capacity.

2. It allows them to control the balance between supply and demand by controlling demand as well as supply.

Currently there are two control switches on an electric hot water tank. There is an upper switch for the upper heating element and a lower switch for the lower heating element. Only one of these switches is used at a time. The upper switch takes priority. If the top and bottom of the tank is cold, the upper switch connects and the upper heating element heats the top of the tank. Once the water in the top of the tank up to temperature, the top switch disconnects and allows the bottom switch to connect and start heating the bottom of the tank.

The best candidates for the installation of a smart switch are the homeowners that use the least amount of hot water. They would have the greatest amount of energy storage capacity. These are the homeowners at the low end of the chart of Savings Chart. Total hot water consumption should have a curve which is very similar to the Savings Chart. The chart is viewable at www.showersmartfaucet.com/savings.html

The control center computer can control thousands of hot water tanks, individually or in manageable groups.

1 Hot water tanks = 3.5killowatts
10 Hot water tanks = 35killowatts
100 Hot water tanks = 350killowatts

Currently the biggest residential water user is the shower. The biggest HOT water user is, by far, the shower. See Aquacraft Inc. -Tampa Project. If an average sized family uses a shower smart faucet, they should be able to reduce their use to 1 tank of hot water/day. See Savings Calculator- showersmartfaucet.com. This allows for the opportunity of heating this hot water with non-peak times or valley times. The prime candidates for smart switches would be the homeowners that use less than 1 tank of hot water/day. For larger families, two hot water tanks might be an option so that they can also store inexpensive energy.

Let us say that you have a city with 1,000,000 electric hot water tanks, all equipped with a switch controlled by the Utility Company. At 3500 watts per HWT, the Utility Company can control the demand of 3500 megawatts (or 3.5gigawatts). If these (prime candidates) tanks are ½ full of hot water, they will require 8,000 megawatt-hours to make full of hot water.

When manufacturing 1,000,000 switches, volume price discounts are huge. The cost of designing the switch can be amortized over 1,000,000 copies. The first computer control center is expensive because it is mostly software and testing but the computer control center copies are inexpensive. Installations are expensive but manageable if neighborhood assembly lines are used. With a neighborhood assembly line, the installer or team goes door to door installing, efficiently. This would bring the cost down to 10 to 15 minutes, whereas installing just one unit at a time would be 45 to 60 minutes.

Best Control strategy
Install the smart switch between the upper and lower switches on the electric hot water tank.

1. Homeowner retains control of top 1/3 rd of tank for unforeseen needs.

2. least control software needed by the central computer

3. individual electric hot water control from central computer not necessarily a requirement

Second Best Control strategy
Install smart switch in series to the hot water tanks existing switches.

Existing switch turns on when there is a low temp. in the tank. This is very poor control. It results in the use of expensive peak power. Holding the heating elements in the off position with an in-series switch makes the electric hot water tank into a better energy storage device.

Initially, HENF started looking at this smart switch because it was thought that the shower smart faucet might, eventually control the electric hot water tank. The outcome of this R&D lead to the conclusion that the Power Company should be in control of the smart switch.

The shower smart faucet has a microprocessor and flow and temperature sensors. It therefore can have some intelligence and can keep an eye on things like hot water use and make decisions to override the Power Companies signal if extra, unexpected, hot water is needed. This override signal goes into the Power Companies' switch and turns on the electric hot water tank. Here are the reasons why this technology has no value to HENF
1. HENF does not have the SSF deployment to participate in this technology
2. HENF would need to develop the software and testing of an electric hot water tank monitoring system. This is very expensive and at this time, It is thought that installing the smart switch between the upper and lower heater element would accomplish the same thing.
3. The shower smart faucet is marketed to the top 5% hot water user families. These are the families with teens. HENF is working on the other end of the Savings Chart compared to the Smart Switch. Ideally the smart switch would work the best when the electric hot water tank is used the least. This maximizes the storage capacity time frame.
4. It is way too far into the future for HENFs' shower smart faucet (SSF) to capitalize on the smart switch. The Power Companies should do it immediately because all that energy storage capacity is just sitting there, today. This switch is a minor cost, but it is extremely valuable to the wind and solar (renewable) generators if they can get the Power Companies on side.

2. Vacuum Insulated electric hot water tank
The Vacuum Insulated electric hot water tank is a double walled tank with a vacuum between the walls. Just think of it as a huge Thermos bottle. Heat can not travel through a vacuum by conduction or convection. Radiated heat can travel through a vacuum but the amount of radiated heat is negligible if the tanks' walls are shiny. A conventional electric hot water tank will loose more than 500 Kw-hours per year of heat out through its' insulation. 500 Kw-hours per year is the same amount of energy as having a 60 watt light bulb on continuously, for a year. This costs about $50 per year. A Vacuum Insulated electric hot water tank would lose less than 5 Kw-hours per year. That is less than $.50 per year. In a hot climate, there is an added savings because your air conditioner does not have to pump this lost heat out of your house. This added savings is another $25 per year.

HENF has done $400K of R&D into the Vacuum Insulated electric hot water tank:
1. Materials testing and selection
2. Product design
3. Production equipment design

HENF estimates a 75 unit/day production facility to manufacture Vacuum Insulated electric hot water tanks would cost $7M and take 1 year to complete.

The exterior wall of the Vacuum Insulated electric hot water tank is heavily ribbed to withstand the implosion force of one atmosphere of pressure. The interior wall (not shown) contains the water. It is rounded like a traditional hot water tank so that it can withstand the explosion force of the homes' water pressure.

3. Vacuum Insulated hot water pipe
Aquacraft Inc. found in their Tampa Project that a lot of water was being used at the kitchen and bathroom faucets. Much of this water is cold water that is purged from the hot water pipe before hot water can be used. Purging this water is a pure waste of water and heat. Aquacraft Inc. also found in their Tampa Project that showering is the #1 user of water. Again, cold water is purged before showering. With Vacuum Insulated hot water pipe this water will stay hot for many hours thus eliminating all the wasted water of purging. It is a time saver, an energy saver and a water saver.

It is more complicated to test the energy savings of Vacuum Insulated hot water pipe because it is more dynamic and dependant on water consumption.

Vacuum Insulated hot water pipe is for new construction or major renovation because it has to be installed inside the walls. This limits installations as compared to the Vacuum Insulated electric hot water tank.

HENF has done $300K of R&D into the Vacuum Insulated hot water pipe:
1. materials testing and selection
2. product design
3. production equipment design

HENF estimates a 60,000 ft/day production facility for the Vacuum Insulated hot water pipe would cost $10M and take 1 year to complete.