Solar Energy Storage
Most practical active solar heating systems have storage for a few hours to a day's worth of energy collected. There is a growing number of facilities that use Seasonal thermal energy storage (STES), enabling solar energy to be stored in summer (primarily) for space heating use during winter. The Drake Landing Solar Community in Alberta, Canada has now achieved a year-round 97% solar heating fraction, a world record and possible only by incorporating STES.
Molten salt is now in use as a means to retain a high temperature thermal store, in conjunction with concentrated solar power for later use in electricity generation, to allow solar power to provide electricity on a continuous basis, as base load energy. These molten salts (Potassium nitrate, Calcium nitrate, Sodium nitrate, Lithium nitrate, etc.) have the property to absorb and store the heat energy that is released to the water, to transfer energy when needed. To improve the salt properties it must be mixed in a eutectic mixture.
Read more about this topic: Thermal Energy Storage
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