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Electric steam

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Haloyloy770
Haloyloy770 Member Posts: 22
in THE MAIN WALL

Hi all, solar panels are coming “in drones” here in NJ, and I am one that also got solar panels installed with storage batteries, the way I understood it works is I pay up to a fixed price (amount of electricity used) and the rest of electricity that’s not used gets sold to the grid


Now I’m a big fan of steam heating, my current system is a one pipe system, i currently have the Megasteam MST396 boiler, I got it with oil running, but I converted it to gas


My question is, is there an electric steam boiler that I would be able to “swap out”?, I do believe that this current boiler is oversized, so most probably I will have to downsize


My thinking of switching is, if (in truth) I only pay up to a certain amount, then why not switch to electric 😀

Comments

  • pecmsg
    pecmsg Member Posts: 6,679

    You can run the gas boiler off the batteries.

    Straight electric boiler you'll need a huge battery backup system. No practical.

  • dabrakeman
    dabrakeman Member Posts: 822

    https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/187797/open-ended-question-regarding-steam-boilers-w-electric-power-futuristic-cheap-electricity
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 26,683
    https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1874557#Comment_1874557

    This. One of the more common problems with solar PV is that people tend to wildly overestimate the power and energy they can get out of a panel system And then compound the problem by not adding up how much power and energy it take to heat a space.

    I'll just toss a few number out here… A good modern state of the art solar panel can be expected to deliver around 200 watts per square meter of area in full sun. But… the sun doesn't always shine, particularly in the northeast in the winter, so a not half bad starting point is to assume that you can get that power output for, on the averabe, 3 hours per day. So 600 watt-hours per day.

    And you really need to stay warm for three cloudy days in a row.

    Now take a moderately sized hourse and suppose that it's heating load is around 70000 BTUh — 24 hours per day. That's around 20 KE, or around 480 KWh per day. For our 3 clouding days, that means your batteries need to store around 1.5 megawatts. And to recharge them you need around 800 square meters of solar panel…

    Big system. really big bucks for the batteries… (a Tesla Poerwall is around 15 KW-hours, and runs around 10 grand each… do the math).

    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • EBEBRATT-Ed
    EBEBRATT-Ed Member Posts: 19,179

    You have a good?? boiler although its a Burnham LOL. Keep it. No payback changing it.

    The solar will knock down the electric bill but I doubt the solar input will be more than an electric boiler will use. Or even a good part of it.

  • Haloyloy770
    Haloyloy770 Member Posts: 22
    edited 6:19PM

    So the solar system was installed about a month ago, we’re still waiting for inspections before “power on day”, so for this year (and might even for the future) not be relevant

    Now I know that they installed 2 Tesla batteries, I’m going to ask them what is the “final” specs of the system once it was installed (I know there was a few changes along the way)

    Photo 6.pdf

    it looks like these are the specs of the solar system installed

    Please note the specs in white are what was originally quoted, and in blue is what was actually installed

    So with this system is it “powerful” enough to “entertain” a thought to maybe switch to a electric steam boiler?

  • dabrakeman
    dabrakeman Member Posts: 822

    Extrapolating from @Jamie Hall 's math that would be on average producing about 17.3kwh per day so it would take you about a month to store up enough energy to heat your home for one day.

  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 26,683
    https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1874593#Comment_1874593

    not even close

    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
    bburd

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