Borg T4: great for the environment and your wallet!

Buffering, decoupling supply and demand

In a society that ran on fossil fuels, there was never an imbalance between supply and demand for long: a coal-fired power plant was turned on or off in no time. Fortunately, more and more renewable energy is being generated in our country. But supply and demand are less easy to bring together. The energy grid can become overloaded at times when much more renewable energy is being generated than is being taken in. And at times with little sun and wind, demand is not automatically lower. At those times, we still turn to fossil fuels. The solution of the Borg T4 therefore lies in buffering. This breaks the tension between supply and demand. With buffering, renewable generation remains useful, even when supply is plentiful. And with buffering, fossil generation is less necessary because your renewable supply is in your buffer!

Dynamic purchasing, taking advantage of off-peak prices

With the Borg, dynamic purchasing suddenly makes sense. That is, buy when prices are low and use heat from the buffer tank when prices are high. When wind and solar power are plentiful, suppliers want you to buy. You buy your power cheaply or even get money for it - and store it as heat in your own buffer. When there is little sun and wind - and other customers have to buy plenty of expensive power - you heat your home from your buffer for several days to a week. This "rush hour avoidance" reduces stress and congestion on the grid. It relieves the power grid when it is congested, and it reduces demand at times when power is scarce anyway. Because renewable energy is also cheap energy (price and CO2 emissions are strongly correlated), you can save 30-60% on heating costs - as much as 70% in some cases.

More efficient use of heat pump

To optimally use and control the Borg, we use a heat pump. The heat pump efficiently converts electricity into heat. The efficiency of the heat pump is technically referred to with the abbreviation COP: Coefficient of Performance. For example, a COP of 3.5 means that the heat pump uses 1 unit of electricity (1 kWh-e) and thus generates 3.5 kWh-thermally by adding free heat from the air or from ground water.

The COP is largely determined by weather conditions: a heat pump can make heat more easily when weather conditions are favorable. If it's still cold and foggy early in the morning, it won't do so as easily as when it's clear and 5 degrees warmer in the afternoon.

Without the Borg, your heat pump is still going to make heat in the morning simply because the house demands it. The combination with the Borg means you can wait until the afternoon. In fact, in the morning you just use heat from your buffer!

And the great thing is, the Borg simply regulates this itself. The software takes into account the weather forecast and other factors. This is how it steers to optimize the COP.

In short: the Borg T4 is good for the environment and for your wallet!