Anyone have one of these? Is this my dump load heating solution?

[mvonw]

I've been eyeing these..

Room Unit - Steffes

steffes.com

I have a lot of periodic excess solar, and this seemed like a painless way to harness them for my power shack to keep my equipment/batteries warm and give me a warmer place to work..

 

[sunshine_eggo]

I've been eying these..

Room Unit - Steffes

steffes.com

I have a lot of periodic excess solar, and this seemed like a painless way to harness them for my power shack to keep my equipment/batteries warm and give me a warmer place to work..

Never seen anything like that. Looks very interesting.

It would arguably be more efficient to use surplus PV to run a heat pump, but storage is the issue.

The smallest unit indicates 13.5kWh of storage. Curious how long it can store that.

While trying to find pricing on that, found this:

Elnur High Heat Retention Storage Heater Electrical World

Elnur High Heat Retention Storage Heaters Features Available in 1.742kW, 2.613kW and 3.484kW 12 Year Warranty* IEM technology, an intelligent way to manage the charge and the discharge. Weekly and daily programming. Open window detection .... $1358.66.Fast Delivery at Electrical World.

www.electricalworld.com

User manual: https://www.electricalworld.com/Images/Manuals/Elnur-HHR-User-Manual.pdf

I can't get past the displeasure of electric resistance heat, but it looks very interesting - more so if the alternative is to lose the energy to floating batteries.

 

[MisterSandals]

I have a lot of periodic excess solar, and this seemed like a painless way to harness them for my power shack to keep my equipment/batteries warm and give me a warmer place to work..

There are a few discussions about heating a 55 gallon barrel with cheap hot water heating elements. Here is one that i like:

Dumb heating element and water pump

I'm just hoping I don't damage the panel in some way. A resistive load pulling as much power as it can is exactly what an MPPT charge controller is designed to do. Get a heating element that will handle the number of watts for the panels you intend to use. Like a 2000W element for 2000W of solar.

diysolarforum.com

 

[green mountain boys]

Those units, or something very similar were quite popular back in the 1970s. They used off peak electricity to heat a thermal mass. Yes, we had off peak electricity in the 1970s but it had a different name back then.