We don't yet have solar panels on our roof, but when we do we want to make the most of them. This is an interesting idea of storing that energy as heat that can be used to produce instant hot water. Instead of directly heating water the Sunamp system uses some sort of chemical phase change like those little heat packs so that it can be a lot smaller than a hot water tank and will not lose as much heat.
It's available as a small domestic unit, but they also talk about large scale systems. They even discuss shipping large containers of units to where the heat can be used. You can see a real time feed from a system owned by someone from the company.
Of course you can store the excess energy electrically in something like the Tesla Powerwall, but I don't know how that compares on cost. The important thing is to maximise the renewable energy usage. If solar panels and storage become standard in new buildings then it will reduce the need for power stations of any kind. Costs are falling, so it's much more viable now.
