System and method for adaptively controlling the charging time of a storage heater

A storage heater comprising:

• a heatable material that increases in temperature when heated;
• and
• a controller including a processor for executing a computer program and a memory configured to store a user input number of programmed heating hours, said controller configured to adaptively control a charging time for heating the heatable material by supplying energy thereto, the storage heater having a heating cycle where the heatable material is heated in advance of a distribution of heat from the heatable material,
• wherein the computer program which when executed by the processor is configured to:
• determine a stored energy requirement value of the storage heater by reading from the memory the programmed heating hours and an expected heating demand per hour of the storage heater as obtained from a lookup table based on a storage heater model reference, a seasonal band parameter, an external temperature value and a room temperature setpoint as set by a user, the computer program computing the stored energy requirement by multiplying the programmed heating hours by the expected heating demand;
• determine a background heat requirement value of the storage heater by computing from a lookup table a standing loss value associated with the storage heater and using the standing loss value in conjunction with a time determination of a remainder of time in a day other than the programmed heating hours;
• determine a daily energy requirement (DER) value of the storage heater by a computation based on the stored energy requirement value and the background heat requirement value;
• and
• determine a daily run time (DRT) at a predetermined time in advance of each heating cycle, the daily run time being a minimum charging time for the storage heater based on the daily energy requirement (DER) value and residual energy in the storage heater.