I was thinking of a way to store power in the form of ice, but using conventional refrigeration to do it. This would be to shift the demand so I could take advantage of variable pricing, and freeze the water at night.

I did the computations, and it appears that as little as 125 pounds of ice would help keep the AC off for two expensive hours when I'm often home, 7-9 pm. Of course, I still need a way to put heat back into that ice while still allowing it to be frozen efficiently. Perhaps refrigerant tubes in the ice to freeze and air tubes for thawing, connected to the furnace fan. If the system was 50% efficient (compared to a direct AC system), it would save a substantial amount of money because of the extreme change in rates between day-evening and night.

However, now you go and post this sort of thing.

The second link talked about a dual-stage device (or something close) that did the absorption-generation in a cycle. How do those work? Can the solar device do that, so I can get continuous cooling to freeze my block of ice? I'd still want the ice, since I don't need to keep the place chilled while I'm at work.