[DanielDudley]

I assume that ice has a crystalline structure. I don't really know much about atomic forces, but I expect there is some considerable attraction. Even so, atoms take in energy during a change of state from solid to liquid, and liquid to gas, and they spend energy changing back.

You put energy into a battery, and when you spend it, it will turn a motor, or cause a wire to glow. When you spend energy making a solid, perhaps not all of that energy is spent as heat production, and that would imply that it could do useful work in directions other than making other molecules more energetic. That energy could also orient molecules. A final punch into shape as it were.