Heated Argument Awaits -

[Confused52]

16 minutes ago, Evil Sid said:

I thought it was going to be 2035 bill but i need to get my glasses cleaned.

The main reason for the grants is to get rid of the surplus of  old boilers that were stockpiled for when gas prices dropped due to north sea gas being found probably.

Very good!

The reason given by the government was to allow those on benefits to get more efficient new boilers to reduce bills. The government thought this a good idea because the otherwise higher bills would need to be funded by the taxpayer. Th usual self interest.

[Bill]

Quote

A special report composed by the The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said no new gas boilers should be sold after 2025 if the world is to achieve net-zero by the middle of the century.

This is something along the lines of what I’d read, although other reports suggest that the outright ban only applies to new build properties and that gas boilers would remain on sale until 2035. After that, it’s either heat pumps or start to burn the furniture.

 

Bill 😊

[Confused52]

9 minutes ago, Observer II said:

Bill, it's not "my idea" - it's a Gov proposal according to news reports.    

The proposal is not as being discussed though. It is actually change building regulations to prevent new homes built after the 2025 (yet to be written) building regulations come into force from having heating which directly consumes a fossil fuel. Building regulations are not retrospective unless you change a home in a way which is significant enough to require compliance with the current version, The bonkers plan to actually go the whole hog is from the IEA and is expected describes how to get Energy Supply to net zero carbon by 2050. It was requested by Alok Sharma but it is role as COP26 Chairman, a readily disposable hat which commits the government to nothing I suspect.

[Bill]

Either way it’s a big ask for the grid to supply the energy required for all those heat pumps, on top of the extra demand from electric vehicles. At the moment a gas boiler only uses a few watts of electricity to run the pump, but a heat pump is going to be using hundreds of times more. I hope someone has got their sums right otherwise we’ll end up with problems.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

Not having central heating i do not have that problem with a pump running,Bill.

Water is heated by gas boiler on demand and if it gets too cold in winter them it is either the gas fires on or the oil filled radiator depending, well that and few more layers of clothing if needed......🥶

 

 

[Bill]

Read an interesting thing yesterday about how they’re thinking about solving the heating problem in Finland. A lot of their homes are heated by a network of hot air pipes similar to that used in many large cities but the actual heat comes mainly from burning wood which they have plenty of.

The problems with all electricity is the demand isn’t constant and at times, especially at night, they literally have to dump excess energy as mass storage is so expensive. So what they’re doing is using the excess to heat up ordinary sand underground to extremely high temperatures then returning it via their hot air pipes when it’s needed. There’s no cleaver technology or chemicals just plain old sand and because of it’s thermal properties, it can retain heat stored this way for months on end.

I think we’ve all experienced the effect of burning hot dry sand underfoot and yet just a few millimetres below it’s quite cool so I was wondering if something like this could be used with a ground source heat pump. So anyone with solar or wind power that’s currently relying on very expensive batteries to store their excess could simply put it directly into the ground for recovery when it’s needed.

Food for thought.

 

Bill 😊

[Observer II]

Perhaps a return to the Roman hypercaust system ?    😉

[Bill]

Very nearly Obs but the issue is more to do with storing energy for when it’s needed. I weighed up some systems and they all needed to have batteries to store energy for later. Most of the time during the day I’m only using a couple of hundred watts of power so if I had a 5Kw solar array on the roof, I’d need a whole raft of batteries to store the excess. These batteries are mega expensive and might last ten years if your lucky but a skip full of dry sand could store the same energy for next to nothing and keep going forever. That’s the theory anyway.

 

Bill 😊

[Observer II]

Don't they have a system for energy storage, in the form of an hydraulic lift - water pumped up in quiet periods and released during peak use ?    

[Davy51]

I have heard that too Obs .

 

[Observer II]

Can't remember the detail now, but I think it's inside a mountain in Wales ?   

[Confused52]

19 minutes ago, Observer II said:

Can't remember the detail now, but I think it's inside a mountain in Wales ?   

That is correct, https://www.electricmountain.co.uk/

 

[Bill]

There are several ways of storing energy all with their advantages and drawbacks but the beauty of this particular solution is in it’s simplicity. Electricity to heat is the only storage method that’s 100% efficient, every other method creates heat that is lost and for heating purposes, that’s not good.

 

Bill 😊

[Observer II]

Seems they are seeking to warm the Eden Project by drilling 3 miles down for geo-thermal energy.    

[Bill]

Ah well, that one of the few areas of the UK where it’s almost possible to access true geothermal energy but even so I reckon they would be doing it for green environmental reasons rather than pure economics. Interestingly the thing in Finland suggested building large green houses like Eden over the underground sand storage areas to make use of any escaping heat.

 

Bill 😊  

[Bill]

Everything to do with energy saving is far too expensive but I think there’s a way to save without a long payback time which we might never see. The trick is to listen to me rather than the salesman who wants to make your home entirely self-sufficient.😲

For most of the day, the electricity I use is next to nothing with occasional big, short spikes. I’m currently leaking electricity at about 200 watts from the telly, routers etc which drops to 75 watts during the night. Over a day this averages out to 5 units which at 17.5p =86p per day. Doesn’t sound much but amazingly it’s about 80% of my total electricity use.

A solar supplier recommends a £6000 system able to power everything and any excess in the first four years could be claimed back. Not too bad if you’ve got £6k floating about but it’s a lot of messing about and it’ll still take many years to recover the initial outlay. And remember, 80% of the power was just that constant little drip.

A simple DIY solution could be a single used solar panel and grid tie inverter together costing less than £120. On average it will generate over 1 unit of electricity a day and so save £63/year making the payback time only two years. No big clutter on the roof and no messing about with feed in tariffs or storage batteries, we just stop the drip for a few hours each day and see a return hopefully well within our lifetime.

 

Bill 😊

[Observer II]

This so-called green agenda being spouted by all politicians in pursuit of a zero carbon future; appears to originate in the middle class dinner parties of our elites, and bares no relation to the capacity for low paid working class folk to afford such changes.    

[Bill]

Maybe so Obs, but the dinner party elite didn’t create the unaffordable technology, they just advised its use. It’d be interesting to know what a group of hardened trade unionist would have come up with while having their chippy supper. 😄 The poorer people probably haven’t got £6000 to gamble with in what amounts to a very long-term investment but £120 isn’t that far out of reach for something with a guaranteed return.

There’s no magic or trickery in what I’m suggesting, it’s just down to generating just enough power to reduce what I call the leakage and no more. If you try to do more, you end up with excess power that needs storage batteries and the economics at that point start to go out of the window.

It’d be nice if we could send some of this DIY energy directly to the grid but the elite at the dinner table insist that’s only possible if the system is installed by an approved supplier and you pay £6000 upfront.

.

Bill 😊

[Observer II]

The MP on TV this morning was saying that gas boiler replacement would be voluntary initially, but may later become compulsory - same with cars.  At £10K a pop,  I can't see many of the great unwashed complying - still I won't be around to see it, so I guess why should I care.    

[asperity]

A new car for £10K Obs? Hold me back 😉🤣

[Observer II]

I was refering to the cost of C/Heating - as I guess you well know.