Will a free boiler and power make these shares hot?

pioneer

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/investing/article-2170211/MIDAS-Will-!!!!!!-power-make-shares-hot.html

Interesting ?

ihateyes

do they have a license yet to sell gas/electric?
how reliable will their boilers be?
will it be easy to get parts?

I know Baxi are selling this new boiler, and its very expensive because of the technology involved.

I dont see how over 5years they can recoup the cost of the boiler/installation, and still make a profit.

I know they will make from the feed in tariff.

Afterall its widely known an energy company only make on average £45 profit per customer per fuel each year.

Also then what if the customer moves house!!??

So im all ears and eyes!!

BargainGalore

There is a government scheme being launched where people get grants to improve there insulation and its similar to this that the saving made over x amount of time will pay for the grant. It would be interesting to see what there rates would be compared with the main suppliers, they would have to recoup a couple of grand just to pay for boiler and installation, that said if boiler was very efficient and old one not and given energy is only going up it might take a fair few years to get a return

ihateyes

BargainGalore wrote: »

There is a government scheme being launched where people get grants to improve there insulation and its similar to this that the saving made over x amount of time will pay for the grant. It would be interesting to see what there rates would be compared with the main suppliers, they would have to recoup a couple of grand just to pay for boiler and installation, that said if boiler was very efficient and old one not and given energy is only going up it might take a fair few years to get a return

especially as they are guaranteeing boiler for 5years.... all those parts when it fails.

MillicentBystander

Ordinarily this company and its product would be viewed with total scepticism if it wasn't for the names they have attracted to the board. Very interesting, will see how this progresses.

antrobus

MillicentBystander wrote: »

Ordinarily this company and its product would be viewed with total scepticism if it wasn't for the names they have attracted to the board. Very interesting, will see how this progresses.

It's quite easy to attract 'names' to the board of any company. You just offer them a 'lucrative' share option. Or just plain cash; that usually works as well.

MillicentBystander

antrobus wrote: »

It's quite easy to attract 'names' to the board of any company. You just offer them a 'lucrative' share option. Or just plain cash; that usually works as well.

Wow, I didn't know that. Thanks for the heads up.

PS In all seriousness, I'm not convinced they have a shed load of cash to splash so it would have to be share options - and someone as savvy as Richardson wouldn't sign up unless he thought the company/shares were going places medium/long term. Time will tell.

savemoney

Tell me more

antrobus wrote: »

It's quite easy to attract 'names' to the board of any company. You just offer them a 'lucrative' share option. Or just plain cash; that usually works as well.

MillicentBystander

To answer the OP, it's no much the free boiler and power that has made these shares hot but a big, gushing Midas write up in the Daily fail. SP currently up 43%! :eek::D

Pincher

My current boiler is two years old, so eight years to go.

Been keeping an eye out for the EcoGen microCHP.
Too expensive, and doesn't seem to be self-sustaining in a power-cut scenario.

One of the criteria to qualify for government subsidy is the energy performance Band, which I think my house fails on.

So is it a south facing roof fiasco, or can anybody qualify?

So, please redesign the startup mechanism so that it can be started in a power cut.

1. I expect to switch off the mains breaker in the consumer unit to isolate the house.

2. I expect to switch off the microCHP, flick a switch to change to off-grid mode.
3. I expect to be able to start the microCHP, presumably based on battery power, and then the microCHP should be self-sustaining from the power generated. It should supply heat to the house, and power the GCH pump, zone valves and control mechanisms. Ideally, it shoud have spare electricity to run a few lights.

Get to work, you have eight years.

tahrey

I'm confused... how does this actually save you money, then? It sounds almost like a perpetual motion thing. Free power! Isn't that the dream? But the input energy has to come from somewhere, and it has to go somewhere too, it can't be split in two and used twice. If it's coming out as electricity, then it's not coming out as warmer water.

I presume it's supposed to be a replacement for traditional type boilers with big hot water storage tanks, where otherwise you'd get a lot of wasted energy from producing the hot water to fill up the tank, but then only using some of it and having the rest of the heat dissipate away uselessly (a situation I'm quite familiar with, living in a flat with an electrically immersion-heated tank as my only hot water option). Normally the response to that is a combi boiler, isn't it? Your only major waste there is the pilot light, and the small amount of warm water left in the pipes between the boiler itself and the tap after you've turned it off. Which still exists in a hot water tank system anyway.

Plus don't you need to have boiling water to generate electricity in any serious amount (IE by driving a turbine) - something most "boilers" don't ACTUALLY produce - unless this is a fairly small scale thermocouple or stirling engine thing? Or there's a complicated heat exchanger between the cold supply, the warm output to the tank (or taps), and the boiler-generator element so the incoming water is warmed up (say, from 15 to 40'C), boiled in the central bit, and then cooled at the output (100 to 75'C)? It still doesn't seem to make much sense that way though. You're still heating the water up far higher than it actually needs to be (most hot water tanks and combis are set somewhere in the 60-70'c range aren't they?), shoving in a lot more gas to the burner to gain those extra 30~40 degrees and drive the water-gas phase change. If that's a cheaper way of generating your electricity, then why not have the whole house run continually off the generator, and just have the hot water as a nice, usable side effect, the way that full size CHP plants work?

I am all of the confused, and the DF article didn't really help much. EG no mention of how much the leccy ACTUALLY costs when being generated from gas.

I don't want to crap on it unneccessarily, and I think CHP is on the whole a very good idea. It just seems one that, on a small scale, is rather like smaller-scale solar: not actually cheap, just a convenient answer to a difficult problem, and cheaper than the -alternatives- (IE running a looooong HV power cable, and installing a transformer at the end, to power a single house which already gets a steady supply of heating fuel trucked in and could convert its heating system to also generate electricity).

If it works, and it actually lowers bills, then I'm all ears (p'raps it's got a two-stage heating system, which just heats the water and stores it at first - then any 60'c-ish water that isn't used when the system timer clicks to "off" at the start of the working day is drained off into the generator circuit to be boosted up to 100'c and turned into steam, so as to produce electricity to run the fridge and sell back to the grid?)...
...but that's going to require some harder data and a better explanation of how it works than what you tend to get from disguised tabloids like the DF. I'm not going to trust articles of this type from a paper that has previously promoted the healing power of red indian crystals with a straight face and can't decide whether or not coffee could have cured the cancer which caused Diana to crash.