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  • Martyn1981
    Martyn1981 Posts: 15,396 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    JKenH wrote: »
    Mart, you have a sense of humour after all. :rotfl:

    I'm a veritable ball of fun, as is typical I believe for life on the left, but tone it down a tad when dealing with anti-RE nonsense, as the issue is quite serious. But it doesn't stop me throwing in the odd Easter Egg or two. Though I appreciate I'm not nearly as funny/clever as some think I think I am.
    Martyn1981 wrote: »
    I have no issues with how 'prefect' you or others are,
    Mart. Cardiff. 8.72 kWp PV systems (2.12 SSW 4.6 ESE & 2.0 WNW). 20kWh battery storage. Two A2A units for cleaner heating. Two BEV's for cleaner driving.

    For general PV advice please see the PV FAQ thread on the Green & Ethical Board.
  • zeupater
    zeupater Posts: 5,390 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    edited 8 August 2019 at 2:28PM
    joefizz wrote: »
    ... Oh and speaking as a former engineer (some would say never left) in all the forums discussions about nuclear piping and hot water, not one person (I think) mentioned that you dont need return pipes. (Hellishedi for example on what to do with hot water)

    Even if you did you wouldnt need that long a circuit because you could use intermediate heat exchangers with solar/battery backup.
    Even my hot tub advice is to keep the 'normal' temperature below final use temperature and only raise when about to be used...
    ..just throwing those ideas into the mix ;-) ...
    Hi

    Couple of observations ....

    In a purely CHP or heat only scenario, not having a return flow results in a considerable loss of energy at the end of the system. Minimising the loss would likely be achieved by varying flow to maintain as close to a linear temperature gradient as possible along the demand provision lines, the result of which would be considerable oversizing of heat exchangers (radiators) towards the end of the circuit, possibly even using heat-pump technology (WSHP) to maximize extraction at the very end of the circuit ... it then simply becomes an issue of what to do with considerable volumes of water in places where it's not needed & how to replenish & guarantee sufficient water supplies at the energy source ...

    The solution raised in Iceland is interesting, but not scalable for the UK due to resource, terrain and technology. In a CHP environment which is designed to provide sufficient heat to meet winter peaks there's still an issue with disposal of excess heat in the summer, so if the generation is nuclear the heat needs to be dumped, as is current practice, with the sea in the locality becoming slightly warmer! ... notably, power generation at the coast is almost at sea level, which is slightly different to a geothermal source which is built close to an existing water source at a altitude above sea level that creates a sufficient header to maintain (largely) unaided flow (~2m/s in ~1m insulated pipe, rising to 3m/s with pumped assistance when demand peaks) to customer premises in the country's largest centre of population density which is around 15miles away and close to sea level ...

    Effectively, unlike a nuclear based CHP solution, geothermal heat extracted provision in the Icelandic example is varied at a rate which is independent to that required for electricity generation, therefore it's not a true co-product which would otherwise be wasted. This results in a need for nuclear generation facilities which can supply heat on a Co-gen basis to be able to vary the heat provision to generation ratio on a demand led basis, so as this can only happen by varying the rate of heat dumping, the generation sources still need to be close to expanses of water to dilute the waste product, heat ...

    That's effectively why any nuclear CHP based national heat-main solution in the relatively high density population UK with numerous distributed urbanised areas requiring supply is completely different to a system which mainly acts as a generation independent geothermal heat-stream to a single nearby population centre on a point to point basis and taking advantage of the local topology ...

    HTH
    Z
    "We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit. " ...... Aristotle
    B)
  • joefizz
    joefizz Posts: 676 Forumite
    Ninth Anniversary 500 Posts Combo Breaker
    zeupater wrote: »
    Hi

    Couple of observations ....

    In a purely CHP or heat only scenario, not having a return flow results in a considerable loss of energy at the end of the system. Minimising the loss would likely be achieved by varying flow to maintain as close to a linear temperature gradient as possible along the demand provision lines, the result of which would be considerable oversizing of heat exchangers (radiators) towards the end of the circuit, possibly even using heat-pump technology (WSHP) to maximize extraction at the very end of the circuit ... it then simply becomes an issue of what to do with considerable volumes of water in places where it's not needed & how to replenish & guarantee sufficient water supplies at the energy source ...


    When you say considerable, you actually mean total ;-)
    Iceland is an interesting setup because it utilises what is available locally (within 20km). If you remember our 'discussion' on the battery thread, engineers tend to see things as systems rather than single point sources. Your reply is phrased in terms of loss but the system will look at it in terms of maximising the energy. As you mention below its not a scalable solution.. or is it.... Energy going forward wont be scalable solutions, they will be tailored for the area and by area I dont mean country. I mean 20-30km area, which hellisheidi is.
    Ignore the geothermal aspect of the source of the generation for a minute (although parts of the UK have geothermal and even hot sands - I think NI would almost be self sufficient in heat and domestic power from hot sands, problem is the people live in the wrong places ;-) Power stations were built far enough away from urban centres here (or the ones that survive) to not utilise the waste hot water output other than dumping into the sea.
    It might be a case in future that newbuilds and new towns are built in these places.
    The Iceland model showed me how it can be used to grow food all year round (the excess hot water from households for instance) but other places have shown that the water doesnt need to be boiling from the main source, just hot enough so that renewables further down the line would be sufficient to raise it to the required temperature.
    Similarly the excess water at the end of the system could be used mostly at night so could be pumped locally to hydro storage and then used in the morning to provide power, charge batteries, man the pumps etc.
    In theory it could be used to then be purified for drinking water or non drinking water such as mentioned for toilets, washing machines, industry etc etc.

    People tend to look at all the tech as discrete elements which they arent, they can be encompassed in the system, we are probably never going to do away with fossil fuels but we can make our use of them smarter and thats probably not in the grid system as we know it.

    zeupater wrote: »
    The solution raised in Iceland is interesting, but not scalable for the UK due to resource, terrain and technology. In a CHP environment which is designed to provide sufficient heat to meet winter peaks there's still an issue with disposal of excess heat in the summer
    Which is where the system and engineers need to come in. Unfortunately the brightest minds have been diverted to finsec over the last 20 years so none of this is being thought about... until now..


    zeupater wrote: »
    Effectively, unlike a nuclear based CHP solution, geothermal heat extracted provision in the Icelandic example is varied at a rate which is independent to that required for electricity generation, therefore it's not a true co-product which would otherwise be wasted.


    Forget the nuclear option, its a non starter, or the nuclear option so to speak.



    A lot of research is ongoing into combined heat and power (I'll expand on the TLAs) units quite simply because thats where a lot of folk see the money being in similar climates to ours.


    I have a boat and go fishing in parts of Belfast Lough, the mackerel dont come up to shallow water until about now but from about June they can be found at the hot water waste exhaust of kilroot power station. Its not a nuclear phenomenon but all power stations. Lots of reports of coal, oil, gas power stations killing off fish life in rivers where they dump the hot exhaust water.

    When the stations were originally designed this wasnt an issue, resources were plentiful and retro fitting acres of greenhouses around the power station sites probably isnt a goer ;-)





    Now if I could develop a roof tile that generated electricity from raindrops then Id be on a winner here and thats the point, scalable solutions dont work and some people argue that with increased climate change large scale solutions wont work either as weather patterns are whilst not increasingly random, cannot be predicted long enough to plan large scale plants.


    Ive mentioned a few times on this forum driving past a nuclear plant in central USA that needed a levee built around it due to the local rivers increasing frequency of flooding. Any disaster there would be catastrophic involving large sections of population requiring factor 2 million for 10,000 years plus most of the US bread basket food coming pre-radiated. Local conditions are well in excess of the original design constraints which is a big issue now going forward.


    All of this requires changes in behaviour (as I mentioned on the battery thread) and at some point, specially in the US, this will have to be addressed and business as normal wont be.
    Now our friend may have went off the deep end with the 50 nuclear plants thing but somewhere someone has the job of looking at scenarios like that as a means of conducting business as usual. Kick the can down the road and worry about the odd meltdown or where to source the fuel or how to dispose of the fuel later. I can tell you though, thats one problem software wont solve, it is said quietly that most of the old US nuclear power stations are still running cobol and fortran from magnetic disks...


    Going back to the battery thread, its why a lot of networks see that localised storage (Ill not say battery as that narrows it to a rack of lithium ion boxes in some peoples minds) will be key because the stored energy can then be used for heat or power or both, locally. The local solutions will be scalable though.
  • markin
    markin Posts: 3,860 Forumite
    Sixth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    edited 8 August 2019 at 6:29PM
    Chinese renewable energy investment abroad soars – but coal still dominant
    • Greenpeace study of growth in energy projects in Belt and Road Initiative countries shows solar investments rocketing
    • But coal capacity continues to rise after earlier study had found China was supporting more than a quarter of all new coal-fired plants worldwide
    ..........................
    China was expected to put another 40GW of solar power capacity in operation at home this year, energy officials said on Friday.

    China’s total coal-fired capacity was also expected to rise by another 45GW this year, with the total eventually expected to peak at around 1,300GW, up from 1,140GW at the end of last year, researchers from China’s State Grid said this month.
    ..........................
    https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3020597/chinese-renewable-energy-investment-abroad-soars-coal-still
    China coal mine approvals surge despite climate pledges. August 6, 2019
    SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - Approvals for new coal mine construction in China have surged in 2019, government documents showed, with Beijing expecting consumption of the commodity to rise in the coming years even as it steps up its fight against smog and greenhouse gas emissions.


    Long-term cuts in coal consumption are a key part of China’s energy, environment and climate goals, but the fivefold increase in new mine approvals in the first-half of 2019 suggests China’s targets still provide ample room for shorter-term growth.



    China’s energy regulator gave the go-ahead to build 141 million tonnes of new annual coal production capacity from January to June, compared to 25 million tonnes over the whole of last year, Reuters analysis of approval documents showed.
    https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-china-coal-climate/china-coal-mine-approvals-surge-despite-climate-pledges-idUKKCN1UW0EM
  • zeupater
    zeupater Posts: 5,390 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    edited 8 August 2019 at 7:08PM
    joefizz wrote: »
    When you say considerable, you actually mean total ;-) ....
    Iceland is an interesting set up because it utilises what is available locally (within 20km). If you remember our 'discussion' on the battery thread, engineers tend to see things as systems rather than single point sources. Your reply is phrased in terms of loss but the system will look at it in terms of maximising the energy. As you mention below its not a scalable solution.. or is it.... Energy going forward wont be scalable solutions, they will be tailored for the area and by area I dont mean country. I mean 20-30km area, which hellisheidi is.
    Ignore the geothermal aspect of the source of the generation for a minute ....
    Hi

    Agree, the energy loss at the end of the flow is total ... if we're talking about the heat-main simply replacing current GCH boilers in wet heating systems & effectively using current radiators and similar heating patterns as current, then the supply temperature would need to be close to that which the heat exchange system was designed for, so around 70C on average (deltaT50) ...

    Feed above ~70C would need to be re-blended within the premises (or locally) to avoid H&S issues and it must be accepted that as the downstream available energy falls below the deltaT50 threshold the period of heating and/or radiator surface areas need to be increased proportionally to the deltaT value, but there's a point where the available thermal energy effectively becomes useless in a direct radiative or convective system and simply needs to be dumped .... this would likely be somewhere around 30C(?), so ~deltaT10 in terms of heating, but likely close to deltaT20 in terms of originally heating the water at the CHP plant, which likely represents ~25% of original energy input, so as the energy loss is total, a significant proportion is wasted.

    To reduce the level of low thermal value 'waste' it would be possible to use heat-pump coils directly in the remaining warm water ... this would help further improve the overall 'system' efficiency and allow the operation of the WSHPs at consistent & relatively high COPs .... however, if we're talking about considerable modification of domestic heating systems in various ways, the cost must be offset against that of simply returning partially cooled water to the heat source for an energy top-up! ....

    What needs to be realised is that this entire discussion isn't related to the heat-main, individual heat mains, or even various energy sources, it's all related to thermal energy provision for domestic heating from 'cheap' nuclear reactors ... the reason we're discussing heat distribution is because it's an essential element of the solution, which has a considerable effect on the overall cost of the solution ... ie the solution involving 'cheap' nuclear reactors is considerably more costly than it may first seem .... (note, I do understand the wholistic 'solution' approach!)

    On scaleability .... the provision of the kind of infrastructure we'd be talking about would cause huge & costly disruption in centres of population ... for instance, whatever the distance for 'transmission' of the nuclear plant thermal provision, London alone has approx 15000km of roadway, most of which will be effected by laying of distribution network heat-mains at some time or other, from which millions of individual property connections would be required, none of which would be anywhere near the diameter (or cost!) of mains water pipes due to both insulation & feed/return circuit requirements ... the issue here is that unless connection to, & use of, the network is mandated, the investment & maintenance costs per connected property becomes a huge unknown, both for the 'developer' & the connected customer, so it either needs mandate or a guarantee from the public purse ... there's plenty that can go wrong here from a scaleability standpoint then ...

    Once the scope of the solution is established, the cost can be estimated/approximated to put a stake in the ground, but the methodology must be realistic & based on various referenced sources, taking into account direct asset costs, all installation related work & (importantly!) a project based economic impact basis .... you can't expect to effectively close down/disrupt a city like London for 10years whilst digging-up 10% of all street per year on a rolling basis, even if that rate of installation (1500km/year+connections) was possible on a resource management basis! ... by the way, as a former engineer, I'd hope you'd agree that any & all assets involved in building such a new network would need to be costed & valued on a new (/full replacement) basis as opposed to some form of harebrained evaluation involving the comparison to heavily depreciated & written down book values of sometimes centuries old infrastructure that seem to be the preference of some!

    As mentioned, the topic at hand is simply the latest incarnation of an argumentative position related to centralised energy provision involving nuclear generation against any and all alternate sources, particularly anything that would steer towards a mixed source provision involving distributed generation & storage solutions, microgeneration or any format which can provide a form of competition to large-scale corporate solutions ...

    Hopefully, when reality hits home, the cost of retro-fitting a heat-main system will put a lid on the discussion & we can return to discussing newsworthy issues of interest as opposed to what really resolves to political strategy & corporate decisions ...

    HTH
    Z
    "We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit. " ...... Aristotle
    B)
  • GreatApe
    GreatApe Posts: 4,452 Forumite
    edited 8 August 2019 at 10:51PM
    zeupater wrote: »
    Hi

    Couple of observations ....

    In a purely CHP or heat only scenario, not having a return flow results in a considerable loss of energy at the end of the system. Minimising the loss would likely be achieved by varying flow to maintain as close to a linear temperature gradient as possible along the demand provision lines, the result of which would be considerable oversizing of heat exchangers (radiators) towards the end of the circuit, possibly even using heat-pump technology (WSHP) to maximize extraction at the very end of the circuit ... it then simply becomes an issue of what to do with considerable volumes of water in places where it's not needed & how to replenish & guarantee sufficient water supplies at the energy source ...

    The solution raised in Iceland is interesting, but not scalable for the UK due to resource, terrain and technology. In a CHP environment which is designed to provide sufficient heat to meet winter peaks there's still an issue with disposal of excess heat in the summer, so if the generation is nuclear the heat needs to be dumped, as is current practice, with the sea in the locality becoming slightly warmer! ... notably, power generation at the coast is almost at sea level, which is slightly different to a geothermal source which is built close to an existing water source at a altitude above sea level that creates a sufficient header to maintain (largely) unaided flow (~2m/s in ~1m insulated pipe, rising to 3m/s with pumped assistance when demand peaks) to customer premises in the country's largest centre of population density which is around 15miles away and close to sea level ...

    Effectively, unlike a nuclear based CHP solution, geothermal heat extracted provision in the Icelandic example is varied at a rate which is independent to that required for electricity generation, therefore it's not a true co-product which would otherwise be wasted. This results in a need for nuclear generation facilities which can supply heat on a Co-gen basis to be able to vary the heat provision to generation ratio on a demand led basis, so as this can only happen by varying the rate of heat dumping, the generation sources still need to be close to expanses of water to dilute the waste product, heat ...

    That's effectively why any nuclear CHP based national heat-main solution in the relatively high density population UK with numerous distributed urbanised areas requiring supply is completely different to a system which mainly acts as a generation independent geothermal heat-stream to a single nearby population centre on a point to point basis and taking advantage of the local topology ...

    HTH
    Z



    What are you talking about you wouldn't have to dump any heat into the sea you just turn the reactor down.

    A 10GW heat station with 3 reactors can turn two off in the summer and even turn the remaining one up and down. Such a system could be varied from 1GW to 10GW although I would imagine it would be closer to 3GW summer 10GW winter.

    Even a EPR has the ability to vary it's output a heat only system will have more ability to vary it's output for obvious reasons

    Like always you think up problems that you think are deal breakers when in fact they are simple solutions.

    And I wouldn't do CHP that's just an example, I would have pure heat only stations
    Electricity for the UK is more or less already solved we don't need additional nuclear electricity or CHP reactors but heat reactors could be useful and might be the only total solution on offer

    Total electrification of heating doesn't solve windless weeks on January so you have to imagine up unproven uncoated electricity to gas or syn fuels chemical industries to do seasonal heating
  • GreatApe
    GreatApe Posts: 4,452 Forumite
    zeupater wrote: »
    Hi

    Agree, the energy loss at the end of the flow is total ... if we're talking about the heat-main simply replacing current GCH boilers in wet heating systems & effectively using current radiators and similar heating patterns as current, then the supply temperature would need to be close to that which the heat exchange system was designed for, so around 70C on average (deltaT50) ...

    Feed above ~70C would need to be re-blended within the premises (or locally) to avoid H&S issues and it must be accepted that as the downstream available energy falls below the deltaT50 threshold the period of heating and/or radiator surface areas need to be increased proportionally to the deltaT value, but there's a point where the available thermal energy effectively becomes useless in a direct radiative or convective system and simply needs to be dumped .... this would likely be somewhere around 30C(?), so ~deltaT10 in terms of heating, but likely close to deltaT20 in terms of originally heating the water at the CHP plant, which likely represents ~25% of original energy input, so as the energy loss is total, a significant proportion is wasted.

    To reduce the level of low thermal value 'waste' it would be possible to use heat-pump coils directly in the remaining warm water ... this would help further improve the overall 'system' efficiency and allow the operation of the WSHPs at consistent & relatively high COPs .... however, if we're talking about considerable modification of domestic heating systems in various ways, the cost must be offset against that of simply returning partially cooled water to the heat source for an energy top-up! ....

    What needs to be realised is that this entire discussion isn't related to the heat-main, individual heat mains, or even various energy sources, it's all related to thermal energy provision for domestic heating from 'cheap' nuclear reactors ... the reason we're discussing heat distribution is because it's an essential element of the solution, which has a considerable effect on the overall cost of the solution ... ie the solution involving 'cheap' nuclear reactors is considerably more costly than it may first seem .... (note, I do understand the wholistic 'solution' approach!)

    On scaleability .... the provision of the kind of infrastructure we'd be talking about would cause huge & costly disruption in centres of population ... for instance, whatever the distance for 'transmission' of the nuclear plant thermal provision, London alone has approx 15000km of roadway, most of which will be effected by laying of distribution network heat-mains at some time or other, from which millions of individual property connections would be required, none of which would be anywhere near the diameter (or cost!) of mains water pipes due to both insulation & feed/return circuit requirements ... the issue here is that unless connection to, & use of, the network is mandated, the investment & maintenance costs per connected property becomes a huge unknown, both for the 'developer' & the connected customer, so it either needs mandate or a guarantee from the public purse ... there's plenty that can go wrong here from a scaleability standpoint then ...

    Once the scope of the solution is established, the cost can be estimated/approximated to put a stake in the ground, but the methodology must be realistic & based on various referenced sources, taking into account direct asset costs, all installation related work & (importantly!) a project based economic impact basis .... you can't expect to effectively close down/disrupt a city like London for 10years whilst digging-up 10% of all street per year on a rolling basis, even if that rate of installation (1500km/year+connections) was possible on a resource management basis! ... by the way, as a former engineer, I'd hope you'd agree that any & all assets involved in building such a new network would need to be costed & valued on a new (/full replacement) basis as opposed to some form of harebrained evaluation involving the comparison to heavily depreciated & written down book values of sometimes centuries old infrastructure that seem to be the preference of some!

    As mentioned, the topic at hand is simply the latest incarnation of an argumentative position related to centralised energy provision involving nuclear generation against any and all alternate sources, particularly anything that would steer towards a mixed source provision involving distributed generation & storage solutions, microgeneration or any format which can provide a form of competition to large-scale corporate solutions ...

    Hopefully, when reality hits home, the cost of retro-fitting a heat-main system will put a lid on the discussion & we can return to discussing newsworthy issues of interest as opposed to what really resolves to political strategy & corporate decisions ...

    HTH
    Z


    Firstly this is just a discussion among hobbyist so what's the deal with everyone being so serious

    Secondly you can test such ideas on a smaller scale before you commit to a bigger scale

    Thirdly you can innovate and get better and better as this will be connecting up 40 million buildings so it's lots of learning innovating and getting better and better

    Fourthly from now to 2050 there will be some 7 million homes built it will be negative cost for them (no need to buy an expensive heat pump) and little problem laying down the infrastructure. Likewise there will be significant expansion of other buildings from schools to hospitals to shops etc to accommodate the population growing to 80 million so again easier to connect them up


    Let's try a phased approach.
    Pick three large council estate in hackney with say 500 flats each and hire three different groups to fit district heating grid to these, heated by a high temp heat pump (perhaps heat from one of the local rivers). Give these council estate free heat for 10 years

    See what it costs and how long it takes what you learn

    If successful keep doing this hopefully you will also see a learning curve and the installs get faster cheaper and better.

    If successful you'd have about half the borough on a district heating grid and then you can move onto the terrace homes.

    There won't be one big heat pump there may be 100 big heat pumps heating 100,00 homes with most the grids independent or connected up to one or two adjoining grids.

    The benefits to this

    One central heat pump in a river is going to be far more efficient in energy terms and also more efficient in capital terms and likely time and distress too. This central heat pump might be able to pay industrial rates for electricity say 10p rather than 16p and being in a river will make it more efficient etc. You could also use a gas boiler as backup (again with the central system paying perhaps only 2p rather than 3.5p for gas)

    If it all works out you interconnector these which provides redundancy

    You could then move onto doing this with the other 33 boroughs

    You'd have a London wide distributed heat grid powered by heat pumps or central gas boilers or likely a mix of the two.

    If the nuclear heat option make sense you can then build about 100 lines from a heat reactor into london nodes to feed this heating grid and get rid of the heat pumps and gas boilers that are feeding this grid.

    You could do it in a phased approach
    Connect up the apartments first
    Learn from them
    Then move.onto the terrace then semis then detached
    Start from the most sense boroughs and move on

    Road works will be not so bad because connecting a council estate of 1000 blocks might only be one pipe in not 1000 individual pipes. The individual properties would be fed internally or externally in the building structure

    Distributed heat also makes more sense in low demand buildings since gas boilers or heat pumps are higher cost per unit for these

    If heat pumps really are super great rainbows and magic and don't cause grid problems we can stick with efficient river based heat pumps feeding these local mini grids.

    If we find heat pumps are too expensive or don't quite work as we hoped then you have the hardest part of the distribution grids done so connecting up a heat only reactor won't be all that difficult

    As already shown the pipes from the reactor to the boroughs won't be huge we are talking 100-150cm size and you can have a lot of the route overground or partially burried.

    Likewise lots of potential learning and getting better
    You may find we innovative ways to do directional drilling so you drill 5-10km underground like they do with shale. With the rock itself acting as insulation. You might run services through gardens rather than the front of properties. You might invent micro directional drilling to connect properties from inside the property outwards. Literally drill a one inch hole from the kitchen down two meters and to the direction of a local pit 50 meters away. Connect up 50 homes to this out and connect this out to fifty other pits using the same tech. You've connected up 250 homes with little to no street 'digging'this might even be highly automated and computerized
  • GreatApe
    GreatApe Posts: 4,452 Forumite
    I'd invent various sized directional drilling, because I'm great like that

    From the rear or front of the property very close to the home drill at a 30 degrees angle into the ground then go horizontal and keep going until you get to a local node which might connect 10-100 homes on a street. This node might be just two feet deep by two feet wide and across. Connect the 10-100 properties to this node.

    This node itself would be connected to a larger local node by directionally drilling to get to a second bigger pit of say 4 fees on each side. Perhaps 10-20 smaller nodes connect to this node so You have 100-1000 homes connected to this feeder node. You could have a tank and a heat exchanger on this node. This tank can also have a backup immersion heater.

    Lots of homes connected using drilling not digging

    The pipes to feed individual homes only have to be 2cm thick plus 1cm insulation

    The node pipes that carry heat for 100 homes need to be 5cm with perhaps 2cm insulation

    Sizes where directional drilling would work

    That's the digging problem solved

    Or many more potential innovation perhaps much better than this

    Certainly it doesn't have to be some man with a shovel

    I also wonder how far you can go with directional drilling
    The shale companies seem to be able to drill accurately for multiple KMs and their shake holes are multiple layers of steel pipe and concrete not just a bare hole in the ground as many imagine
  • joefizz
    joefizz Posts: 676 Forumite
    Ninth Anniversary 500 Posts Combo Breaker
    edited 9 August 2019 at 6:30AM
    If the rumours coming out of Germany are true they are about to pull the trigger on their debt which might trigger the next round of global QE which this time will be specifically aimed at infrastructure and or green deal.


    Either that or they will tax us meat eaters out of existence ;-)


    Had a discussion about this in the US and they said they would wait to see what Europe does then see what California does then maybe roll it out to the rest of them. Saying that both Trump and Boris have mentioned infrastructure projects so QE to the moon.


    No need to cost stuff out now, just print to the moon and be done with it.
    Will be interesting to see what way Germany does go,if so, how much debt and what they do with it over and above what they have already committed to with the current climate action plan.


    As per later post, heres the reuters link

    https://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUKKCN1UY1O3?__twitter_impression=true
  • Hexane
    Hexane Posts: 522 Forumite
    Sixth Anniversary 500 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 9 August 2019 at 12:30AM
    joefizz wrote: »
    If the rumours coming out of Germany are true ... meat eaters out of existence ... Had a discussion about this in the US ... to the moon.... to the moon and be done with it
    As per the MSE Insert at the top of this thread, please include the news within the last 2 weeks that you are discussing, with each post. Here's mine, related to your post: 'Water bears' stuck on the moon after crash
    7.25 kWp PV system (4.1kW WSW & 3.15kW ENE), Solis inverter, myenergi eddi & harvi for energy diversion to immersion heater. myenergi hub for Virtual Power Plant demand-side response trial.
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