Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

gefnew

Green boiler companies to be investigated about claims of hydrogen ready boilers.
Worcester Bosch's green boiler claims investigated - BBC News

Netexporter

I think hydrogen for home heating is a dead duck.

The Gas Boiler. Does It Have a Future? - YouTube

Martyn1981

Netexporter said:

I think hydrogen for home heating is a dead duck.

The Gas Boiler. Does It Have a Future? - YouTube

It's a good vid.

Here's a comparison I've posted in the past, of the energy needed to be produced by RE, for green hydrogen boilers, v's heatpumps. [Note, the use of wind only, is simply for comparison purposes.]

Netexporter

That's quite a stark illustration of how wasteful of resources green hydrogen is. I suspect a lot of the push for green hydrogen comes from the fossil fuel industry because it gives them an opportunity to produce hydrogen from fossil fuel in the "transition". A transition that would never end, if they got their way, I suspect.

michaels

Interesting that 15% of the energy in gas is lost in transmission compared to 10% loses for electricity, I had not realised it would be so high for gas.

I don't think the diagram is quite fair though as it does not assume any extra energy cost for ASHP from energy storage and/or curtailment.

Martyn1981

Netexporter said:

That's quite a stark illustration of how wasteful of resources green hydrogen is. I suspect a lot of the push for green hydrogen comes from the fossil fuel industry because it gives them an opportunity to produce hydrogen from fossil fuel in the "transition". A transition that would never end, if they got their way, I suspect.

It could be the FF industry. They have a lot to gain by pushing H2 for heating and transport (and e-fuels), even if it just delays the transition by 5-10yrs.

There may also be an issue of GCH engineers being a bit scared of the change, plus of course our natural human fear of change.

What frustrates me, is that many households close to choosing a heatpump over a conventional boiler, the last few years, and even the near future, will think that getting a H2 ready boiler, is a green and future proof move, so may be misled. Hope that makes sense, households that might have gone HP, but opted for a new gas boiler, due to the H2 nudge. It all adds up.

But, have to be fair to the Government on heatpumps, whilst they could explain the benefits a bit better, a £7.5k subsidy, is a decent incentive.



QrizB has said several times, that costs could, and should come down, as install rates rise, and I had those comments pop up in my brain, when I read this article:

Low income UK homes ‘should be given free heat pumps’ to meet climate targets – but hydrogen ruled out

More than 2 million low-income households should be given a free electric heat pump to replace their gas boiler if the UK hopes to meet its legally binding climate targets, according to the government’s advisers.

Britain’s official infrastructure tsars have called on the government to spend up to £4bn every year for the next 12 years to cover the full cost of heat pump installations, and support energy efficiency improvements, for 1.5 million households on lower incomes in England.

It has also called on the government to spend up to £4.5bn a year to support energy efficiency improvements and heat pump installations across the public sector estate and social housing, which would include another 1 million low income households.

Perhaps shifting from a general subsidy, to a targeted install, such as above, might be better. Or reduce the general subsidy a bit to help fund the above, or keep the £7.5k and the above. I've no idea what is best, but targeting large blocks of properties, may be a way to help pump-prime the UK HP industry, which is lagging the rest of Europe.

Netexporter

I can foresee a time when the gas network gets shut down, by degrees. As people go over to electrical heating and transport, the numbers of people on particular branches of the network will fall to a point where the pipeline operator considers it uneconomic to maintain (unless standing charges rise massively). A gaseous version of ash die-back disease.

zeupater

Martyn1981 said:

Netexporter said:

I think hydrogen for home heating is a dead duck.

The Gas Boiler. Does It Have a Future? - YouTube

It's a good vid.

Here's a comparison I've posted in the past, of the energy needed to be produced by RE, for green hydrogen boilers, v's heatpumps. [Note, the use of wind only, is simply for comparison purposes.]

Hi

That's pretty good on the surface, in basic terms only somewhere between a 5x & 6x investment in wind generating infrastructure which would eventually need to be passed onto the consumer, but a lot also depends on the relative cost of the hardware required by the consumer (unless it's, somehow, 'free' ...  ) & essentially the relevance of the logic applied within graphic .... wind isn't the only generation source available and the supply/demand ratio doesn't remain constant, resulting in redundant capacity which could be employed in various forms of storage/charging - but let's leave that complexity aside ...

Let's, for argument sake, assume that the cost of hydrogen to the consumer would be equal to electricity ... fair as that would say that both forms of heating would cost the same to run .... nice thought, the status quo is maintained and everyone's happy ?? .... well not really as the consumer is the one paying for the appliances to  provide the heat ... possibly a replacement boiler would cost around £2k, whereas a heat pump (unsubsidised) would be more like £8k - £15k? ... for simplicity sake, on the basis that both could require replacement on a 10 year cycle (?) that favours hydrogen by around £1k/year .... Okay, if the consumer isn't using gas then there's no need for a connection and there's no need for paying a ~£100 annual standing charge and if there's no boiler, there's a further saving of ~£100 for annual servicing .... effectively the 'investment' benefit of the hydrogen approach to the consumer is therefore  ~£800/year (1000-100-100) .... this is the figure that would need to be applied back to the relative cost of hydrogen vs electricity to the consumer ... if the cost of heating with hydrogen is no more than £800/year above that of electricity consumed by the heat-pump then hydrogen might win out ... but, it doesn't end there ...

Missing in the graphic is a pretty basic observation ... maybe this should/could have been illustrated as a third option .... the use of hydrogen, not through direct combustion but through fuel cells. This approach, effectively provides a solution where around 50% of the hydrogen's energy is converted to electricity which could be used to run a heat pump with a waste product being ~50% recoverable heat, so approximately doubling ((0.5x3)+0.5) the heat provision per unit hydrogen purchased by the consumer ... running this backwards through the hydrogen route in the chart, the 70GW of domestic heat would require a nominal (/nameplate) installed capacity of ~165GW (70/2/0.85/0.9/0.75/0.95/0.39) as opposed to the 367GW illustrated ... a possible third solution saving >200GW of generation investment and having the advantage of hybrid heat provision to the consumer .... it's not impossible to design a hybrid system that could utilise a combination of local fuel cell, solar PV, battery and grid sourced energy to run the heat-pump ... but that's far too complex for consideration at the moment as I'm in need of a caffeine fix whilst our 'free' energy is well in excess of that needed to keep the house warm ...

HTH - Z

Martyn1981

Hi Z. I think you're describing something like the Ceres Power fuel cell boiler, which I mentioned many years ago. It can run on methane, through a combination of methane/H2, right through to full H2. It produces leccy at about 50% efficiency, with about another 30% 'waste' as heat. The thought that occured to me back when I posted it, was that the leccy could be used to run a heat pump.

So it would work as a great compliment to PV, especially if you have a battery too, producing leccy in the colder periods, when there's less PV.

Not sure how much it has progressed, I've struggled to find much more info, but if the idea is sound, then it or something like it, may be a way to help transition.

Ceres Power | Fully Charged

A British company making a world beating product, fuel cells. Cheap abundant materials, existing manufacturing technology, disruptive technology coming into the energy market. Pure genius.

zeupater

michaels said:

Interesting that 15% of the energy in gas is lost in transmission compared to 10% loses for electricity, I had not realised it would be so high for gas.

I don't think the diagram is quite fair though as it does not assume any extra energy cost for ASHP from energy storage and/or curtailment.

Hi

Does seem a little high .... I remember reading an Ofgem report some time back and losses were referred to as 'shrinkage' - odd, but referring to them directly as leaks probably triggers thoughts of potential catastrophic events!

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the figure was closer to 1% than 15%, something like ~5TWh over ~500TWh at the time,  but this did include self usage/theft etc .... maybe the 15% would include energy used/embedded in maintaining pressure, pumping etc, but it kind of sounds suspicious considering the level of embodied energy 15% would represent.

Of course, as hydrogen molecules, due to relative size, would be more prone to leakage than methane based natural gas it would be natural to expect higher losses, both through joints and directly through the walls of pipes through permeation, but again, leaving associated risks aside, would replacing natural gas with hydrogen at low system pressures really result in a >15x loss ??? ... if so, the issue would be that in attempting to reduce CO2 based climate related emissions, we'd effectively be both blowing up and burning the towns & cities (literally!) & releasing a product with, pound for pound, ~12x the warming potential of CO2 ... is it therefore likely that any forms of mitigation have been somehow overlooked and the 15% thrown out there as yet another form of FUD by one side of the debate or the other ?

HTH - Z (Where's that coffee?)