How do you reckon we'll be heating our homes in years to come?

Section62

coffeehound said:

Section62 said:

Because the volume production of gas boilers vs heat pumps, and the cost per kWh of gas vs electricity, skews the economics in favour of gas boilers.

Make lots of heat pumps and very few gas boilers, and the economics of purchase quickly change.

Something strange about the current national debate is that people make out heatpumps are some new exotic technology fresh from the pages of science fiction.  The fact is, heatpumps have been around for donkey's even in Britain.

Absolutely.

Somewhere I've got a leaflet issued by Eastern Electricity Board in the mid-1980's promoting the use of consumer heat pumps.

A lot of people without mains gas in rural areas would have given serious thought to getting one as a supplement or alternative to oil heating.

silverwhistle

Section62 said:

The point is domestic PV doesn't take a significant amount of load off the national grid.

At peak demand times domestic properties with PV will still be importing most of their electicity from the grid.  Thus the grid and the generation capacity attached to it has to be sized to meet that demand.

Except it does. I take it you don't have PV yourself? If you surprise me by saying yes you must be the only such person I know who doesn't take steps to use the panels when they are producing. There may be others who are rich enough not to worry about the cost but the rest of us time shift our usage to varying degrees. We may need to import in peak hours but the load on the system is a lot less than if we didn't load shift. For example nobody with panels comes home and puts the dishwasher or washing machine on in peak hours. I do all my water heating from March to October from PV, and although I've used the gas boiler once this autumn today I've put 4.62kWh into my tank and for good measure done a load of washing and a dishwasher load on PV.

Section62

silverwhistle said:

Section62 said:

The point is domestic PV doesn't take a significant amount of load off the national grid.

At peak demand times domestic properties with PV will still be importing most of their electicity from the grid.  Thus the grid and the generation capacity attached to it has to be sized to meet that demand.

Except it does. I take it you don't have PV yourself? If you surprise me by saying yes you must be the only such person I know who doesn't take steps to use the panels when they are producing. There may be others who are rich enough not to worry about the cost but the rest of us time shift our usage to varying degrees.

No. But I've been timeshifting for 30+ years using E7 electricity.

It has never ceased to amaze me that when telling people they could save money by switching to E7 the response frequently is reasons why it would be utterly impossible for them to put the washing machine or dishwasher on during the cheap period.

So, whilst I have no reason to doubt that you personally load shift with a great deal of success, I do doubt when you refer to "the rest of us" that those comments would scale up to the majority of the population, in the absence of punitive TOU charges in peak hours. The "varying degrees" deserves some emphasis there.

Furthermore, what do you believe the domestic peak demand consists of, and how much of that relates to dishwashers and washing machines? And how much to electric showers, ovens, hobs, toasters, coffee machines, kettles, lights and all the other electrical equipment which needs to be used at specific times, and isn't easily time-shifted?

silverwhistle said:

We may need to import in peak hours but the load on the system is a lot less than if we didn't load shift.

"A lot"?

silverwhistle said:

For example nobody with panels comes home and puts the dishwasher or washing machine on in peak hours.

"Nobody"?

Rosa_Damascena

Section62 said:

After a long debate the conclusion is going to be that we all need to have less heat in our homes; or get used to paying a lot more for our heating; or have heat pumps contributing a much greater proportion of our domestic heating needs.

Or a combination of the above, or hope that nuclear fusion can soon be miniturised to the size of box we can fit on our kitchen walls.

That is a joke, correct?

Nuclear is everyone's worst nightmare because of the unquantifiable public health impact when things go wrong. And they inevitably DO go wrong.

Section62

Rosa_Damascena said:

Section62 said:

Or a combination of the above, or hope that nuclear fusion can soon be miniturised to the size of box we can fit on our kitchen walls.

That is a joke, correct?

Nuclear is everyone's worst nightmare because of the unquantifiable public health impact when things go wrong. And they inevitably DO go wrong.

Yes.

Although it is worth noting that fusion, if it ever becomes a practical source of energy, doesn't have the same safety issues as fission.

And also that fission has had a relatively bad rep when it comes to health and safety because we've blithely ignored the public health impact of burning carbon-based fuels.

Will people look back in 100 years and think us mad for believing burning gas and coal was 'safer' than nuclear fission? Will we be condemned for carefully counting every death from nuclear incidents whilst ignoring all those caused by air pollution?

Grabs39

Rosa_Damascena said:

Section62 said:

After a long debate the conclusion is going to be that we all need to have less heat in our homes; or get used to paying a lot more for our heating; or have heat pumps contributing a much greater proportion of our domestic heating needs.

Or a combination of the above, or hope that nuclear fusion can soon be miniturised to the size of box we can fit on our kitchen walls.

That is a joke, correct?

Nuclear is everyone's worst nightmare because of the unquantifiable public health impact when things go wrong. And they inevitably DO go wrong.

Fusion, if it becomes feasible would not have the same risks as Fission and would create risk free, polution-free energy.

However, on the risks of Fission, it could be argued it is far safer than burning fossil fuels.  Chernobyl, for example, killed roughly 50 people (or about 4,000 depending on who you believe, how much you attribute cancer rates to it and so on).  In the UK, every year, around 40,000 deaths are linked to air pollution, mainly from the burning of fuels (be that by cars, in factories, in boilers and so on), according to the Royal College of Physicians*.

It's a bit like comparing flying to driving, statistically driving is many thousands of times more dangerous than flying, but when you fly and something goes wrong, it goes very badly wrong and so some have the perception that it's unsafe.

*https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/outputs/every-breath-we-take-lifelong-impact-air-pollution

anotheruser

Rosa_Damascena said:

Section62 said:

After a long debate the conclusion is going to be that we all need to have less heat in our homes; or get used to paying a lot more for our heating; or have heat pumps contributing a much greater proportion of our domestic heating needs.

Or a combination of the above, or hope that nuclear fusion can soon be miniturised to the size of box we can fit on our kitchen walls.

That is a joke, correct?

Nuclear is everyone's worst nightmare because of the unquantifiable public health impact when things go wrong. And they inevitably DO go wrong.

Do they?
Yes, catastrophic if they do go wrong but there have been plants operating for many years without problems.
Plus, if the tech is a lot smaller, the area of badness will be a lot smaller.

There's been, what three large scale explosions in the last 50 years.
But how many homes have been powered in that time.

silverwhistle

Section62 said:

silverwhistle said:

We may need to import in peak hours but the load on the system is a lot less than if we didn't load shift.

"A lot"?

silverwhistle said:

For example nobody with panels comes home and puts the dishwasher or washing machine on in peak hours.

"Nobody"?

Well, there are over a million domestic installations in the UK and as I reckon they are more aware consumers than most their behaviour will have an impact. You said there was no impact. You also went on again about things people use: again that is irrelevant in talking about cutting peak loads. As for the "nobody" perhaps I should have said not many. Originally I mentioned people I know; perhaps I could extend that to intelligent people with commonsense and a need to keep costs down. Depends on your view of what proportion that is of the million + installations: personally I reckon it is high.

jamesperrett

I've been looking at potential replacements for my old gas boiler and took a good look at heat pumps. The house is fairly well insulated and there is enough wall space to double the size of the radiators if needed to accommodate the lower water temperature. The one big stumbling block for me is the amount of room they need. The outdoor unit needs quite a bit of clearance around it it (according to Vaillant's installation manual) while you need a large water tank indoors. I live in a fairly small house and I simply don't have the room for the tank and its associated equipment indoors and there is nowhere with sufficient clearance for the outdoor unit.

However this house once had a hot air heating system and the vents are still there so I wonder if some kind of heat transfer system would be a possibility?

LV_426

jamesperrett said:

I've been looking at potential replacements for my old gas boiler and took a good look at heat pumps. The house is fairly well insulated and there is enough wall space to double the size of the radiators if needed to accommodate the lower water temperature. The one big stumbling block for me is the amount of room they need. The outdoor unit needs quite a bit of clearance around it it (according to Vaillant's installation manual) while you need a large water tank indoors. I live in a fairly small house and I simply don't have the room for the tank and its associated equipment indoors and there is nowhere with sufficient clearance for the outdoor unit.

However this house once had a hot air heating system and the vents are still there so I wonder if some kind of heat transfer system would be a possibility?

Not sure, but I was also looking on the Vailant website. They offer hybrid systems that can work with your existing gas boiler, which may be a consideration for you. Interestingly there's a tool to recommend a system for your house. When I entered all my details, the recommendation was a solar thermal system, which I didn't even know was an option. But this only provides hot water, not heating.