Air/Ground Source Heat Pumps

[sjp23480]

6 minutes ago, Reorte said:

All this sounds like yet another all or nothing attitude, one that forces nonsense where it's not needed and hold back good enough to do a good enough job because it's not good enough to do every job everywhere, and one simple solution for everywhere is the only thing that's acceptable in today's simple-minded "throw more money and technology at everything and all our problems will magically vanish" world.

I agree.  Sounds like more "money for the boys", generating more revenues and profits for the companies big enough to make the investments to support the government strategy.

[Zomboid]

59 minutes ago, sjp23480 said:

f the government offered £5000 to get proper insulation, upgrade household heating systems (smart thermostats/TRVs/etc) and install new super efficient gas boilers (combi/condensing etc) would that have a meaningful impact

It would be a step in both the right and wrong direction at the same time. We've avoided making the difficult choice of ditching gas for a long time, and by procrastinating about it we've made it a much harder job to do, and also increased the urgency.

 

Making gas as good as it can be isn't a bad thing for some applications, but it's not a long term solution for most.

 

A bit like internal combustion engines. They're really good now, but they simply cannot have a long term future as a widespread application.

[APOLLO]

Trouble is - and they won't tell you this - gas (UK North Sea) IS well past peak and is running out. As stated previously most of UK's North Sea gas comes from the Norway North Sea fields, 

 

https://mip-prd-web.azurewebsites.net/InstantaneousView/Index

 

Easington Langeleld - Norways pipeline to UK. Scroll down to bar graph

 

Brit15

 

 

[APOLLO]

Hmmm !!!

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/20/meat-tax-and-frequent-flyer-levy-advice-dropped-from-uk-net-zero-strategy

 

Brit15

[woodenhead]

Whatever the Government might say now, the dash to gas was not about the environment and all about saving money because it was cheaper to builld lots of them rather than consider new coal fired stations or building on nuclear.

 

Now, and borne out by the Guardian article, a somewhat fanciful thought of 2050 UK being powered by North Sea wind which is already being shown to be ill judged as the two coal fired power stations are being recalled from standby at great cost to keep the power on because not only is gas now expensive but the wind has gone on holiday.

 

Lack of focussed investment is coming home to roost, outsourcing doesn't solve problems it merely shifts them into the future when it's a scramble rather than orderly change.

 

And now a meat tax because the future does not include Beef or Lamb, but it's not the fluffy future our high up politicians want to sell, they only want to be popular and liked so they don't want to discuss the hard bits lest people turn against them in the polls.

 

Maybe we should be listening to what the XR people are saying, maybe their view of the future is closer to the truth than the politicians would have you believe.

[Theakerr]

Over here Heat Pumps are now marketed as Ductless Heating and Cooling Systems.  Many houses, at least in Ontario were constructed with electric baseboard heaters (when nuclear power was going to cheaper that anything) and as a result do not have heating ducts.  Hence the name change.  They are marketed as an 8 year payback for an all electric house and before COVID, when the Government brought in all kinds of discounts, I was on schedule to have it paid back in 7 years.  I suspect that had things been the same the actual payback time would be even lower due to the extensive use as an air conditioner over the last three years.  My unit is on one wall and if there is interest I can send a picture.  It is very quiet.  I opted for a single unit as I felt (correctly it turns out) that multiple slave units were not needed.   So far i have not experienced the house air becoming very dry in the way it did when we lived in Manitoba with a traditional AC unit.  There we had to add a humidifier. 

[APOLLO]

Very interesting and informative video

 

Martyn Bridges, Director of Marketing and Technical Support at Worcester Bosch Group, discusses hydrogen boilers and the future of heating our homes with reduced emissions.

 

You need to watch from the start

 

 

Brit15

 

Edited October 20, 2021 by APOLLO
typo

[Michael Hodgson]

17 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Whatever the Government might say now, the dash to gas was not about the environment and all about saving money because it was cheaper to builld lots of them rather than consider new coal fired stations or building on nuclear.

 

I thought the dash to gas was all about the balance of payments, something which always used to be on the 9 o'clock news, but you never hear about now since the news changed to ten.  

 

Our once massive coal reserves were becoming exhausted, as more & more of the pits became worked out, remaining seams being increasingly difficult/uneconomic to extract.   So imports were necessary.  We were no longer sufficiently competitive to send manufactured goods all over the world with "Made in England" stamped on them and we don't grow enough in this country to feed ourselves, a problem which had become painfully obvious in 1940.   However we had discovered gas in our own waters and the technology to extract it.  So it made sense to move domestic heating from coal to gas to reduce the imbalance of trade.  The Clean Air Acts did clean up a lot of our historic pollution and the Valleys no longer look ugly as they did at the time of Aberfan, and the North has lost its dark satanic mills.   But now as was predictable at the time, the gas has been used up too, so we have an economic problem again. 

 

Quite apart from any environmental concerns, we can't afford to keep importing oil or gas from such places as do still have it.  Not until we can offer Johnny Foreigner something he wants in order to pay for it.  So on economic grounds we need to take full advantage of the wind and tide this island has in abundance.  True, those need to be supplemented by other resources to maintain continuity of supply, but even nuclear and battery technology require importation of raw materials as we don't have Uranium or Lithium here. 

[MPR]

44 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

...but even nuclear and battery technology require importation of raw materials as we don't have Uranium or Lithium here. 

https://cornishlithium.com/

[RichardT]

Can I just quickly express my appreciation for the civilised way this thread is being conducted by everyone? Technology being explained, fears and doubts being aired, alternative viewpoints expressed - but all in the spirit of respectful give and take.

 

Thanks everyone,

Richard T

 

(Puzzling over the best next move for our 1880 end terrace)

[shady]

To try and show the scale of the problem I just did some quick calculations.  Obviously this is a complete fantasy as we would never try and do this and some of the gas consumption is used to generate electricity which further complicates the figures and any conversion from gas heating to electric heating will obviously reduce the total gas demand (if the extra electricity is produced using gas plant and the heating is not via heat pumps , then the gas demand would increase!), but anyway.

 

On a cold winters day the UK can consume 4316 GWh of gas (not the maximum either) , if the same amount of energy was instead supplied by electricity that was produced by using previously  "spare" electricity capacity via electrolysis to create hydrogen which is then stored and then converted back to electricity which is approx 30% efficient that would have required 14386 GWh of spare electricity for one days usage  (note this also means that any such electricity would be more than 3 times as expensive as the original source).

 

If you had a very very good summers day (some plant is scheduled for maintenance during the summer) you might have a total generating capacity of 75 GW (very unlikely) , if that rate could be maintained for 24 hours (it could not) you could get 1800 GWh of electricity production in a day. So very very roughly if we used our entire generating capacity (all sources) on a summers day and nobody used any electricity for anything else other than to create hydrogen for storage for the winter , then one weeks summer supply would not meet one winters day supply.

 

When you take into consideration that we need to replace our existing none renewables generating plant , whilst also plan to add millions of EV's to our roads and convert millions of homes to electric heating and hot water, its not looking likely that we will have vast quantities of  spare renewable generating capacity any time soon (keeping the lights on will be a big enough challenge).

 

But apparently some hydrogen fanboys (not accusing anyone in this thread) think "green" hydrogen will solve all our transport , electricity and heating needs, personally I will be impressed if we get to the stage that there is enough spare capacity to create enough green hydrogen to replace the hydrogen that we currently use in industrial processes let alone anything else.

 

I was rereading a 2017 report this morning (done by a hydrogen fan boy) where it was stated that the government was delusional in its forecasts as UK electricity costs for domestic users could

never reach 18p per Kwh  , let alone the governments higher figures , yet a mere 4 years later 20.66p per Kwh is the new normal , come April 2022 it could be 25p per Kwh.  (business customers

that were with Symbio and have been transferred to E.on next are now paying 60p per Kwh !!!!! could we see £1 a Kwh for motorway service area type fast EV chargers ???) .

 

I will also confirm that I am not a heat pump fanboy as I think they do have problems , cost, noise , long term reliability and cost of repairs etc

 

 

 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, shady said:

I will also confirm that I am not a heat pump fanboy as I think they do have problems , cost, noise , long term reliability and cost of repairs etc

 

They're fine in a house designed with them in mind. Putting them in new builds? Yay!

Retrofitting them everywhere? Not so sure.

 

Reliability isn't a problem. You rarely fret about your fridge breaking down. 

[simontaylor484]

Drax power station burns biomass most of which is imported via either Immingham or Bootle Docks. Surely other plants could have been converted to biomass instead of being demolished. The crazy thing is the pillar of support underneath the former Ferrybridge and Eggborough Power station contains millions of tonnes  of coal.

 

There are 2 multi fuel power stations at Ferrybridge burning a lot of municipal waste. 

 

Waste heat is a vastly untapped resource think of how many crematoria there are in the country some heat recovery is done on places but in others its wasted they should become Combined Heat and Power generation facilities too.

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

Waste heat is a vastly untapped resource think of how many crematoria there are in the country some heat recovery is done on places but in others its wasted they should become Combined Heat and Power generation facilities too.

 

Cremation is silly. Alkaline hydrolysis is the thing now.

Down the drain with you.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disposal)

[shady]

30 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

They're fine in a house designed with them in mind. Putting them in new builds? Yay!

Retrofitting them everywhere? Not so sure.

 

Reliability isn't a problem. You rarely fret about your fridge breaking down. 

I agree with you , to clarify I have no concerns that its possible to build and install reliable systems, I do have concerns over what will actually be built cheaply for mass deployment and the quality of the workmanship of some of the future "less reputable" outfits that will appear (and no doubt disappear , after having taken someones life savings).

 

[rocor]

2 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

 

Quite apart from any environmental concerns, we can't afford to keep importing oil or gas from such places as do still have it.  Not until we can offer Johnny Foreigner something he wants in order to pay for it.  So on economic grounds we need to take full advantage of the wind and tide this island has in abundance.  True, those need to be supplemented by other resources to maintain continuity of supply, but even nuclear and battery technology require importation of raw materials as we don't have Uranium or Lithium here. 

 

Lithium the 25th most abundant element. It is the low concentrations that it is found in that makes extraction difficult. 

 

 

[Karhedron]

43 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

Drax power station burns biomass most of which is imported via either Immingham or Bootle Docks. Surely other plants could have been converted to biomass instead of being demolished. The crazy thing is the pillar of support underneath the former Ferrybridge and Eggborough Power station contains millions of tonnes  of coal.

 

Biomass is another example of a good idea spoiled by bad implementation. In theory you grow some sort of fast burning wood on low quality land and then burn it for energy which is carbon neutral. Drax power station uses pellets sourced from a variety of locations, many of them on the other side of the Atlantic. This means that we are adding transport costs (and carbon) to the process.

 

There have been reports of some virgin forests being felled to meet demand for biomass which is damaging in different ways. If we could grow enough biomass in this country to fuel power stations like Drax, then it would be a positive contribution. The current situation however is not ideal and I don't think it should be expanded until the supply of sustainable biomass is established.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/23/green-groups-dispute-power-station-claim-biomass-carbon-neutral

Edited October 21, 2021 by Karhedron

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

Lithium the 25th most abundant element. It is the low concentrations that it is found in that makes extraction difficult. 

 

 

 

I forget where, but there's a geothermal power plant being built where they discovered the hot water coming up was loaded with lithium.

That's going to be quite profitable,

[Karhedron]

4 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

I forget where, but there's a geothermal power plant being built where they discovered the hot water coming up was loaded with lithium.

That's going to be quite profitable,

 

Cornwall is one location, I believe other sites in the US have shown similar potential. 

 

https://cornishlithium.com/projects/lithium-in-geothermal-waters/

[PenrithBeacon]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

 

Biomass is another example of a good idea spoiled by bad implementation. In theory you grow some sort of fast burning wood on low quality land and then burn it for energy which is carbon neutral. Drax power station uses pellets sourced from a variety of locations, many of them on the other side of the Atlantic. This means that we are adding transport costs (and carbon) to the process.

 

There have been reports of some virgin forests being felled to meet demand for biomass which is damaging in different ways. If we could grow enough biomass in this country to fuel power stations like Drax, then it would be a positive contribution. The current situation however is not ideal and I don't think it should be expanded until the supply of sustainable biomass is established.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/23/green-groups-dispute-power-station-claim-biomass-carbon-neutral

I don't think we should be burning anything. I accept that for the time  being we have to but it should be winding down. 

I wonder if it would be possible to bore a hole down within the Drax site to see if geothermal heating could replace the boilers? 

[spikey]

2 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

... In theory you grow some sort of fast burning wood on low quality land and then burn it for energy which is carbon neutral ...

 

And in practice, some UK farmers reckon they'll now be better off growing miscanthus grass for energy instead of growing food crops which would help reduce this country's dependence upon imports.

[APOLLO]

The very deep mineshafts at some collieries around Wigan & Leigh had high coalface / ground temperatures All closed now and filled in but there is heat down there at depth (most everywhere in fact) and I'm sure it could be utilised in some way.

 

Brit15

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

The very deep mineshafts at some collieries around Wigan & Leigh had high coalface / ground temperatures All closed now and filled in but there is heat down there at depth (most everywhere in fact) and I'm sure it could be utilised in some way.

 

Yep. I mentioned a few posts back some proposals to use warm mines with heat pumps for district heating.

[pH]

On 19/10/2021 at 04:51, APOLLO said:

A Ground Source heat pump has a collection pipe filled with a Heat Transference fluid and collects heat from the ground. The collection pipework is normally a continuous, unjointed length of pipe buried in the ground either horizontally or vertically in a borehole …  If the collection system is to be sited vertically then either one or more boreholes equivalent to around 150 metres deep would be needed.

 

Non starter for virtually everyone.

If converting an existing property - probably yes. However, easier if done as part of construction. One of my sons worked on a drill crew boring holes for vertical ground heat pump systems in this new (at the time) development:
 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rivers-taps-geothermal-energy/article1022329/

[peach james]

12 hours ago, APOLLO said:

The very deep mineshafts at some collieries around Wigan & Leigh had high coalface / ground temperatures All closed now and filled in but there is heat down there at depth (most everywhere in fact) and I'm sure it could be utilised in some way.

 

Brit15

Done at Springhill, NS, Canada.
https://www.geothermal-energy.org/pdf/IGAstandard/WGC/1995/1-jessop2.pdf