Green energy powered by bullsh!t

[Exfarmer]

They have immersion heaters so they can run a weekly disinfection cycle to kill any legionnaires bacteria. Heat pumps max out at around 50C and legionnaires needs to be 60C to kill it. Now... With an unvented cylinder using mains water the risk is effectively zero at 50C, but that's just how they're configured in the UK. They won't use those for anything else unless there is a full on breakdown and the user switches it on. In the past, larger properties have any back up boilers (a hybrid system), but they're pretty much no longer needed with newer heat pumps.

In freezing conditions the heat pump will reverse cycle to clear any frost. This does reduce the efficiency (and makes a great spectacle with the cloud it produces), but overall they're still cheaper than off grid oil and gas. Even in the -10C weather it was maxing out at approx £6/day to run - less than oil was costing me before. Not cheaper than mains gas, though.

Edit - massive caveat. The problems and 'horror stories' are when a house is poorly insulated/draughty so the heat pump can't deliver enough heat to warm it up. But in a well designed system, great!

Certainly my old heat pump spent most of the winter months on reverse cycle and was very expensive to run, luckily I have 8 KWof solar on the roof to help.
I am surprised if you house is so well insulated that it was costing you £6 a day more to run on oil, I just do not know how you get to those figures. A friend of mine replaced his oil burner and reckoned the heat pump was £1200 a quarter more to run in the winter. He has now gone back to oil for the winter period.

 

[BrianV]

You are incorrect about the offshore turbines, they are very cost effective and do not require subsidies to work. They are good for the environment as they are placed in shallow water which fish like and the super trawlers can no longer go them there.
The only problem the turbines have, that while they are very efficient generators, they still need 100% back up as the country has experienced in the last months.

The lesson is there is no one simple solution, what is wrong is politicians making dramatic draconian statements without taking into account the possible consequences, banning all new gas boilers in 2025 for an example what are people with existing boilers which make up the greatest part of the countries house's heating supposed to do when their boiler needs replacing after 2025, do gas boiler manufacturers now start winding down production or research?

 

[Exfarmer]

The tidal lagoon at Swansea bay looked interesting. The Welsh assembly granted permission and was going to contribute £200m to the £1.3bn cost, however it needed an electricity price guarantee (similar to other renewables), which the British government refused. It was proposed 350MW capacity. Possible it will still go ahead without the guarantee.

The government didn't want to guarantee it, because it was felt the cost of the technology would not decline overtime, unlike wind and solar.

The swansea bay barrage was projected at 320MW , do you realise that is a fairly small amount of power! Although it is reliable but still has the high and low points of the tide issues.
The French who have constructed several barrages get very little real power from them, and silting has been a big issue at more than one

 

[Lincoln75]

Recently we were lucky enough to have countless energy firms starting up & saving the planet by signing up millions of like minded customers intent on doing their bit by supporting these companies with their green energy.

Now here's the really strange thing, virtually all these so called "green" companies are suddenly going broke & are no longer viable, has the price of wind suddenly rocketed, has the sun suddenly increased it's price?
Of course not, these lying buggers are simply all going out of business because the price of oil & gas has shot up making the polluting energy they buy dearer than they can afford, they simply pretended to be green by planting a few trees to "offset" all of their pollution, remember that when you look around your green carbon absorbing farms & are told your few cows are destroying the world.

I think the energy companies are just brokers , they don't own anything in the way of wind turbines ,power stations or gas pipelines , they lease a big office and buy a customer data base , something anyone with the know how could do , they work on extremely tight margins and give customers price guarantee`s/contracts , as soon as the real energy suppliers has to put prices up it all collapses , the directors of the retail energy company just sets up again , little lost other than their salary, it has little to do with green energy or efficiency , its just about the price of energy.

 

[jendan]

For what it's worth, my air source heat pump is working very well with zero amateur engineering required. And with the fuel oil price creeping back up, would have been financially viable even without RHI.

(wouldn't have gone for it without the grant as the fear of it not working was too great. Now I know what the technology can do, its a no-brainer)

Whats your electric bill like?

 

[Exfarmer]

The lesson is there is no one simple solution, what is wrong is politicians making dramatic draconian statements without taking into account the possible consequences, banning all new gas boilers in 2025 for an example what are people with existing boilers which make up the greatest part of the countries house's heating supposed to do when their boiler needs replacing after 2025, do gas boiler manufacturers now start winding down production or research?

I dont disagree at all, having been in the renewables industry for ten years now , I see more bulls**t in a week than I ever did dairy farming
It scares me whenever politicians talk of these issues, as it is perfectly clear none have any idea of what they are talking about.
Yes we need more electric, not just a little, we need a doubling of power available over the next 20-30 years if we are going to bin all the gas boilers and ICE cars.
The move to renewables has in some ways been a huge success from nothing a big chunk of our power comes from wing sun and AD. Wind and sun stack up with no subsidies, which is fine, but not reliable so needs back up, which nuclear, if that is the alternative, cannot provide.
If we are to biuld more wind and sun we need an equivalent gas turbine back up in reserve for those dull windless days.
The alternative is batteries, but I do not believe we will ever have the installed capacity for more than a couple of hours, it is just not feasible

 

[br jones]

They have immersion heaters so they can run a weekly disinfection cycle to kill any legionnaires bacteria. Heat pumps max out at around 50C and legionnaires needs to be 60C to kill it. Now... With an unvented cylinder using mains water the risk is effectively zero at 50C, but that's just how they're configured in the UK. They won't use those for anything else unless there is a full on breakdown and the user switches it on. In the past, larger properties have any back up boilers (a hybrid system), but they're pretty much no longer needed with newer heat pumps.

In freezing conditions the heat pump will reverse cycle to clear any frost. This does reduce the efficiency (and makes a great spectacle with the cloud it produces), but overall they're still cheaper than off grid oil and gas. Even in the -10C weather it was maxing out at approx £6/day to run - less than oil was costing me before. Not cheaper than mains gas, though.

Edit - massive caveat. The problems and 'horror stories' are when a house is poorly insulated/draughty so the heat pump can't deliver enough heat to warm it up. But in a well designed system, great!

6 quid a day ? Thats 2 grand a year ,recently built a 4 bed house with a lpg boiler ,running costs last year was 192 quidsworth of gas for heating and hot water,and around 40 a month for electric ,family of 4 living in the house ,2 young kids both parents work from home

 

[DaveGrohl]

Burning wood is no better than burning coal or oil.
Burning wood to dry wood to use to dry grain is also madness

Ok, you're gonna have to explain that to me, I'm a bit hard of understanding. Since humans discovered fire we've been destroying the planet by burning wood? Wood that keeps regrowing in the above ground carbon cycle? Nah, sorry. Not remotely comparable with digging up milennia old fossil fuels.

Now if you're talking about using fossil fuels to facilitate burning wood in a massively wasteful manner then yeah. Not the same though as "burning wood is no better than burning coal or oil". It's how you go about it that's the problem.

Edit: @egbert beat me to it in eloquent fashion.

 

[DaveGrohl]

and yet the light houses built in the 18th and 19th century are still viable

Blades innit.

 

[HatsOff]

6 quid a day ? Thats 2 grand a year ,recently built a 4 bed house with a lpg boiler ,running costs last year was 192 quidsworth of gas for heating and hot water,and around 40 a month for electric ,family of 4 living in the house ,2 young kids both parents work from home

That's £6/day on the absolute worst conditions. Probably about £0.10p in summer for the hot water.

 

[BrianV]

Ok, you're gonna have to explain that to me, I'm a bit hard of understanding. Since humans discovered fire we've been destroying the planet by burning wood? Wood that keeps regrowing in the above ground carbon cycle? Nah, sorry. Not remotely comparable with digging up milennia old fossil fuels.

Now if you're talking about using fossil fuels to facilitate burning wood in a massively wasteful manner then yeah. Not the same though as "burning wood is no better than burning coal or oil". It's how you go about it that's the problem.

The problem I have is Brazil is criticised no end for cutting down trees in the Amazon whilst at the same time our government & eco nuts claim that burning 800,000 trees a day in Drax, cut down in the USA dried chipped & shipped to the UK is wonderfully saving the planet, now if you were a Brazilian would you not think that we are a load of tossing hypocrites!!

 

[HatsOff]

Whats your electric bill like?

The heat pump has a separate meter. That used £600 for the year for kWh. Ignoring standing charge because I'd pay that anyway.

 

[HatsOff]

Certainly my old heat pump spent most of the winter months on reverse cycle and was very expensive to run, luckily I have 8 KWof solar on the roof to help.
I am surprised if you house is so well insulated that it was costing you £6 a day more to run on oil, I just do not know how you get to those figures. A friend of mine replaced his oil burner and reckoned the heat pump was £1200 a quarter more to run in the winter. He has now gone back to oil for the winter period.

Yeah it's tricky to compere because I did do other things as well as the heat pump so it wasn't a straight swap.

Edit - we insulated, changed the radiators. However the heat pump now heats every room and the hot water. Oil system before only really did one room and pathetically did the radiators. So it's two very different systems to compare. My original point was only to say they do work well, but added the caveat about it being a well designed system.

 

[DaveGrohl]

I dont disagree at all, having been in the renewables industry for ten years now , I see more bullsh*t in a week than I ever did dairy farming
It scares me whenever politicians talk of these issues, as it is perfectly clear none have any idea of what they are talking about.
Yes we need more electric, not just a little, we need a doubling of power available over the next 20-30 years if we are going to bin all the gas boilers and ICE cars.
The move to renewables has in some ways been a huge success from nothing a big chunk of our power comes from wing sun and AD. Wind and sun stack up with no subsidies, which is fine, but not reliable so needs back up, which nuclear, if that is the alternative, cannot provide.
If we are to biuld more wind and sun we need an equivalent gas turbine back up in reserve for those dull windless days.
The alternative is batteries, but I do not believe we will ever have the installed capacity for more than a couple of hours, it is just not feasible

Ignoring batteries, how do the costs stack up for other forms of storage? Dams and pumped hydro, weights up and down unused mineshafts, heavy trains going up and down hills, etc? I've no idea, I just keep on hearing batteries batteries batteries. Dams and hydro seem the most obvious solution but difficult to enact granted because of various factors. Surely the Btitish Isles has enough suitable areas?

 

[DaveGrohl]

The problem I have is Brazil is criticised no end for cutting down trees in the Amazon whilst at the same time our government & eco nuts claim that burning 800,000 trees a day in Drax, cut down in the USA dried chipped & shipped to the UK is wonderfully saving the planet, now if you were a Brazilian would you not think that we are a load of tossing hypocrites!!

Those Brazilians are a polite bunch frankly.

 

[roscoe erf]

Blades innit.

shouldn't make much difference from on land to sea for blades it will be the structure taking the pounding

 

[egbert]

You are incorrect about the offshore turbines, they are very cost effective and do not require subsidies to work. They are good for the environment as they are placed in shallow water which fish like and the super trawlers can no longer go them there.
The only problem the turbines have, that while they are very efficient generators, they still need 100% back up as the country has experienced in the last months.

100% disagree, respectfully.
The extra cost is simply pointless.
The only conceivable benefit is that they get wind from all directions...but I suspect that doesn't go anywhere near compensating for the logistical demands.
It's a sop to the 'those turbines spoil my view' brigade

fish want scrap to swim round? give them some.
Trawlers overfishing? Stop them.

 

[HatsOff]

100% disagree, respectfully.
The extra cost is simply pointless.
The only conceivable benefit is that they get wind from all directions...but I suspect that doesn't go anywhere near compensating for the logistical demands.
It's a sop to the 'those turbines spoil my view' brigade

fish want scrap to swim round? give them some.
Trawlers overfishing? Stop them.

Wind is more consistent offshore. You can build bigger turbines as not limited by road access. The wind farms create artificial reefs, I've read that dish fish catches near to wind farms are increasing.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Ignoring batteries, how do the costs stack up for other forms of storage? Dams and pumped hydro, weights up and down unused mineshafts, heavy trains going up and down hills, etc? I've no idea, I just keep on hearing batteries batteries batteries. Dams and hydro seem the most obvious solution but difficult to enact granted because of various factors. Surely the Btitish Isles has enough suitable areas?

The economics of micro-hydro collapsed in 2017 (iirc) when the government decided to apply business rates to the civils structure associated with hydro.
A typical micro-hydro scheme, unlike a major public one, uses a long pipe to create the head of water to drive the turbine. This pipe now attracts business rates that destroy the economics.

 

[egbert]

Wind is more consistent offshore. You can build bigger turbines as not limited by road access. The wind farms create artificial reefs, I've read that dish fish catches near to wind farms are increasing.

I would take a LOT of convincing on this.
The reef reason is hooey.

There is already a growing industry servicing the sodding things.
I would want to know who owns the 'site'. HM?

If onshore site ownership is a cost obstacle, then I'm afraid the heavy and of the state should be applied.
(I hate to say that, and am then speculating whether that potential PR controversy alone is a big factor in the growth of offshore)