Vocal Voices

This one from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and an anonymous "thick" tank.

Reduce the price of electricity and move the savings on to gas bills. So, our electricity bills go down (yeah, let me rush out to get a heat pump or two) whilst our gas bills go up.

The problem with this is that with current technology millions of homes cannot have a heat pump fitted or that the cost outweighs any benefit. They will be penalised through no fault of their own and most of them are at the poorer end of society. I am thinking mainly of those in Victorian terraced houses and blocks of flats.

Currently only 1% of homes have heat pumps and that needs to rise to 10% by 2030. There are currently 26.4 million "homes" in the UK so by 2030 2,640,000 of them will need heat pumps, that's a rate of 396,000 per year. It is not going to happen whatever we do.

Times they are a changing. But installation is still required. I didn't check that.

My replacement gas boiler cost £2300 however it was a good one. I'm advised that a 1kw heat pump like this one provides sufficient heat in the winter and sufficient to cool it in summer and at a cost lower than using the gas. Only on very cold times is the gas needed and the gas only does hot water in most cases.

This massively reduces gas use.

I've also done my own investigation and if I put in 10kwh of batteries, even charged off the difference between night and day charges, when using the heat pump, I can save the install cost in 4 years. This is without installing solar, just charging from the mains off peak and using that electricity during the day. Of course then heating is also cheaper during the night.

Times they are a changing. But installation is still required. I didn't check that.

My replacement gas boiler cost £2300 however it was a good one. I'm advised that a 1kw heat pump like this one provides sufficient heat in the winter and sufficient to cool it in summer and at a cost lower than using the gas. Only on very cold times is the gas needed and the gas only does hot water in most cases.

This massively reduces gas use.

I've also done my own investigation and if I put in 10kwh of batteries, even charged off the difference between night and day charges, when using the heat pump, I can save the install cost in 4 years. This is without installing solar, just charging from the mains off peak and using that electricity during the day. Of course then heating is also cheaper during the night.

Jeez!!! It is not about how well the bloody things work, or not; nor whether they are worth it, or not.

It is about making the electricity to run them cheaper, and thus persuade people on-board, whilst making gas dearer, for everyone. This iniquitous idea hits the poorest, and those who cannot install a heat pump, the hardest. I happen to be in the "can't have one" category.

What many of these people will do is to turn down / off the gas CH and use portable electric heaters to take advantage of this "cheaper" electricity in order to stay warm. What this will do to the country's energy mix when they are added to all these electrically driven heat pumps and EVs is anybody's guess.

Ah well, I guess that it will make more gas available for the gas fuelled electricity power stations to help the electricity grid cope with the new demand for "gas produced" electricity.

Yes I know that thing about making electricity cheaper. That's stupid and I don't like stupid.

However the technology continues to advance and become cheaper. That's reality. As does all the other tech around the clean energy arena.

I would expect any reduction of electricity for heat pumps would require the equivalent of white meter and not be available to the standard sockets in the home.

They may be stupid by I don't think they are entirely insane.

As for gas fuelled power stations. Gridwatch, have a look at all year daily averages. The blue is wind and the brown is CCGT. Note the blue continues to grow and the brown, whilst significant, continues to fall.

The goal is blue and yellow to heat pumps. Another decade and the brown will be heading towards the black stuff, coal, which is virtually invisible now. Time was that nobody could ever see the black line being less than a full 50% of those graphs. Things change and they will keep on changing.

Yet I still agree. Reducing the cost of electricity and putting the cost on gas is bonkers.

Suff, go read the CCC dreamscape, here:

All of this by 2030 - just six years away!

* Annual offshore wind installations must increase by at least three times, onshore wind installations will need to double and solar installations must increase by five times.
* Approximately 10% of existing homes in the UK will need to be heated by a heat pump, compared to only approximately 1% today.
* The market share of new electric cars needs to increase from 16.5% today to nearly 100%.

These idiots need to move away from their spreadsheets and visit the real world.

Yes, we do need to do things, but they have to be practical and achievable... and affordable.

Workingman wrote:These idiots need to move away from their spreadsheets and visit the real world.

I read the summary. Not located in time and place in sanity.

Electrified vehicles must be 80% of vehicle fleets by 2030 anyway, that has not changed. 100% is ambitious but actually Norway proved it could be done.

Offshore wind, not a chance, the inflation over the last few years killed expansion. Although they did say significantly change the CFD Which could drive a significant increase in uptake, even as much as 3x, but the government cost could exceed 10x for that. However physical reality intrudes again. We won't be AT our 2030 goal even if they do accept the new CFD because it takes about a decade to build these out.

Onshore is actually something interesting. The most powerful wind turbine in the UK today is 4.1mw and I understand there is ONE, singular, of these. This is because of planning restrictions. The most powerful wind turbine available today is 15MW and the power ratings keep going up. It would be possible, with planning relaxation, to easily double onshore wind generation simply by replacing about 20% of current existing wind turbines with the current highest capacity turbines placed in the highest generating areas of the UK.

Onshore wind is the single largest renewable source which can be very quickly deployed and have a high impact. However my take is that doubling would be easy however trying to put in place the same as offshore will rapidly run into location issues and capacity issues. Which is why I favour more offshore which also has the very highest generation time percentage now reaching over 50% with the very largest turbines.

Solar is another really interesting one. Pay for the solar, let people get the money from the panels and the entire business will go into overdrive. We did it under Cameron and it worked. However, again, you need to open the purse strings and let money flow like water.

In short the name "dreamscape" is fairly accurate for where we are today.

Offshore wind is never going to make it, the logistics and construction timeline will not allow. The rest? EV? Onshore wind? Solar? They are viable. Heat pumps? Again if they make them essentially free, the new gas boiler market would halve overnight.

So in the end it comes down to this. Does the government have the will to borrow the money to give away on making this change? Under the Conservatives, the answer was NO. Under this Labour government? Honestly only time will tell and I just don't know.

As for reducing the price of electricity artificially? Yes they need to get away from their spreadsheets and enter the real world. Ditto fixing government property in 6 years and some of the other touchy feely BS in there.

Workingman wrote:The problem with this is that with current technology millions of homes cannot have a heat pump fitted or that the cost outweighs any benefit

Especially the last bit.
Heat pumps cost allegedly £2,500 - £14,000 to install and save £240 per annum on your bill.

So all things being equal it is going to take a long time to get your money back.

It's an interesting thing though.

2030.

Not too long off, is it? At what point is reality going to dawn?
Those targets for EV's, heat pumps, green energy - they aren't going to be met; not by a long way.
I've got the popcorn in, it will be amusing to listen to the excuses.

cromwell wrote:So all things being equal it is going to take a long time to get your money back.

You will never get the money back.

Which? and the Energy Saving Trust come up with a rough figure of £400 per annum in savings, but that is just on energy usage. It is also based on a quality unit (much more than £2.500 basic kit) and a well insulated property. The insulation can be done on a gas boiler property so that's misleading. The comparison is also for an older G rated boiler when modern combi boilers are A or B. Nothing is mentioned about servicing or replacement of the HP unit, and that will be a lot more than servicing and replacing a gas boiler over the perceived payback time - about 11 years.

They then both conflate heat pumps combined with solar panels, as if homes with gas boilers cannot have solar panels. They, and others, are picking and choosing the best (nominal) outcomes in order to "sell" heat pumps.

Well they are hardly going to choose the worst combination. They assume that someone who is going to invest in a heat pump will do the numbers and look at Solar too.

Prices have dropped dramatically but it is still an investment. For anyone considering it I recommend a comprehensive spreadsheet model.