Energy Saving

[Spectric]

most of us cannot afford them new and will wait for them to drip feel into the used market. Especially the more exciting ones.

No one really knows how the secondhand market for EV's will develop because for non main dealers the risk may be to high, having to replace the batteries could cost more than the car is worth and they are dealing with new technology. Think how many decades the garages have been dealing with ICE vehicles. It may be at least initially people will be hesistant about second hand and will feel more comfortable with new from the main dealer so second hand prices will be low.

 

[Jacob]

I've been in the construction industry for 30 years as a mechanical engineer designing large heating and ventilation systems. On the global warming/carbon neutral issue there are a couple points that baffle me. 1st one is Govt pushing heat pumps.

Government inertia and incompetence. They are willing to make token noises and gestures but that's it so far. They will hope to blame other factors or people when things go wrong. It's a bigger problem than this lot can handle, not least because they are only slowly recovering from deeply rooted CC scepticism.

Point 2. Can someone please tell my why every new build house in the UK isn't built with solar PV panels on the roof, and/or why every industrial building on every industrial estate in the UK doesn't have solar PV installed on them?

Good idea! Same 'reasoning' plus it'd mean raising taxation - which is now and always has been top of the tory agenda, in fact their single issue from early days. To start taxing and spending, however urgently it is needed, is against their deepest instincts

 

[Jacob]

The electric vehicle question is interesting.

I think a major factor that will accelerate the move over the next couple of years will be as the large car fleets make the change.

I also think the concept of car ownership will change. Driverless cars are the real game changer.

Public transport an even bigger game changer. Big car toys for boys will be a thing of the past.

 

[heimlaga]

I don't think electic vehicles are an immediate solution to the traffic caused carbon dioxide problem. Not in their current shape.

To charge the number of electric vehicles necsessary to keep our car-based society going we need a massive increase in power generation and an entirely new electric grid capable of transfering all that power without any voltage drops. Surely that can be done but only at tremendously high costs. Many of us not very well paid workers and underfinanced small business owners cannot possibly afford an electic vehicle. For a car to be affordable to me it has to be either severely damaged by fire or collision or over 20 years old. And yet I am dependant on a car for earning my small income. The electric cars that are on the market at the moment are designed to be impossible to rebuild after a fire or a collision and the lifespan of the batteries is 6 or 7 years. Out of question for me and many million other Europeans.
The only way to afford owning an electric car would be to buy one with useless batteries and power it from a home built diesel generator towed on a trailer behind the car. I cannot possibly see where the environmental gain would be in running an old Perkins P4.212 (you need a motor with RPM regulator) taken out of a scrapped combine harvester powering a home built generator to feed the electic car. Though that is what a ban on cars with combustion engines would lead to.
Wood gas would be a renewable opportunity but as we all know the efficiency is very low in a woodgas powered motor. Most of the energy in the wood becomes heat in the gasifyer. The heat is cooled away before the gas even reaches the motor. There are better ways of using the world's limited timber resources.
Methane produced from organic waste (sewer and maunure) will certainly be a very good alternative fuel but there will not be enough of it.
Unemployment would be another solution to the problem but as we all know a society where everybody lives off benefits is not going to last.
Quadrupled minimum wages would be another solution but I wonder what big business and the right wingers would say about that.
In short we are stuck with fossil fueled cars for now. Whatever the car manufacturer and dealer lobby says.
So what to do then?

I rekon that the first step must necesserarily be to reduce the dependency on cars and lorries. More transports must be carried on railways and on ships. A new syncronized transport network must be deviced where goods is carried by ship and then loaded onto trains in the harbours and offloaded onto loading docks in every town the railway passes so that the distance it has to be carried by lorry becomes as short as possible. Small harbours must be modernized and put to use and coastal trade by ship revived. Unnecssessary transports back and forth for "logistic reasons" must be either banned or taxed to death. "Just in time" delivery systems must become a thing of the past. Your components come with the weekly packet from Germany and if the parcel didn't get to the harbour in time to be loaded it will arrive a week later. Anyone whining about lead times can fetch his parcel from the DHL facility in Hamburg himself. By rowboat.
Supply chains must be shortened so cope with longer lead times. More production in Europe.

We must all learn to travel by bus, train, and ship when going on longer journeys. We must all say goodbye to winter holidays in Greece and visits with relatives in USA. From now on travelling will take time!
To make the best we can of the new limitations we need ferries (or packets if you like) running on timetables syncronized with the railway which in turn is syncronized with bus lines.
To reduce commuter traffic we need to break up the distinction between residential and industrial areas so that small business owners can live and work in one place. We need to set up bus lines everywhere and to distribute industries and businesses mere evenly. We also need to improve data networks and electric grids to allow more people to work from home.

When all this is done car and lorry traffic will probably be reduced enough to make it viable to go electric or methane with the rest..... or at least I hope so.....

 

[Just4Fun]

Upgrading the radiators to to accommodate the lower water temperatures will have to be done, typically the mean water temperature from an ASHP is 50deg C.

Yes, but ...
If the water temperatures are lower then the radiators will need to be upgraded, but water temperatures are not inevitably lower with a heat pump. Our radiators ran at a maximum temperature of 55C when we had an oil burner for heating and we did not not need to change the radiators when we fitted a heat pump. (We fitted a GSHP not an ASHP but the principle still holds). The heat pump runs the rads at the same temperatures as the oil burner used to. When we changed we installed the heat pump and that was it. Still expensive of course, but no rad upgrades, pipe changes or other system modifications.

 

[Misterdog]

So your rads were specked correctly to start with, though 95% of homes are not.
Many homes cannot even cope when the outside temperature falls below zero.

 

[Just4Fun]

So your rads were specked correctly to start with,

OK.

though 95% of homes are not.

I would not know what percentage of homes have under-sized radiators. I do know that my own experience proves that it is not inevitable that rads will need to be upgraded when fitting a heat pump.

Many homes cannot even cope when the outside temperature falls below zero.

If true, that is ridiculous. Even in the UK the temperature gets below zero often enough that all houses should cope with it.

 

[Flynnwood]

This is a really hazy memory and may be wrong but I think the two windmills info came from an Island community who had previously generated electricity from Diesel until installing a wind turbine. They then payed for their electricity at a price intended to pay back the loan or possibly grant and pay for two replacements within the projected life of the first unit.
My main memory was a reporter leaning into the wind struggling to interview two of the locals saying what happens when it's not windy and getting a look of complete incomprehension.

I recall having an online conversation with someone a long time ago who had retired from BP. His words:

"Windmills are just sitting there doing sweet FA cos the wind ain't blowing or they're clogged up with snow or summat.

Barometric pressure tends to be high in the winter in Blighty. High pressure means no wind. No wind, no leccy from windmills.

When I look at windmills, especially on a day when the horrible things are sitting there motionless like the fighting machines in Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds after the bacteria did for 'em, I just think that there's not enough energy there to pull the skin off a rice pudding.

Shell (and BP) used to be in the windmill biz in Blighty until a few years ago, but sold out completely because the underlying economics just weren't right.

Clearly, if you've got a bunch of built windmills sitting ruining the view somewhere, there will be a price at which any 12 year old spreadsheet jockey can make out an investment case for 'em"

 

[RobinBHM]

. 1st one is Govt pushing heat pumps

Well they did try insulation first…..but that failed miserably and people are having to remove it…..so heat pumps will be the next failure.

oh, apart from smart meters, another failure.


none of these things are a failure if you are running businesses getting these contracts…….

 

[RobinBHM]

Point 2. Can someone please tell my why every new build house in the UK isn't built with solar PV panels on the roof, and/or why every industrial building on every industrial estate in the UK doesn't have solar PV installed on them

good points.

 

[RobinBHM]

The simple fact is only the well off will be able to afford the capital investment to install renewables like solar power or buy Tesla cars.

So when energy prices ramp up to force people to go green, the poor will suffer the most.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Point 2. Can someone please tell my why every new build house in the UK isn't built with solar PV panels on the roof, and/or why every industrial building on every industrial estate in the UK doesn't have solar PV installed on them?

Where I live it is impossible to install a new solar system to supply the grid: it's full up. The system can't cope with any more randomly variable, only working for 30% of the time energy. A solar panel on every roof would cause chaos across the grid as the power and voltage leapt about according to the vagaries of any passing cloud.

Imagine the Sahara desert covered in solar panels supplying all of Europe (and Africa? ) with all the energy they need...and then the sun goes down. How do you balance it all? The simple answer is that you don't, currently. It may be that someone comes up with a cunning plan, and gravity batteries might be it, but for now it's just not possible.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

So when energy prices ramp up to force people to go green, the poor will suffer the most.

The choice is to fix the problems as they come up, if they arise - or fix the problems now in anticipation of the dire consequences of the runaway Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Emergency etc, so on and so forth.

As I see it the equation is simple: how many people must die now, in order to save how many potential people at some point in the future? No one likes to talk about it though.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

If the intention is that eventually all grid energy is zero carbon, why does it make sense to install PV on domestic or other buildings:

• is a domestic roof a better location - probably not unless aligned for maximum efficiency.
• do the economics favour 4KW arrays rather than 100KW++ arrays in a field - probably not due to economies of scale in installation and associated kit - cabling, inverters etc etc
• is it cheaper for the consumer to have their own panels - depends entirely on government subsidies
• does home PV reduce the maximum load on the distribution networks - unclear
• do home PV transfer the funding of investment from energy companies/national grid to the consumer - yes

So it looks like there is little or no fundamental environmental case for domestic installations - for most it will be an economic decision. It is however clear why the government may chose to encourage home installation.

There may be a self sufficiency aspect to the decision which is neither environmental or economic - particularly if combined with battery storage.

 

[heimlaga]

If the intention is that eventually all grid energy is zero carbon, why does it make sense to install PV on domestic or other buildings:

• is a domestic roof a better location - probably not unless aligned for maximum efficiency.
• do the economics favour 4KW arrays rather than 100KW++ arrays in a field - probably not due to economies of scale in installation and associated kit - cabling, inverters etc etc
• is it cheaper for the consumer to have their own panels - depends entirely on government subsidies
• does home PV reduce the maximum load on the distribution networks - unclear
• do home PV transfer the funding of investment from energy companies/national grid to the consumer - yes

So it looks like there is little or no fundamental environmental case for domestic installations - for most it will be an economic decision. It is however clear why the government may chose to encourage home installation.

There may be a self sufficiency aspect to the decision which is neither environmental or economic - particularly if combined with battery storage.

To my understanding it is about spreading the risk. If you have 40 hectares f solar panels in one place and a cloud passes by you get a significant dip in production. If you have a few square metres here and there it is less likely that a disturbance happens everywhere at once.
It may also be about not wasting valuable farmland or woodland which we have other uses for. You don't normally farm much on a roof...... not since it went out of fashion to have goats grazing on turf roofs.
This is my understanding. I may be wrong though.

 

[Misterdog]

As I see it the equation is simple: how many people must die now, in order to save how many potential people at some point in the future? No one likes to talk about it though.

It took 60 years to remove lead from petrol used in cars, ( July 2021)

https://theconversation.com/leaded-...lution-may-linger-for-a-very-long-time-167214
How many have/will die as a result of that ?

Thinking that we can control the worlds Carbon output in 20/30 years is a bit laughable in my opinion.

 

[TominDales]

On these tariffs, we would need an air or ground source heat pump to have a COP of nearly 6 to break even on heating costs. Since they seem to average out at almost 3 over the year, from what I've read, our heating bills will double. Much as I'd like to be greener, doubled heating bills are not much of an incentive.
Maybe there's a mistake in my figgering?

Hi just seen this post. My look into the crystal ball of future energy costs is a follows. Cost of electricity will rise more slowly than gas, for 3 reasons, i) electricity currently takes the hit for climate change levys and for upgrade costs to the national grid, both elec and gas grids, government policy will swap this over putting more fixed costs into gas and less onto elect. (it was policy to put the cost onto elect as it suited the government to have cheap gas as its was from the North sea and so gas infrastructure was prioritised and subsidised), I expect that to go into revers with gas subsidising the electric grid in future. 2) Off-shore wind costs will fall as turbines get even bigger. 3) gas will become scares and hence a bit more expensive. one way or another the government will fix the prices of elec and gas to get us onto GSHP

 

[TominDales]

It would be sacrilege to put tea in a flask obviously! Stick to just hot water then make cuppa soup, tea, hot chocolate whatever in the mug.
That particular flask keeps the water so hot it seems no different to just boiled from the kettle. Brodies do Earl Grey in a pocket friendly sachet if out and about, then I don't need milk.

Black tea is best brewed below boiling point, between 90 and 98c depending on type, so a good flask may well have water at 90c. Early grey is better at 90c than 98/100c.

 

[TominDales]

I realise that - which is why I mentioned the GSHP - the hot water we get from that is potable and sterilised weekly (2-hour heated > 60C) and there is no header tank - ours is a pressurised sealed system.

Older properties with vented HW systems are indeed ghastly.



We have a circulating HW system as it's a large property - there is no cold water run-out from the hot tap - it's hot pretty much instantly. Again, older and smaller properties are unlikely to have this.

But if you can, filling the kettle with potable hot water saves more energy...

A good brew of tea needs oxygen in the water, does the water in the hot tap have enough? I suspect you would not have continued if the tea tastes bad so I presume it has enough. I suspect most houses will move to a system like yours as we rip out our gas boilers to prepare for a heat pump future.

 

[TominDales]

I am of the same opinion. It just seemed like common sense to me that incandescent lamps are just heaters which give off some light, 10% light and 90% heat, so if you change to LED, 60% light 40% heat (that's overall efficiency) you are reducing the amount of heat produced. If the house temperature is controlled and remains the same, the CH will have to supply the difference, so savings will be minimal.
In a hotter climate, it's a different story, there would be a bigger saving because the air conditioning would run less to remove the extra heat from the incandescent bulbs.
I did some calculations on my usage and the total power consumption has gone up slightly, converting everything to LED. The reason is, I have much higher lighting levels in and around the house with incandescent, 21500 total lumens for Incandescent and 64700 total lumens for LED.

I'm not suggesting we go back to incandescent. I love LED lighting, but they didn't give the whole picture. I would like to see how much energy it takes to make an LED bulb compared to incandescent, the whole life cost of both, including disposal and recycling.

You raise a number of intersecting points. firstly with LED you have added more light, it is more affordable so we use more, that is always a problem with advances in technology, they tend to increase consumption. Our household is the same, my wife and I need a lot more lumens to see than the kids so we have increased the number of lumens in the home with LED and also added a lot more outside lights. That said, LED use 10x less electricity than incandescent so you are still winning, I'm surprised you electricity bill hasn't fallen, I'd expect you lighting to use on 1/3 of the electricity of the incandescent even at 64k lumens. Maybe they are left on longer? or the kettle or washer dryer, which are the dominant users in our household have outweighed the light saving.
Overall LEDs have reduced the world's office electricity bill by 25% that is a lot of CO2 saved. Its a genuine win win, less CO2 and less cost.

The other question you asked was life cycle analysis of LEDs vs Incandescent bulbs. In this case LEDs win hands down:
1. Firstly they use 90% less electricity whilst running and that is by far the biggest impact on the environment.
2. Secondly they last longer, on average about 15 times longer. Some last 50,000 hours, but although the semiconductor will last for 50,000 or more hours its usually the ballast that gives up, anytime from 10,000 to 25,000 hours. So you need 10 to 25 (say 15 on average) times more bulbs for one LED.
3. Finally LEDs use less harmful materials. They use a small amount of semiconductor (silicon, Nitrogen, gallium Phosphorus) and quite a lot of aluminium in the heat sink, but aluminium is 100% recyclable. Incandescent are made with glass which uses heat to form and also contain tungsten which is a scares metal, although Gallium is also a metal that is getting hard to source. The amount of gallium in a LED is tiny 0.025g vs 1g of Tungsten in an incandescent so gram for gram there is 400 times less rare metal. However even at these low concentrations, people are beginning to look at ways to recycle the metals. I should add a CFL contains 0.004g of mercury, not enough to harm us if one breaks but another win from switching to LEDs.