Electric Heatpumps.

There’s at least 50 plus years before gas will run out. 

Only true with significant caveats. The stuff that flowed out of the North sea with minimal engineering effort from large salt caverns and made us rich in the 1980s is pretty much all gone.  We can push the remainder of it out now by injecting seawater under pressure but it is slower and an expensive and energy intense game.   There may be gas for sale from other countries whose politics we do not like who will probably have the easy to extract stuff for some decades to come, but they may not sell it to us so cheap when we have none of our own. 

Tightly trapped gas in small pockets that require fracking and other tricks to get it to the surface we have plenty of, but that is not so cheap as it needs a larger number of small holes,  and there are concerns about risks like contaminating ground water to consider.

Yes, there will be gas, but it may not be at a price we are so happy to pay as we have been used to. In fact I thing there will be some methane underground pretty much for ever, as it will be in places or deposit sizes that make it simply too hard to bother with, though as price rises that threshold of what is worth it also moves with it.

Mike.

 edit some figures to back that up shale gas in the UK.. a report from 2018.

The break-even price at which shale gas can be sold varies between 0.95 and 114.44 pence/MJ, averaging at 9.47 pence/MJ, depending on the volume of gas produced by a shale gas well. The latter is two times higher than imported liquefied natural gas, around 30% more expensive than UK natural gas and three times greater than the price of US shale gas.

Not as clear as I would have stated it, and of course that was at 2018 prices. But back then it meant  that something like all but the bottom 10% or so of the larger and most  easy to extract deposits of  shale gas in the UK would cost more to extract than you could sell it for.

food for thought?

  With my County Councillor's hat on; something else to consider?  Last week I was talking with a colleague Councillor who mentioned that he had considered changing to a Heat Pump when his boiler failed a few years ago. However one problem he came up against was that in Wales, at least, the installation of a Heat Pump is NOT a Permitted Development (in the same way that a TV aerial is) and that you have to apply for Planning Permission. This can take weeks (if not months) that to one side, in Flintshire and likely elsewhere, if the Applicant is either a County Councillor or a Council Officer, then their Planning Application cannot be determined by a Planning Officer under Delegated Powers, but has to go to a full Planning Committee hearing. Time then drags on…  My colleague chose gas again.

 (I once witnessed a County Councillor's planning application being rejected - the Councillor concerned not being allowed to be present in the Committee Room. When she heard the result she was not best pleased, but accepted it. And then she found out that the photographs shown of her property during the meeting were not of her property, but someone elses.  But since it had been refused, it necessitated another Application……)

A relation of mine has a ground source heat pump in a property designed for same. After some years (8 or 10 I think) they needed a new compressor. Not cheap. Plus of course initially they needed a 3-phase supply.

I wonder what they do in those rural areas where the 11kV to the outback is 2-wire single-phase? More expense of a 3-phase converter perhaps?

Clive

Chris Pearson: 
 

 

Incidentally, I am sitting here, lightly clothed and with no heating. Quite remarkable for the second half of October.

What colour are they? Spotted or striped?? When I werra lad we couldn't afford clothes, we 'ad ta sit int puddle naked ont common to git warm.

Z.

When I werra lad we used ta dreem abat sittin in't puddle ont common ~ an u try an tel young folk t'day ,,,,

Colin Haggett: 
 

Chris Pearson: 
 

Jon Steward: 
 

More green madness.

When will it end!

Oh. I know. When the money runs out!

Or the gas runs out.

Or there are no suppliers left. As of yesterday, my supply has been taken over - from a competitive fixed rate to a standard variable one. Problem is that I cannot shop around until the changeover has been completed. ?

There’s at least 50 plus years before gas will run out. 

That's fine then.  No need to do anything for 49 years

A plumber who doesn't like heat pumps, who would've guessed?

Makes absolutely no argument against heat pumps except he thinks it isn't going to be any cleaner than a gas boiler. 

If you have a heat pump with a lowly 2 C.O.P, then you put 1kW in and get 2kW out. The initial 1kW is 25% renewable, 21% nuclear, and the rest is imported or fossil fuels. I put 1kW of gas into my boiler, that is what I get out (minus efficiency losses of course) - which is 100% fossil fuel.

As for the cost side of things, I haven't looked into that and he mentions it - but doesn't address it at all (perhaps he can't because it's cheaper and that invalidates his argument ??) I will definitely be considering getting a heat pump, especially with rising costs of gas.

As things stand now it won't be  cheaper, assuming you are on the gas mains, and it certainly won't be cheaper if you have existing heating based on pumping water round radiators.

kW for kW the price of gas is quite a lot lower than electricity, even at the record high.

It will not always be so, but while we generate electricity from gas, and that state of the art is about 50% efficient, and that will continue  a while yet, expect the two sets of prices to rise  in a similar ratio.

If your house has no heating, insulate it. If you are fitting a complete heating system you might wish to size rads and bury pipes in the floor ready to suit the lukewarm temperatures that a heat pump  at high COP produces. But if you already have the smaller rads that assume water  at 50-60C from a boiler, then to use a heatpump they would need to be changed.

If however you heat by lugging calor gas bottles or having oil delivered, then it may well be worth looking at properly right now, but I fear there are not that many folk skilled in the art out there, and a few snake oil men.

Mike.

The numbers say it all, but they do not necessarily say what we want to hear. 

If I were to insulate my house (wall cladding, new windows; roof insulation is already done) and amortise that cost over 30 years, it is over €4K/year. Our gas bill (purely for heating) has been round €2.5K/yr (although I imagine this will be going up).

I have radiative radiators, big fat ones with lots of ribs that spiders like to spin their webs between (I like house spiders), not the cladded ones that primarily work by convection. They love 50°. They like 30° a lot less. Not so wonderful for heat pumps. 

I had thought of the following. Maintain basic temperature at or above 14° with heat pump and existing radiators. Install a PV installation with battery, and spot-heat rooms being used with Dyson-type air heaters, which can get any of the space being occupied by humans, including the 80m^3 room, up to 21° in a few minutes. Back-of-envelope calculations tell me this should work. It is carbon-neutral (if the electricity supply for the heat-pump is). And I think it might be cheaper than insulating, although price estimates fluctuate wildly.