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No more gas boilers? You must be joking!

Former Community Member
Former Community Member

The media seems to be awash today with the announcement that the government HOPE to have no more new gas boilers sold after 2035. The devil of course is in the details….

At the moment I am working on a project at the HQ of a local parts supplier to do away with the existing (quite new) gas boilers and convert the place to VRV AC system. The existing gas loading is about 900kW so if I stick in a VRV system drawing about 300kW that should do. This would add about 400A per phase. Assume every other office block on the estate decides to ‘go green’ and do the same and straight away you are looking at some serious deficiencies in the local power infrastructure. Add in charging electric cars (we already have issues trying to charge 7 electric cars at 4 charge points in this office) and the potential for thousands of homes to all be heated by electric and I foresee a looming catastrophe.

Of course, the obvious solution is to upgrade the local and national grids to futureproof them and bring online more generating capacity but do you see any new power stations being built (apart from Hinkley)? Any new power lines/substations appearing? Or are we going to swap gas heating for electric heating run from gas generation? And what about the existing nuclear stations reaching the end of their lives? Discuss….

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    As has been noted elsewhere, reducing the UK gas consumption will be much harder than it was to increase it when north sea gas came ashore in the 1960s and the following decade when most of us saw ‘central heating’ for the first time, and new generations got out of the habit of using hot water bottles in winter and scaping ice off the inside of the windows in the morning.

    To some degree that cooler life will need to return, but we also have the option to make our buildings a lot less lossy, and that is a better place to start. A straight swap of wasting electricity instead of wasting gas, even with heat pumps and the like, will help no-one, especially while it is still gas burnt to generate half the electricity. And as you note the distribution will not stand it.

    It is not as sexy but I firmly believe that polyurethane foam and rockwool will save moremoney and more lives than fancy boxes with lots of electronics in. Pity really as  I design the latter  for a living…

    Mike

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    As has been noted elsewhere, reducing the UK gas consumption will be much harder than it was to increase it when north sea gas came ashore in the 1960s and the following decade when most of us saw ‘central heating’ for the first time, and new generations got out of the habit of using hot water bottles in winter and scaping ice off the inside of the windows in the morning.

    To some degree that cooler life will need to return, but we also have the option to make our buildings a lot less lossy, and that is a better place to start. A straight swap of wasting electricity instead of wasting gas, even with heat pumps and the like, will help no-one, especially while it is still gas burnt to generate half the electricity. And as you note the distribution will not stand it.

    It is not as sexy but I firmly believe that polyurethane foam and rockwool will save moremoney and more lives than fancy boxes with lots of electronics in. Pity really as  I design the latter  for a living…

    Mike

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