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Never mind the EVCPs, what about the boilers.

Chris Pearson
Apparently gas boilers should be banned from 2025.


At the moment, well under 10% of our energy is supplied by electricity: it is mostly gas. Use of an electric vehicle could double our leccy consumption, which would be bad enough; but (a) trebling the cost of our energy would be painful, and (b) how would the network and generation cope?
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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Thermal power station coolant outputs are generally in the 30-40 C range, this is warm enough to be useable as an input to a heat pump and hugely increase its COP compared to ground source or especially air source.


    If you wanted to directly use the heat for say underfloor heating you might prefer a higher temperature which would come at the expense of a modest decrease in thermal efficiency for the electricity generation. Say you raised the coolant outlet from 35C to 50C, and for the sake of argument assume the hot side is a PWR at 275 C. We've lowered the theoretical efficiency from 44% to 41%. For the same thermal input the plant has lost around 5% of its electrical output but now produces usable heat sufficient for many thousands of buildings which then no longer need to be electrically heated. You can still have a net win here.
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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Thermal power station coolant outputs are generally in the 30-40 C range, this is warm enough to be useable as an input to a heat pump and hugely increase its COP compared to ground source or especially air source.


    If you wanted to directly use the heat for say underfloor heating you might prefer a higher temperature which would come at the expense of a modest decrease in thermal efficiency for the electricity generation. Say you raised the coolant outlet from 35C to 50C, and for the sake of argument assume the hot side is a PWR at 275 C. We've lowered the theoretical efficiency from 44% to 41%. For the same thermal input the plant has lost around 5% of its electrical output but now produces usable heat sufficient for many thousands of buildings which then no longer need to be electrically heated. You can still have a net win here.
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