Really cold day today and wind and solar are able to provide only 8% of the total power we are using.

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Ilovecheese

We need to find better ways of storing energy.
If we want nuclear power we should put our money where our mouth is and build them ourselves, not pay for a foreign company to build them, who will then rip us off for generations to come.

Yes, that would be ideal. However, back in the 90s, when the then government decided the UKAEA was no longer needed the highly skilled scientists, technical staff and design engineers lost their jobs. Nuclear engineering courses were no longer in demand and as a result we no longer have the skills and experience in this country. Hence we have had to look abroad.

Laughs in Quebec winter...
Try a -35 C plus a wind chill factor of -10 while our hydro is supplying 90% of our electricity and wind power is 4% of the rest .

There are ways to maximise green power if the will is there.
Oh and Quebec isn't the leader in Canadian green power.

There isn’t an energy source without a downside, nuclear has been neglected for far too long, alongside Solar and Wind we could get close to all green energy and meet our targets but decisions have to be made now.

Grantanow

That is why we need nuclear power. Unfortunately our Tory and Labour government failed to build nuclear stations for years, probably because CND and Greeneace gzve nuclear a bad name and because there are few scientists in senior political roles. We do of course buy nuclear generated eectricity from France which did not hesitate to build several nuclear stations.

Couldn't agree more. i was on the Local Liaison Committee of a local power station for nearly 20 years, so I have been monitoring the day to day variation of the sources of our power and it has been only too clear from the start of wind/solar power could never be relied on to provide what is known as base power.

Weather systems seem to always engulf all the British Isles, if the wind isn't blowing in Scotland, it is generally not blowing anywhere else so production drops drastically. That classic winter weather, clear skies, bright sunlight and freezing cold temperatures is accomanied by no wind.

As for battery storage, well we have seen how small high storage batteries can explode. it started with some telephone batteries, but we hear of exploding batteries in bikes and cars and when batteries do explode the ensuing fire is very difficult to extinguish. Imagine a huge power storage battery holding 500MW of power exploding or catching fire!

More needs to be done to develop water power, there were plans for a necklace of lagoons down the South Wales coast, starting with the Severn barrage, all fell victim to government expenditure cuts. The money spent on HS2, Osborne and cameron's vanity project, would have easily funded this work - and it would have provided 20% of our power. That and nuclear. As James Loverock pointed out, nuclear power is the safest form of generation when you look at the deathrate per power source.

That is why we need nuclear power. Unfortunately our Tory and Labour government failed to build nuclear stations for years, probably because CND and Greeneace gzve nuclear a bad name and because there are few scientists in senior political roles. We do of course buy nuclear generated eectricity from France which did not hesitate to build several nuclear stations.

Barleyfield I always made it quite clear that I was talking about my response to underfloor heating and whyI would not want it in any house I lived in. I ponted out that other people with me were happy with the system.

We do not all have to be the same, and on this subject my views are diffeent to others and I am quite comfortable with that.

Barleyfields

I couldn’t agree more, but try telling Milliband that.

What do you think of Trump leaving the Paris Agreement and vowing to drill dozens of new oil sites Monica.. truly he is only thinking of America

M0nica

Barleyfields

Once the room is up to temperature it switches off, so the floor isn’t permanently warm. I have lived with it for about 12 years now throughout the whole house and have never found the floor uncomfortably warm.

The floor was never uncomfortably warm. Everyone else with us was quite happy with it, and I did not find the temperature uncomfortable, but, while I do not like cold feet, I do not like my feet to be too warm and I kept wanting a nice cold tile (the floors were tiled) for the pleasure of the coolness on my warm feet.

The fact that everyone else was happy with it means it was just you! I am always perfectly comfortable with our underfloor heating. The house is not very old, very well insulated and we have an air source heat pump.

One of my nephews has a ground source heat pump with underfloor heating and it works well - but it’s a brand new highly insulated house with plenty of space. Running cost aren’t especially cheap, it’s a spacious 4 bed detached, if it was an older house it would cost a lot more.

Barleyfields

Once the room is up to temperature it switches off, so the floor isn’t permanently warm. I have lived with it for about 12 years now throughout the whole house and have never found the floor uncomfortably warm.

The floor was never uncomfortably warm. Everyone else with us was quite happy with it, and I did not find the temperature uncomfortable, but, while I do not like cold feet, I do not like my feet to be too warm and I kept wanting a nice cold tile (the floors were tiled) for the pleasure of the coolness on my warm feet.

Once the room is up to temperature it switches off, so the floor isn’t permanently warm. I have lived with it for about 12 years now throughout the whole house and have never found the floor uncomfortably warm.

Barleyfields

The best thing about air source heat pumps, I have found, is that they work with underfloor heating to dispense with the need for radiators and associated pipe work.

I really do not like underfloor heating. We had it in a holiday house we rented in December. It made my feet too warm for my comfort, although DH was quite happy wth it.

We shouldn’t expect big changes in the energy use in the UK any time soon because there isn’t enough generation capacity to replace gas.

According to OFGEM the average house uses 4 times as much gas as electricity, currently we are struggling to maintain that level of electricity, even doubling the capacity is a dream. It’s not a case of storage, that will not change anything.

Today renewables are generating 10% of our Electricity, gas + nuclear most of the rest with some import, that’s not counting the gas we use directly for heating, there is a mountain to climb to replace gas. We could conserve gas using it as a backup to nuclear and renewable which would mean a much easier target to achieve but still 50yrs development.

The best thing about air source heat pumps, I have found, is that they work with underfloor heating to dispense with the need for radiators and associated pipe work.

Lathyrus3

Thanks to those who answered my query. Ground source not really an option for most then.

I lived on an estate where the Housing Association built with Air pumps. The Winter bills were astronomical and after 3 years they had to install gas boilers instead.
This was about 10 years ago.

So how does the pump extract heat from low temperature air. I’ve tried to look this up too but all it says is something about a coil that heats the extracted air. An electric powered coil? So you need power from another source?

A heat pump is just a fridge in reverse, a fridge circulates coolant through the air in the fridge to cool the it and then sheds the heat outside the fridge (hence that pipework grid at the back of the fridge.

A heat pump sucks heat out of the air outside and the heated air then sheds the heat in the house. It can extract heat from air down to temperatures of -5. After that you have to turn electric heaters on.

My feeling is that it is a complicated way of doing something that can be done just as effectively and much more cheaply by electric boilers and room heaters, we just need to move the green taxes from electricity to gas, so that the cost per Kw hour to the consumer is the same for both.

M0nica

The modular nuclear units have only been market ready since the coal fired stations closed down and not all sites would have been suitable anyway.

RR are testing them but they are not market ready yet, existing sites have all the transmission infrastructure, if those are not suitable the the gas generating stations could be used but they still need a large water supply for cooling.

My guess it will be 20yrs before modular nuclear becomes a reality, currently Trawsfynnyd and Wylfa former nuclear sites are being developed as testing sites for the first modular nuclear generators.

Yes, an air source heat pump needs electricity to operate it.

Lathyrus3

Thanks to those who answered my query. Ground source not really an option for most then.

I lived on an estate where the Housing Association built with Air pumps. The Winter bills were astronomical and after 3 years they had to install gas boilers instead.
This was about 10 years ago.

So how does the pump extract heat from low temperature air. I’ve tried to look this up too but all it says is something about a coil that heats the extracted air. An electric powered coil? So you need power from another source?

Only down to -5C below that they use electrical heating, so ground source is much more efficient but costs a lot more to install.
In urban areas a deep borehole would have to be used because there isn’t space for the near surface - 1 metre deep pipe work.
It’s only worthwhile if you have a well insulated house, ideally with underfloor heating, if you do use radiators they need to be much larger

Thanks to those who answered my query. Ground source not really an option for most then.

I lived on an estate where the Housing Association built with Air pumps. The Winter bills were astronomical and after 3 years they had to install gas boilers instead.
This was about 10 years ago.

So how does the pump extract heat from low temperature air. I’ve tried to look this up too but all it says is something about a coil that heats the extracted air. An electric powered coil? So you need power from another source?

Lathyrus3

Posting posting.. Oh dear…….

Most heat pumps are air sourced heat pumps. Ground sourced heat pumps require very large areas of open land are impractical unless you own an acre or so of land.

The modular nuclear units have only been market ready since the coal fired stations closed down and not all sites would have been suitable anyway.

M0nica

I disagree with David49 on the difficulty replacing gas. All that is needed is to build nuclear power staions. The small packeged ones like those produced by Rolls Royce and othe companies, essentially based on the generators used in nuclear subs.

If the green taxes were removed from electricity and put on gas instead, the cost of both fuels would be similar and most people could then simply replace their gas boiler with an electric powered one, which for most people would cost well under £2,000, instead of the great expense and disruption of installing a heat pump.

The problem seems to be that governments want to go from our current state to net zero in one huge jump, when t could acctually be achieved much earlier if they would consider intermediate steps towards Nirvana.

Heat pumps may be perfection but on the way why not redistribute 'green' taxes, to make electricity cheaper, gas more expensive, so that cheaper electricity boilers or room heaters are a viable alternative on the journey to heat pumps for all, and install small scale nuclear fission until we have nuclear fusion.

The logical choice would have been to replace the coal fired power stations with Modular nuclear power plants, but logic is in short supply in the UK. The nuclear part might be quite small but they only generate steam so need turbines and a cooling system to operate. They need to be either coastal or close to a large river, rather more complex than a submarine surrounded by water.

Heat Pumps, ground source pumps do cool the soil but only in a small area, most are air source.

Ground source heat pumps need quite a large area of land Lathyrus so are not really suitable for today’s cramped modern developments. So it’s very unlikely that a lot of people will be using them. Most developers install air source heat pumps which take up little space and are apparently cheaper.