Heat pumps and home electrical capacity

[Bletchleyite]

Heat pumps are all well and good but what use are they to tower block, maisonette and those who do not have a garden.

Building heating is the solution here - one heat pump for the building (or maybe two for a bit of redundancy). I'd hate to see UK buildings covered in warts (individual aircon units) like Asian ones often are, they're pig-ugly and a really inefficient way of doing things. But as others have said they'll more likely be air-source than ground-source. It might sound odd, but if the temperature of the air is above zero Kelvin there is heat to extract.

 

[Energy]

Building heating is the solution here - one heat pump for the building (or maybe two for a bit of redundancy). I'd hate to see UK buildings covered in warts (individual aircon units) like Asian ones often are, they're pig-ugly and a really inefficient way of doing things. But as others have said they'll more likely be air-source than ground-source. It might sound odd, but if the temperature of the air is above zero Kelvin there is heat to extract.

So each one still has a boiler but they share a few heat pumps outside? Could definitely work, you can already split refrigerant lines with between multiple units.

 

[158756]

Remember that gas boilers, along with gas cookers, will be banned from new built houses from 2025, (if the Government sticks to its own ruling). That means buildings will be designed to accommodate other non-CO2 creating heating and cooking solutions. If they don't, they won't get approval from planners or building control.
So there will be appropriate provision for heat extraction or sinking (they are likely to be offered with heat pump heating and cooling). Add to that the reduction in allowed heat loss from the building itself, the issue of heat pumps is likely to be just another thing for builders to design in.
With the trimming of the market for new gas appliances, manfacturers are likely to turn to other heating solutions and that will pave the way for the administration to incrementally discourage the perpetual use of gas in the replacement of old systems. Ultimately, price adjustments in the cost of gas, like other hydrocarbon fuels (petrol/diesel) will be used to flush out the majority of remaining users. So expect the same sort of reaction that there was to the banning of tungsten lightbulbs.Like the stockpiled lightbulbs, the number of working boilers will steadily tend to zero.

New builds won't be a major issue - like you say heat pumps and electric cookers will be built in from the start. (Do these houses have any form of heating in a power cut?).

Replacing existing systems on the other hand is not a small job. Substantial subsidies will be needed to drive mass adoption of heat pumps, and cookers are only likely to be replaced when the whole kitchen is. The problem with trying to use price rises to force people to abandon gas is who you are targeting. Early adopters are usually much better off than the average consumer. Certainly you can't start putting prices up until social housing has switched, and without a comprehensive public investment programme the last gas users will still likely be people in poorly insulated homes unable to afford new systems or reliant on uninterested landlords.

 

[AM9]

New builds won't be a major issue - like you say heat pumps and electric cookers will be built in from the start. (Do these houses have any form of heating in a power cut?). ....

No more than a house with a normal central heating system does now. If the mains goes off, the gas valve in the boiler and the pump won't work. On a more constructive note though, with the proliferation of EVs, from about 10 years there is likely to be increasing availability of hand-me-down batteries which have been put into use as buffers for peak demand electricity.

... Replacing existing systems on the other hand is not a small job. Substantial subsidies will be needed to drive mass adoption of heat pumps, and cookers are only likely to be replaced when the whole kitchen is. The problem with trying to use price rises to force people to abandon gas is who you are targeting. Early adopters are usually much better off than the average consumer. Certainly you can't start putting prices up until social housing has switched, and without a comprehensive public investment programme the last gas users will still likely be people in poorly insulated homes unable to afford new systems or reliant on uninterested landlords.

The first action is to define a (much ) improved insulation standard for all new dwellings. This could be done almost immediately against a (say) 5 year enforcement date. The planning process would be sensitive to applications that didn't fully comply with all the relevant standards. The additional cost of implementing the thermal performance improvements in new build would be insignificant, and the resulting asset woulld be cheaper to live in.
The first physical priority is a programme to increase the quality of insulation in as many existing homes that need it. Rather than the farcical 'green deal' which cynically didn't want anybody to get 'something for nothing', the administration needs to view domestic energy efficiency as an investment as part of their commitment to decarbonisation of the country.
Starting with the most urgent cases, - poorly insulated social accomodation, where residents are closing every window to reduce draughts and in the process, sealing in harmful fungal spores to the detriment of their health. If a holistic view is taken, preventing that provides a substantial improvement in the health of that part of society with it's attendant hit on national health and welfare costs. If it means additional costs for LAs, then so be it, central government makes it available as ring-fenced capital.
In the case of private rented properties, there should be a carrot and stick approach, i.e some assistance in the costs to bring properites up to defined standards (which should be linked to a licensing system), but a penalty if no action is taken - ultimately removing the right to let sub-standard properties. Such a scheme should protect tenants from any costs that the landord incurs intended to increase the market value of the property.

If all that can be underway over 15-25 years, there would be a reducing trend in the domestic heating energy requirement which would make matching the additional investment in electric distribution to the increase in load more viable. That sort of period is also compatible with the typical lifecycle of kitchen and boiler replacement. The white goods equipment industry would respond with items that are designed to work in the new environment, - they would need to as the existing fossil fuelled kit wouldn't be attractive with higher gas prices.

 

[158756]

No more than a house with a normal central heating system does now. If the mains goes off, the gas valve in the boiler and the pump won't work. On a more constructive note though, with the proliferation of EVs, from about 10 years there is likely to be increasing availability of hand-me-down batteries which have been put into use as buffers for peak demand electricity.

I was thinking of being able to light a fire (and the hob). Yes it's something we only use a few times a year at most, but it's certainly nice to have on a cold winter's evening.

 

[AM9]

I was thinking of being able to light a fire (and the hob). Yes it's something we only use a few times a year at most, but it's certainly nice to have on a cold winter's evening.

There are many homes without any heating other than a gas fired central heating boilwer, (my home for instance). The intention of the Government is to not have gas connections to homes inthe future, so everybody would be in the same situation, hence the possibility of battery backup facilities. Of course there's no guarantee that any supply to a house will never fail, but the resilience of electric supplies has in my experience certainly improved over the last 50 years. The reliance on a single source of energy is likely to require that it made even more so because the convenience of perpetual CO2 creation is unsustainable in the near future.