Electric cars.

[Northern_Brewer]

This was announced last year and its the first i have heard of it, i wonder if a big success this could lead to production for ICE vehicles in the future?

It's a shame they are building this huge plant just to supply the bog roll factory.

As we've discussed before, it will take ~10% of current UK electricity production just to "green" our existing consumption of hydrogen from fossil fuels, and a lot more for the chemical industry and others to replace methane in chemical processes. There won't be any hydrogen left for inefficient processes with good alternatives to hydrogen - like running cars.

Already this week we've seen the effective collapse of plans to use hydrogen in UK domestic heating - without the trials in Redcar and Ellesmere Port they just won't have any data for widespread rollout to happen in the timescales needed, it looks like we could be heat pump only from 2025. And the main reason for binning the Redcar trial was they didn't have enough hydrogen to put into it.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

it looks like we could be heat pump only from 2025.

If what i have read and seen about heat pumps is true we are doomed and i feel sorry for those in countries that are a lot colder all year round than ours.

 

[Agentgonzo]

If what i have read and seen about heat pumps is true we are doomed and i feel sorry for those in countries that are a lot colder all year round than ours.

There is a lot of scare mongering around

I believe they're used very well in Scandinavia and Greenland, where renewable energy is easier to come by. They're not a magic bullet but not terrible. They do require a change in the way you approach heating your property though - have it on longer at a lower power

 

[Rodcx500z]

I know one guy who works in this industry and he will not have one under any circumstances, to use his words not mine they are a pita and a waste of time and money

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I'm interested in what solution you are advocating.....

Unlike a lot of people, I'm not advocating a specific mix, primarily I just want the mix that is cheapest and achievable, whilst giving us acceptable energy security and reliability. With current technology - and note, I've not mentioned CO2 so far - for the UK that probably looks something like 70% wind/solar, 15% nuclear/biomass, 10% gas and 5% storage. Maybe it's 60% wind/solar, maybe it's 75% wind/solar, whatever.

But it's the current state of technology that is primarily pushing us in that direction - (our legal obligation to) net zero is relatively marginal in that, it just pushes some of the gas generation into other forms. But the mix advocated by the government advisors in the report I mentioned above (as I say, do read it if you're interested in this stuff even if it's far from perfect) seems an ambitious but doable place to aim for - 70% wind/solar, 20% nuclear/biomass/tidal, 8% storage, 2% gas in 2035.

Again, I'm only interested in the general direction, not the detail at this stage.

- are you saying that nuclear isn't a viable backup to renewables or are you just pointing out its limits ? My sense is that a large number of smaller reactors would, based on the law of averages, provide a backup that is net more Whilst one nuclear power station might be somewhat unpredictable a cluster of them would be very likely to meet our needs.

I'm not saying whether anything is a viable backup or not, merely observing facts in the real world, which are often absent from this debate. And the fact is that the entire nuclear fleet of France saw availability in the real world drop as low as 35%, which is not just lower than offshore wind, it's barely more "reliable" than onshore wind. That is at odds with the perception of nuclear in some quarters.

The other lesson from France is that the law of averages doesn't save you - nuclear power stations of a certain age all tend to go wrong in the same way at the same time. And if they're of the same design - necessary for economies of scale - then the low bar for safety shutdowns mean that if one goes wrong, the others tend to get shut down at least until they've been inspected.

And the main problem is cost - the French prototype of the reactor at Hinkley Point C was promised to cost €3.3bn but ended up costing €19.1bn for 1.65GWe (£10bn/GWe), and at the moment Hinkley Point C is due to cost £32.7bn for 3.2GWe. That excludes running costs, maintaining Sellafield for fuel processing etc. And based on existing nuclear plants you could see availability of 75-80%. Whereas the Dogger Bank windfarm is costing £9bn for 3.2GWe. Current offshore windfarms are averaging 45% of capacity, Hywind has been getting as high as 57.1% and I've seen suggestions Dogger Bank will manage the low 50s%. So you need to adjust a bit for capacity factors - but not that much.

The fact remains nuclear is just stupidly expensive compared to the alternatives, and that's before you get to how slow it is to build. Gordon Brown's government decided in principle to build new nuclear power stations in 2008, and Hinkley Point was named as one of 8 sites in 2010 - but it won't produce electricity until 2028 at the earliest. At that rate, any new nuclear wouldn't come on stream until 2041 - can we afford to wait that long? Not that any government is going to announce new nuclear sites a year before an election.

- or are you saying that renewables and storage could be enough for the UK and that we don't need nuclear or fossil backups ?

If government advisors are saying 15-20% nuclear and 2% gas is plausible for 2035 then let's have that as a starting point and see where we go from there. Replacing gas totally is dependent on the development of hydrogen storage for the chemical industry, which we're a long way from just yet but it is happening slowly.

- i'm also intrigued as to what you mean by "live within our means" - are you advocating we reduce energy consuming activities to cut our demand ?

I said "we need to start living within our means when it comes to energy imports" - as in, depending on gas which is >50% imported is not sustainable, as we can't rely on it being there when we need it. It needs to be replaced with energy produced within our shores.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

There is a lot of scare mongering around

I know one guy who works in this industry and he will not have one under any circumstances, to use his words not mine they are a pita and a waste of time and money

There is so much misinformation on these pumps the guy in the first video even slates the guy in the seconds video for putting out misleading reviews the start of his, if my gas CH boiler went tomorrow and was unfixable i think i would get another at least we know 100% they work in all weathers.




The plumber below answers the point the first guy makes about Scandinavia they dont live in draughty old houses as we do they build houses to keep cold out and heat in therefore the HP does work, another thing the guy in the fists video doesn't go into detail about is the legionella cycle the HP must go through he does mentions it briefly but doesn't mention the emersion tank has to heat the water to temperature to kill the bacteria regularly.

 

[Rodcx500z]

There is so much misinformation on these pumps the guy in the first video even refers to the guy in the seconds video at the start of it, if my gas CH boiler went tomorrow and was unfixable i think i would get another at least we know 100% they work in all weathers.

I don't really know much about them just what he said, my view is it should all depend on your carbon foot print weather you should have one our foot print is very small, according to eon we are very green in terms of our usage of gas and leccy, take 2 days ago we used £2-38 of gas and £5-79 of electricty and that includes the standing charge, it would not benefit us having one

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I don't really know much about them just what he said, my view is it should all depend on your carbon foot print weather you should have one our foot print is very small, according to eon we are very green in terms of our usage of gas and leccy, take 2 days ago we used £2-38 of gas and £5-79 of electricty and that includes the standing charge, it would not benefit us having one

You would never get your money back if only using that much energy.


I think we cross posted i have added this to the post -

The plumber below answers the point the first guy makes about Scandinavia they dont live in draughty old houses as we do they build houses to keep cold out and heat in therefore the HP does work, another thing the guy in the fists video doesn't go into detail about is the legionella cycle the HP must go through he does mentions it briefly but doesn't mention the emersion tank has to heat the water to temperature to kill the bacteria regularly.

 

[Rodcx500z]

So basically your paying for something that **** and emptys your wallet

 

[tigertim]

bob lazar uses sunlight to produce hydrogen from water for his hydrogen car. It's good to see someone else has caught on.

But if he were to use that sunlight to charge a battery, he would go much further for the same amount of energy. Leaving the hydrogen step out makes it far more energy efficient.

 

[dad_of_jon]

But if he were to use that sunlight to charge a battery, he would go much further for the same amount of energy. Leaving the hydrogen step out makes it far more energy efficient.

It doesn't matter to him sunlight is free. I also don't know the process he uses and whether or not it is more or less efficient compared to other hydrogen powertrains. What would also be interesting to find out is the resources used in the different drivetrains.

If measuring efficiency in terms of delivered energy from the power source then mass of vehicle would be important. A low weight low energy vehicle could have a better range due to not having to accelerate the mass of a high weight higher efficiency vehicle.

 

[Rodcx500z]

It's all down to the angle of the giggling pin and it's rate of wobble

 

[MashBag]

So not really a recall, just tweaking what's already there.
But whilst I believe the majority of people are sensible, you can't do everything to protect the stupid and stupid people are generous when operating heavy machinery

I'm on the Tesla model Y owners group and one woman was raging...proper raging...that she nearly had a crash and it was the Tesla's fault.
She put on cruise control on a local road and was dismayed that she nearly crashed when she came to a corner at 60mph. 'Why didn't the car slow down when it was coming to a bend?' 'why didn't it read the map and know you can't take that bend at 60?'
Ffs....

No I disagree. Stooput people believe it does what it say on the tin. So it should.

If this is OK, surely it's OK for VW to lie about economy too?

.... And tbh BMW had a similar thing almost 20 years ago that worked perfectly (re: speed cornering control)

 

[MashBag]

I don't really know much about them just what he said, my view is it should all depend on your carbon foot print weather you should have one our foot print is very small, according to eon we are very green in terms of our usage of gas and leccy, take 2 days ago we used £2-38 of gas and £5-79 of electricty and that includes the standing charge, it would not benefit us having one

Some people don't have the choice to use gas, compared to oil they work very well.

But they are a proper PITA to fix.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

This is all rather OT for a thread about cars, but anyhow...

There is so much misinformation on these pumps

Hmmm..... It's weird how there's lots of people out there who are happy with their heat pumps, and yet every customer of Mr Angry is unhappy with their installation. Is the problem with heat pumps as a technology - or is he just really bad at his job?

And yet he's going on YouTube to boast about how bad he is at his job, it's weird. I guess he makes more money telling people what they want to hear on YouTube, than he does from installing boilers.

if my gas CH boiler went tomorrow and was unfixable i think i would get another at least we know 100% they work in all weathers.

And yet millions of people in Scandinavia and Canada have heat pumps and use them year-round in far worse weather than we get here - heck even Keswick only gets 45 days of air frost, in London it's less than a month per year. There are cold-climate heat pumps that will heat even below -30C, below what we ever get in the UK. Is the problem with the technology or incompetent tradesmen like Mr Angry, fitting (badly) the wrong kit?

The plumber below answers the point the first guy makes about Scandinavia they dont live in draughty old houses as we do they build houses to keep cold out and heat in therefore the HP does work

This point has been vastly overplayed, it's not relevant in most cases. A badly insulated house will be colder than a well insulated house and need more energy and a bigger more-expensive heating system to keep it warm. That's true regardless of whether it uses a gas boiler or heat pump, and the heat pump will still work out cheaper. If the insulation is that bad then current energy costs mean you have a strong incentive to improve it, the payback time is pretty short.

It was interesting one of the stats in today's announcement of £6bn to be spent in the next Parliament on energy efficiency including £1.5bn on heat pumps subsidies, that in 2010 14% of houses in E&W had EPC of C (broadly LED lightbulbs, decent loft insulation and double glazing but not heat pumps, solar panels etc) but it was now up to nearly half. British houses are a lot less badly insulated than they used to be.

 

[dad_of_jon]

This is all rather OT for a thread about cars, but anyhow...

Hmmm..... It's weird how there's lots of people out there who are happy with their heat pumps, and yet every customer of Mr Angry is unhappy with their installation. Is the problem with heat pumps as a technology - or is he just really bad at his job?

And yet he's going on YouTube to boast about how bad he is at his job, it's weird. I guess he makes more money telling people what they want to hear on YouTube, than he does from installing boilers.

And yet millions of people in Scandinavia and Canada have heat pumps and use them year-round in far worse weather than we get here - heck even Keswick only gets 45 days of air frost, in London it's less than a month per year. There are cold-climate heat pumps that will heat even below -30C, below what we ever get in the UK. Is the problem with the technology or incompetent tradesmen like Mr Angry, fitting (badly) the wrong kit?

This point has been vastly overplayed, it's not relevant in most cases. A badly insulated house will be colder than a well insulated house and need more energy and a bigger more-expensive heating system to keep it warm. That's true regardless of whether it uses a gas boiler or heat pump, and the heat pump will still work out cheaper. If the insulation is that bad then current energy costs mean you have a strong incentive to improve it, the payback time is pretty short.

It was interesting one of the stats in today's announcement of £6bn to be spent in the next Parliament on energy efficiency including £1.5bn on heat pumps subsidies, that in 2010 14% of houses in E&W had EPC of C (broadly LED lightbulbs, decent loft insulation and double glazing but not heat pumps, solar panels etc) but it was now up to nearly half. British houses are a lot less badly insulated than they used to be.

This is all sensible.

I would point out the promise of long lasting led lighting ....

LED bulbs are now a reality in our daily lives. They offer the longest durability, between 30,000 and 50,000 working hours or more. They are made of very durable materials and are only sensitive to high temperatures.

This is a total misinterpretation of reality. the LED itself may well last 30,000 - 50,000 hours, however work out how long your lights are on a day divide that by 365 and that gives you how many years they should last. My figures give 10-12 years. I dont think so, I've tried various brands and get 2-5 years out of them because the electronics in the bulb fail not the light emitting diode. planned obsolescence. Yet you are or were being charged a premium on the promise of a 10 yr light bulb.

So it's not surprising at the lack of trust some people have with energy saving technologies.

I wish those who claim their product could last 10 years being subject to legal action for knowingly misdirecting the public with incorrect use of known data.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

And for those worrying about using an EV to go to the local shops, these two have just driven from the magnetic North Pole to the South Pole in a Nissan Ariya (with modified suspension/tyres but standard powertrain/battery pack), with the help of a trailer with wind turbine and solar panels. He'd previously driven from the UK to Siberia in a Leaf.

https://poletopoleev.com/

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Hmmm..... It's weird how there's lots of people out there who are happy with their heat pumps, and yet every customer of Mr Angry is unhappy with their installation. Is the problem with heat pumps as a technology - or is he just really bad at his job?

He doesn't say every customer but what he does say is if they were as good as the government would have us believe he would have installed one at his home and he hasn't!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

And yet millions of people in Scandinavia and Canada have heat pumps and use them year-round in far worse weather than we get here - heck even Keswick only gets 45 days of air frost

As he says in the video their homes are built to keep cold out and heat in our old draughty houses are not, I still have a chimney and coal fire I doubt a HP would work for me and I wouldn't want to rely on it as my only heat source.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

LED bulbs are now a reality in our daily lives. .

We recently replaced our G9 bulbs with led but found when they eventually blow the bloe the main fuse for all the downstairs lights this turned out not to be a one off so we have gone back to halogen.