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Has anyone had any experience with Sips Industries ltd in Fife Scotland? I’ve seen them at the home building show at the Nec, are they any good?

If your putting a battery to cover your whole winter loads, it going to be huge and not cheap. I would size it now for an average winter day. But your tariff makes a big difference to the size, Cosy gives you 3 charge periods, a typical electric car tariff only one, so you would need a much bigger battery. Just choose a battery that can be expanded, add more later if you want as slave units.

You can see the difference between the red/white lines which are the demand on the transmission system vs the pink/red lines which are the actual consumption of homes and businesses (plus import /export etc) The difference is the amount of LV solar &. Wind which are the renewables that operate on the low voltage distribution network At this time of year almost all my instantaneous electrical demand is met by my solar system.

I'm not sure. It is a company but is it one of those weird ones where the Gov is 50.1% share holder?

@LnP I don't disagree with the idea that the high elec price is an issue or that we could do with some sort of reform to bring it down. And pricing intermittently into the renewables price would effectively take the place of the marginal auctions now, though it might help by better ammortising the intermittent gas stations costs with the renewables cost. But I do quibble with a few things.... Yes, better storage would be good but the "long term gas... North Sea" bit is (potentially) a bit more of an issue. The core point of this thread is that UK North Sea gas is running out - even the Norwegians are seeing production falling, albeit at a slower rate than us. So if by "long term gas... North Sea" you mean drilling more to get more gas - nope. I can see (ha!) a potential for drilling new gas fields specifically for providing gas to power stations when they are needed as backup for renewables (sort of storage except we never put the gas in), but that only works of the fields are vertically integrated with the power stations. The UK peak is now down closer to 35GW and we have nowhere near 120GW of renewables capacity (though your point about having to have a greater "nameplate" capacity to peak demand ratio for renewables vs thermal is very true) I would point out that solar can be extremely close to the consumer ie on their roof. This is visible in current data when the national consumption diverge from the transmission load as more LV solar supplies the demand without having to travel long distances.

Isn't the grid completely private? We were discussing this a week or so ago.

We are fitting solar and intended to include a battery system sized to suit estimated use. But our electrician/plumber suggests we leave the batteries until the house is up and running, then size accordingly. I was surprised, as it will take a year until we have reliable figures, and that's a year of not getting the benefit. Plus we will not be getting in the habit of optimising. The vat reclaim entered my reasoning until I twigged that it is zero anyway. Is the electrician wary of estimating wrongly? Or wise? Or perhaps undersizing or oversizing is more than a cash issue. He also agreed we should get a 3 phase heat pump, which the solar people were resisting. On the principle that as we have 3 phase we should use it. Thoughts please,

The EU has rules around government involvement but I don't think they are absolute - the NHS wouldn't have been able to exist otherwise. I agree there could be some market distortions but I'm not sure it would stop people joining unless the government had so much capacity that nobody else was ever needed to generate - but at that point, by definition, we wouldn't need the extra capacity so the problem is moot!😁 Maybe if the government built and owned the storage facilities? Eg pumped hydro and battery. That way they would be creating an additional market for the excess power. Big long term infa like pumped hydro is more suited to government ownership rather than quarter to quarter shareholders. And building big battery farms (or providing lots of domestic batteries) would provide a "prime the pump" investment for UK based battery manufacturing...

Listen to this Dieter Helm podcast... high industrial electricity prices are causing deindustrialization of the UK economy. Energy consuming industries are leaving - chemicals (we now have just one ethylene plant, Grangemouth, left in the UK, after Mosmorran and Wilton closed), ammonia (all now gone from the UK), cement and steel. New investment is not coming in. At the same time, our consumption of these materials hasn't decreased so the CO2 emissions from the UK might have dropped, but they're just being released somewhere else. "To restore industrial competitiveness, Britain needs permanent, structural reform to electricity pricing—not short-term fixes. This requires three big changes: charge industry based on long‑run marginal system costs rather than loading full network costs onto them; reform the electricity market by moving away from gas‑set wholesale prices towards a capacity‑based “equivalent firm power” system that properly accounts for intermittency; and index carbon prices inversely to oil and gas prices to stabilise overall energy costs. Together with improvements in gas storage and long‑term gas supply contracts from the North Sea, these reforms would deliver predictable, globally competitive energy prices to support both existing industries and the more electricity‑intensive sectors of the future." The long term gas supply contracts he talks about are how to address the often quoted reason why drilling in the North Sea won't help gas pricing or security, that the gas is traded at the spot price on world markets. It doesn't have to be like that. When North Sea gas production started in the late '60s and '70s. The Gas Council, on behalf of British Gas (nationalised state gas company at the time), entered into fixed price contracts with the producers for gas which had to be landed in the UK. There's no reason why new gas drilling licences couldn't be granted on similar conditions. That's essentially how it works with renewables CFDs. Locally produced natural gas is much better for the environment that liquifying it to LNG in the US or the Middle East, shipping it over here and then vaporising it again. He also makes the point that renewables are not cheap. They appear cheap because the generators don't have to pay the full system costs - intermittency and grid capacity. To compare intermittent renewables with firm power from e.g. a CCGT, the renewables should be required to provide and pay for the batteries or whatever. Regarding grid capacity, the UK consumes about 45 GW. 60 GW of firm power generating capacity from a few power stations, situated close to consumers, used to be sufficient to deal with peaks. We now have 120 GW peak renewable capacity spread around the grid, remote from consumers and still they doesn't provide all our electricity. Despite that, in the latest off-shore wind auctions (AR7), we had to contract for a strike price of £91/MWh. Renewables aren't cheap.

This is a bit of a 20-20 hindsight thought. The layout is what it is: all neatly boxed in and decorated. For repeat or about-to offenders, I would add ease of access to the tap line as a checklist item. This really wasn't as issue for me during commissions as they were easy to turn then. 3D printing sound like an easy solution -- at least for my son-in-law who has a 3D a pinter -- until you add in the learning curve and hassle of doing the 3D cad etc. for the key (it isn't on Thingiverse). Gemini suggested putting a bolt in the end of a 28mm end-feed cap and using 2-part epoxy plus a greased tap to make a female. I also though about using 22 mm endfeed T and toothing the middle branch as you suggest to form a T bar overkey -- except that Jan had a clear-out, and gave away all my odds and sods plumbing bits on the rationale: "we'll never be doing any more plumbing ourselves, but if nec, then Screwfix is only a 10 min drive away". How do you deal with sticky 10-year old HEP2O manifold jobs?

Battens on top of PIR. If you have ever built traditional with dot and dab and taken off a electrical socket, you will feel the draft running behind the plaster board. 100 boards of 25mm 250m2, more than enough for what I need £1500. 150mm dri therm 32, 250m2 £6000 100mm cavity PIR 250m2 £5400 I’ll say it again though. I build houses everyday and there is no way I’d have PIR in the cavity. I’d rather pay the extra and have 150mm fulfill, 25mm PIR internal and batten service void. 1% extra on the whole budget but much better results.

@TerryE, I think it’s just ‘life’ and would be far less problematic if you had better access to get your kits on it more robustly. Beware using a ratchet as that apply way too much torque and wreck the manifold, but I’d certainly look at getting a long screwdriver and welding on a tip that fits the square shaft, or, as above, 3D print a key. You could probably buy some aluminium tube and just hand cut some castellations into the end of it to create a Hep-spanner. I doubt those teeth would need to be more than 5mm deep vs the full depth of the tap heads. Have you emailed Wavin to see if they do a spanner for this?

I think, when we were part of the EU, there were rules against too much government ownership. Did not stop the French taking over EDF though, so probably a way around that rule (and similar ones here). If a government did own, plan, build, run and sell energy (even at arms length) it would affect the private companies investment plans i.e. why bother when the government can undercut. They could put a capacity cap in place i.e. no more than 20% of the expected 2050 needs. But then they could also change the rules if they wanted to (think student loans and retirement ages). I don't know the answer, and I am sure some clever people are working on it, be interesting to see what happens.

Possibly. No. I mean the government build and operate the facilities themselves. They may (prob will) use private companies to do that but the asset will remain the property of the government and be operated by the government. We used to do it. We used to build and operate national railways, hospitals, schools, even power stations. Whilst there are pitfalls in this approach, it would be hard to argue that the privatisation model eg railways, water, hospitals has been a success on all fronts. Edit: I don't mean PFI or similar - I've been involved in hospital and school PFI schemes and they are often really shit for the tax payer. Not only is the build quality really low, the contractual conditions of the "landlord" are terrible. The power facilities are going to be big enough and around long enough for a corps of efficient government employees to form to operate them.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/543682.The_Complete_Book_Of_Underground_Houses

M4 options also reduced ! Sure new models are coming but ram shortages clearly becoming a massive issue

This would make me VERY nervous - you pay out for all the planning application, surveys and reports that may be needed to support the application, it gets approved, and then they pull out, up the price and you can't afford to buy and are out of pocket for the planning. Something needs to be put in place to protect you.

This is part of the reason the system was set up. It may have run its course and now need modifying. While the idea seems good, in principle, private investment would quickly dry up, and/or bigger risks would be taken by the private sector investors on marginal sites/plants/technology knowing the the government would probably bail them out. Financing public services, through private investment has not proved very successful in the past.

3d print a tool to sit over the head like a socket?

I do get the logic behind the marginal price auction system and it should be pointed out that the CFD system of strike prices basically negates some of that by effectively fixing the price for renewables over a long period. I don't quite know how it feeds into the price we pay as consumers or if the over/under just goes the treasury. However, it would be nice if the cost savings from renewables could be passed on more. The flip side is the profits to be made from putting in renewables does encourage more to be put in. Of course it would be nice if the gov, who can borrow money nice and cheaply (relative to companies) borrowed, built and operated some windfarms and solar parks to sell the power to the grid at a low cost.

I never had this problem after 5 years. Even more annoying for you if you're softening the water prior. What is likely cause? Suppose you could swap the manifold after 10 years and consider it a consumable.

That's an annoying problem. I can't really help other than for others to say that as far as I can, I avoid gate valves and other valves that require turning like these as they always seem to foul and stiffen up. I use full bore lever ball valves nowadays, even they are sometimes stiff to close.

Also just to add, if I drop the delta-T to 3 degrees, that looks like it might still work - flow rates for each circuit would be 1.6 / 1.7 / 2.0 litres/minute for a total of 5.36 litres per minute. Which I think should be OK? Am I right in thinking that ideally the lower the delta-T the better (so long as it still produces enough heat output)?

OK, I have properly modelled the space insulation / heat loss etc values in LoopCad and set it to a delta-T of 5 degrees (I'm not sure why it had defaulted to 11 degrees originally, but that was very helpful advice @JohnMo, thanks!). I also worked it out in terms of where the actual turns / channels in the UFH panels will be, to help figure out the best / easiest routes. I now have: And a circuit temperature diagram that looks like: Does that look vaguely sensible / viable? In my head this should give a fairly even temperature across the open floor area in the bedroom. It also brings a bit of the utility room / porch loop into the bedroom (and takes the hot water there first) - on the basis that the utility won't need as much heat and this keeps the bedroom loops a little bit shorter (I've seen advice that around 70m is a good limit for 12mm pipe). Any opinions welcome! Thanks