SteamyTea

As it is winter, the same questions are coming up, again, again. I decided to have a look at my temperatures to see what is happening at different times of the day, even though I don't have an ASHP, I thought it would be an interesting exercise anyway. I sample, and log, temperature data via my energy monitor (approximately every ten seconds) and via a RPI and a DS18B20 outside (every 600 seconds). For analysis purposes I take the mean temperature over each hour and use that. The standard error of the mean is smaller than the resolution of the DS18B20, so I am not worried too much about accuracy being way off. For this analysis I am using daily means taken from the hourly means, while not perfect, they are easily good enough to get a decent understanding of what is really happening. Over the last 11 months, the daily mean internal temperature has been 20.9°C (the secondary glazing fitted last year has raised my temperature about 1°C compared to previous years), the minimum has been 17°C (Jan 8 when I was away) and the maximum 25.4°C (was that heat wave, on June 24, I grew up in the tropics so don't find it excessive). This is shown, by the red line, in the chart below. The chart below shows the outside air temperature. Another way to look at this is temperature differences between the internal temperature and the external temperature, again it is the red line. You may have noticed that there are two other series on these charts. These show the temperatures between midnight (0 hour) up to 8 AM and 8 AM to midnight. Over the year the mean temperature difference has been 9.8°C, with a minimum difference of 1.1°C and a maximum difference of 19.6°C. The 0 hour up to 8 AM (near enough my E7 window) mean difference is 10.4°C, minimum of 4.5°C and maximum of 19.5°C. The non E7 times the mean temperature difference is 9.4°C, minimum of 2.4°C and maximum of 19.6°C. Now I do not know how much of a difference the coefficient of performance is affected by, at worse, a 2.1°C difference when the mean temperature is 9.4°C (E7 window), compared to 10.4°C (non E7 window). Now this year, I turned my heating off on the 1st April. Thought that would be a laugh. So below are the same charts adjusted to just my heating times. Taking just the numbers from the temperature differences, which are the important ones as they show how hard a heating system needs to work. The mean temperature difference is 13.4°C, minimum 10.2°C and maximum difference 19.6°C. During the E7 window, the mean difference is 13.5°C, minimum 9.2°C and maximum difference 19.5°C. Outside the E7 window, the mean difference is 13.4°C, minimum 9.5°C and maximum difference 19.6°C. With those differences I don't believe there is anything to worry about regarding the CoP of an ASHP. This analysis is, obviously, only for my location and my house heat loads, and I am not sure how well it would describe other locations and houses/households. One way to try and make a universal model is to look at the energy usage over the heating period (1,463 kWh) and adjust that to floor area and see how it compares. For my house (~50m2), for 90 days heating (and DHW/Cooking/Laundry/Lighting/etc) it works out at 0.325 kWh/m2, which is 13.5 W/m2. I am not sure of that is good or bad to be honest. It seems quit low to me for resistance heating. If the above is plotted, then the correlation between temperature difference and energy usage shows that for every 1°C increase (in difference), and extra 70W of power is needed. That is an extra 1.4 W/m2 or over the 90 days, 3 kWh/°C. Looking at the rest of the year, to 01/12/2023 (non heating), shows that for every extra 30 W, the temperature difference increases by 1°C. This is nonsense as it is the non heating season and the house is ventilated a lot more (windows open). What is actually happening is that the house is at a relatively stable temperature and the OAT is varying. What needs to be done here it the 36 W/°C (from the trend line function calculation) needs to be subtracted from the 70 W/°C trend line in the above chart. This leaves 34 W/°C needed to heat the house. As a power per square meter number that is 0.7 W/°C, which is very little. The important point there is that my house is thermally stable, even though it is a timber frame. It can 'store' enough thermal energy for short term OAT variations (just as well as Cornwall has extremely variable weather). I am not sure if any of the above is going to be of use to anyone else, but the main point is that for a few quid, basic temperature and energy monitoring can show a lot of useful information when deciding to change a heating system. There is enough information on here to build your own monitors and it amazes me the amount of people that don't monitor and spend a couple of hours analysing the data.

Have you ever looked into the costs of running it? A diesel CHP unit that also runs a small HP could be an interesting option. Diesel, at the pumps is about 15p/kWh at the moment.

Not a bad idea to post up. While you may never recover the capital cost, long term, you may be doing the right thing. Hard to tell where energy prices are going, I suspect that there will be a convergence between natural gas and electricity prices in the medium term. If you really are only using 5 kWh/day during the heating season, and say 2 of them are for showering, then you may be better off fitting PV and heating a water cylinder. That would get the gas cost down to zero for DHW. But when I think about it, if it is really 5 kWh/day in total, then a heat pump and PV is really the say to go. You would only be importing energy for a couple of months a year.

Do you know how many litres of kerosene you use each day? Know that, and the local weather, you can get a good idea what size you need. Is your hot water stored in a cylinder? What size oil burner do you currently have?

Do you know how much energy (that is the kWh, not kw/h) you currently use a day? Knowing that is a double check on the heat pump sizing. Assuming you have had a quite from a MCS registered company, they will have done a proper heat loss survey and report, can you get hold of that? You may find that in future, Octopus pull your current deal, this has already happened to some of their deals. So rerun the financial side of but with a SVR tariff. kWh = energy kW = power

You just want a happy ending.

Don't think I had a choice on my switches, but not looked for 20 years.

Back in 1989/90, my old boss sold up and bought a farm. 180 acres of bankrupt dairy farm just outside Aylesbury. With buildings and a large house, whole lot cost him £140k. My horrible little 3 bed semi in Aylesbury was then £85k. A quick look at the land registry site shows that the house that was 6 doors away from me, sold last year for £320k. 3.7 times the price in 1989. The nearest comparable farm I can find to my old bosses is £1.55m, 11.1 times the price. Farms have gone up a stupid amount, partly because land investment companies have bought them up.

Like most places, property has become a huge multiple of wages, and like most places, they are not building any more farms/small holdings. While it may seem cheap compared to up country, property is still a silly price down here by any measure.

Probably. It is very low concentration, they use it in food packaging. Just clear the area and if, like me, you are susceptible to contact allergies, wear gloves, or get someone else to do it.

It is a biocide, rather than just a water shield. It will need to be dry I would thin. Bathroom/Kitchen tile grout is really a ridiculous material to use as it likes to soak up water, and has a great structure to harbour spores and bacteria.

Contains this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylisothiazolinone

Can't really help with the silicone choice, except it would not be my choice to use silicone as a protective layer. But the hair dryer I can help with. 2100W is the same as the fan heater I heat my whole house with, it is a lot of power. Is it a hair dryer or a paint stripping gun? The trouble with drying water is the high energy needed to change the state from liquid to vapour (latent heat of evaporation). https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-properties-d_1573.html There is a temptation to heat the affected area as quickly and as high as is easily possible. This can local discolouration of grouts and, possibly material fatigue/failure. When I was a lad, my Father wanted to paint the kitchen window. As there was condensation on it, he got me to dry the frame with my Mother's hair dryer (was the 1960's so probably low power). I held it steady in the corner, loud noise as the windows cracked.

Basically a time series, in a useful export format i.e. .csv, .txt, .xls That can be correlated to local temperatures and RH, which is usually easy enough to get hold of. Initially I would just look at instances of the defrost cycle happening, just to get a feel of the problem.

Does anyone have an proper data on this? It would be interesting to correlate it with local weather data and see what conditions make it better, or worse.

@Andehh Can you do a quick summary. Something along the lines of: Heating system was unstable Turned out to be the ventilation system But more detail, and maybe a possible solution.

Will carbon dioxide removal tech help or hinder climate targets? Billions of dollars are pouring into the carbon dioxide removal industry, which aims to clean up emissions and slow global warming, but few companies have delivered results. Is the technology a planetary saviour or a risky bet? By James Dinneen 29 November 2023 A direct air capture plant operated by Heirloom in California Heirloom Carbon/Handout via REUTERS What do Microsoft, Ikea and Shopify have in common? All have promised to become “carbon negative” companies, aiming to not only cut their emissions, but go beyond that to remove carbon dioxide from the air. With such pledges becoming increasingly popular as boardrooms flex their green credentials, the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) industry is seeing an investment boom. At the moment, around 2 billion additional tonnes of CO₂ are taken out of the atmosphere each year, over and above existing carbon sinks, but this is almost entirely due to efforts to expand forests or other nature-based approaches. To keep emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goal of staying below 1.5°C of warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates we need to be removing between another 5 to 16 gigatonnes a year by 2050, depending on emissions reductions elsewhere. The uncomfortable reality of life on Earth after we breach 1.5°C Passing 1.5°C of global warming isn't just a political disaster, it will have dire consequences for us all, as those living on the front line already know CDR technologies, which can store CO₂ for longer periods and may be able to scale up more quickly than nature-based approaches, have the potential to close that gap. But to date, they have removed only around 115,000 tonnes of CO₂ (see “A slow start”, below). As nations assemble this week for the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, any steps towards net-zero emissions should be welcomed. But the question remains whether big bets on CDR technology will pay off in time – and will do so without detracting from efforts to directly slash emissions by transitioning away from fossil fuels. Gregory Nemet at the University of Wisconsin-Madison calls this the “formative phase” for CDR, where ideas that worked in the lab are put to the test in the real world. “Inevitably, it’s a messy period.” There are a slew of CDR technologies, but two are likely to dominate: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air capture (DAC). The former involves growing plants to absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere, and then burning them for energy while capturing the resulting CO₂ emissions. The latter sees air blown over materials that absorb CO₂, then release it when heated. The stream of CO₂ from either approach can then be stored underground, turned into rock or locked away by using it in any number of products, from concrete to condoms. Other engineered approaches use chemicals to remove CO₂ from seawater, which naturally absorbs the gas from the atmosphere. Yet others involve grinding up rocks to spread on fields to absorb CO₂, or removing carbon taken in by plants by using them to make charcoal and adding this to soil, or sinking wood and seaweed to the bottom of the ocean. There are variations on all of these themes. California-based company Charm Industrial, for instance, uses heat to turn agricultural waste into oil that it then pumps underground. None of these methods has yet been used to remove more than a few thousand tonnes of CO₂, but all have their sights set on billions. Proponents, however, are less clear on the downsides, such as cost, steep energy and land-use requirements and potential consequences for people and ecosystems. Much of the hype around these technologies fails to recognise “how difficult CDR is and how ineffectual it’s been”, says David Ho at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. “We haven’t shown that we can do this.” Ho reflects a widely-held view that sees CDR as a false solution, promising a way to keep emitting without the consequences, all while diverting financial and energy resources that could go directly to reducing emissions. He sees the need for large-scale CDR eventually, but says removals now, when the world continues to emit so much CO₂, are futile. “Right now, the most valuable thing about CDR is greenwashing,” he says. How to reach net zero five times faster Outdated economic theories and a poor grasp of worst-case scenarios are behind our failure to curb carbon emissions, says climate policy expert Simon Sharpe – but it isn't too late to change tack But others, including Nemet, argue that we have to begin aggressively scaling up CDR now to ensure there is sufficient capacity to meet net-zero targets come mid-century. While many people say relying on removals to hit these targets is a gamble, Nemet sees it the other way. “I find it a little bit risky to hang our hat on people just stopping emissions,” he says. Either way, it is now the consensus view that a substantial amount of CDR will be needed to meet climate targets. According to the IPCC, CDR is “unavoidable” if we are to reach net-zero emissions. But it says those removals are primarily needed to “counterbalance” the residual emissions left in sectors that are difficult to decarbonise, like steel-making or long-distance aviation, and to address any overshoot of our dwindling carbon budget. They shouldn’t be seen as a general solution for every industry or as an excuse to keep emitting, says the IPCC. “We can’t be relying too heavily on this because we don’t really know today how much we can be removing,” says Eli Mitchell-Larson at the think tank Carbon Gap, emphasising the importance of cutting emissions before resorting to the much more difficult task of removing them. Even in an optimistic scenario where efficiency gains lower demand for energy, the IPCC says a total of 20 gigatonnes of CO₂ must be removed by the end of the century to meet climate targets. In a more pessimistic scenario, 660 gigatonnes of removals are required. In a middle scenario, we would need a 540-fold increase in removals from new CDR technologies by 2030, and a 1300-fold increase by the middle of the century, according to modelling by Nemet and his colleagues. Whether this scale is achievable is a question for the future. Today, CDR projects are only just getting started. In November, the first commercial DAC plant in the US started operations in California. Heirloom, the firm behind it, says it will remove 1000 tonnes of CO₂ a year, equivalent to the annual emissions from around 200 cars. Meanwhile, a giant DAC plant being built in Texas is supposed to be able to remove half a million tonnes of CO₂ a year. Record amounts of money are also flowing. A consortium of tech giants called Frontier has pledged to buy more than a billion dollars worth of such carbon dioxide removal and recently made its first purchase. Firms that want to green themselves pay CDR outfits per tonne of carbon removed, a bit like carbon offsetting. Leading bank J.P. Morgan has said it would invest $200 million in CDR technology. The US Department of Energy too announced a programme to pay firms tens of millions of dollars in return for carbon removals, and has billions of dollars of support to develop regional DAC hubs. All this amounts to a more than four-fold jump in purchases of new CDR since 2022, which would equate to 5 million tonnes of removals, according to the website CDR.fyi. But this rush of money is no guarantee that CO₂ actually leaves the atmosphere. Only about 2.3 per cent of tonnes purchased so far have been removed. The rest may be delayed or never happen, either because the technologies involved don’t work as planned or upstart companies fold. Mitchell-Larson says the problem is exacerbated by an “inadequate” system to monitor and track removals. He says the system is a bit like “students marking their own homework”. But Mitchell-Larson and others also say potentially risky purchases are needed to spur innovation. “There will be failures in the years ahead,” says Harris Cohn at Charm Industrial. “But there should be if the market is experimenting as aggressively as we need [in order] to grow.” According to its website, Charm has delivered 6417 tonnes of the more than 165,000 tonnes of removals it has sold so far. Despite concerns over delivery, demand for long-lasting removals doesn’t seem to be flagging. A report from consulting firm BCG, also a buyer of carbon removals, forecasts demand outpacing supply at least to 2030, with the former reaching as much as 900 million tonnes of CO₂ per year by 2040 as cost falls and governments do more to support CDR. However, even if CDR firms deliver this, it would leave removals billions of tonnes short of what the IPCC says is needed by 2050. Mitchell-Larson says closing that gap will require governments to buy removals themselves or force companies to pay for CDR, perhaps via a carbon tax, rather than leaving it to the generosity of climate-conscious firms with lots of extra cash. “The question that everyone is asking is: ‘Where is the next billion dollars?’ ” he says. Such issues are set to be discussed at COP28, where CDR is likely to get more attention than before. Currently, the technologies don’t play a big role in any nation’s formal climate commitments, but that could change, says Mitchell-Larson. The summit may also lead to a deal enabling states to trade removals between themselves. “I think the CDR community is looking for a sense of legitimacy,” says Nemet, to be seen alongside other key climate industries like wind and solar, which also once looked impossibly expensive to build at scale, he says. “We have gone that fast before.”

COP28: These are the key clean energy targets the world must agree on Momentum is building for an agreement at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai to triple renewable energy capacity and double the rate of energy efficiency gains by 2030 By James Dinneen 29 November 2023 A solar thermal power station in Dunhuang, China Jian Fan / Alamy The following is an extract from our climate newsletter Fix the Planet. Sign up to receive it for free in your inbox every month. A basketball player knows she has played well if she achieves a “triple-double” in a game. That means putting up double digits for three key categories: points, rebounds and assists, for example. At the COP28 climate summit starting this week in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, it is looking as though the world may pull off a “triple-double” of sorts on climate change. About 100 countries have now said they support an agreement at the meeting to triple renewable energy capacity and to double the rate of energy efficiency gains by 2030. The plan has its roots in the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) influential roadmap to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. First published in 2021, the report found both targets were necessary to keep emissions from the energy sector in line with the Paris Agreement goals. Just achieving those two targets would deliver two-thirds of the emissions reductions needed by 2030. Support for adopting this at COP28 has mounted since the IEA began campaigning in July to make both targets a major part of the agenda at the summit. The US, the European Union and the UAE are leading a coalition of backing the proposal, which now includes around 100 countries including Australia, Japan and South Africa. according to Reuters. Major emitters India and China haven’t joined that pledge, but have signalled their backing for such measures in other international forums, including in a declaration by the powerful G20 group of countries. A joint statement in mid-November by the US and China — the world’s two largest emitters — included language in support of tripling renewables and improving energy efficiency. Wind and solar sprint Political support for these targets is welcome, but the numbers behind them are big, and meeting them isn’t a given. Take renewables. In 2022, the world had 3.4 terawatts of renewable energy capacity, more than the total energy capacity of the US and the EU combined. Is tripling that in the next eight years achievable? Katye Altieri at UK-based energy think tank Ember thinks so. In a report just out, she and her colleagues found existing government targets already put the world on track to double renewables by 2030, mostly through increases in solar and wind capacity. That would involve repeating the record 500 gigawatts of renewables expected to be added in 2023 every year until 2030. “Doubling is a slam dunk,” she says. Tripling capacity is harder, but also possible, they found. The amount of renewable capacity added each year would have to grow by 17 per cent every year until 2030, about the same rate of increase seen on average between 2016 and 2023. That would involve building 1500 gigawatts of renewable capacity in 2030 alone, more than all the renewables currently built in China. “Tripling is very ambitious,” says Altieri. “It’s not something that’s going to occur on its own.” To achieve it, they found countries would need to increase the ambition of their current targets and support renewables in other ways, for instance by building more transmission and energy storage infrastructure. But this might not be such a tough sell. The researchers found that 12 countries — including China, Brazil and Morocco — are already building renewables at a pace that would exceed their existing targets for 2030. And 22 countries, including the UK and Australia, have enough renewable energy capacity already in the pipeline to reach their existing target, suggesting more ambitious targets are in reach. However, Altieri points out that to triple global capacity doesn’t mean tripling in every country – some would need to build more and some less. The places where most of the renewables needed to triple capacity will be built — China, the US, the EU and India — all could be moving faster. Invisible efficiency Energy efficiency is less visible than wind farms and solar arrays, but it is arguably the more important target for cutting emissions in the near term, making up half the emissions reduction needed between now and 2030. “Often the efficiency opportunity gets less emphasis than it deserves,” says James Newcomb at the Colorado-based energy think tank RMI. He says that is in part because efficiency involves so many different aspects of the energy system, from improving home insulation to better public transportation. Newcomb says people also tend to have a bias towards fixing problems by adding, rather than subtracting things. “It’s just the way humans’ heads work.” But the efficiency target is no less ambitious than tripling renewable energy capacity. The average annual rate of energy efficiency gain was 2 per cent in 2022. Doubling that would mean reaching a 4 per cent annual improvement in energy efficiency by 2030, a rate that countries have reached but not sustained in the past. “We think it’s definitely achievable and economically achievable,” says Newcomb. “But it will require this commitment to pay attention to it.” Where will these invisible efficiency gains come from? A large portion — perhaps as much as 30 per cent — will be the result of switching to electric vehicles and appliances like heat pumps, which are inherently more efficient than their fossil fuel-powered counterparts, says Newcomb. Other gains could come from using energy more efficiently in buildings. In high-income countries, this largely means retrofitting them to improve insulation and swap out appliances (the IEA has said a fifth of all buildings may need renovations to reach net-zero). In developing countries with lots of new construction, Newcomb says that means improving building standards and using materials like steel and cement more efficiently. Changes in behaviour, from improving recycling to using more public transportation, can also contribute to efficiency. Industry, from steelmaking to brewing beer, can also become more efficient. “Plenty of options exist, and they lead to lower energy bills and improved energy security,” says Arnulf Grubler at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. “But market uptake of these options remains slow and needs to be accelerated via policy carrots and sticks.” Grubler also points out that as demand for energy rises with growing and more affluent populations, the emissions reductions expected from building more renewables are contingent on improvements in efficiency. “Without stepped up investments in efficiency, demand growth more than compensates for all growth in renewables, and does not displace fossil fuels,” he says. In parallel with support for action on renewables and efficiency, a coalition of countries is pushing for an agreement at COP28 to include explicit language on phasing out fossil fuels. There are other synergies between the two targets as well. By reducing peak energy demand, for instance, energy efficiency measures enable the grid to support a higher proportion of intermittent renewables. “It dramatically lowers the cost of energy transition if we do efficiency,” says Newcomb. Sharing the wealth While these global targets look ambitious and achievable, the picture is complicated in individual countries and regions. Low-income countries in the global south in particular have largely been excluded from the energy transition gaining momentum in high-income countries in the global north. “The global tripling needs to come from everywhere,” says Altieri. “There’s a big part for the developing countries to play there.” African countries, for instance, have only received around 2 per cent of total investment in renewable energy over the past decade, says Amos Wemanya at Power Shift Africa, an energy think tank in Kenya. He says past investment has been hampered by the extremely high cost of capital, such as very expensive loans, to develop projects there. “We have a continent that has abundant renewable energy resources, but it’s still also energy poor.” The tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency targets at COP28 could help both reduce emissions and expand access to energy by including a commitment to “evenly and fairly” distribute those resources, says Wemanya. Parallel debates at the summit around reforming international development banks to lower the risk of clean energy investment in developing countries could also help more money flow to projects there. In September, African leaders called for more financing to support a six-fold increase in renewable energy capacity on the continent ahead of COP28, which would take 10 times the investment Africa has seen so far. “Renewables are the way for the continent of Africa,” says Wemanya.

Not any more.

Ok Doctor Slap-Herr https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2023-12-01/man-charged-with-manslaughter-after-woman-dies-at-slapping-therapy-workshop

I prefer my shits to be brown than red.

How are you going to monitor the CO levels that may enter the living/sleeping areas though the chimney breast brickwork? There is a reason that WBS have approved flues these days.

What happens if a Peregrine Falcon moves in? Or pigeons, shitting tenants.

Cam Out

Viewing this oil painting in St. Ives at the moment. A Stuart Thorn. Actually acrylic.