Beelbeebub

Gas is near double what it used to be and it isn't going to get cheaper. Saying "poor people rely on gas for heating so we shouldn't try and move them off it" basically dooms them to be stuck using a volatile energy source. If we moved everyone onto a cheaper energy source that we actually have energy security over it would be fit us all in the long run. Again to go back to the OP. If you are worried about someone barely making ends meet using electric resistance heaters the swapping them to a HP would slash their bills in half. If we fitted air to air systems it would be cheap and those systems are commonly fitted to low income housing around the world. The government coukd subsidise the costs of fitting a2a.

osndoes boil down to the old "it's too expensive to reduce carbon emissions so we shouldn't" That neglects the costs of doing nothing which are starting to bite now. All the people displaced by fires, floods, drought probably don't think it was too expensive if they had their time again. I saw a good quote "the climate change effects will play out as a series of videos on your phone, until it's your phone making the videos."

I'm merely pointing out the ratio is the issue and from a purely "how to drive co2 emissions down" POV higher prices of energy (gas and electric) helps. Obviously it's crap in pretty much every other way. As I said the tarionis the issue and currently one part of that is thr unequal distribution of green levies. There are several ways to fix it. Simply shifting from one to the other is a way. Another would be to remove them from electric and stick them on general taxation. As you say, fixing the wholesale price structure would drop electric pretty quick. I wonder if anyone has done a calculation on what the wholesale price would be if it was the average of all the units bought in the period.

The key metric is the ratio between electric and gas. In a way, to drive the swap to HPs (which is the correct thing from a co2 perspective) the best thing is high gas *and* electric with electric less than 3x the cost of gas. If both are cheap then the savings from switching aren't worth the capital costs. If electric was 1p/lwh and gas was 2p, people on gas probably wouldn't bother switching because saving 50% of very little is very little.

Yes which is amazing. But even a poorly performing HP slashes that co2 in half again.

Yes but I included it to be the best possible case for storage heaters

correct. Currently elec/gas in the uk is about 4:1 With one or two exceptions this is the highest ratio in europe The majority of Europe has a ratio at or below 3 which makes HP's a no brainer.

The generation figures are suspect. That's the most likely explanation for all the "symptoms". At a guess the flow meter is faulty. If either of the temp sensors were faulty the unjt would most likely throw an error as it needs that data to control itself. But the flow data is an extra it doesn't need so it can be faulty without causing an error, just bad figures. By my estimates your elec bill would be about £130 a month? I"d suggest that isn't half bad. Y

Going back to the orginal topic Say we have a storage heater flat Uses upto 90kwh a day. If it had 6 storage heaters, each holding upto 15kwh - those are typically about 700mm 1000mm and 190mm deep. Maximum output is around 1kw (dimplex xle) E7 rates are about 14p Octopus go is 8p Let's say it uses 90x8 kwh in day. £7.20 If each heater was replaced by a. K33 700x1000 (similar size shonshoikdbe aa straight swap). Those provide 2.8kw @dt50 (flow 70C). If we aim for a flow of 45C which generally gives ascopp of over 3.5 (vaillant arotherm) the dT is 25. That derates the rads to about 40%, which is 1kw. So the rads will output upto 1kw, which matches the storage heaters. Assuming a cost of 24p per kwh then the cost per kwh delivered is 6.8p. So for 90kwh, £6.17 or 17% cheaper. Nearly 50% cheaper if you use 14p/kwh tarrifs. So for a house using storage heaters it is absolutely possible to run cheaper and with no loss of comfort or space.

don't even think you'd need that. Each home unit would provide the pumping power via it's own pump and obviously it's own power to operate the compressor etc. All the "public" bit of the network provides is some pipes running into the ground (or into a lake or river) filled with brine. There would obviously be a "standing charge" to pay for the infrastructure and occasional repairs but the heat just comes from the environment.

I do like the kensa approach of one ground array, multiple independent users. I cans ee it might work really well for blocks of flats etc. You just have some flow and return pipes running up and down the stairwell and each flat just taps into it.

But the point is we are curenrtky just the wrong side of the "tipping point" where it is easy for a HP to be cheaper than gas. Swapping the levies will make a difference.

Work best in well insulated houses with ufh But that's different to "only work in well insulated houses with ufh" First, the "well insulated" bit. Insulation does 2 things, it reduces the overall heat demand and it makes it easier to heat at lower temperatures with sensible emitters. Those two things only effect the capital cost of the install. Higher heat demand means a bigger HP and larger rads. The running costs (relative to gas) are only effected by the flow temps required. My OP showed (OK 2 data points) that you can heat a fairly normal. Uk property at HP friendly flow temps using just normal rads.

cost The gas generators would still be paid what they bid to provide power at the price the offered. But the wind/solar etc would only get what they offered, maybe plus a bit so they are still encouraged to build out capacity. I wouod say wind/solar is the ideal thing for the government to be investing in. The cost of renewable energy is basically the upfront build cost,amortised over the life. Yes there are some maintenance costs but essentially once you have built your solar/wind farm it spits out free energy until it eventually wears out. So the finance costs are the bugger. Plus planning, permits, grid connection etc. Luckily, governments can finance easily and can ease permits. Sure it's a debt on the government books but it produces a long term income stream to pay it off. Even the upfront money isn't "wasted" as it goes into the economy

"man whose wealth depends significantly on electric vehicle sales complains about electric prices being lowered"

Get the ratio of gas to electric to less than 1:3 and making a HP cheaper to run than a boiler becomes much easier. At that point people will start to adopt much faster.

I went around a national trust property last week. Outside was just above freezing. Inside was not too bad. Not hot but about right to unbutton your coat, take off your gloves and wander around. There was a video presentation that you could comfortably sit through lasting around 15 minutes. As far as I couod see, the only emitters were the admittedly fairly large, cast iron ones. They were warm to the touch but not scalding. I'd estimate 45C, maybe 50C tops. Ok the total heat demand for the place must have been huge, but it could probably have been provided by a (bloody huge) HP with a scop greater than 2.5 - the point where you emit less carbon than a gas boiler even if all your electricity comes from a gas plant.

But what if we changed the model so the wholesale price is the average of the sources rather than the highest price? If we don't then, until we get 100% renewable days, our electricity prices will always be set by the gas prices. Even then it will be set by nuclear.

The "green levies" are made up of a number of different charges for different things. Some of it pays for the old solar FiT scheme. That has been closed for a while but because it guaranteed payments for (IIRC) 25 years it's still creating a cost. There are other costs, some to do with renewable subsidies some to do with initiatives like insulation. The point is these costs are not split equally. "These levies make up 16% of the final price of electricity and 5.5% of the final price of gas. For a typical household, they add about £140 to the annual electricity bill and £50 to the gas bill." (figures are rounded) At current (late 2024) price cap levels about £145 from a typical £884 electric bill are green levies. Only £46 of the typical £833 gas bill is green levies. If we dumped the entire £145 onto gas bills you'd get a typical gas bill of £978 (10% up) and electric bills of £739 (16% drop) Crudely the unit price for elec clwuod drop from 24p to 21pand for gas go from 6p to 7p. As I mentioned before, this would change the price differential (and hence efficency needed to "breakeven") from 4:1 to 3:1. Right now your heatpump install needs to be pretty good (at least by industry norms) to break even. Your scop needs to be in the high 3's (though things like no standing charge for gas help) If the ratio dropped to 3:1, that would be well within current standard (if not best) practice https://www.nesta.org.uk/household-energy-bills-green-levies/

I can sort of understand the logic as it does incentivise low cost (aka renewable) power investment because there are some big profits to be made. On the other hand it doesn't help the consumer because our prices are dictated by the cost of the most expensive source (gas and sometimes oil). There is also a perverse incentive as.we.get towards higher % renewable where nobody wants to bb the one who pushed the UK to 100% renewable and thus spoils the party for everyone (the generators) by dropping the price to wind levels rather than gas. Ultimately if we are going tohave heavilyy renewable generation we will always need some backup, probably fossil fuel, although biomass and waste can also contribute for the few times "the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow". I would suggest this bit needs to be nationalised. The government operates and maintains loss making gas plants and storage (in the sense they have to maintain, staff etc even though they aren't needed 90% of the time) so it can be the "generator of last resort".

The other bit is the "green taxes" (a crap name) that pay for stuff like insulation upgrades, social tariffs.for struggling customers, historical subsidies for wind and solar (but not new ones) all tend to go onto electricity prices rather than gas prices. So when there are grants for insulating lofts - that's paid for out of electric prices not gas. Thry aren't huge, a few pence per unit but if we took 2p.from the 23p electricity unit cost and added it to the 5p gas cost we'd have 21p vs 7p so you need a 3:1 efficency to break even (fairly doable) rather than 4.5:1

The way the wholesale price per unit is set like auction. The network requests X Mwh and various generators put up bid to supply some Mwh at a set price. The network then accepts the bidsfrom lowest rom lowest nit upwards until it's got enough. So far so normal. But the wrinkle is, the prove paid per Mwh *to everybody* is the price of the last unit bought ie the most expensive. Let's say in a simple setup 1000mwh is asked for. Solar bids 300mwh at £100 Wind bids 300mwh at £150 Gas bids 400mwh at £200. The total cost for the 1000 will be £200,000 not (as you might expect) £155,000 That is super simplified but is the rough outline of how it works.

Yes, partly this. Although I do also think that until recently people just didn't care as a rule.

This is an issue with almost any improvement to the fabric of the building. Basically tenants don't seem to care about the EPC. We have almost never had anybody ask about the heating or epc. It was a bit depressing as we'd spend money insulating lofts etc and all anybody was impressed with were the sodding bathrooms. That has changed a bit recently butnit still seems not to be a priority Some of that may be simple pressure on spaces. Competition for homes is so fierce that people are glad to get anywhere even if it is costly to run. Building better social housing to rent wouod go someway to moving the market.

This is a root cause of reluctance. Gas is cheap vs electricity. If the ratio was 1:1 people would be ripping out gas boilers so fast the scrap yards be overwhelmed. If the ratio was 2:1 or even 2.5:1 it wouod be simple to break even vs gas. At the current 3-4:1 range it's hard. Shifting a load of the green and social taxes onto has would help. Reforming the energy market to get rid of the "last unit sets price" method would be a huge win for electricity.