With diesel exceeding £1.55, calories gas rising and all bills increasing I’d like you to read this in yesterday’s DT. Nothing wrong wanting to be green . Can we honestly afford it🤔🤔...
There are some questionable statements in that article, and I wonder if the piece has been cut down by an editor.
"Heat pumps are not as efficient as gas boilers." There are a lot of variables when it comes to establishing the efficiency of boilers and other types of heating so that particular statement needs to be clarified more objectively. For example Condensing Gas boilers can achieve efficiencies of in excess of 90% And if conditions are ideal some will exceed 95%. Now to be clear that is the heat energy delivered into the water divided by the energy content of the fuel burnt. Now that is good by any standard.
But heat pumps again depending on the exact conditions will actually liberate in some cases up to 500% of the electrical energy used to drive the system. More typically it will be 200 to 350% , but it is still vastly more than the most efficient gas boilers.
If instead of looking at efficiency, if you look at the effectiveness then the operating conditions can play a bigger part, and as the article suggests the maximum temperature of the working fluid will affect how much heat energy can be transferred. Whilst that is a possible limitation, there are ways around it.
Increasing the working area of radiators will allow fluid at a lower temperature to liberate the same amount of heat as a smaller radiator working at a higher temperature.
But there also systems where a second stage heat pump that can take the lower temperature from the first cycle and raise the temperature to provide better radiator performance.
Heat pumps are not the answer for everything. and reputable fitting companies should be able to advise when HP's are appropriate or not. As with so many walks of life, no single solution is likely to be universally adopted. we need some diversity, but as we have seen with motor cars, it is probable that limited number of technologies will take the lions share of the workload, and the less easily implemented solutions will fill the cracks where the main solution is not appropriate.
The quoted figures for improving thermal insulation are not neccessarily typical, and an extra layer of roof insulation will certainly not cost many £k's
To answer Dusty's question about green energy "Can we honestly afford it" To be honest I don't think there is a realistic long term alternative. We are going to have to afford it, if we are serious about reducing CO2 and other pollutants generated by burning fossil fuels. Ultimately there is a limited supply of these fuels, and eventually they will run out, Whilst I cannot see how we can totally remove our reliance on some of these fuels during my life time, that does not mean we shouldn't begin the process for our children to carry forward.
There are plenty of people who are looking for excuses not to change the way we use and waste energy, If more people would take a lead in trying to make these resources last longer for the future, the better it will get.
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