As the heatwave hysteria somewhat subsided, the Telegraph revealed that in the future, use of heat pumps might be rationed at times of energy shortages. The Guardian, meanwhile, reported that the Prime Minister’s replacement, Andy Burnham is considering proposals to “make heat pumps cheaper to run than boilers”. The occupier of Number 10 may have changed but a profound unreality is still driving the policy agenda.
The main problem afflicting the green agenda was always physics. The second was economics. And the third was democracy. Heat pumps capture this sequence of problems perfectly. Green technology attempts to convert diffuse, ambient energy into useful energy – heat, in the case of heat pumps. And it does this in place of using a dense energy resource such as gas. But the relative density of these energy sources means that the machine that collects ambient energy must be so much larger, plus its capacities do not fully overlap with what it purportedly replaces. Consequently, a heat pump is at least six times as expensive as a gas combi boiler, occupies a much larger part of a home, responds less effectively to a household’s needs and requires the making of substantial alterations to the home and the behaviour of the occupants in order to function as expected. For those many reasons, most people have rejected them. And for that reason, successive governments have said that homes will have heat pumps whether they’re wanted or not, because the superior product that they replace will be ‘phased
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The Data centres that are being planned to spring up all over the UK (Scotland is working on 20)will finally wake up the naive, gullible people who think we are in a climate crisis.
Actually the crisis is a collapse of reliable electricity supply coming down the track. Most Data centres will use lots of massive diesel generators to keep them running and will remove vast amounts of water from rivers, lakes and lochs.
If you ever needed proof that the climate crisis is a scam, here you have the reality. They don’t give a damn about the environment or emissions.
Got to laugh at the latest bbc factcheck on electricity prices… blamed on gas, despite not mentioning it’s needed to make up for unreliables… no mention of why we need huge network expansion… to cover connections to unreliables… or massive subsidies… to unreliables!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn8n5vnmjlzo
Really looking forward to some of my ex friends appearing at my door over the coming winters, asking if they can pop in and warm up. The more polite ones called me a conspiracy theorist when I queried whether their new “smart” meter could adjust their leccy flow remotely. Why would anyone want to do that, they said.
Why can’t you just read your old meter as always, I’d reply.
I’ll offer them a wooly hat and a scarf…
Always nice to see the self-righteous colliding with reality.
The sheer naivety and gullibility of the people is staggering. They have no idea what is really going on.
I have resisted getting a smart meter despite repeated requests from British Gas. Texts and emails are easily ignored and when I got a call from them I asked if it was compulsory to have one. The answer was no (though I am sure that will change) so I told them I didn’t want one and never would. They promised not to contact me again. But of course they still do.
My concern was that they could and would use a smart meter to restrict access to gas and electricity which it now appears is part of the plan. I remember my first experience of “smart meters” years ago in NZ when there was a period during which they cut the power to domestic water heaters to reduce electricity consumption. I think it was necessary because the utilities had screwed up capacity planning.
Probably the rationing is more to do with the inability of low voltage grid and distribution equipment which serves streets and building, to cope with the load if a street full of heat pumps are working hard.
That multiplied across the whole network. Smart meters have a contractor inside, with battery backup – the idea is to enable your supplier to cut your whole house off, not to vary the load etc. to turn down heat pumps etc, they’ll need a network connection into the control unit somehow, likely via the heat pumps cloud based management apps back door… actually quite a sensible approach in managing a limited resource, however it’s only limited due to a stupid obsession with unreliables…
They no longer care if we have enough electricity or not. They are not even trying to ensure we have a stable supply, their response is switch everything off in a few thousand homes.
Agreed, but the best mechanism to do that would be at the local LV grid level – streets and districts at a time, not house by house
“Making electricity cheaper relative to gas would make running heat pumps a more attractive option.. “
A principle must work consistently across a spectrum. So if average family cars are made more expensive than Rolls Royces, so the latter relative to the former is cheaper, Rolls Royce will sell more cars.
If airlines put economy fares up higher than First or Business Class, more people will travel First and Business.
Got it.
How the green mind works – a marvel to behold.
Or nobody can actually afford anything….
I’ve lost count of the number of letters I’ve had from my energy supplier telling me about the “benefits” of smart meters and inviting me to have one installed, it could well be 30-40 possibly more. The letters used to be about smart electricity meters, these stopped about 18 months ago and they’re now about smart gas meters. I’ve ignored every letter and will continue to do so.
In the meantime, “something has been done” – by advertising the policy of chopping 5% VAT off domestic energy supply. I seem to remember that in the past, their was an EU rule that prevented VAT from being reduced to less than 5%, if it had been charged at all before a reduction – so they are taking the opportunity to do something that can now be done.
As to smart meters, I have one which is about 2 years old, and the other day it developed a fault which prevents it from transmitting the meter values. It’s owner (OVO) does not seem to be too worried about it yet, or maybe they are too busy with faults to communicate about it at present. The net effect is that the in-house gadget, and their end, cannot read the meter; back to the old system where you have to look at it and read it manually, from time to time.
VAT is an EU tax and now we are free could be ditched completely. Just imagine the boost to business and industry in not having to spend time on VAT records. But do not expect a Far Left football shirt wearing retard to come up anything that radical.
VAT was an EEC Tax introduced in the UK in 1973 as a condition of joining the EEC. (EU did not start until 1992.)
It replaced Purchase Tax which was applied at the wholesale or manufacturing stage on a range of consumer goods. Rates varied according to the category of the goods based on “luxury” (it was meant to discourage buying luxury goods). Rates in 1973 were 13%, 22%, 36%, 55% in 1973.
Should we go back to that – and do you think there was no paperwork?
VAT was introduced at 10% and is a consumer tax. It avoided the cascade effect of Purchase Tax which gets compounded at each stage of the manufacturing/supply chain.
They have actually called me and set up an appointment to replace it now! The fault occurred on 17/7, and they have arranged to turn up on 31/7, so well see.
You can ask for it to be made ‘dumb’ if you want…
I have a 10 yr old gas boiler and two bio-ethanol fires (one which can be easily moved from room to room).
I have a fairly small 3-bed terraced house and, since the back of it is nearly all glass, there is only one small area where a heat pump could potentially go, directly under my bedroom. There is no area at the front of the house and since it’s a conservation area I doubt if one would be allowed.
I don’t have a Smart Meter. I submit my meter readings at the end of every month and SSE have given up asking me to get one. I’m watching how things develop, but in a year or two I intend buying a replacement gas boiler to keep in my garage until it’s needed.
I bought a new, petrol driven car a few weeks ago which I will run into the ground. I can’t charge a car at home and public chargers are few and far between out here in the sticks.
We are being bullied and coerced by the Eco Nutters who infest in the Establishment. Net Zero is a SCAM and they, like Dale Vince, expect to make a… Read more »
I have a heat pump for heating a garden office. It is very large, noisy when in operation, prone to breaking down, and struggles to heat even a small space to a comfortable temperature in cold weather. When the air temperature gets close to or below freezing, it ices up and then has to shut down for awhile to defrost.
After this experience, there is no way I would use a heat pump to heat the main house. I’m going to hang onto my gas boiler and wood burner until they actually come and break down the door to remove them.
We had heat pumps when overseas. They were OK for short periods, say an hour over breakfast before school/work, but not beyond that as they became costly to use. Also, they only heated up a small area. The other problem was that when the outside temp dropped below about 3 deg C, the unit ceased to function or did not work properly. I would never get another one.
Heat pumps are only good if they move energy into a building, moving it outside is a climate catastrophe, apparently.
A significant part of the problem with heat pumps, lies in the word ‘pump’, which of course requires electricity to operate.
Its been a while since I last saw the numbers crunched, but then it was apparent then that using gas to generate electricity to run a heat source, was a significantly worse option than just using it to directly run a gas boiler.
It’s possible that heat pump technology might have advanced significantly since then, I suppose, though anecdotal evidence suggests not, but it would be interesting to see a proper breakdown of the costs of powering the different systems, maintaining a steady domestic temperature over a normal winter.
You might also want to factor in the challenge of getting your domestic hot water cylinder up to a temperature that will control Legionella bacteria, i.e. 60°C or above. That’s a challenge for most heat pumps, particularly in cold weather, so you’d need to run a traditional immersion heater on those occasions.
Actually it’s not possible as HP max at 55C output, and some just 50C. Hot water has to leave the tap at minimum 50C, so heat pumps cannot supply hot water on demand. A storage cylinder and additional pipework is required with an immersion heater to keep the temperature at minimum 60C.
So it’s back to the days of having a schedule for baths/showers – don’t use all the hot water. Great news for a family.
The cost of cylinder, immersion heater, installation and electricity cost has to be taken into account too – but is never mentioned.
Many houses now don’t have room for a storage cylinder or have had one removed and its cupboard repurposed.
But that is precisely what I do not want. I like my bedroom cold at night. We keep our window open at night except in the very bitterest frosts. We get up and close the windows before the heating comes on.
Essentially, we want the house to warm up quickly at the start of the day.
Hmmm that’s no good for this government – they’ve not yet found a way to tax fresh air…
What happens when you place a Faraday cage around a smart meter?
Unfortunately you can deliver Internet signals down live electrical wires at the same time! thats how some wifi extenders work
I am fortunate enough to not have a smart meter. However, if all goes to plan, I will be moving house later this year. If I find a smart meter, I want to know how to successfully block signals getting to it.
I’m afraid once you’ve got one your stuck with it, our meter was fitted in 1972 and I’ve opted out of the smart meter deployment over here in Ireland, im just praying it keeps working, if it breaks you can only have a new smart meter in its place!
There must be a growing market for imported devices to confuse them but likely it is a criminal offence to interfere with state monitoring systems
An unfortunate accident?
If you have a smart meter you can request that it be put in ‘dumb’ mode. This switches off the comms. Just send manual readings as & when.
“Making electricity cheaper relative to gas would make running heat pumps a more attractive option, and shave £130 off average bills.”
Or, alternatively, making gas more expensive relative to electricity, in an attempt to persuade people to replace existing systems with ones that, even then, will take a century to pay for in cost savings…
In my experience, price adjustments to alter consumer behaviour generally make nothing cheaper, but make the “undesirable choice” more expensive. Remember when EasyJet adjusted its booking charges because people with one type of payment card weren’t being charged the fees that the others were? This was deemed unfair, so the answer was to charge everyone the same.
Natural gas which we already supply in 150,000 miles of pipelines across the UK, is by far the most efficient, effective and cheapest way of heating our homes and protecting the environment .
They don’t want you to know that.
The talk of using “cheaper green energy when it is available” takes me back to the 1970s (a popular decade these days for government ambitions, it seems), and my grandmother’s storage heaters. (For younger readers, basically a cabinet containing a stack of bricks and an electric element to heat them with. It would turn on in the early hours, powered with lower priced off-peak electricity from the white meter.)
By breakfast time the house would be lovely and warm. During the day, when everyone was out, the heaters would continue pouring out the heat they had stored up overnight. Then, by the time everyone had returned home in the evening, the heat would pretty much have run out, and we were reduced to sitting round the gas fire in the lounge.
It’s all very well for governments to encourage us to use the power when it’s available, but that doesn’t necessarily fit in with a normal human existence. Hands up, all those who want to be woken by a noisy washing machine spin cycle at 5am, followed by a trip downstairs to take the washing out before it gets creased beyond recognition. Or those who want their house to be… Read more »
Our masters wear shirts that look as if they did not get up at 5am to take clothes from the washing machine. (I am glad you did not refer to a tumble drier as they are being progressively eliminated in favour of damp flats with condensation mould).
At 7pm our masters will be in a subsidised bar on the Parliament estate, in a BBC green room or at a booze free vegan conference on Palestine- temperature at home in their state subsidised flat is of no consequence.
Purchasing condensing tumble dryers is already illegal in post Windsor Agreement Northern Ireland, thanks to EU legislation and the continued and relentless overreach of Brussels into what was once the UK. Only heat pump tumble dryers can be installed, and probably not (as in my case) in the unheated garage because the temperature differential is not great enough, ie there is not enough heat in the atmosphere to pump. As with central heating and hot water heat pumps, the heating process takes much longer than with other “dense energy” sources like electricity. So say goodbye to throwing a few items into the tumble dryer to be usable in half an hour.
In the EU, I can’t remember if these crazy laws were passed before Brexit and therefore apply in the UK, vacuum cleaners and hairdryers above a certain wattage have been banned. This means people have to use less efficient appliances for longer to get the job done and use the same amount of energy they would with a higher wattage model.
Same with vacuum cleaners – used to be you could almost suck the pile off the carpet, now they are limited to x watts of power, no matter they don’t work as well and you have to use them for twice as long, using more total power…
A theory. Directly or indirectly the govt is leading the electorate to conclude that grid-connected battery storage is a good idea. I expect them to start incentivising it financially soon. The govt cannot afford the large scale battery storage necessary for their NetZero fantasy, better to offload it onto the population.
And these storage farms are installed at grid nodes / substations in built up areas, not where windfarms and solar farms are located to back these un-reliables up. Wait until a few towns have been evacuated due to lethally toxic emissions during the inevitable thermal runaway fires
I mean battery storage at home,
They are using these for arbitrage – ie. Making money, not for the good of the nation…
Plus, nowadays heat pumps are competing with EV chargers at night. With several users taking the max load the 95mm2 cable to their close or street permits. In the hope they can leave their home at 7 am for a warm workplace.
How lucky am I to have a very eficient wood-burning stove which doubles as cooker when it’s alight. I’ve polished and sharpened my pitchfork in case they try to take it away.
At some point I have no doubt they’ll place an outright ban on log stoves and deploy drones to detect households using them through heat signatures. Isn’t technology fantastic?
Survey drones are quite vulnerable to shotguns. Of course they might capture on one final frame the heat signature of the gun, but….