OneGuyFromBarlick

Drax again. They used to get a lot of flak for being the biggest producer of CO2 in Europe - they used to have foaming at the mouth greenies demonstrating outside their gates. They are already converting to run the main station on biomass and now they are going to build a new coal plant with carbon capture. They'll still be a big producer of CO2 but it will either be stored or has come from recently grown forests. That should get the Tory anti renewable Europhiles going....

I feel sorry for the big coal-fired generators, they are on a hiding to nothing. If all the protesters switched off at the main for the time equivalent of 'dirty' generation percentage each day that would cure the problem? Of course they won't and of course it wouldn't. The hard fact is that these generators have kept us and our economy going and now they are cast in the role of the bad guys.... The problem is due to procrastination by the government in not making the right decisions in good time. We will see a lot of mothballed 'dirty' generators switched on as the capacity of the others falls before nuclear gets in front of the game.

Good Friday was an excellent day for my clean energy (solar panels) not a cloud in the sky all day and it was quite cool and clear so we had a 15kWh + day. And we don't get more than a couple a year from our setup. We get most of them in May usually when the day length is a bit longer and it can still be cool. Later in the year the temperature gets up and they don't produce as much. Although with the better weather we get more days with good rather than excellent generation. In late Summer & Autumn the days are getting shorter, but the temperatures tend to be higher on cloudless days.

I still consider them one of my better decisions in life.

Pluggy wrote:In late Summer & Autumn the days are getting shorter, but the temperatures tend to be higher on cloudless days.

Sorry to be pedantic, but doesn't the PV effect depend on visible light rather than infrared? So your power output would go up with brightness rather than warmth? The two aren't directly related because visible and infrared will be absorbed and/or reflected to different degrees by clouds.

The panels perform better when the temperatures are lower, they have a lower resistance so the current flows easier. I don't think the wavelength of the light enters into it. Some of the real PV fanatics have been known to hose their panels down on hot days to increase their output. Their output does depend primarily on the brightness of the light and the panels orientation to the sun, but if there is a cool north easterly breeze keeping the temperature down and the panels cool they do better.

This is my energy graph for yesterday, the red line is the PV output. Sorry plaque, its log(10) on the y axis



The system is running at the limit of the inverter (flat topped curve) between about 10:30 and 13:10. On a hot cloudless day it often doesn't reach the limit of the inverter. or will peak for a shorter time. We have 2.5kW of panels but the inverter is only 2 kW. Its fairly standard to over panel inverters in this country. Due to the increased efficiency of the smaller inverter it will produce slightly more power than if the inverter was the right size. (Its much like the same car with a smaller engine will be more economical to run)

And to think that not many years ago you just ordered two bags of coal a week from Bilborough's or Town's...

For years some of us have been shouting in the wilderness about energy security and advocating as near self-sufficiency as possible. For years, government has been kicking the problem into the long grass and adopting expensive short term solutions. The situation in the Ukraine seems to be focussing attention particularly in the EU which depends on Russian gas to top up their energy requirements. The UK government has always said that as we don't buy any great quantities of Russian gas it wasn't a problem for us, ignoring the fact that shortages in Europe where gas prices are set are going to affect us anyway. There is talk in the EU now of finding alternatives and in particular Germany is looking at reversing their decision on nuclear power and re-commissioning some of their mothballed plants. Remember that closure of them was a knee-jerk reaction to the problems at Fukushima.
On the domestic front, I've let the stove go out from a very low level for two nights running now. Yesterday I gave it a good flueing, including the bend at the bottom of the flue. No big problems and we now have a perfectly clean stove. It won't need any further attention until well into next winter.

As part of the "Big Community Energy" swap, it would appear that I am now a customer of Ovo Energy and my direct debit has fallen 10%

The stove is out. I have not frozen the death yet! Could be the end of the heating season. Goody!

Today I change to Ovo Energy with the Big Community Switch

Goodbye Sainsburys Energy

Stanley wrote:The stove is out. I have not frozen the death yet! Could be the end of the heating season. Goody!

Temperatures are set to plummet over the Bank Holiday weekend, falling to as low as -3C as a blast of cold air moves in from the Arctic and potentially lasts for up to a fortnight.

Forecasters say that parts of Britain will experience heavy overnight frosts, with the North facing a windchill factor of -5C and the potential for snow on hilltops by the end of the week.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z30GyJmQFL


Keep your hot water bottle handy, Stanley.

Seeing the front page headlines of some papers on the counter at the newsagents (Express, Mail come to mind), I'm taken aback by some of the alarmist weather headlines. (Come to think of it, most of their other headlines, too...)

David, I look at the BBC News web site every day and one of its features is a page that allows you to see pictures of the front pages for that day of the main UK newspapers. It's mind boggling to see the headlines in some of them and helps explain why so many folk are on anti-depressants!

chinatyke wrote:

Stanley wrote:The stove is out. I have not frozen the death yet! Could be the end of the heating season. Goody!

Temperatures are set to plummet over the Bank Holiday weekend, falling to as low as -3C as a blast of cold air moves in from the Arctic and potentially lasts for up to a fortnight.

Forecasters say that parts of Britain will experience heavy overnight frosts, with the North facing a windchill factor of -5C and the potential for snow on hilltops by the end of the week.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z30GyJmQFL


Keep your hot water bottle handy, Stanley.

More than 5 days ahead and they're guessing.

We aren't safe from frost and cold until the second week in June and I understand that well. Alarmist headlines about severe weather don't bother me at all, I simply accept what comes and take appropriate measures, like putting a jumper on or lighting the stove....

Stove out and CH kicked in for twenty minutes this morning at a very low level. Cheaper than coal in this transition period and a good thing for the boiler which has been sat there doing nothing all winter. Nice to know it's still on the job! (I have a credit on my gas debits so no worries there)

It got down close to freezing last night with the clear skies and it was on the cool side yesterday afternoon. Fabulous solar panel day today. Maybe that was the Mail's arctic blast. The now short term forecast for the Bank Holiday weekend looks a bit 'par for the course' for early May. My gas will be going up, a 'price freeze' contract I was on has ended and I'm now on another 'price freeze' with the inevitable price hike. Wheres this fracking when you want it ?, the situation in Ukraine and Putin's anti west posturing isn't going to to be doing energy prices any favours.

You're right Pluggy and it will get worse. I can remember when they said nuclear power would make Leccy too cheap to bother metering it.... Fracking, if it ever happens, will be no different.

See this LINK for a report on an encouraging development. Th National Trust today initiate a heat pump system to supply energy to one of its properties, Plas Newid in Wales. I have often wondered why this well-understood technology is not more widely used. Well done the NT!

The BBC presented the National Trust initiative as using a wonderful new technology but it's been used by people building their own energy-efficient houses for years now under the name `air source' because it's most commonly set up to draw heat out of the surrounding air, though you can use it as water source or ground source if you have a body of water or a big enough area of ground near your house. I applaud the NT for using it but I wish the BBC would employ some technical journalists and get up to date on technology! And the heat pump approach isn't free energy as some people think...you have to put in energy to run the system, so what you get out is the difference between input and output. When air source is used on domestic houses it can have problems too, like being noisy for yourself and neighbours (noisy fan). You have to be careful where you site it in relation to buildings and wind direction otherwise it's not efficient.

I've probably mentioned already that we are planning phase 2 of our house insulation. Phase 1 was the internal insulation of rooms to which we couldn't apply external insulation due to insufficient space on the outside and other negative factors. Phase 2 was to use external insulation panels where the walls have enough outside space and it would have been less easy on the inside. But now the plan has been upset because our builder can't get a system that would allow us to have a warranty. We wanted to use 50mm thick polyisocyanurate (PIR) panels bonded to the outside of the walls and coated with render but apparently the PIR panels don't allow the wall to `breathe'. The builder has been told he would have to use expanded polystyrene (EPS) panels instead of PIR because they can breathe...but that's no good for us because we would need at least 100mm of EPS to give the wall sufficient improvement in insulation efficiency and we don't have enough space, it would make the window reveals too deep and the roof would have to be extended too much. It looks like we'll have go for the internal insulation again although it won't be possible to use it on all the walls.

I remember Lucas at Burnley making air source pumps for heating commercial size buildings. They installed one in their leisure club in the early days. If you got in too early you would be sat in a gale force cold draught for the first two hours.

The increased efficiency of a heat pump is usually negated by the fact that the heat pump uses electricity and normal heating would use gas in most instances. The heat pump moves about 3 or 4 times as much energy as it uses and the electric it uses is 3 or 4 times the price of gas to heat it normally. As Tiz says its a long way from being new. I think one of the sheltered housing schemes in Barlick uses ground source heating, and if Barlick has it, its hardly cutting edge......

Air pumps are common here, usually described as reverse cycle air conditioners. I know our air temp is a lot different to where you are (33C/91f today) but the efficiency is great when on heating or cooling, typically outputting over 8kW heating/cooling for <3kW electric input, the difference coming from energy extracted or voided from/to the atmosphere. The <3 kW is electric used for the compressor motor and fans. Fridges work like this also, a small compressor and a lot of heat discharged, very efficient. Believe me, here in winter it gets cool (but never below freezing in Nanning) and a 3 kW heater does not cope as the buildings are not insulated, just bare concrete walls. 8kW output is a bit over the top but our lounge is over 45m²x 2.8m = 126m³ and this keeps us comfortable.

Anyone with the luxury of a stream in their garden can use this as a source to extract heat even in winter.

Just checked the figures:

Our 3HP a/c unit in the lounge uses 2286W to give 7200W cooling capacity on full demand.
It uses 2580W to give 8000W heating but can be boosted to 9000W with a 1000W internal heater element.
Our 2HP a/c unit in the main bedroom uses 1800W to give 5100W cooling capacity. And 2350W for 6800W heating capacity.

Electricity is priced at 5 UK pence to 7.5 pence per kWh, work it out for yourself, they seem cheap to me, and remember they are not constantly drawing the full power.

Bad news for Southern NIMBYs, see this LINK for news of a report to be published today by the National Geological Survey that there are large reserves of shale oil that could be accessed by fracking in the SE.
I used to spend a lot of time delivering cattle in the part of SW Scotland where there was an old shale oil extraction industry. The waste from the workings had a nasty habit of combusting spontaneously and there were many 'burning bings' that had been on fire for decades, you could smell the sulphur downwind from them and it was years before I found what the smell was. I don't remember anyone in the South complaining about them.....

Pluggy mentions the Barlick sheltered housing scheme; it's at Hollins Court and uses air source units.

An interesting side issue at Hollins Court was what happened with the bills.

Previously, the flats were heated by electric with each resident being able to adjust their heating to suit themselves and each paying their own bills. When the air source units were put in, the flats were paired and heating costs divided between the two flats.

The overall fuel costs were cut substantially, but some people found they were expected to pay more than they did previously as they hadn't used their electric heaters previously.