Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Air source heat pumps

It isn't though. Every single seal on every single stretch of gas pipe would need to be redone. There's way more leeway for electric to scale up through battery storage of excess wind.
What seals? The gas pipes are heat welded and most of the network is already hydrogen ready.

With the extra electricity demand from heat pumps you're going to have to upgrade all the transmission lines, sub stations and dig up every street in the country to put in heavier duty cables. :eek:
 
Most hydrogen is currently made from natural gas, which makes manufacturing it only slightly less unfriendly than coal. Hydrogen produced by electrolysis uses more power than it creates, so the electricity used in its production may as well be piped to homes, instead. Add storage and transportation problems to that, and I have no idea how anybody ever thought it would be a good idea to pipe hydrogen into houses.
I can't see it ever happening.
See my other posts about the gas network already being able to transport hydrogen whereas the electric network isn't capable to handle all the extra power. :(
 
Just be aware that if you live close ( five miles?) to the sea an air source heat pump will have a much reduced life as the salt in the air will corrode the very small heat exchanger pipes far more quickly than in non literal areas.

Ms 747 and I were very keen to go the heat pump route, but spoke to the main ( probably only) chap at the British Association of heat pump suppliers. He warned us of this. He said that almost all manufacturers will say the salt issue isn’t a problem for their heat pump but they will all be fibbing and the issue won’t manifest till after the warranty🙁. His view is near the coast only ground source are suitable, and given the small size of our garden that would have meant a bore hole for us. 🙁🙁.
That’s handy to know. I live 5 miles from the sea
 
What seals? The gas pipes are heat welded and most of the network is already hydrogen ready.

With the extra electricity demand from heat pumps you're going to have to upgrade all the transmission lines, sub stations and dig up every street in the country to put in heavier duty cables. :eek:
Yes the local energy networks are going to change considerably, with likely more locally generated and stored energy too. Every area has local area energy plans in development that is looking to help plan gor all this.

You might not need the investment in electricity networks to do hydrogen but you'd need to generate an awful lot more renewable electricity in the first place because the process is intrinsically inefficient, especially compared too heat pumps. And the electricity networks need upgrading anyway to take account of more local generation and EVs regardless of home heating.
 
What seals? The gas pipes are heat welded and most of the network is already hydrogen ready.

With the extra electricity demand from heat pumps you're going to have to upgrade all the transmission lines, sub stations and dig up every street in the country to put in heavier duty cables. :eek:
Literally 3 seconds on Google, and that's just the first hit.

Heat pumps are not a high demand device. If we can push EVs, we can sure as fuck do heat pumps. Hydrogen is a dead end for homes and personal transport. It does have industrial use though.
 
There's an energy guy on Twitter who has been collecting all the studies on hydrogen home heating (independent ones). They all come to the same conclusion - costly, inefficient, won't meet climate targets. He's up to 60 now.

 
The same generally applies to EV vs. hydrogen fuel cell. It's too inefficient for anything that doesn't need to be used 24 hours a day.
 
Literally 3 seconds on Google, and that's just the first hit.

Heat pumps are not a high demand device. If we can push EVs, we can sure as fuck do heat pumps. Hydrogen is a dead end for homes and personal transport. It does have industrial use though.
That link is from MIT and refers to the gas network in the US. The UK network is mostly plastic and is capable of delivering hydrogen.
 
That link is from MIT and refers to the gas network in the US. The UK network is mostly plastic and is capable of delivering hydrogen.
Then why was the estimated cost of converting the UK gas network to hydrogen £182 billion? For a fuel that, let's remember, is less efficient and less green than the alternative?
 
less green? including methane escape?
The alternative being heat pumps. It's clear methane's days are numbered either way.

Editing to add: The time isn't quite right. I wouldn't replace a working gas boiler and I wouldn't buy an EV today. But I think they're both quite clearly the future unless something quite disruptive gets invented in the short term.
 
There's an energy guy on Twitter who has been collecting all the studies on hydrogen home heating (independent ones). They all come to the same conclusion - costly, inefficient, won't meet climate targets. He's up to 60 now.


Are those from climate change deniers?

Burning hydrogen adds no carbon to the atmosphere.

3 main ways of producing hydrogen are:-
a) splitting methane to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Bad idea.
b) electrolysis. Add no more carbon to the atmosphere.
c) Another method of splitting methane produces hydrogen and fine carbon particles, which could be sequestered or if fine enough could be used as a source of carbon nanoparticles. Again this process doesn't add any carbon to the atmosphere.

So I have no idea how they claim using hydrogen doesn't decarbonise much. :hmm:
 
I'm having a survey for a heat pump from Octopus in a couple of weeks. My gas boiler is getting towards end of life so it makes sense to do it now - if you wait till it's actually fucked I think you'd end up from necessity just to swap in another gas boiler quickly. Have been quoted just over 3 grand - obviously might change with survey. That's for heat pump, new tank, all new radiators. Am anticipating running costs will be similar but will likely reduce when I get solar panels next year, and I also anticipate that gas and electric prices will come more into balance over the next decade.
Are you sure about running costs?
My elecy is 5 to 6 times more expensive than gas per kWh.
And heat pumps have an efficiency of about 2.
So that's means whatever you spend on gas through your boiler could cost you 2.5 to 3 times more on elecy with a heat pump.
And how is your hot water going to be heated?
 
Village sent a tech bloke round to do a test run of our heat exchanger ready for it likely being switched on for winter next month. All running fine apparently, but really need to do something about the massive windows letting out too much heat even double glazed.
 
Really?

Might want to have a look at this from 3 months ago. Energy live news
Even if we assume the gas network is 100% ready for 100% hydrogen. It still takes over 100 kWh of electricity to produce 80kWh of hydrogen.
That report just reads like "Fossil fuel company throw some money into greenwashing swan song."
I'm unconvinced.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Chz
Anybody remember solar roadways? The money thrown at that was mind-blowing. Anyone with half a working brain could see it was never going to work, yet even governments threw money at it.
Some people seem to totally disregard simple laws of physics when 'green energy' is mentioned.
 
Even if we assume the gas network is 100% ready for 100% hydrogen. It still takes over 100 kWh of electricity to produce 80kWh of hydrogen.
That report just reads like "Fossil fuel company throw some money into greenwashing swan song."
I'm unconvinced.
That's precisely what it is. WouldBe may want to look into what the government was budgeting for the project before they wisely killed it. If it were actually just a case of pumping a different gas through the existing system, there is no way the project would have been dumped.

I suppose it doesn't matter now - it's dead, and no other countries are seriously considering it either. Research is ongoing, but on the back burner for the EU and Japan.

Edit to add: On a practical level, if you wanted to still use the gas network and boilers, you'd manufacture methane via carbon capture of atmospheric CO2. You end up carbon neutral for the same energy cost as hydrogen, without having to modify anything. But there aren't hundreds of billions to be made out of that.
 
Last edited:
That's precisely what it is. WouldBe may want to look into what the government was budgeting for the project before they wisely killed it. If it were actually just a case of pumping a different gas through the existing system, there is no way the project would have been dumped.
And yet if you bothered to read the article I linked to they are actually doing trials at the moment in Cumbria it's not been dumped. :rolleyes:
 
Even if we assume the gas network is 100% ready for 100% hydrogen. It still takes over 100 kWh of electricity to produce 80kWh of hydrogen.
If you produce the hydrogen from ammonia in waste water (basically piss) you get this.

AHDB Logo









Hydrogen electrolysis​

How much energy is produced?
What are the benefits?
Useful links

Electrolysis is a commercially viable option for producing hydrogen from renewable resources.​

How much energy is produced?​

Electrolysis of ammonia in waste water consumes just 1.55 kWh of electrical energy to produce 1 kg of hydrogen. When used as part of a fuel cell, 1 kg of hydrogen can produce up to 23 kWh of electrical energy, but this figure could be lower with an older battery.
If the electricity for electrolysis comes from renewables (wind and solar), there is no ‘direct’ release of CO2 when generating, or burning, the hydrogen.


That report just reads like "Fossil fuel company throw some money into greenwashing swan song."
I'm unconvinced.
So you're talking rubbish.
 
And yet if you bothered to read the article I linked to they are actually doing trials at the moment in Cumbria it's not been dumped. :rolleyes:
I very much did read it. Trial's done, been analysed, no further funding coming.

Look, it's great for industrial use and has a rosy future there. But the practical hurdles for both home heating and automotive power don't suit wide consumer use. Electricity has too many advantages over it. Efficiency - the first law of thermodynamics is king - most of all.
 
This is starting to read like someone who got roped into a pyramid scheme, trying to convince others that it isn't a scam.
 
This is starting to read like someone who got roped into a pyramid scheme, trying to convince others that it isn't a scam.
I get the appeal. In theory it's the simplest thing going. Stars run on it. Scifi has touted the hydrogen economy since forever. But the catch in SF is that it relies on cheap fusion. Without cheap, plentiful power, hydrogen takes too much effort to use. Use hydrogen instead of electricity and you're throwing away 25% of your energy right off the bat to make the hydrogen. It's the most plentiful substance in the entire universe, but only in space. Elemental hydrogen is incredibly rare on Earth and it needs a lot of power to extract from water.

So I understand the draw.
 
I get the appeal. In theory it's the simplest thing going. Stars run on it. Scifi has touted the hydrogen economy since forever. But the catch in SF is that it relies on cheap fusion. Without cheap, plentiful power, hydrogen takes too much effort to use. Use hydrogen instead of electricity and you're throwing away 25% of your energy right off the bat to make the hydrogen. It's the most plentiful substance in the entire universe, but only in space. Elemental hydrogen is incredibly rare on Earth and it needs a lot of power to extract from water.

So I understand the draw.
This is the important bit. It takes a massive amount of energy to break those bonds. It'd be nice if we discovered an efficient method of doing so. It'd be the next best thing to over-unity. But I can't see that happening any time soon.
 
Back
Top Bottom