Pompeyexile Will it be a case of just aving to have burners changed as I did many years ago when going from LPG gas to mains gas?
I don’t believe so, because the boiler has to be hydrogen red and surprise surprise, they cost more, even though they shouldn’t. Most existing boilers can burn a 20% hydrogen 80% natural gas mix. Whether this is as heat efficient, I don’t know. I also don’t know if the kW per kW hydrogen price will be the same as natural gas, I suspect again…not.
Meldrew If Hydrogen does become the future to replace natural gas then surely the way forward would be to change the Electrical generation from gas to Hydrogen.
The problem here is: requires about 55kW of electrical energy to produce 1kg of Hydrogen containing about 33kW of energy. Burned in a Hydrogen boiler, you will get around 28kW of usable energy from 55kW of electrical energy.
A heat pump will turn 55kW of electrical energy into 220kW of heat!
Logically central heating is not really on in the middle of the night, so in the twilight period of green energy production,4-10pm, yes you can use hydrogen to heat homes, but it’s relatively inefficient in terms of the energy used to produce it. During the time green energy is available, it’s hugely inefficient to use Hydrogen for heating as opposed to a heat pump.
If we use the hydrogen made by electrolysis, to generate electricity it’s an incredibly inefficient and hugely expensive method, storage of huge amounts under very high pressure is super expensive as well. Hydrogen doesn’t make a good “battery” and doesn’t make a huge amount of sense for heating, compared to heat pumps.
There is a huge amount of money to be made from the general public by these policies and by god these companies are going to make it.
The green energy stuff is a bit of a crock, because it doesn’t generate when we need it and currently no sensible way of storing the quantities of energy required to see us though a few days of nil green generation, doesn’t exist. In fact the tech to take us through the night doesn’t exit, even running the country for an hour is unthinkable.
Leaving Nuclear and air to air heat pumps for the 80% (which the government et al, absolutely don’t promote and yet when I look at boilers being banned, it’s the only solution that seems to make sense for me) where it’s completely cost ineffective to install air/ground to water heat pumps. Nuclear is the only way, because it’s always on, then you don’t need the “green” energy, as it won’t make any difference. You might see the windmills turn and all, but the reactors will simply have the steam turbines being bypassed…or the windmill won’t be connected to the exciter coils and generating any energy (you will just think it is).
There are huge amounts of money to be made (from us) by all this….I’m not saying we should keep burning fossil fuels, of course not, we need that resource to support the chemical industry for the next 1000 years or so. However, we have to swallow the red pill and realise, nuclear is the only way to go that will definitely work.
P.S. Fossil fuels make fertilisers, without which half the world will starve.