Electric boilers - how is this going to work.

[Zerax]

...The biggest problems with hydrogen atm is how cheaply it can be produced to compete with what's available, also the transmission of it. could the existing gas network be used?

Most of our gas network (I can't vouch for recent stuff) was designed for 'Town Gas' which is has alot of hydrogen in it... so in theory, it should be an easy transition back to what we used to have ?

 

[Simon47]

Most of the electric boilers seem to be around 12kW, while most of the gas boilers I've seen even in flats and small houses seem to be 30kW plus. So my main question is, how is replacing a 30kW + boiler with a 12kW boiler going to be sufficient to heat the place?

Probably no problem for the heating - but the hot water supply will be on the carp side of rubbish. One of the problems with (gas) combi boilers is that they are generally vastly over-sized for the heating load - and thus suffer from not condensing due to the fudges (eg bypass) required to make them function at all with a typical existing heating system. They have to be vastly over-sized because if they are sized appropriately to the heating load - then they'll be incapable of supplying decent hot water.
Example: 1990s one bed flat, ground floor with another flat above it. Combi installed has minimum output power of about 9kW, hot water output rating of nearly 30kW (but still struggles to fill the bath faster than it's going cold). So how much heat does the flat need for heating ? About 2kW average when outside it's been hitting -10˚C or lower and struggling to get above freezing during the day. I measured it by using the immersion on the thermal store for heating, letting it settle for a couple of days, and then seeing how much lecky it used for a couple of days - back in Dec 2010 when we had that long cold spell and the flat was empty.

 

[LightGEN]

Noting some early comments in this thread about connection sizes ....I see that the REA has called for three phase to become the norm for domestic connections ....mostly driven by the need for EV charging.
Homes should be fitted with three-phase electricity supply - Utility Week - https://utilityweek.co.uk/new-homes-fitted-three-phase/

 

[Zerax]

Noting some early comments in this thread about connection sizes ....I see that the REA has called for three phase to become the norm for domestic connections ....mostly driven by the need for EV charging.
Homes should be fitted with three-phase electricity supply - Utility Week - https://utilityweek.co.uk/new-homes-fitted-three-phase/

I'd love to see the Government's grand plan for sourcing all this extra power whilst sticking to greenhouse gas targets ! And all this whilst keeping the cost increases low enough to avoid riots on the streets...

 

[LightGEN]

I'd love to see the Government's grand plan for sourcing all this extra power whilst sticking to greenhouse gas targets ! And all this whilst keeping the cost increases low enough to avoid riots on the streets...

Clearly, this isn't going to happen over-night. The cost of 'renewable' energy generation is ever decreasing; the strike price for recent off-shore wind farms (£57.50/MWh) is vastly less than that of the propose Hinkley Point nuclear plant (£92.50/MWh - in 2012 prices)
On the other side of the equation, individual consumption has dropped significantly with increases in efficiency.
Among the interesting proposals I see is the idea of constructing geothermal power plants in Iceland to supply the UK via underwater cables ....a couple of companies are investigating projects of this type. Tidal lagoons have potential; the Swansea Bay project seems to have found some investors and that may now go ahead ....that's a pilot project to prove the concept, with potential for a number of larger projects.

 

[Zerax]

Clearly, this isn't going to happen over-night. The cost of 'renewable' energy generation is ever decreasing; the strike price for recent off-shore wind farms (£57.50/MWh) is vastly less than that of the propose Hinkley Point nuclear plant (£92.50/MWh - in 2012 prices)
On the other side of the equation, individual consumption has dropped significantly with increases in efficiency.
Among the interesting proposals I see is the idea of constructing geothermal power plants in Iceland to supply the UK via underwater cables ....a couple of companies are investigating projects of this type. Tidal lagoons have potential; the Swansea Bay project seems to have found some investors and that may now go ahead ....that's a pilot project to prove the concept, with potential for a number of larger projects.

That's all good news... however...
Wind is not always blowing, so it cannot be relied upon... imagine a Christmas Day afternoon, with a large high pressure system sitting over the UK so there's not a breath of wind... and everyone puts the oven on to cook the turkey... whilst charging both family cars ?? We need other sources...

As to tidal etc... it's all in it's infancy and has been for years... we'd need thousands of tidal lagoons to make a difference ! Each one taking 10, 2o, 30 years to design, agree on and build....

 

[LightGEN]

That's all good news... however...
Wind is not always blowing, so it cannot be relied upon... imagine a Christmas Day afternoon, with a large high pressure system sitting over the UK so there's not a breath of wind... and everyone puts the oven on to cook the turkey... whilst charging both family cars ?? We need other sources...

As to tidal etc... it's all in it's infancy and has been for years... we'd need thousands of tidal lagoons to make a difference ! Each one taking 10, 2o, 30 years to design, agree on and build....

Wind generation is a part of the mix and can't be considered in isolation. It's a rare day when the wind isn't blowing adequately for the country's installed base of turbines to make a useful contribution, when considered as a network. Solar makes a contribution during the winter, even if it's suppressed by lower light levels and shorter days. Considered in tandem, wind and solar generation are fairly complementary - it tends to be windy in the winter and sunny in the summer.
Energy storage systems need further investment in the UK, to moderate the peaks and troughs of the solar/wind combination. There are a number of 'molten salts' storage installations, globally, which operate quite effectively; maybe a technology we'll see appear here.

Tidal current generation is certainly immature, however, tidal lagoon generation is far from so, there are a number of existing installations:
La Rance River, France (240MW) - opened in 1966.
Annapolis Royal, Canada (20MW) - opened in1984.
Shihwa Lake, South Korea (254MW) - opened in 2011.
Jiangxia, China (3.2MW) - opened in 1980.
Kislaya, Russia (1.7MW) - opened in 1968.
Uldolmok, South Korea (1.5MW) - opened in 2009.
Eastern Scheldt, Netherlands (1.25MW) - opened in 2015.
Plus a number of proposed schemes.

As for the number of tidal lagoons required to power the UK ....that clearly depends on how large they are and the number of turbines installed. The Swansea Bay pilot project is planned with 320MW installed capacity (530GWH/year), claimed to be able to generate 11% of the requirement of Wales. The Swansea project already has planning permission. The Cardif Bay project is almost ten times the size of Swansea, with a planned installed capacity of 3GW (5.5TWH/year) and plans for that are already quite advanced. It's suggested that the Cardif Bay lagoon would generate adequate electricity to power all the homes in Wales.
There are outline plans for additional tidal lagoon installations at Newport, Colwyn Bay, Bridgewater Bay and West Cumbria. The Newport installation being planned for an installed capacity between 1.4 and 1.8GW (2-3TWH/year). The other three are at an earlier stage of development, however, it seems reasonable to conclude, the proposals will be of similar scale to the Cardiff and Newport Schemes, in the 2-6 TWH/year range.
I don't have a figure to hand for overall UK electricity consumption, though I seem to recall something like 50TWH/year ....suggesting that twenty five 2TWH lagoons could supply the UK, not 1000s. Of course, it's unlikely that there are suitable sites for 25 lagoons ....but five could potentially supply some 20% of 'current' UK electricity requirement and, should those installations be 5TWH that would be nearer to 50% of requirement.
The December 2018 DBE&IS energy statistics report indicates that in Q3 of 2018 renewables accounted for 33.1% of UK electricity generation, 10% up on the previous year.
Timelines for lagoon projects ...of course, a number of projects would run in parallel. Construction - 2 to 3 years from 'go ahead', if memory serves. Time to 'go ahead', let's assume 5 years.

Home - Tidal Lagoon - http://www.tidallagoonpower.com/

 

[Zerax]

Excellent information LightGen... and good news that it's more advanced than I knew ! You've just saved me many hours of googling !

However... I still maintain that it's all many many years away... I've just checked on the current status of the Swansea scheme as I thought it was all canned due to lack of funding... but I see it is still an outside chance of being built... I did see though, that due to only two tides a day, it'll only produce power for 14hrs a day... lets hope we can re-work the tides to coincide with Coronation Street and kettles going on !

Large scale battery storage is definitely part of the solution... but again, we're many many years away from this.

I think it's great news that we're heading in the right direction with all this... but it's too slow and every year we're building another 200,000 'shoe-box' houses all with an electricity supply !

 

[Midwest]

Well, unless we gonna go extinct in the next 100 years, some clever boffin will come up with something. We are too reliant on electricity; there thats the new way forward.

 

[GBDamo]

Most of our gas network (I can't vouch for recent stuff) was designed for 'Town Gas' which is has alot of hydrogen in it... so in theory, it should be an easy transition back to what we used to have ?

No, no, no.

Predict lots of bangs do I.

Hydrogen is the smallest molecule and is far more searching that natural gas or town gas.

Just no, please don't try it.

I thought town gas was effectively obtained from coal, coal gasification, which if true would almost certainly contain little or no free hydrogen but I am no expert so glad to be proved wrong.