Heat in the home

[simonineaston]

That's such a great chart! UK - the cold man of Europe. You'd think the gov would do something about it...
I remain puzzled by the heat loss from my flat. SInce this topic launched, I've been casually noting the outside temp. v the inside and see that the lowest temp.s inside aren't the expected fit with the coldest days... I expected a lag due to slowish heat loss of course, but even so, the coldest temps inside occur on days when its been warmish outside!
Best I can conclude is that when it's cold outside, the ch in the surrounding flats kicks in, thus heating my middle flat indirectly.

[Jon in Sweden]

We've just ordered solar panels for our house on a leasing arrangement. We haven't got the capital to pay for the array outright, but leasing still gives us about a 30% reduction in our electricity bill.

It'll be quite useful (from a heating perspective) for spring and autumn, where the temperature remains fairly low outside, but there is plenty of sun. Additionally, in summer (when it can get uncomfortably hot here), the panels reduce the solar gain on the roof by 38% and we can also use the air conditioning in our living space without any restriction.

Looking at the charts, we should have 6 months a year where we're a net producer of electricity. Solar panels are really common here. There are 3 other full roof installations within 150m of our house.

[Cugel]

When small scale and very efficient wind generators become commercially available, it'll become a lot easier to reduce the use of electricity from the grid as wind power isn't so seasonal as solar, providing a fill-in through the darker/shorter days when wind strength also tends to be rather higher, on average, than through the lighter/longer days.

This one looks like the sort of thing that would be feasible for many who have a house and some form of open surroundings that winds could get at:

https://www.halcium.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg7wW2nnrPU

But there seem to many other designs in the pipeline. For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdXJJ8y12po

At present we have two 4K solar panel arrays that generate 7000KwH of the annual 8000 we use (for every energy guzzling thing, no gas or oil albeit a hybrid car used 95% of the time on electricity). A couple of those 1K wind turbines would easily fill in the 1000KwH gap.

Cugel

[Biospace]

When small scale and very efficient wind generators become commercially available, it'll become a lot easier to reduce the use of electricity from the grid as wind power isn't so seasonal as solar, providing a fill-in through the darker/shorter days when wind strength also tends to be rather higher, on average, than through the lighter/longer days.

This one looks like the sort of thing that would be feasible for many who have a house and some form of open surroundings that winds could get at:

https://www.halcium.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg7wW2nnrPU

But there seem to many other designs in the pipeline. For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdXJJ8y12po

A couple of those 1K wind turbines would easily fill in the 1000KwH gap.

Cugel

There are comments on the videos saying, "Show us the data!", "It won't offset energy use, but it can charge things like a battery for emergency backup power supply" and "Surprise - no news in over a year". I think these are valid since there's a history of wind generators for use on or close to houses which have been near useless, some have been outright scams.

I do hope these designs rock the world of domestic energy production, do be absolutely certain before parting with your money.

We've just ordered solar panels for our house on a leasing arrangement. We haven't got the capital to pay for the array outright, but leasing still gives us about a 30% reduction in our electricity bill.

It'll be quite useful (from a heating perspective) for spring and autumn, where the temperature remains fairly low outside, but there is plenty of sun. Additionally, in summer (when it can get uncomfortably hot here), the panels reduce the solar gain on the roof by 38% and we can also use the air conditioning in our living space without any restriction.

Looking at the charts, we should have 6 months a year where we're a net producer of electricity. Solar panels are really common here. There are 3 other full roof installations within 150m of our house.

Heat pumps and solar panels work together extremely well, sometimes even in mid-winter - at the moment large parts of the UK have subzero temperatures and sunshine from sunrise to sunset. Sweden has the benefit of reliable annual snowfall which I imagine is very effective at cleaning the glass. It's not so long ago that the experts advised solar panels would not be very effective as far North as Britain.

[reohn2]

The answer to the country's energy costs and needs?
A Trade Union leader spells it out why we're paying through the nose for our enery:- https://youtu.be/g9hIaICUbbI

[853]

That's such a great chart! UK - the cold man of Europe. You'd think the gov would do something about it...

No it isn't. A sample of 80000 homes, from 11 countries, is too small to prove anything as it depends which 7300 homes in each country you looked at; it could be made to say anything that creator of it intended it to say

[853]

It's easier to see the wood for the trees if you look at the way the temperature varies on a section through the thickness of a cavity wall over a heating cycle. Take this plot of my all-but uninsulated house, it shows, over a 72 hour period, the temperature of the inside air, inside surface of the cavity wall, inside of the cavity, outside of the cavity, outside of the wall, and outside ambient, in that order, from top to bottom, and it compares those with the heating both timed and continuous.
.
Plot.png
Scale of the plot is 1sec to 1 hour, and 1V to 1C.

You can see that whilst the inside air temperature drops by 5.3 degrees over 7 hours (& 4.7 over 5 hours), the outside surface of the wall varies by only 0.1C over the daily cycle, and its mean difference above ambient is only about 10% lower with the heating timed than on continuous. This smoothing of the daily temperature variation is caused by the thermal resistance and heat capacity of the wall, and it's the reason why switching my heating off for 29% of the day saves only about 10% off the heating bill, because it's ultimately the outside surface of the wall that's losing heat to the outside air.

This is a great graph. I'm not sure that it would be practical/acceptable, but what would be really interesting would be to see this graph over 48 hours with the heat switched off completely - so we could see the shape of the graph over a longer period.

As I said, this might not be practical so I do understand that you may not be able to do this - particularly at present.

[briansnail]

Depends on diet as well.If I eat lots of carbs in winter include bad cakes and biscuits I get by with 12c and two jerseys.Switch to a good veg diet without the bad stuff in winter the thermostat goes up LOTS.
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I ride Brompton and a 100% British Vintage

[al_yrpal]

Heat pumps: The 'geeks' obsessing over their heating systems - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64261457

Well, we have some here and I know two personally...

Redrow builders say they will install air source heat pumps in all the new detached homes they build....all the show homes we have visited lately have gas boilers and tiny radiators.......

Al

[Mick F]

Just chatting to Mrs Mick F about temperature here.
Minus 4degC outside as I type at 09:20, and only 13degC here in the north-facing livingroom.

Yes, I could light the fire, or use the portable gas heater, but they won't warm the walls and floor up.
We've had cold and frosty weather for the last week and bit, and very slowly, the building has cooled and cooled and cooled.

The fire was roaring yesterday evening, and the room was nice and toasty warm. Overnight, all that heat has gone.

[rjb]

Anybody here been invited to join the demand flexibility scheme to get paid for reducing their consumption. I've not been invited despite having a Smets 2 smart meter.
I get the impression that those who are being invited are the profligate users at the expense of those who have already reduced their consumption.
Total reform of the energy market is required to address the way we all pay for our energy.
Incorporating standing charges into the unit price and having a banding structure like income tax so you pay a surcharge as your consumption increases would be a fairer system in my view not the demand flexibility scheme which disproportionately rewards the high energy users.

[DevonDamo]

I get the impression that those who are being invited are the profligate users at the expense of those who have already reduced their consumption.

I looked into it a couple of months ago when the scheme was announced. I was told that in order to get onto the scheme, you had to apply to your energy supplier, but my one wasn't taking part.

[Biospace]

Just chatting to Mrs Mick F about temperature here.
Minus 4degC outside as I type at 09:20, and only 13degC here in the north-facing livingroom.

The fire was roaring yesterday evening, and the room was nice and toasty warm. Overnight, all that heat has gone.

A 17C temperature differential after a night without any heating on is reasonably good performance for an older property. You'll find your new MacBook doesn't contribute nearly so much to the heating as older models!

We typically cycle the kitchen/living area between 16.5C and 20C, running the UFH (boiler output at 37C) as necessary. When it's 6-9C outside, that takes an hour and a half every two and a half to three days, when in the -5 to 0C range, every day for an hour and a half or so. The rest of the house settles out around 14-15C, there has been occasional heating elsewhere when prompted!

Total reform of the energy market is required to address the way we all pay for our energy.

Yes, I totally agree. It's a nonsense for government to say it recognises AGW as a problem but encourages the consumption of energy through allowing a pricing structure which penalises the energy efficient. The cost of each additional unit should increase, over an acceptable threshold and become punitive over a slowly reducing level. EV supplies could have their own meter, I see no reason why similar pricing shouldn't apply.

[rjb]

BTW coal units on standby just in case means fully functioning coal fired power stations with the boilers fired up burning coal feeding steam to the turbine which is running at 3000rpm and the alternators synchronised to the grid ready to increase load as the grid requires. It would take most of the day to get to this stage and the cost in manpower and coal would not be insubstantial even if they were not required.
This was a routine arrangement in my day known as "spinning reserve" a much more apt description.
EV chargers are mandated know to be capable of recording charge to enable future tax pricing.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new- ... e-fuel-tax

[Jon in Sweden]

Just chatting to Mrs Mick F about temperature here.
Minus 4degC outside as I type at 09:20, and only 13degC here in the north-facing livingroom.

Yes, I could light the fire, or use the portable gas heater, but they won't warm the walls and floor up.
We've had cold and frosty weather for the last week and bit, and very slowly, the building has cooled and cooled and cooled.

The fire was roaring yesterday evening, and the room was nice and toasty warm. Overnight, all that heat has gone.

I don't think that you need to accept that your house is cooling though. We were in Devon previously and our house was crap, but here in Sweden, we often have weeks at a time of sub zero temperatures and it has no affect on the internal temperature, other than that our electricity bill goes up a bit.

We just need to massively upgrade the insulation on our houses in the UK. There is nothing else for it.