Energy Matters Global and Domestic

[myglaren]

Musk has withdrawn from using cryptocurrency giving security problems as the reason.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Musk has withdrawn from using cryptocurrency giving security problems as the reason.

Changes from day to day Steve

May 19th 2021
Elon Musk suggests Tesla is committed to holding the Bitcoin he criticized last week

Elon Musk wasn’t exactly the most popular person amongst Bitcoiners last week. He spent several days criticizing Bitcoin’s energy usage (so much so that he walked back Tesla’s earlier decision to accept Bitcoin for vehicles), and pumping up his favourite altcoin, Dogecoin. Now, as the Bitcoin market takes a massive plunge, Elon says that he’s not selling Tesla’s Bitcoin holdings.

May 11th 2021
Tesla might delve deeper into crypto as Elon Musk teases accepting Dogecoin payment

Regards Neil

[myglaren]

They should make up their minds.
I wouldn't touch craptocurrency with two bargepoles. Looks like something doomed to spiral down into financial hell.

[Paul-R]

it's just another South Sea Bubble, Dutch Tulip Mania or (more modern reference) Dot Com Bubble in the making.

[NewcastleFalcon]

I just wonder if blockchain tech will invade whether we like it or not, in many other areas of activity and not necessarily in its most visible application in finance with investment and speculation on Bitcoin and the like.

It would appear that blockchain tech will form part of the production/supply/distribution/selling chain in many sectors.
Energy as a commodity as per the thread title is likely to embrace blockchain tech.

I haven't a great understanding of it, but seems to me that blockchain tech is heading for time of massive expansion.
Not talking about bitcoin or any existing Crypto, but the blockchain tech behind it.

In other areas of major importance like agriculture blockchain tech is also an active topic of debate.
There may be better vids....just an example.


Regards Neil

[bobins]

A brief, and none-too-convincing article on the alternatives to gas boilers, featured on the BBC website.

Gas Boilers: What are heat pumps and how much do they cost?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57159056

The article closes with this:
"So lots of options… but be warned: the great task of shifting heating from gas will be expensive and difficult.
Politicians don't like those words much, which is why the government's Heat and Buildings Strategy, expected next month, has been so long-delayed."

[myglaren]

Like most things, I expect early adopters will be skinned alive for inferior results and better, less expensive alternatives will emerge once the adoption of the system gathers speed.

[NewcastleFalcon]

A brief, and none-too-convincing article on the alternatives to gas boilers, featured on the BBC website.
Gas Boilers: What are heat pumps and how much do they cost?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57159056

Over on the sister thread Heat pumps one for the engineers as a thread starter I posed these questions.

Heat pumps one for the engineers

Gas Boilers are soon to become persona non grata, and go the way of the internal combustion engine. The only alternative purported is either direct electric heating or heat pumps ground and air source, together with better insulation.

So what do I know about heat pumps. Not very much and its probably all wrong. Here is a back of a postage stamp summary of my current little knowledge thinking.

This is a heat pump

Heat pump installations are ridiculously and unnecessarily expensive.
I've seen some heat pumps they are just a small cabinet not a lot bigger than a gas boiler which sits outside the building with the minimum of pipework and electrical connection entering the house.
They are a glorified fridge in reverse, not really any cutting edge technology
I can't believe the components in those cabinets are any more complicated, or any more expensive materials wise than a gas boiler.
I suspect the pricing of them is inflated by unnecessary subsidies for installations.

I could go away and do a bit more research and I probably will, but give me an armchair ride with your own thoughts to get us started.

How do they work
Why are they currently so expensive
DIY could you make one in your shed what components would you need

My pre-thread starting impression I have highlighted. Don't think I have read anything since to change that much, other than as well as the pump itself which really isn't that complicated you need a tank. Your combi gas boiler doesn't need a tank so a bit additional internal plumbing required, and with gas you can crank up the heat and have much of it disappear through the walls and windows, and still be comfortable while the heat pump experience is really you do need decent insulation etc.

The policy makers are at a crossroads

Scale up the heat pump industry get the economies of scale and bring heat pumps down to the price of a current gas boiler. (smallish green lobby)

Or try go go down a "north Sea gas" route. Retrofit existing boilers and mandate all new gas boiler be Hydrogen ready, readily accept a very slow pilot study on injecting hydrogen into the grid, commit to the gas grid and hope you can get enough hydrogen to support domestic heating and cooking. Guaranteed Hydrogen through the grid will be more expensive than electricity (Massive Gas industry/Fossil Fuel Industry Lobby)

Other factors come into play and some questions for this thread which I don't know the answers to:

Why in May 2021 is Domestic electricity massively more expensive than and Domestic Gas
(16p ish /kWh/ 3p ish /kWh )
Is domestic gas heading up in price/ electricity heading down
(in the H₂ in the gas grid "solution" inevitably Gas prices boom!)
What are the fuel poverty implications. of any of the changes to the energy mix.

[bobins]

Other factors come into play and some questions for this thread which I don't know the answers to:

Why in May 2021 is Domestic electricity massively more expensive than and Domestic Gas
(16p ish /kWh/ 3p ish /kWh )
Is domestic natural gas heading up in price/ electricity heading down
(in the H₂ in the gas grid "solution" inevitably Gas prices boom!)
What are the fuel poverty implications. of any of the changes to the energy mix.

I'd guess that the answers to your questions will have something to do with:
1: That's what the market determines.
2: The prices will change to what the market will bear with slight input from the government to help achieve its aims.
3: Fuel poverty is, and will always be, an issue. That's due to a combination of human nature and pricing to what the market dictates with an element of government 'nudge' thrown in.

[NewcastleFalcon]

The experience of Domestic Energy pricing in Spain as posted by Chris in this thread...here

Well done, Steve - you got it in one!

We learned, only this week – with no obvious announcements from government or electricity suppliers – that from 1 June (a week's time) that almost every domestic electricity customer will be switched to a new Tariff, called 2.0TD . . .
.


Green = low price per kWh
Yellow = 'flat' or mid-price
Red = peak price

We've had variable tariffs for years here, but lots of different ones, which has (as intended) made price comparisons between providers very difficult. Our own one was low price from 22h00 to 12noon, peak price 12noon to 2200h.

Claimed extra Good News is that
1 - all weekends and public holidays will be low price 24/24h
2 - the same times will operate for both Summer and Winter

All this rides on the back of smart meters, which are almost everywhere now. We've had one for around 10 years.
The smart meters will "change the clocks" twice a year, instead of consumers having to remember to re-schedule the washing machine.

BUT - and there are always a BUT's . . .
All the companies can fix the unit prices for each time-slot as they wish, so comparisons are still difficult.
Endesa (the largest supplier) seems about to boast the lowest Peak cost per unit . . . but has wound up the price of the other two!
Half our current bills are standing monthly charges for 'potencia' (i.e. having a power supply), meter rental, government 'green' tax, and VAT at the full 21% on all of those. Not uncommon for us to use €90 of units in a month (currently €0.08/kWh off-peak, €0.17 peak), plus another €90 for standing costs. Not cheap! There has been no announcement about these charges for the new tariff.

Endesa are one of the companies that most consumers here trust about as far as they can throw them, and errors in billing almost always end up very much in their favour, not ours. (We have personal experience of this, when a smart meter managed to get the time of day wrong (9 hours out!) for over a week, resulting is a serious spike in cost. This was never acknowledged or put right, despite the intervention of the Consumer Office here.) None of this inspires confidence. We long ago fitted our own (analogue and calibrated) second meter, so to be able to keep a check on problems. The trouble with remotely-controlled smart meters is that they can very easily be . . . . . remotely controlled. Shift a time slot by just 15 minutes across tens of thousands of meters, and there's big bucks to be had. Suspicious, moi ?

So, it's a 2.0TD for us all!

I thought for a minute before your explanation that perhaps Spain as a country took more control over its electricity generation and distribution to customers with a simple tariff across the country. I get the impression perhaps incorrectly that it is dominated by Ibedrola and Endesa rather than the complete free-for-all in the UK and the large number of energy brokers (inc the big 6 and countless others) all acting as largely unnecessary intermediary between generation transmission and distribution and payment by the consumer.

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

With Smart Grid, Smart Meters Smart V2G, and local domestic/community generation/storage from home solar/wind/ electric vehicles, disruptive blockchain tech could have has major consequences for the existing intermediaries.

How Blockchain will Re-write the Energy Sector

The use of blockchain to decentralize energy supply and transaction systems ensures the elimination of third parties in the energy sector hence reducing the cost for the end consumers. There will no longer be any need for such intermediaries like energy companies, banks or traders. Instead, with the above system blockchain based smart contract applications would enable direct relationships between producers and consumers. The consumer would be able to manage their electricity supply contracts as well as consumption data.

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

The EU used to have a policy ambition of an Energy Union and linked grids, maybe still do but have struggled to make it happen

Out of date but this was the idea, from the horses mouth.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content ... 015:80:FIN

Talk in 2017 of ditching it, but it may happen just as a result of technical progress and the market for buying and selling electricity, or the development of microgrids where community or even individual household generators will be empowered to sell their generation and storage, across countries and across borders peer to peer without the intermediary of an energy company.

So someone in Spain with excess solar generation for their domestic needs on a particular day part of the day, could in theory trade their excess with someone in the Netherlands, or indeed with their near neighbours in their community.

ANyone care to offer up the latest information on the EU's Energy Union. Some of it has happened. From a security point of view joining up centralised grids to a other centralised grids, is less secure than a truly distributed internet of power generation and distribution with many points of local generation, and many micro-grids.
Spain to France/France/Spain somewhere in the Pyrenees


REgards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Another relevant post from Chris' thread

Solar is becoming big here. Some huge mirror arrays have been around for a while, concentrating reflected heat on to an elevated boiler. Sounds crude, but effective.
https://www.google.com/search?q=spanish ... AUnE55VKEM

Spain currently has seven active nuclear stations, I believe, and around ten inactive/being decommisioned.
____________

We visited some new neighbours last weekend. Have bought a house a 200m from us, and spent a lot of money modernising it. This includes a Solar PV array on their garden hillside:

18 (soon to be 24) PV panels, at 400W each (= 7.2kw, soon to be 9.6kW)
Small, neat inverter/controller panel (small suitcase size) in the garage.
Battery bank underneath it, a near modular cabinet, brand BYD (we know them, don't we?), capable of 13kW output, 3ph.

The whole lot monitorable and controllable from the owner's smartphone, whether he's here or in Germany.
While we were there (sunny afternoon, 4pm) readings were
- PV output, an available 6kw
- output to house/premises, c.3500W - which included heat pumps for both DHW and pool, and pool circulation
- call from the public supply, just 350W.

With the current installation, he can normally produce more energy than he consumes.
Bureaucracy, reluctance and taxes make it unfeasable at the moment to export power to the local grid. Endesa claim the local network is "unsuitable", and have quoted a sell-back figure of just 5¢/kWh [their normal supply rate is around 18¢], which is taxable.

A fascinating chance to see all this working, and up-close.
No shortage of funds in this case; our man is an investment banker, he and his wife now both working 'from home'.

Bureaucracy can kill innovation initially, but local generation of electricity from solar/wind/hydro or whatever source/ and local storage could be traded between neighbours/communities, and micro grids set up as well as exporting to the "big" grid or providing storage for the "big" grid. Its so obvious it will happen. Some places will just be quicker than others.

REgards Neil

[white exec]

Heat pumps - the type that are just small-ish cabinets which usually sit or get wall-mounted outside - are just essentially the "outside" half of a common "split-type" domestic air conditioner. These (normally outside) units output either heat or cold along their refrigerant pipes (depending on whether you want to cool or heat - the unit is reversible) to the indoor part, which blows either heat (or cold) into the room.

It's very efficient, and units which output say 3000W of heat can be operated with 900W (or even less) of mains power.
They're also very cheap (in countries that have had them for some time), with the big DIY stores selling a split unit (ready to install) for even just €200. Better models (eg Panasonic, Daikin, Mitusubishi...) can cost around €600-700, and can have similar outputs.

Larger versions of these air-to-air heat pumps are used here for domestic and commercial hot-water (although, with all our sun here, simpler water-filled solar collectors/tanks are usually favourite), and increasingly for electrically heating swimming pools.

Traditionally, domestic A/C hs been a rarity in the UK, and correspondingly expensive, and suppliers have been happy to keep it that way. But now, climate is changing, fuelling is under scrutiny, and there is no inherent reason for either air-to-air heat pumps (or split air conditioners), or their ground-source cousins, to remain expensive — quite the opposite, in fact.

In any case, a good, efficient gas boiler is no longer the cheap item it once was. The output from these heat pumps can feed into hot-water systems (or even existing wet radiator circuits, or underfloor pipes, with some forethought), as well as being able to provide 'instant' air heating for rooms.

The essential companion to this is a massive improvement in UK home insulation, something the government keeps postponing, unfortunately.

[bobins]

An article on the BBC website about the current outlook for 'going green.'

Move to net zero 'inevitably means more mining'

"The public will need to accept greater mining activity if the world is to meet the challenge of going green.
Resource experts say the current supply of various metals and minerals cannot support a global economy producing net zero carbon emissions."

".......Prof Richard Herrington and colleagues believe an urgent conversation needs to get going on where and how the inevitable new extraction is practised.
'The public are not in this space at the moment; I don't think they understand yet the full implications of the green revolution,' the head of Earth sciences at London's Natural History Museum told BBC News.
'We're probably only talking about a short-term spike in mining but we have to work quickly, because we know if we don't cut carbon dioxide now it will be a problem in the future.' "

"The UK, for instance, wants all new cars to go electric from 2030. But to switch Britain's 31.5 million petrol and diesel vehicles over to a battery-electric fleet would take an estimated 207,900 tonnes of cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate, 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, and 2,362,500 tonnes of copper."*
"This amounts to twice the current annual world production of cobalt (used in battery electrodes), an entire year's world production of neodymium (to make electric motor magnets) and three-quarters of the world production of lithium (battery electrolyte).
Replacing the estimated 1.4 billion internal combustion engine vehicles worldwide would need 40 times these quantities, and that's before the metal and mineral requirements of all the wind turbines and solar farms are considered."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57234610

*-there's no indication of how long it would actually take to switch all of Britain's cars over to electric, or, indeed, if that's the actual plan.