Changes to Boiler Upgrade Scheme

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/discounts-for-families-to-keep-warm-in-winter-and-cool-in-summer

I cannot stop thinking... what sort of Air con unit costs 2500 to supply and install?

This may be a good solution for example for a one bed flat.. but how would anyone installing this remove their boiler? As it does not tackle hot water.

Posted by: @batpred

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I cannot stop thinking... what sort of Air con unit costs 2500 to supply and install?

This may be a good solution for example for a one bed flat.. but how would anyone installing this remove their boiler? As it does not tackle hot water.

I bought a handful of system in my last job, commercial use but domestic in scale.  Costs soon mount up if you need multiple, even two or three, idus and, at least then, splits, where you have multiple idu for a single odu, were more expensive than 1 odu per idu.  It was easy to get to 10k for a system with 4 idus hung off a single odu.

Smaller houses or large modern open plan houses may be well suited.  In a well insulated house that is largely open plan downstairs you could likely get away with a couple of units down and none up.  Poorly insulated heavily subdivided houses I imagine are a better fit with a2w.  

Posted by: @batpred

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I cannot stop thinking... what sort of Air con unit costs 2500 to supply and install?

This may be a good solution for example for a one bed flat.. but how would anyone installing this remove their boiler? As it does not tackle hot water.

The last census said 2.8 million one bed households so it will be higher than that now. 

The government says circa £4500 for a small home for air to air. 

So it could be suitable for some of these 1 bed households and some 2 bed households. 

I have lived in flats with electric and no gas, directly heating water with electric. So I expect some homes will continue doing this in the future with a2a rather that a2w heat pumps.There is also a grant for a heat battery along side the A2a heat pump for water heating. This can be charged up with off peak electricity. 

Be interesting to see just how many that is. 

As an aside it will be strange if the government changes the main heat pump grant criteria in the budget having made this announcement yesterday, but you never know. 

It is nice to see some different options for  variety of homes. 

Posted by: @jeff

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Posted by: @batpred

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I cannot stop thinking... what sort of Air con unit costs 2500 to supply and install?

This may be a good solution for example for a one bed flat.. but how would anyone installing this remove their boiler? As it does not tackle hot water.

The government says circa £4500 for a small home for air to air. 

So it could be suitable for some of these 1 bed households and some 2 bed households. 

I suppose they include the hot water heating system in that £4500. But it still seems a high cost. Or perhaps it is just that installing an air con that doubles as a heat pump is more standard in southern Europe..

Posted by: @jeff

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I have lived in flats with electric and no gas, directly heating water with electric.

I may do something similar. We have a CLAGE 9kw compact direct hot water system in storage. I am thinking of using it in line with the hot water tank (perhaps keeping 40C). This would help with water pressure in the colder months. 

Posted by: @jamespa

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Posted by: @batpred

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I cannot stop thinking... what sort of Air con unit costs 2500 to supply and install?

I bought a handful of system in my last job, commercial use but domestic in scale.  Costs soon mount up if you need multiple, even two or three, idus and, at least then, splits, where you have multiple idu for a single odu, were more expensive than 1 odu per idu.  It was easy to get to 10k for a system with 4 idus hung off a single odu.

I thought an aircon doubling as a heat pump could do our open plan area. But with the BUS, even overpriced heat pumps can compete. 

I am assuming the gov will not allow 2.5k for the a2a system + 7.5k for a heat pump in the same property...

Posted by: @jeff

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Interesting to see the UK may pay to join the EU internal electricity market, 

"a possible agreement on UK participation in the EU’s internal electricity market"

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10390/

I am not sure what this means in practical terms on interconnectors and bills etc. Perhaps @lucia has some more information on the EU market in and what the UK can't currently participate in.

Yes, an informed view would help, @lucia  

All I can say is that it does not seem unfair for non-members to pay more to access club facilities. And little argument to pay as little as aspiring members? 

I found this example of how it works for Norway, it seems three Nordic countries accepted Oslo to host Nord Pool AS. And Nasdaq Stockholm handles the financial power trading. 

Posted by: @batpred

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Posted by: @jeff

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Interesting to see the UK may pay to join the EU internal electricity market, 

"a possible agreement on UK participation in the EU’s internal electricity market"

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10390/

I am not sure what this means in practical terms on interconnectors and bills etc. Perhaps @lucia has some more information on the EU market in and what the UK can't currently participate in.

Yes, an informed view would help, @lucia  

All I can say is that it does not seem unfair for non-members to pay more to access club facilities. And little argument to pay as little as aspiring members? 

I found this example of how it works for Norway, it seems three Nordic countries accepted Oslo to host Nord Pool AS. And Nasdaq Stockholm handles the financial power trading. 

Sorry I did write a reply to @jeff the other day and then lost it 🤬 So here's another take.

First off Nordpool etc., has been around for ages and we already trade in Europe. That's not quite what we are signing up for. 

The first thing to know is that after deregulation of the UK energy system in the '90s as a very vocal and 'senior' member, the UK promoted deregulated energy markets in the EU. We pushed it on them. 😁

[However, most other EU members didn't quite take it to the extremes of privatisation that the UK did and thus they maintained state ownership of their grids and or some of their producers and/or suppliers.]

Until about 20 years ago trading was manual. Now it's digital and very high speed.

We were fully integrated into the EU electricity market until Brexit.

But in many ways we never really left. We are already part of the European markets/auctions - the Epex Spot/ the Intraday and Futures markets. (These all vary by time of payment, duration and MWhs). This is how our Balancing Mechanism works as our Grid balances demand with supply. We already rely on Europe for 10% of our electricity. If you recall that map I posted a while back, it shows we are net importers.

We have now signed an administrative agreement (last Feb) which is the first step to rejoining - like an MoU. However the financial contribution is still at the haggling stage so there's more to come.

So now we are in the process of moving our entire systems to 15 minute trading (I was able to observe this enormous task at Elexon) - this is the aspect of Spot or Day Ahead market called MTU. The French are way ahead of us and their 'bidding zone' is already fully up and running on 15 minute trading plus some European interconnectors between Italy/Germany/Belgium & a few others (not the UK) are MTU trading too..

The EPEX spot determines the prices for the entire continent - I have a nice little app on my phone that shows me the wholesale market prices per country. But the EU is also fully integrating the Intraday (3 day auctions) too and this means IT systems Europe wide also have to be integrated. It's the biggest market in the world.

If you were ever signed up to the infamous Octopus Tracker tariff (I was one of 16 who were the original 𝗀̶𝗎̶𝗂̶𝗇̶𝖾̶𝖺̶ ̶𝗉̶𝗂̶𝗀̶𝗌̶  customers ) this tracked the EPEX spot. 

The integration with the EU system includes everything - offshore wind, interconnectors, the works. This, in theory should allow Europe to shift excess electricity from renewables for example, to places of high demand or to places in deficit. I suspect that this is one reason why DESNZ chose not to go for locational pricing which can really distort domestic pricing (as we saw last winter in Sweden) but are faking it instead for businesses who relocate by subsidising their wholesale electricity costs.

I assume it will also mean conforming to new regulations too - on Carbon pricing for example and newer regs on trading and compliance. I'm not sure how far in we will go. Will we for instance, have to conform to EU rules about energy poverty or whatever?

We never really left the EU energy markets in other ways too - all the TSOs - Transmission System Operators - work closely together anyway - that was reflected in Brussels by the way they interacted; the jobs market is Europe-wide and is somewhat 'incestuous' for want of a better way of putting it as are the technical capacities and markets. The head of the trade organisation, Wind Europe, for example, is British) Meanwhile, lots of Brits still work in Brussels anyway.

So it's not too clear yet but watch this space - I will be writing about it and will post links.