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Well & Truly Off The Grid
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13/05/2025 1:45 pm
Looking forward to Transparent’s insights once the dust settles…
Top story on Apple News Today (must be a slow news day):
An extension of this approach being talked about is to make loan payments via salary sacrifice on pre taxed income as a tax free benefit which would help one cohort of consumers.
13/05/2025 2:02 pm
Doubling of annual allowance for distribution network spending. Sounds a lot to me.
Yes, it's far too much money.
DESNZ will no doubt wish us to reflect on the positive aspects of such expenditure...
... but it's got to come out of our pockets over several decades, as we pay back the commercial companies who are being permitted to saddle us with this debt.What we really need is an Industry Regular who is charged with the responsibility to act in the best interests of consumers....
I don't think there is any real consensus or buy in yet on what is the "best" so we are a long way off an Industry Regular then being truly charged.
I personally wonder if the costs and wider economic and social impact in the UK have been vastly underestimated?
13/05/2025 10:01 pm
still not fully convinced everyone needs a heat pump. Storage heaters are a sound technology, suited to a lot of property especially flats. A small flat just cannot justify spending stupid money on heat pumps.
Gas boiler can be very efficient, but not when coupled to S or Y plan though. Needs to be reasonably low flow temperature to get efficiency via condensing.
Biggest improvements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions come from not using energy, so insulation.
14/05/2025 8:47 am
still not fully convinced everyone needs a heat pump.
...
Nor should you be, @johnmo. The pathway set out is one of moving away from fossil fuel heating and heat pumps are only one way of doing that. Sadly, the publicity of the deadline to stop selling gas boilers has morphed in the public consciousness to the idea the only alternative to a gas boiler is an air source heat pump and that's clearly not accurate.
Unfortunately, the public debate about interchangeability between boilers and heat pumps has also become very muddied. The fact heat pumps are not ideally suited to historic buildings with little scope for the fitting of modern insulation doesn't mean they can't work in those situations and certainly doesn't mean they're not appropriate for the vastly more common modern(ish) homes. Similarly, just because heat pumps in well designed systems can economically replace a boiler in many homes doesn't mean they can be fitted in all homes. The nay-sayers and the evangelists are each guilty of using polarising and flawed arguments to support their viewpoints.
One of the biggest - and largely ignored - shortcomings to heat pumps is the simple fact they can only service domestic hot water in conjunction with a hot water tank or other related heat store. As such they can't provide a direct replacement to a combi boiler and so aren't appropriate for any home which doesn't have the space for a tank or similar. Of course, you can easily heat the home with an air to air system instead but we still have to take showers and baths. Given how many people live in flats, this is quite a considerable problem for which I have heard few good suggestions; in fact, the only one I know of is an electric combi boiler which will only ever be practical and economically viable once the leccy prices are decoupled from the price of gas.
Personally, I'd like to see a lot more in the media about practical community heating setups. They seem to me (non-expert that I am) as a potentially very good way of servicing the heat and DHW for many of the flats and city homes that aren't suitable for a heat pump.
105 m2 bungalow in South East England
Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5 kW air source heat pump
18 x 360W solar panels
1 x 6 kW GroWatt battery and SPH5000 inverter
1 x Myenergi Zappi
1 x VW ID3
Raised beds for home-grown veg and chickens for eggs
"Semper in excretia; sumus solum profundum variat"
1
14/05/2025 9:03 am
@majordennisbloodnok Systems such as those offered by Kensa (and I feel sure, by other companies too) would appear to be quite an elegant system for community housing, blocks of flats etc. and as you say perhaps need more extensive promotion and consideration. As many readers will know, our DHW needs are served via a Sunamp Thermino unit and we have solar panels to provide much of the energy required much of the year. I suppose community housing and flats might also consider joint useage of roof and/or wall mounted solar collectors for electricity and heating DHW.
I have seen promotions for roof top wind turbine schemes that are being considered too. Regards, Toodles.
Toodles, he heats his home with cold draughts and cooks his food with magnets.
14/05/2025 10:45 am
Sunamp Thermino unit
But if heated by immersion does not comply with the grant rules as it states heating and DHW need to come from heat pump. Think they withdrawn the low temp version.
14/05/2025 10:56 am
@johnmo Ours is powered from solar energy (with grid back up); the Myenergi Eddi is in control of this factor. I did question eligibility when having surveys as I was applying for the (then) £5.000 BUS grant. My installers assured me there would not be a problem. My grant went through without a problem. Perhaps Left Hand v Right Hand? Regards, Toodles.
Toodles, he heats his home with cold draughts and cooks his food with magnets.
20/05/2025 12:44 pm
Ours is powered from solar energy (with grid back up); the Myenergi Eddi is in control of this factor. I did question eligibility when having surveys
Here on the Forum we're going to need to be increasingly aware that the regulatory system is changing.
Things that we had done, even just a couple of years ago, might no longer fall within 'the rules'.
Installers also have a vested interest in telling customers that they can implement a particular approach.
They want to take your money, even if you've asked for something that is in the 'grey area' of grant conditions.
The Kensa Heat the Streets initiative is a case in point, which has been caught up in new regulations.
It's a relatively new approach, much of which is attractive because of the very affordable monthly finance and maintenance package, rather than the technology.
However, heat networks now fall within the remit of NESO.
That is underpinned by the Energy Act (Nov'23) and became effective when NESO commenced operating in Oct'24.
I want Kensa to succeed, but NESO will be acutely aware that many estate-wide community heating systems are of poor quality.
Houses further from the central heat-sources sometimes get supplied with tepid water,
and equipment faults can leave hundreds of dwellings without heating or hot water for weeks at a time.
There are numerous stories from a heat network in Peckham, which seems to generate more hot air for the local press than it does for the residents.
The regulations need tightening, but without negatively impacting innovation from the likes of Kensa.
Save energy... recycle electrons!
1
28/05/2025 3:50 pm
Australia Blue, the first wind farm in Western Victoria, is closing after 20 years. The closure is for financial reasons; the turbines have to be replaced, and it is unaffordable. The alternative is also unappealing, as it requires the farm to be demolished.
The cheaper of the options is to demolish and restore the land. There is no way of recycling the blades, so they will go to landfill, the metal work will be scrap, and the 20,000 tonne foundation will have to remain in the ruined farmland.
Retrofitted 11.2kw Mitsubishi Ecodan to new radiators commissioned November 2021.
14 x 500w Monocrystalline solar panels.
2 ESS Smile G3 10.1 batteries.
ESS Smile G3 5kw inverter.
15/06/2025 8:30 am
Retrofitted 11.2kw Mitsubishi Ecodan to new radiators commissioned November 2021.
14 x 500w Monocrystalline solar panels.
2 ESS Smile G3 10.1 batteries.
ESS Smile G3 5kw inverter.
1
16/06/2025 4:24 pm
Ain't consumerism wonderful!
Just because EVs could be a part of the solution doesn't mean all EVs are good. Greed seems to be universal and it never ceases to amaze how many ways there are for unscrupulous companies to flip the bird at people trying to do the right thing.
105 m2 bungalow in South East England
Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5 kW air source heat pump
18 x 360W solar panels
1 x 6 kW GroWatt battery and SPH5000 inverter
1 x Myenergi Zappi
1 x VW ID3
Raised beds for home-grown veg and chickens for eggs
"Semper in excretia; sumus solum profundum variat"
17/06/2025 10:39 pm
The first press reporting is out Here's a brief synopsis from Spanish media:
The big Blackout El Apagón:
"The government is blaming Red Eléctrica and the generating companies for the April 28 blackout, which left the entire Iberian Peninsula in the dark. Third Vice President and Minister for Ecological Transition Sara Aagesen pointed to a power surge in the grid at the press conference following the Council of Ministers meeting on Tuesday, citing a power surge that was not properly mitigated and ultimately brought down the entire system.
On the one hand, Aagesen has pointed to a possible planning error by Red Eléctrica (REE, 20% publicly owned ) for that day. On the other, she has pointed to apparently abnormal operation of the power plants that should have helped control the voltage. The vice president has not ruled out the possibility that "a combination of both" was behind the blackout.
Aagesen, who presented the report on the causes of the blackout to the Council of Ministers on Tuesday, explained that the electricity system operator had scheduled ten conventional power plants (which could be gas, coal, nuclear, etc.) to be available for the 28th, taking into account demand and generation forecasts.
However, the night before, the owner of one of those plants announced that it would not be operational the following day. REE then decided not to activate any additional power plants. "They did their calculations and saw that it wasn't necessary," Aagesen added. That wasn't the case."
"That could be where the planning error lay. But when it came to dealing with the power surges that ultimately brought down the system, the nine plants did not operate as planned. "Each and every one of them," the vice president noted, "experienced some degree of noncompliance" and did not absorb the stress as expected.
The vice president also emphasised that the system had sufficient generation capacity to have been able to respond. "There was enough generation capacity to respond," she noted, making it clear that the problem was not a lack of generation.
"She began her appearance by warning that the report has not yet gathered all the information requested from the parties involved. In her analysis, Aagesen concludes that the blackout was caused by a "multifactorial" problem.
Several fluctuations were detected during the morning of April 28th. Given this situation, minutes before the blackout, Red Eléctrica ordered the activation of a new plant—a combined gas cycle, the fastest-response technology in situations like this. But it wasn't available until 2:00 p.m., when the blackout had already begun."
"The lack of synchronous generation, according to the Vice President of the Government, had already caused power surges on the morning of April 28. But the system operator's actions to mitigate the fluctuations also contributed to this voltage rising. When one leak was blocked, another opened up. Because to control the frequency fluctuations, measures were taken that further increased system voltage.
Just before the blackout, the voltage was very high and sustained, causing the generators to shut down. They began disconnecting power in Granada, Badajoz, Segovia, Huelva, and Cáceres. Of these safety trips, some were triggered improperly, Aagesen emphasized, pointing to a second source of responsibility for the electricity companies. "The disconnections, some of them apparently improper, increase the voltage," the ministry emphasized.
These power outages were, as the Executive's number four emphasized, an unstoppable chain reaction that prevented the blackout from being controlled. Under these circumstances, the firewalls used to limit these types of events to specific areas or zones—up to six load-shedding maneuvers were attempted, all of them unsuccessful—were completely insufficient."
“The investigation confirms that the system did not have sufficient dynamic voltage control capacity. The thermal generation units that should have controlled voltage, and who are financially compensated for doing so, did not absorb all the reactive power expected in a context of high voltages,” summarized the solar industry association UNEF. “Let's be clear: solar photovoltaic energy was not the cause of the blackout,” several European photovoltaic associations added in another statement."
"The Spanish government had a maximum of three months (starting on April 28, the day of the worst blackout in Spain's recent history and one of the largest in Europe) to notify Brussels of the causes of the incident, its impact, and any possible improvements identified. The EU authorities then have another three months, until the end of October, to publish their even more comprehensive report ."
Both Spain & Portugal have urged both France and the European Commission to accelerate the development of electrical interconnections between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe , a development that Paris has been blocking for years. Most experts believe that, had there been a greater degree of interconnection, the probability of a blackout would have been lower
Note this is only a media summary - I do not have a copy of the report. Yet!
Main source El País
I suggested the speculation getting thrown around at the time was exactly that - speculation based on nothing tangible - it seems my sources were pretty good. I will be working with both grid authorities and various other expert parties in Spain (and elsewhere in Europe) later on this year so should be interesting. 😁
This post was modified 2 weeks ago by Lucia
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