Posted by: @watcher

↑

The world is a long way from ‘Hydrogen Ready’, no doubt it should be the future but there are a lot of hurdles to overcome

Er, there is definitely doubt that it should be the future and I would say certainly that it isn't the future for domestic use.  Hydrogen ready boilers are a pure con, it simply does not make sense when there is a readily available alternative that is mature technology and is four times more efficient in turning electrical energy into heat.

Oh my, bureaucracy at its finest!

Does that imply that the reason why both my PV inverters and heat pump have a 8 pin connector with extremely basic dry contact "energy management" commands is...

@jamespa

Agreed, replacing gas boilers with a Hindenburg option seems foolish!

My post was on the wider interpretation of Hydrogen Ready.

Having read the paper I referenced, I am convinced that hydrogen is the only direct alternative to carbon burning. 

Is this the government position currently?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hydrogen-heating-overview/hydrogen-heating-overview--2

Has anyone heard anything about a consultation that is mentioned?

Posted by: @jeff

↑

Has anyone heard anything about a consultation that is mentioned?

No, but the text suggests that the consultation is in the future.

I think I read this some while ago and interpreted it as government knows it's a non starter but doesn't yet have the evidence required to prove it to the degree of robustness necessary, so is putting it on the back burner.

Posted by: @jamespa

↑

Posted by: @etchedpixels

↑

Posted by: @jamespa

↑

Hydrogen has a role in applications where a real time electricity supply isn't an option, but it has no material role in domestic heating.

 

A lot of science and studies are questioning even that. It's just so dangerous, so voluminous for a given energy and so annoyingly good at escaping and damaging materials that it's not usable. Even shipping which is the classic "large not grid attached" case the only uses for hydrogen being trialled are burning stuff made with hydrogen and other materials not hydrogen on its own.

All the rail pilots have been dismal, hydrogen buses have tanked and even HGVs are going electric.

It also sucks as a storage medium - poor efficiency, horrific safety risks.

It's great for some industrial processes and we need it to make some fertilizer products so we can stop using methane and steam.

 

Interesting, I was trying above to be generous towards the global industrial scum promoting this technology for domestic heating. 

Im beginning to think that both the gas and electricity grids should be re-nationalised as a matter of urgency.  Then we can stop wasting money on upgrading the gas grid for a future that makes no sense, stop the abomination of centralised control of heating systems to balance the grid, promoted by the industry because it justifies lots of highly profitable investment in infrastructure, and instead spend the money on selective upgrades of the electricity grid only and domestic storage to load balance.  Whilst the people in control are motivated solely by profit for their own silos, extracted from the poor to make the rich even richer, we cant make holistic decisions about our critical national infrastructure in the interests of the general public and based firmly on science.  

I would be willing to be that the cost of the works @jeff posted about would have bought everyone affected a heat pump and an induction hob, rendering the pipework unnecessary and probably with money to spare.

 

From what I have read and heard from Cadent locally, although I am no expert... so feel free to correct... 

The Tier 1 Iron Main Replacement Programme across the country has been running since 2002, due to finish 2032 so most of the money has already been spent. A lot would have had to be done anyway since 2002 due to the slow rollout of renew­able generation and the age of the gas network

Tier 1 covers everything within 30 meters of a building. 

The wider ongoing pipe upgrade is separate to this. 

I don't know how much it is costing, it will be in the standing charges. 

Be interesting to see if Andy Burnham wants to put his name to any dates related to gas other than new builds. 

" focus instead on raising demand for electricity"

Aka profits up for the lads please. There are lot of incumbent producers whose underlying model is "energy is a commodity" and whose basic model is that you have supply and demand and electrons should be sold in bags like peas where having extra bags is a failure and wasteful. The renewable model on the other hand is more like rainwater. Not having enough is really really bad, but having extra and having nowhere to put it is pretty much "who cares". We can store it in batteries, maybe hydrogen, heat batteries, maybe recycle aluminium when the sun shines - so many things. And worst case if the economic value of saving it somewhere is negative we can just not bother. We didn't pay $85 a barrel for sunlight and squander it by not using it up, nor does the excess turn into a nasty sticky mess.

Much of what he is saying isn't new. Almost everyone (except the privatised DNOs and the people who supply them equipment) have been saying that the additional grid build out is the partially needed but most of it is the wrong thing in the wrong place. Economists likewise have been telling the government since forever that the correct way to manage the differences in supply and delivery costs is (at least for bigger businesses) to expose the true cost to the market in the first place. Unfortunately that means "not near London" which in UK politics often might as well mean it's the moon. That's aside from the people terrified of the idea of building some AI super-hub in the UK, putting it in Scotland and having Scotland go independent.

The hard side of the gas problem is actually the end ramp and it has a lot of economics and political folks rather alarmed. In many countries the correct approach of "Your street gas system will need renewal in 2028 and as gas is going away it will be withdrawn, here's help moving off gas" can be used. Nobody dares try this in the UK and some other chunks of Europe.

That means that what will actually happen is that outside of the new estates gas exit is likely to be a fairly random distribution (skewed somewhat to better off middle class areas - what is left of them). This causes the fixed cost of the gas network maintenance (which is enormous) to continue to be the same whilst the number of customers remaining falls. The more customers exit the more every remaining customer pays. The more every remaining customer pays the more customers exit and then whole thing does the economic equivalent of smoking next to a hydrogen leak.

I think the opinions here on nuclear are wrong for the record (it's expensive, high risk and some of it like SMR is actually about using green funds to backfill military reactor research budgets) but I think that's a topic perhaps to discuss some other thread.

The other aspect that's really getting interesting is the question of "who needs a grid". In poorer countries achieving a good reliable supply (by their standard not ours) without a grid versus with a grid is at the point where if you are more than 100 miles from the grid it's not worth bothering with a grid. That distance has been shrinking, and in the early 2030s on current projections it crosses zero distance. That's not "everyone has their own power" but it's "the village/town has it's own power infrastructure and we don't connect outside"

Posted by: @jeff

↑

The Tier 1 Iron Main Replacement Programme across the country has been running since 2002, due to finish 2032 so most of the money has already been spent. A lot would have had to be done anyway since 2002 due to the slow rollout of renew­able generation and the age of the gas network

OK, we cant do anything about the past but we can do something about the future so lets consider now till 2032. 

At least some of the replacement works will be because Cadent are assuming that they have to continue supplying gas, and of course for Cadent that is the case.  But as far as the country is concerned, they don't and in fact the quicker they can stop having to supply gat the better.  This is where the siloed, profit motivated thinking goes wrong.  If the money that they would spend (with the exception of genuine emergency repairs)  between now and 2032 were instead spent on supplying people with heat pumps, then ultimately we would all be better off.  It could be a planned transition, a road at a time (or whatever the unit of segmentation of the gas network is).  We did it with the transition from coal gas to natural gas, so we can do it with the transition from gas to electricity.  But it requires the utilities to act in the public, not the private, interest.

I dont know the numbers, maybe the cost of the gas network upgrade/repairs is insignificant in relation to the number of households served by those upgrades in which case, while the above remains valid, it wouldn't make a material difference so maybe not worth considering.  What I do know is that the current ownership structure means that it will not be considered.

Posted by: @jamespa

↑

Posted by: @jeff

↑

The Tier 1 Iron Main Replacement Programme across the country has been running since 2002, due to finish 2032 so most of the money has already been spent. A lot would have had to be done anyway since 2002 due to the slow rollout of renew­able generation and the age of the gas network

OK, we cant do anything about the past but we can do something about the future so lets consider now till 2032. 

At least some of the replacement works will be because Cadent are assuming that they have to continue supplying gas, and of course for Cadent that is the case.  But as far as the country is concerned, they don't and in fact the quicker they can stop having to supply gat the better.  This is where the siloed, profit motivated thinking goes wrong.  If the money that they would spend (with the exception of genuine emergency repairs)  between now and 2032 were instead spent on supplying people with heat pumps, then ultimately we would all be better off.  It could be a planned transition, a road at a time (or whatever the unit of segmentation of the gas network is).  We did it with the transition from coal gas to natural gas, so we can do it with the transition from gas to electricity.  But it requires the utilities to act in the public, not the private, interest.

 

The Tier 1 replacement is a regulatory change mandated by the HSE within the time frame. 

Currently Cadent would be subject to HSE enforcement action if they didn't replace all the pipes. So I am not sure Cadent have much leeway? 

The older pipes that haven't been replaced have suffered increased leakage so I suspect the risk is currently too great to change anything regarding the upgrades, at least until the government come up with a final decision on natural gas phase out, hydrogen, transition planning etc. The pipes I have seen in the holes in town look pretty corroded to my untrained eye.

Perhaps we will hear more from a new PM about more solid transition planning and costings. 

The gas distribution cost for a typical customer was £168 a year in a recent ofgem cap. So the upgrade for Tier 1 will be in that. I don't know how much of the £168 covers the upgrade. 

Posted by: @jeff

↑

The Tier 1 replacement is a regulatory change mandated by the HSE within the time frame. 

Currently Cadent would be subject to HSE enforcement action if they didn't replace all the pipes. So I am not sure Cadent have much leeway? 

No, and HSE dont have much choice either because of the ownership structure.  HSE cant, with the current ownership structure, say either upgrade the pipework or subside heat pump retrofits and disconnect the structure not least because Cadent shareholders would not accept that.

Posted by: @jeff

↑

The gas distribution cost for a typical customer was £168 a year in a recent ofgem cap. So the upgrade for Tier 1 will be in that. I don't know how much of the £168 covers the upgrade. 

Me neither, nor do I know over how many years the cost is being amortised (and thus what the total cost to the customer is).

As I say it may be that the cost of the upgrade per household is insignificant in which case I would probably say it should go ahead for the most part, but (assuming that there is a spread) there should be section by section analysis and sections where it is significant should instead be decommissioned and the houses served provided with heavily subsidised conversions.

Posted by: @jeff

↑

Perhaps we will hear more from a new PM about more solid transition planning and costings. 

 

Maybe, but I doubt that anyone will, in reality, will do much better than Miliband has in DESNZ, so unless the new PM can change the boundary conditions by a significant critical (monopoly) infrastructure nationalisation programme, which may be politically or financially unpalatable, the fragmentation of the industry and the resultant siloed, profit driven, approach will continue.  Unfortunately the Government is not wholly in control. 

All that said I dont know the figures and it may well be that the right choice has in fact been made.  I think the structure of the plan may now all fall under NESO, which for the past year or so has been publicly owned.  I am prepared to believe that they have actually done a good job and what we are seeing is the best that can reasonably be achieved.  I just don't know which is my failing not a failing of NESO. 

This is half of the problem - the other half is that customers don't want change (and in time when something replaces heatpumps they'll hate that too and swear allegience to heatpumps of old).

It would be much simpler to start pruning the gas network systematically as renewals were needed. You'd not be able to avoid all the renewals. However unlike OpenReach the government doesn't have an effective control point over a single body, and with telephony most people won't notice that copper has gone away, and the few that do get angry at a manageable rate and are drowned out by the people who've discovered their internet is ten times faster.

The POTS phone network removal is what it should be looking like but it will instead get kicked down the road until it implodes unless they can somehow manage to guide it to a semi-controlled crash landing with a mix of grants and playing with the gas/electricity prices

Posted by: @jeff

↑

Be interesting to see if Andy Burnham wants to put his name to any dates related to gas

That sounds a dangerous combination.

Whichever gas is being considered, you don't want burn'em anywhere near!