I thought people might be interested in this. Yesterday I had a long conversation with my local council (Harrogate). It seems that they have just reached the end of a year long trial of sustainable energy systems. They have provided batches of council houses with heat pumps, solar pv and solar water. They are about to start trials of wind turbines (in central Harrogate.).
Their initial analysis of results shows that the heat pumps (supplied by Ice Energy) have the best payback and efficiency.
Whats interesting is that this is in council housing for the elderly - and retrofitted into 1960's houses rather than new build. As you know council houses dont tend to have the huge amounts of land that I always associate with heat pump systems.
What they have done is improve insulation, replace old readiators with better modern designs - increasing the size by a 1/3. They are using rads rather than underfloor and finding it works very well. The approach is to keep it on all the time and treat it as heat maintenance (in the same way a water UF system would be ) rather than heating at specific times. Rather than use pipes either straight or slinky, they have flat plate collectors buried in the ground. They say that for a smallish house 17m chain of flat plate units - they buried them in a U shape around the gardens.
The result of the first year is that the backup heating system was used only once - when a thermostat failed on the heat pump system. The elderly people tend to keep the heating up so if it works for them it should work for many others.
Interestingly they say that they are being told that borehole prices are coming right down - they quoted about £2K for a borehole, down to £1.5K if you can get a batch of people in one location , getting the equipment to the site is a significant expense, so good saving to be made.
Mark
Their initial analysis of results shows that the heat pumps (supplied by Ice Energy) have the best payback and efficiency.
Whats interesting is that this is in council housing for the elderly - and retrofitted into 1960's houses rather than new build. As you know council houses dont tend to have the huge amounts of land that I always associate with heat pump systems.
What they have done is improve insulation, replace old readiators with better modern designs - increasing the size by a 1/3. They are using rads rather than underfloor and finding it works very well. The approach is to keep it on all the time and treat it as heat maintenance (in the same way a water UF system would be ) rather than heating at specific times. Rather than use pipes either straight or slinky, they have flat plate collectors buried in the ground. They say that for a smallish house 17m chain of flat plate units - they buried them in a U shape around the gardens.
The result of the first year is that the backup heating system was used only once - when a thermostat failed on the heat pump system. The elderly people tend to keep the heating up so if it works for them it should work for many others.
Interestingly they say that they are being told that borehole prices are coming right down - they quoted about £2K for a borehole, down to £1.5K if you can get a batch of people in one location , getting the equipment to the site is a significant expense, so good saving to be made.
Mark
