The Green Deal

[MdB]

If one cell has a shadow in it the current stops!

This is a well known problem with PV panels. There are various ways around it with complex electronics but currently their cost isn't justified. Come up with a good solution to this and you could become rather popular.

He could not accept that a building needed to be super insulated for a heat pump to work or else it is an electric fan heater!

I would argue with that last statement. You need good insulation as the power output from a heat pump is generally not that great compared to normal boiler style heating. However they are more efficient when the temperature differential is low so you will get more heat out with poor insulation than you will will with great insulation.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

you are generally such a well informed group.

Steady on garnett, we don't want to sully the forum by throwing around accusations like that. :shock:

I know very little about the green deal and hence have not commented other than post the original links in response to biff. I'm still reeeling from not having been quick enough on FiTs (although Biff and Graham certainly were and others probably. :mrgreen: ) . I'll probably be too late on the green deal - but as I am resigned to thermals, being cold and burning loads of wood during the winter (as well as the oil CH), I doubt I am a top target.

In my day job I have just been involved in the closure of a small, Victorian community hospital site - the key saving was from shutting down the boilers/steam generators. OK, they were old and knackered, but the oil bill was £15k+ per week. I can quite imagine significant savings from upgrading school boilers can be made. Of course when I was a lad and it was cold, we all piled into the school hall together. These days they send my kids back home...

 

[biffvernon]

One item they mention is: "Our unique system will optimise the incoming voltage to 220V giving householders immediate and significant energy savings for the home. Home appliances will have significant savings of anywhere between 10% and 17%. This includes fridges, freezers, washing machines, driers, dishwashers and lighting. Even a 10% saving on energy saving bulbs." Can our electrical engineers explain this one?

Pure snake oil. Report to trading standards.

 

[biffvernon]

I also think that people are getting a bit hung up on the residential and historic buildings.

This is Period Property UK, so historic residential buildings is kinda what we talk about here.

I'm off to a conference about the Green Deal tomorrow.

 

[Flyfisher]

All that University and my post grad taught me is how little I know rather than how much!

I know that feeling only too well . . . though in my case it's probably the lack of doing anything post-grad. :lol:

But the real value of a forum is having a mix of members with all different skills, knowledge and experience that we can share, learn and correct where appropriate. It's also very valuable having real professionals in the mix, so if a discussion strays into uninformed speculation I'm sure no-one would mind being nudged back on track with some real-world facts - how else do we learn?

I didn't know about the serial nature of PV panels and would have thought that the output drop would be proportional to the obscured area. A 90% output drop certainly highlights the importance of careful siting!

 

[MdB]

I didn't know about the serial nature of PV panels and would have thought that the output drop would be proportional to the obscured area. A 90% output drop certainly highlights the importance of careful siting!

http://www.schoolgen.co.nz/se/pv_tech.aspx#3

 

[biffvernon]

This is a ploy, based on mythology about global warming,

Careful now, global warming is not mythology. It is very real and those of us who care for our grandchildren should be very afraid.

But the Green Deal is not going to help. Money saved by a household on fuel bills will be spent on something else that, ultimately, has an equivalent carbon footprint. It might be jetting off on holiday, or importing heaps of plastic from China. If you put the money in a bank someone else will spend it. If you stuff the money under your mattress and live the hair-shirted life that just enables someone else to burn the fossil fuel.

The ONLY way carbon emissions are going to be stopped is if we stop taking the coal, oil and gas out of the ground. The government's recent round of new licenses for North Sea exploration demonstrates that there is no policy of demand side constraint, so all government talk about reducing global warming potential is greenwash.

Where the Green Deal could help (if only it were designed more sensibly so that it actually worked) is in reducing our energy requirements. Nothing to do with climate but this is vital for our economy, which is now experiencing at least a 6% decline rate in North Sea production. Our balance of payments is greatly affected by our energy import bill and as the world slips down the post peak oil decline curve, with China and the other BRIC nations able to outbid us in the global energy market, reducing household energy bills is absolutely make or break for the UK economy.

The Government thinks it's politically expedient to talk about climate change rather than peak oil.

 

[biffvernon]

If one cell has a shadow in it the current stops!

This is a well known problem with PV panels. There are various ways around it with complex electronics but currently their cost isn't justified. Come up with a good solution to this and you could become rather popular.

The solution is micro-inverters. Each panel has it's own small inverter on the back. Not complex and only slightly more expensive.

It's a solved problem.

 

[MdB]

The solution is micro-inverters. Each panel has it's own small inverter on the back. Not complex and only slightly more expensive.

It's a solved problem.

OK so I stand corrected.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_micro-inverter

It does look though that improvements are wanted as I have received indirect enquires from people looking for better technology in this area.

 

[Flyfisher]

The ONLY way carbon emissions are going to be stopped is if we stop taking the coal, oil and gas out of the ground. The government's recent round of new licenses for North Sea exploration demonstrates that there is no policy of demand side constraint, so all government talk about reducing global warming potential is greenwash.

. . . not to mention the recent approval to resume fracking in Lancashire. Let's face it, no government is going to cripple its economy by leaving fossil fuels in the ground. It's just not going to happen unless something like fusion power suddenly has a breakthrough and we know that's rather unlikely .

 

[Penners]

All that University and my post grad taught me is how little I know rather than how much!

I know that feeling only too well

Whereas I never went to university, so I'm still firmly convinced that I know everything.

 

[Flyfisher]

But that would make you a teenager, surely?

 

[Penners]

Or someone who never progressed intellectually beyond his teenage years.

 

[ilikecobwebs]

Afraid I will never be convinced like Biff about humans being responsible for global warming. As it is, I believe there is a mighty leap of technology coming towards us that might make the use of domestic heating oil and gas almost pointless. Just started reading a book called "The Bottomless Well", subtitled "the twilight of fuel, the virtue of waste and why we will never run out of energy". I'm only into the early pages right now, but it would turn all today's energy-police into shivering nervous wrecks.

 

[Penners]

That sounds like a good plan. When the oil runs out, you can keep warm by burning the book.

 

[ilikecobwebs]

What, as in Fahrenheit 457? I keep an open mind. They said Man would never fly.....

 

[wobs]

Afraid I will never be convinced like Biff about humans being responsible for global warming. As it is, I believe there is a mighty leap of technology coming towards us that might make the use of domestic heating oil and gas almost pointless. Just started reading a book called "The Bottomless Well", subtitled "the twilight of fuel, the virtue of waste and why we will never run out of energy". I'm only into the early pages right now, but it would turn all today's energy-police into shivering nervous wrecks.

Sounds like you have a does of "hopium":

Another common reaction (that I have had myself) is to get excited about a technology that is not yet demonstrated, but seems awfully promising. Some refer to the effect as “hopium,” and yes, it is addictive. What I have found in myself is that the less I know about something, the more prone I am to the “hopium” effect. This is another part of human nature. I have noticed in my professional life that when multiple people are involved in the diagnosis of a complex problem involving many interacting components/subsystems to which each member has contributed some piece, there is a tendency for each person to cast suspicion on the component they understand the least. Conversely, when looking for a solution, we give a pass to the concepts with fewer known, demonstrated hangups.

It may well be that our energy/resource salvation lies in some presently obscure or unappreciated technique. But realizing that obsession with these notions means bypassing tried-and-true “conventional” technologies like solar photovoltaics, solar thermal, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, conventional fission, lead-acid storage, etc. to me is a tacit acknowledgment that the main ideas we have on the table are not obviously going to cut it. Such enthusiasm for the unproven—often accompanied by statements of unmitigated hope (“our best hope,” “the only real solution,” “we must aggressively develop,” etc.)—carries with it a ring of desperation. It’s maybe like a dog whistle: I’m not sure all of us hear it. The trick is to remain attentive to the real potential underneath the shrill sound of fantastical thinking, in case salvation actually does lie within.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/12/the-future-needs-an-attitude-adjustment/

There are many promising technologies that are awaiting further development, but one cannot predict with any reliability that any particular one will be our salvation. There have been so many false dawns (and fusion is "only just a couple of decades away" still), that we should at the very least work with what we have, and plan with mature technology.

 

[Penners]

What, as in Fahrenheit 457? I keep an open mind. They said Man would never fly.....

Er... I think we mean Fahrenheit 451 don't we?

 

[biffvernon]

Afraid I will never be convinced like Biff about humans being responsible for global warming.

If your mind is closed to the possibility we may as well stop discussi

 

[biffvernon]

I'm off to a conference about the Green Deal tomorrow.

It was pretty good really.