I'll look forward to those calls then Chris. ;-)
I helped a mate install a ground source heat pump (he is a plumber and was thinking of making such installations his (side) thing) but he imported the actual pump directly from China, the instructions for the controller were nearly non-existent and it never really worked. I never really gotround to going though it all with him to see if we could actually get it running. Luckily, he also installed a new CH boiler ... ;-)
Cheers, T i m
Don't they just freeze the earth?
if it was lead acid it might be funny
tim
I guess they could (without thinking about it too closely). ;-)
You extract low level heat from the ground using pipes drill a few meters into the ground and containing a flow and return pipe in each hole and by pumping an antifreeze fluid though them to a heat compressor. 10l of 5 DegC fluid supposedly (theoretically) 'compressed' into 1l of 50 DegC fluid (or summat).
As you say, to extract the heat it must take heat out of the ground but I guess that heat must be being replaced though the ground for the system to work at all (assuming you don't extract it too fast etc)?
Cheers, T i m
OTOH lead acid batteries are cheap to make diy - but then your skilled labour isn't.
NT
other battery technologies are far too expensive on that scale
NT
if you majorly screw up the design, yes
NT
well yes., the theory being that the summer sun will warm it all up again.
Average insolation is around 100W/sq m IIRC. So 100 sq meter is enough to draw an average of 10kW out of ...well ist not THAT simple but...order of magnitude.
You go deep with the pipes - to where the temperature is fairly constant summer to winter.
If it was lithium it would be dangerous and impossibly expensive
The earth heat exchange medium is water.
The heat removed is made up/replaced by the sun, rainfall and geothermal heat.
but they are lithium
and whilst, not cost effective, they aren't *impossibly* expensive (they costs less than half the installed panels would cost)
tim
Given lead acid can only withstand 200 charge/discharge cycles that's not many cycles per year.
Paying consumers to use electricity when too much is being generated is surely the economics of the mad house. Who pays, eventually? The consumer, of course, who else? No wonder Germany has amongst the highest electricity prices in the EU!
Ofdd that I used to start my cars twice a day every day - or more when e.g.shopping = so that is 700 cycles a year and the batteries used to last at least 5 years
So you are only out by an order of magnitude
It's 700 partial cycles a year.
NT
Bishop Wilton near York has a new village hall which has a heat pump with the ground loop under the car park. During some building work it was discovered that permafrost had been formed under the tarmac.
What I find interesting is just how little TNP seems to know, outside his supposed area of expertise?
Like, who else here who wouldn't even profess to know anything about batteries, would conflate starting a car with a typical discharge cycle on a storage battery?
And it's to do with energy and storage FFS? ;-(
Cheers, T i m
I don't think that's a very likely explanation. We all overlook things at times.
I question the cost numbers anyway.
NT
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