Heat pumps - ThisIsMoney

[chop]

Land per head is irrelevant. What matters is land per house block, stupid.

[Rod Speed]

That's bullshit. Those that rent have a problem finding the deposit for the quite expensive houses.

[alan_m]

It's also impractical to build a housing estate on the top of a mountain.

In some parts of the UK sheep greatly out number the people living in the same location. The people tend to live on the flatter bits of land while the sheep occupy the steeper sloping bits.

[me9]

We had fireplaces in th living room and main bedrooms. cooking was done on the one in the living room. If teh sweep was coming we couldn't use that one so lit the one in the back bedroom for cooking/water heating.

[Algernon Goss-Custard]

This was in August.

Ah, a spec sheet. I believed one of those once.

[RJH]

How does just the pump manage to do that? That page seems to show that efficiency drops considerably when the system warms to those water temperatures. This /seems/ to suggest some sort of auxiliary heating somewhere

- or it needs to keep running for a much longer period?

(And that illustration was taken at a very warm time of year - hottest summer since the beginning of time, or something)

[Alan J. Wylie]

But not *too* flat, otherwise the house floods regularly.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Another myth

"every watt hour of renewable is a watt hour of CO2 emissions saved" Simple narrative for dim bulbs,.

It isn't that simple. Essentially the displacement of efficient fossil fuel by wind or solar results in either operating the fossil that exists inefficiently, bu increasing the number of start-stops it has to do, or displacing it with inefficient fossil like OCGT or diesel plat to cover STOR. Once you start distorting the market by subsidising a technology, and not taxing carbon based fuels, there is no incentive linkage between the uptake of that technology and emissions reductions at all. Historically the only nations to reduce carbon emissions in their electricity generation below that of all coal, use gas, or better still hydro or nuclear or a combination of both.

Germany is still the highest emitter in Europe by any metric.

As I said, your analysis of the weather is correct, but not your analysis of renewable energy. And if Scotland wants to virtue signal it should disconnect itself from the English and Irish grid. And refuse all subsidy granted by the English parliament.

My own experience is that it is in fact high wind and subzero temperatures that ruins *my* oil bill. But it is continental high pressure and mist that threatens the whole European grid.

There is one simple answer, de regulate nuclear and build out shitloads everywhere.

But the propaganda machine of the renewable energy manufacturers is running overtime.

And you believe it

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. Broadly the North is rising and the South is sinking. Geostatic rebound.

IIRC from O level geography the south west is full of 'drowned valleys'

- Exmouth, Dartmouth, Falmouth are all good deep water ports as are Portsmouth and Southampton.

But it isn't that simple, because there are parts of the south east coasts where erosion and deposition have put mediaeval ports underwater (Dunwich) or left them miles from the sea. None of the Cinq ports are still on the coast .

I regularly visit a part of the coast that loses about 5 foot a year to the sea, and every time I go, it is not a matter of inundation, it is simply that storms have undermined a bit more sandy *cliff* and it's fallen down.

The part one would worry about is the Fens, but unlike the Somerset levels, its not managed by Gaia worshippers but by land drainage boards that understand dredging and pumping.

It is part of the ice ages terminal moraine - an outflow of water washed all the rocks into gravel and sand and indeed clay, and that is what the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts are made of.

Simple stories for dim bulbs suit guardian readers who feel 'well informed' , But they do not bear close inspection.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its all propaganda bullshit.

The more renewables you out in the more CO2 you emit when it isn't working

Take that east of england figure. Sizewell B is more than enough to make the whole of east anglia CO2 free.

Why isnt it mentioned?

[Theo]

The heat pump pushes heat 'uphill' - that's what it does. Just like a fridge, it moves heat from a colder place to a hotter place.

Pushing heat uphill takes energy (2nd law of thermodynamics), but it's mostly a matter of the phase transitions of a specific refrigerant as to how hot you can go. In Japan they have 'Ecocute' heat pump hot water heaters that take water up to 90C, which use CO2 as a refrigerant. They can get a COP of about 4 (I saw a claim of up to COP=8 somewhere but wasn't able to track it down).

CO2 is awkward to use as a refrigerant in our weather conditions because it's hard to modulate it *down*: ie if all you need is 90C hot water it works well, but if you need just a little heating for a spring day, CO2 doesn't work so well. That's why we tend to use other refrigerants. (although there are some CO2 - called R744 - heatpumps coming on the European market now, so maybe they've solved this problem)

Yes, but the manufacturer claims it does that down to freezing. The measurements demonstrate that the unit is capable of a 75C output. I'm sure other experiences could be found. My unit only goes to 55C so I can't test it personally.

Theo

[Theo]

Sizewell B is in shutdown until 24/26 April. At the moment it's consuming about 5MW.

'Statutory/refuelling outage':

[The Natural Philosopher]

[Max Demian]

So what was the difference between the Victorian era (and just following, say up to WW1) and later, that lead to the abandonment of bedroom fireplaces? Maybe it was electricity, and the assumption that we would all be in all-electric houses (which, I think, was a popular idea in the 1930s, before people realised how expensive it would be to heat a house by electricity).

[Max Demian]

I'm surprised that you can use CO2 as a refrigerant at all, as it doesn't liquefy under compression at room temperature, with the accompanying enthalpy advantages.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Upmarket houses that would have had a coal fire in very room ended up with a coal fired radiator heating system.

Downmarket houses weren't heated much at all. Cheaper.

[Andy Burns]

It does at high enough pressure (about 750 psi)

[Andrew]

No, *you* lose because you have never been anywhere where the sea level is rising and noticibly causing problems for low-lying land. I *have* spent some time in the South Pacific. You have never been there.

Oh, and since you have never been there, the Somerset levels are indeed low-lying and highly susceptible to rising sea levels.

[Andrew]

Scotland and Scandinavia might still be rising after the weight of

2 miles of pack ice has gone, but there are low-lying island countries all around the Indian and Pacific oceans that are being increasingly affected by storm surges and higher tides. Even some of the Caribbean residents living on the coast have noticed a change over the last 20 years.

[Andrew]

Scotland is rinsing but the South East is sinking.