what a load of pish

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

[tim...]

yup

banning gas boilers only makes any sense when 100% of UK electricity production is carbon free

until it is, simply transferring gas use to additional electric use is just daft

[Scott]

Not following your line of thought here. AIUI gas boilers are 100% gas and electricity generation is far less than 100% gas - and declining..

[The Natural Philosopher]

ArtStudents? like to build a houses interior decor and layout before they do the foundations or the roof.

[Fredxx]

It's worse than that. A gas boiler is 80-96% efficient. Generating electricity from fossil fuel is ~30% taking into account generation and transmission.

Until we are 60+% non-fossil fuelled electricity generation more carbon will be thrown into the atmosphere if we are force to move to electric heating.

1) Yes I know air/ground sourced heating is available with improved efficiency. 2) Car battery charging is going to require more electrical generation which is already limited and no plans to build more generating plant.

[Dave Plowman (News]

It can make sense to reduce local pollution.

What is daft is charging a higher price per kilowatt of electricity than gas.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Is this really the case with electricity generated with gas, so like for like?

And how about the energy used to get the gas from wherever to your house?

If making meaningful comparisons, best to start with a level playing field.

[Fredxx]

I guess overall there is little to choose from, apart from a lot of complex hardware at each end.

Good question. The thing with gas is the pipelines are used to even out use over time, essentially a means of storage.

I agree, but not everyone is going to have access to ground or allowed to place large fan units on their building.

I would wager that most systems will have a cooling capability, which will increase electricity consumption in the summer.

[Fredxx]

It depends on what you mean by pollution? There are places where NOx emissions are significant from NG boilers. Perhaps ban them from cities? :-)

Why when generating electricity creates more CO2?

[Dave Plowman (News]

Any NOx generation may be regarded as significant. The amount a boiler generates can also depend on its age and condition.

Well, electricity can do most things where energy is needed. Gas not so - unless that nice Mr Bayliss also invented a gas radio.

[Chris Hogg]

Been done.

"The gas-powered radio was developed in 1938 by Henry Milnes. It was linked to a generator which created an electrical charge when heated by gas. The charge was stored in an accumulator ? a sort of rechargeable battery. The development of the gas radio was interrupted by the start of the Second World War in 1939 and, despite the potential, it never really took off."

PDF: p.20

Presumably, the 'potential' wasn't high enough! (sorry!)

and when I was a kid, we had a gas-powered fridge for many years. As above, p.4

More here

[Fredxx]

The newer ones are worse. Old boilers with an excess of air had a colder flame and produced less NOx.

Yes it can do more things but at a cost, such as producing more CO2. I thought we wanted to decrease CO2 production, not advocate an increase.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

As I said in another thread, it won't happen, at least not at much of a speed as everyone will get their boilers fitted before hand and its going to be theier slow demise that they hope will allow time to ramp up generation, but Unless they use portable nuclear I cannot see how, Turn the English channel into a tidal power station perhaps? grin. Brian

[tim...]

Gas isn't the worst non-renewable

So, It isn't just the amount of electricity that's produced by gas that's important, it's the amount that produced by anything that isn't renewable.

and whilst the amount of the current electricity demand is moving to renewable, where's the supply for the 100% increase [1] in amount needed when everybody move from gas to electric, going to come from?

tim

[1] I use approx the same number of kWh of gas per year, space and water heating, as I do electric on everything else. And I have a *very* well insulated house.

[tim...]

Assuming you are talking about public health considerations, that surely has to be a tiny effect

given that gas is one of the fuels that we use to make electricity, and making electricity costs money

it's simple economics that supply of manufactured electricity will cost more than raw gas

It's expecting anything else that is daft

[Max Demian]

That's mostly down to the second law of thermodynamics.

Efficiency = (input temp - output temp)/(input temp) for a heat engine.

A gas power station is 30-50% efficient, the rest being waste heat unless you can use it for something like district heating.

[Dave Plowman (News]

When the coroner in London ruled that the little girl who died a few months ago was due to pollution, there was quite a local fuss. Of course transport got the blame since she lived close to a busy main road, but several different types of sources will have contributed to that pollution.

How much does wind cost?

That depends on how much the gas costs to find and extract. At one time it was an unwanted by product of oil extraction. And may well still be subsidised by that.

[Dave Plowman (News]

If that is the case, burning it directly to heat our homes etc makes more sense.

[Max Demian]

It always is unless a zero carbon way of generating electricity is used.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The problem with wrong assumptions is that they lead to wrong answers

1. A gas power station is in the range of 40-70% efficient
2. Not all the heat from a heat pump comes from the electricity. A lot of it comes from the air or soil outside
3. Not all the heat from a central heating boiler goes into the hot water. Some goes out of the flue as hot gasses at slightly below 100C.

In reality a CCGT and a CH condensing boiler are both about 65% (thermal) efficiency : the kicker is that heat pump is, in terms of heat out to electricity in, at least 200%, and up to 400% 'efficient'.

That means that overall CCGT plus heat pump is a less energy intensive heating solution than a gas boiler.

making your statement plain wrong