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Extremely compact Dimplex air-to-water heatpump. If you have any sort of garden/flat roof space whatsoever you could put one of these in and it will probably do all of your heating and hot water needs for most normal urban houses. You'd be surprised how good air-to-water has gotten. It was always seen as inferior to ground source heatpumps due to lower COPs but at the moment Dimplex air-to-water heatpumps have a higher COP than that of their groundsource models. Also the lack of ground collector makes them very attractive indeed for people who have limited space. Currently though you're looking at COP of 3.5/ 4.5 roughly speaking on a heatpump compared to at very best 0.92 on a gas condensing boiler. In plain Engrish, for every 1kW of paid for energy/fuel you put into a boiler your best return will be 0.92kW of heat. With a heatpump it will be 3.5/4.5kW for every 1kW spent.
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Just the same as a geothermal heatpump but instead of having a ground collector you have a heat exchanger built into the heatpump which is placed outdoors. There is a fan which forces airflow across the heat exchanger and it takes it's heat from the air.
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Duck--> Duck--> Goose
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Don't mean to start a fight but you forgot to mention that a heating flow temp of <40 degrees C is required to get decent efficiency out of air source heat pumps. So even if it fits under the stairs, you really need to be using it with a wet underfloor heating system to make it work as intended.
Also, whilst I'm not arguing with your maths, for completeness you should also remind the reader that electricity costs about 3x as much as gas and incurs 2.5x more CO2 emissions (unless is comes from a convenient renewable source, which most people do not have).
So it may save some money and CO2, when it's all worked through, but may not be suitable for the building in question. BTW I'm not a NIMBY or anti-renewables, quite the opposite in fact. But I do get called upon regularly to advise impartially on this stuff. Good luck with your venture Nahguavkire, we need more people like you and hopefully the incentives you mentioned will be good for business!
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Left in ----> Left out ----> Shake about
hahaha. ahhh balki, you so crazy.
interesting thread. i've worked in railway electrification for 10 years now and have had the occasional run-in with renewables. once did a feasability studies for putting a wind turbine on the pier at greenwich power station, that sort of thing. needles to say[/partridge] nothing ever came of any of it. interestingly, greenich power station, which provides peak lopping and backup power for the tube is basically 90% empty building (where the old steam turbines used to be). the last two station managers have been looking at all sorts of renewable schemes to untilise the space with the existing connections to the grid and the underground network. the gas turbines tucked away in one corner will be life expired and need replacing within a few more years too. might be something worth investigating nahguavkire?
i've always wanted to move into renewables though. applied for a couple of jobs at "good energy" last year bit i don't think i've got quite the right background. so i'm very keen to learn more about the industry. *pricks up ears.
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The primary application sounds like an on-demand electrical generator with fairly quick startup time - so they'll probably need to retain GTs or big piston engines for that duty. But they could also look at altenatives alongside to provide baseload/non critical power. Wind is probably too contentious, solar PV just too feeble to have much impact*. Heat pumps no good becuase you don't need heat. So I would look at some kind of alternative-fuelled power generation, potentially set up as CHP and exporting heat to a nearby housing/school/industry. Are the existing GT's set up for this or are they shudders open cycle? You could consider biomass CHP (e.g. wood chip boiler with steam turbine), waste vegetable oil fired CHP, anaerobic digestion of community waste, hydrogen fuel cells. I'm sure a scheme in there somewhere would wash its face financially, what with all the financial incentives at the mo.
*although no harm covering the roof in it since the Feed in Tariff is good right now.
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I want off the grid on my new houseboat*. Its small and currently running gas stove and fridge and a
Catalytic Heater. I want to bring my laptop on board and run it via a solar pannel not off the battery. Does anyone know how to do this or what it woud take?*mine pending the evaluation / hull survey
hippy
Balki
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Heatpumps For Everyone
Posted by
@Nahguavkire
I meant... like... instead of getting a new boiler, he cant exactly put a geothermal thing under his stairs.
I think its good technology, but its not like your middle-class suburbanite bunging a few solar panels on the roof so they have something to smug-chat about while they are waiting to pick up their twins Noah and Henry from day care. It needs to feed the grid.