By Julian Singer One of the obstacles to using heat pumps for domestic heating is the need to store hot water, since unlike the combi gas boiler the heat pump cannot produce hot water instantly on demand. It needs to be stored in a hot water tank, but since the advent of combi gas boilers [...]
By Julian Singer On 20 January Dr Matthew Trewhella, managing director of Kensa Contracting, a division of the KenslaGroup, gave a stimulating talk on the past, present and future of heat pumps as part of the Oxford Energy series. Kensa is based near Truro and claims to be the only British manufacturer of ground source [...]
By Julian Singer The government is reported to be considering an incentive scheme to encourage home owners to replace their gas boilers with heat pumps. A sum of £4000 was floated, recently increased to £7000. Even so it is unlikely that many owners will take up the offer. The problem is not just that heat [...]
By Julian Singer The water in abandoned coal mines has received increasing interest as a source of residential and commercial heating. There are certainly many such mines in the UK and most of them will contain significant volumes of tepid water, but how much useful heat can be delivered? Two projects at Gateshead and Seaham, [...]
By Julian Singer In May the H21 project released its Phase 1 report on the safety of replacing natural gas (methane) by hydrogen for residential heating. The hydrogen molecule is much smaller than methane so that there are reasons to fear that hydrogen might leak more easily from the gas network. On the other hand, [...]
By Julian SInger Heat Wayv is a private UK company developing a system for domestic hot water and space heating using microwave electricity on the same principle as the microwave oven. The company claims that its boilers will be the same size as conventional gas combi-boilers and with a similar fast response time. As a [...]
By Julian Singer The H100 Fife project is designed to be a real life test of the use of hydrogen for heating homes. The idea is to build a facility in Levenmouth, Fife, that will use offshore wind power to generate hydrogen from electrolysers. The hydrogen will be stored on site and used to feed [...]
By Julian Singer The interest in hydrogen as a carbon-neutral fuel has increased significantly this year, with shares in some of the companies involved rising sharply (Greenbarrel, 28 July). Much of the interest has focused on hydrogen powering vehicles or storing energy. However while hydrogen may be the solution for commercial and industrial vehicles it [...]
By Julian Singer Heat pumps are expected to play a major role in decarbonising residential heating, which contributes 14 per cent of the UK’s CO2 emissions, about the same as transport. In fact they are nearly the only solution currently available and will remain so unless the gas grid is converted to hydrogen. But what [...]
The two previous articles on Decarbonising Heat summarised the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC)’s study of the costs of different solutions and looked in more detail into the most effective but also the most expensive of these solutions – heat pumps. This article will look into the other main contender – the use of hydrogen instead [...]