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Electicity is, of course, very inefficient for heating houses v piped natural gas. Chris V doubtless has better numbers but I suspect the combination of power generation and transmission losses result in around 30 - 40% overall efficiency for electric home heating. By contrast burning gas via a conventional home boiler is around 80 - 85% efficient...and more like 90% for a condensing boiler. Btw these are unresearched numbers I've read somewhere; maybe someone can correct them if they are badly adrift. On this basis a big switch to electricity for home heating does not look a good idea....even if the existing grids could handle the extra load (and I strongly suspect they couldn't).
On a personal basis I'm in the process of ordering a 2nd wood stove to reduce my oil dependency, there being no gas supply in this area. Those of us who read this site regularly are doubtless making individual arrangements so as to be 'ahead of the pack' when fuel prices enforce transition. We are, however, only a tiny percentage of the UK population and the vast majority are almost certainly totally unprepared for a situation which looks increasingly inevitable.
Hi canbrit - yes they still make 'xxxxx houses' and other tasteless shoeboxes in the UK. Its the only new house option for people who don't want the maintenance and heating bills of an older house [our house is the creaking victorian type]. Radiators! how did I miss them off my 'pain ita' list..? I think there there is a critical mass of people who would love to live in a better house, but choice is not available in the UK.
zceb90, electric losses before the meter will be of no interest to someone who is spending £1000s replacing worn out central heating and is trying to guess gas prices for the next 20 years. The cost and supply of gas vs electricity are the only factors. A full blown GCH could be £5000. That buys a lot of electricity for the cost difference even today.
Wood stoves if you have endless supplies are great for the individual, but what of 50 million 'townies'?
I too read those numbers of 89% [my exact Potterton model] for gas boilers on that database someone linked last time I brought this up. Personally I think thats comparing apples and oranges.
The manuf will write whatever tripe he can. Maybe 89% of the heat from burning gas reaches the water - so what? An electric fire is 99% efficient. Even a filament light bulb is a 98% efficent heater with about 1 - 2% light output.
My modern '89%' efficient boiler requires a constant electric standby wasted, electric ignition, and an electric pump for both hot water and heating. So the old boiler used more gas and less electricity..thats progress!
I can see the changeover to electric creeping up on our gov who, I think we largely agree, seems unprepared for every national resource planning from water to climate change. Zceb90, yes I fear the electric suppliers could not cope with the demand [the grid presumably is matched to their outputs and would be OK]
cheers all.
I could understand a switch to electric power for domestic heating generated from combination of renewables, coal or nuclear but all 3 have major problems. Renewables are growing from a tiny base and wind and wave power alone cannot provide a constant base load on calm days. There a major CO2 issues with coal and, unless UK revives its coal industry in a big way increasingly expensive imports are required. Nuclear power has a long lead time and it's unlikely that the first batch of new builds (which are not even at the planning stage yet) could do any more than replace plant being decomissioned up to around 2020.
My view is that the most likely course of action will be for trends to occur whereby the number of rooms in houses being heated will reduce, heating will be run upon occupation as opposed to 24/7, number of occupants per house will increase, temperature settings will reduce and more clothing will be worn. A big program of insulation for existing houses would be an ideal step but I'm rather afraid that Gov'ts will wait until a full blown crisis is upon us before acting by which time financial resources (in the inevitable recession) will be a limiting factor.
I appreciate wood stoves are only an option for a tiny minority; I just happen to live in a very rural area with no natural gas supplies where, at present, large quantities of wood are available free of charge to me. The local council advises the nearby estate that they have to remove unwanted wood and they find it much cheaper to deliver it to me v hauling it further away.
You have hit the nail right on the head. My in-laws lived in a very large house. When they retired, they shut down a number of rooms to cope with heating costs. Ultimately, they moved.
The Brits, over the last 4 decades have become used to shirt sleeve order, even in December, January and February.
This will change with time.
The deregulation of the energy market has reduced prices up until now. From last winter onwards we will start to examine more closely our efforts to 'gather winter fuel'.
Most households can slash fuel budgets by 15% over night. With thought, by as much as 25%.
But, and this is the biggest BUT of our times, will those who can afford fuel conserve? OK , so a fixed income pensioner cannot do anything but switch it off and thereby freeze and die, But will an upper middle class family behave in the same way?
Regrettably, I think not. The people who can afford to burn gas and electricity will continue to burn it. Until they, in turn can no longer afford to burn it.
Rationing by price will kill the fabric of our society. Just now, on the news, Teachers, Police, health workers are being priced out of Cities in England. Add heating and transport fuel costs to this, and the fabric irretrievably erodes.
And we get to the 'great unwinding'
In all the excitement (?) about the Dear Leader's apparent change of heart re nuclear power, this simple irreducible fact seems to have have escaped scrutiny - what will happen of course is that current stations will , by waving a magic wand in Whitehall have their working lives extended beyond design life to fill the gap - as has already happened I think with Dungeness B. Let us hope that such decisions are based upon a proper scrutiny rather than simply by desire.
What frightens me is that we have had under this lot of myopic midgets, no serious attempt to grasp the energy requirements of a cold wet island off the western coast of Europe for the next 50 years. One example, Pilkington's Glass has been taken over within last 2 months ( whopping £1.8BN cash deal !!) by JPG, (incidentally they with other Japanese co.Asahi Glass have 80 /90% of worlds flat glass capacity) - it is evident they intend to move production within say 3/4 years to Poland - making sense of cost , security of energy supply, lower labour costs in addition.
Aluminium smelter powered by Wylfa will close and production fed by Dubai , now world's largest smelting capacity - again plus lower labour costs.
These iterative decisions driven by enery cost/securty will naturally affect the core manufacturing economy - with all that it entails - Chris is right to point to energy poverty.
This is happening (with a vengeabce) in the US , especially in the Mid West - see this
http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/library/energy/homelessness.cfm