The Great Hydrogen Boiler Con
Vložit
- čas přidán 23. 07. 2024
- Is hydrogen really the answer to clean, renewable heating? Adam explores the science and the maths of what it will cost.
→ COURSES - Become a MASTER of renewable heating: courses.heatgeek.com/
→ HEAT GEEK ASSURED HEAT PUMP INSTALLATIONS: www.heatgeek.com/heat-geek-as...
or
assured@heatgeek.com
→ More free content: www.heatgeek.com/
SOCIALS 🙋♂️
→ Twitter: / _heatgeek
→ Facebook: / heatgeek
→ Insta: / heat_geek
#heatpump #heating #renewableenergy #hydrogen
Sources:
- onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/e...
- www.leti.london/_files/ugd/25...
- www.nationalgrid.com/electric...
- assets.publishing.service.gov...
- • Grid Scale Energy Stor... - Věda a technologie
Very fair and balanced. I like the way you are not swayed by public opinion (on your hat).
Cheers 🍻
Btw. I think it's only a small demographic that don't like the hat rather than public opinion 😜
Since this video an Australian company demonstrated 95% green hydrogen electrolysis and a UK company supercritical alleges 99% efficiency. Just to be clear. Nothing is 100% efficient (not even a short cable) so the terminology needs correcting. In any case the electricity grid is far from 100% efficient. A cursory search indicates over 20% electricity grid losses on average. As battery powered evs and heat pumps increase ampages those cabling losses increase not linearly but exponentially. That increased electricity use is also 0% green currently. Gas pipes for delivering hydrogen do not have that significant losses problem and have much higher capacity than the electricity grid and so far lower infrastructure costs. On top of that, batteries for electricity storage are far more expensive than advertised. The real cost to buy a Teslas battery is usually over half the cost of the car new and then there is the fitting costs. Hydrogen cars will be more convenient and affordable if given a fair chance especially as they develop further. The battery manufacturers such as Sony and Panasonic only guarantee 500 cycles by the way and their performance degrades constantly until you suddenly realise that your phone needs charging all the time and is next to useless. Not really relevant but another thing that noone seems to think about. How much power will charging degraded batteries waste?
If you ever want something confusing to be delicately dismantled, and then formally rearranged in your head. Turn to Heat Geek! 👍
The Finns have taken the much simpler option - their Sand Heat Battery. There's a YT video on it.
Heat the sand up during summer to ~500°C and then release that heat in the winter. This is purely a district heating option, but should suit blocks of flats quite easily.
nice one, very informative and well overdue.
Great presentation, info etc. I hope your message gets through. Currently installing a hybrid heat pump, batteries and solar cells 👌
An amazing video by Adam and the Heat Geek team. Hydrogen for domestic heating is looking very expensive, but there is potentially a use for it by storing it to convert to electricity to power heat pumps. Heat pumps use far less energy from the grid than gas or Hydrogen boilers.
Absolutely perfect video, perfect explanation. I hope you will open eyes to other people with this video.
I'm glad to hear you have understood the issues with hydrogen and clearly articulated them.
There's more too! Piping hydrogen to domestic premises is high risk, the current metal and PE gas infrastructure won't cope with leakage. It has around a 15% leakage now across the network in the UK. Hydrogen is the smallest sized molecule on the periodic table, it finds all the holes and gaps. Pressures in the pipeline, currently 7bar, will need to be increased to pump the hydrogen to the consumer as hydrogen is 3 times less dense than natural gas which means the need for more of it at a higher pressure to gain the same calorific value. Then there's the fact it will be a blend, rather than 100% pure hydrogen. Circa 20 - 25% is the limit.
This will also increase the leakage rate. There's more! It attacks metal and causes embrittlement. A 10 year lifespan and don't fill after this date on the high pressure storage tanks used in hydrogen fuel cars.
Domestic home heating will not see hydrogen IMHO. Too much risk due to safely getting it to the house, its flammability, lack of naked flame when burn and so on.
That's in part 2 out next week
@@HeatGeek I've jumped the gun then!
and don’t forget hydrogen induced cracking in steel (inc stainless steel) pipes 😳
@@dickie997 embrittlement Richard, mentioned above in my comment. I'm sure it's on his list.
@@johntisbury 👍
Amazing video. Is there any difference in utility grid upgrade costs between hydrogen and full electrification? I’ve heard many a time that we should be reusing our gas network, but judging by the H2 project in Leeds, it would all need replacing.
Numbers, data, facts. These will never catch on!
Excellent vid 🤑
ive always been interested in this hydrogen thing and know i understand from this great video , thanks
This is probably the best explanation of why h2 needs to wait, at best, behind more efficient solutions.
All those with a huge hard on for h2 rarely listen to logic.
Very interesting video. I experimented with hydrogen when studying renewable energy at college 15+ years ago and it appeared to have potential if the issues of pipe embrittlement and leakage (due to the tiny size of the molecule) could be addressed.
What if the user makes their own H2 through implementing ANODE/CATHODE extracting H2 from water?
@@mattdierks3841 To make a meaningful amount you would need an electrolyser, preferable powered by a solar panel, and means of volume H2 storage, all of which are expensive. A cheaper starting point might be an educational equipment supplier who can provide scaled down versions and also advise on the safety aspects.
Love the channel. So glad someone is presenting the clear (and what i thought was well known) case that hydrogen is not the future for domestic uses. There is a hierarchy produced based on scientific data (struggling to recall who produced) , showing it only had feasible use in industry and at a push, transport.
Fantastic explanation! 🙌
As usual, this is absolutely spot on. The only thing he's missed is that we only need 4 days worth of battery storage to run the UK and that's already cheaper than hydrogen and waaaaay safer so airsource heatpumps and LFP grid battery storage will be the way it goes.
Thank you for sorting out the voice and music mix. Great video and info.
A really informative, enlightening discussion -- thanks very much 👍. Just one tiny tweak to suggest, regarding the gas graphics: H2 molecules, yes, as you showed, but oxygen gas also exists naturally as O2 molecules.
Not to forget O3 in the upper atmosphere which acts as our shield from UV but is created by UV which is rather handy. Toxic lower down but not much around luckily. I was reading emissions from ships can kick off production from the waste so living near big ports probably best avoided as also breathing that filthy diesel powered London air which can at times be full of it.
Very well explained. When you consider you can drive a heat pump with solar panels on your roof plus a battery to store solar excess and off peak energy dropping your bills by 75% it's a no brainer.
Very clear explanation, I agree 100% with the conclusions. Worth mentioning too, that due to protecting their own business interests, the Gas industry is really pushing hydrogen, lobbying government etc. and some are being very dishonest in a lot of their PR, so it's important to take a lot of what's been put out in the press etc. with a pinch of salt. It's great to see wider analysis like this from Heat Geek so people can make up their own mind.
Air to Air Heatpumps are the future I think, much cheaper to install, the liquid/gas travels at a much higher velocity giving far more efficiency as an installed system compared to air to water, Air to air for heating and separate air to water for hot water cylinder the way to go.
Yeah I'm not sure why air to air isn't looked to more, especially in electric only current households.
@@JanZamani here in Shetland and Orkney air to air is taking over with retrofit installs, and getting more popular in newbuilds, I have run air to air heating and air to water hot water for the last 9yrs, I know of quite a few air to water heating systems installed here that are not efficient, I know a guy he has a 165m2 insulated timber frame house that chews through 18000kwh a year, i use less than half of that, similar size house, both have same amount of people in house
The old gas to ducted air heating of the seventies were installed in their thousands in new builds. By the late eighties they had all gone. They were terrible. They were dirty and they were noisy. I know air source is a different technology, but you are still blowing cold air over a heat exchanger, using a fan big enough to move air around an entire building.
@@markrainford1219 yeah, the tech is wildly different now, instead of ducted air, your getting high velocity refrigerant in insulated microbore pipes directly to each indoor heater, very easy to get a very high installed cop, very difficult for an installer to make it inefficient, unlike air to water
Well done for explaining this. We used to call this EROEI which is energy return on energy invested, you can't escape the truth!
But what about insulation before heat pumps?
Just kidding..
Really education video....well done!
As a knew gas safe apprentice what would you recommend is the best path to go down, heat pumps or stick to the gas route
Heat pumps.. you can go gas but you'll eventually have to move over anyway.. better off starting now
@@HeatGeek cheers mate literally just doing my final acs now and hopefully gas safe in 2 weeks.
I am looking for some information on solar storage and heat pumps. Is there any (heat pump) safe way for people living in remote areas to heat with a heat pump? Safe shut-down (low-storage)controls, propane backup heat, etc.
I am an energy advisor from the west coast of Canada. Insulate first :), ventilate right, air-seal, and heat pumps everywhere! :) In normal situations, we are encouraging ground-to-air and air-to-air to allow for cooling benefits.
Thanks for sharing all your great knowledge, and your great intention towards our kid's futures. Well done all!
Thanks very much for putting this together. I had wondered how it was going to be possible to spend a lot of time, money and energy converting electricity to gas so that the existing gas pipes and gas boiler manufacturing industry might continue to be useful and in business and it looks like it isn't. Bad news for them and the gas grid owners, it reminds me of the story of the last days of steam-powered railways in the UK. As well as mentioning insulation at some point in every video (a great move) you might also mention that ventilation with heat recovery is also a must if we aren't all going to get very ill living in these super-insulated, super sealed up, heat pump heated homes.
not in my draughty single brick home I wont
@@ranxxerox6407 a draughty home is like feeding an open fire with fivers! Seal up and go heat recovery and start recouping the outlay.
I am thinking about getting a heat pump but I am now thinking about having a borehole instead. Besides cost, is there a any disadvantage or borehole heating.
Borehole heating is a heat pump.. its a ground source heat pump. Rather than air source. Down side is an extra 6,000 to £16,000 on top of the usual air source cost
@@HeatGeek many thanks, Of course, they both are exchanging heat and pumping heat from its surroundings.
6-16K is this the amount of heat the house may need and the type of ground that needs to be drill that gives the range of price.
@@anthonycraig274 mainly the amount of heat
@@HeatGeek many thanks
TPV... a theory that is along long time from large scale ? I was watching a video about it, but they didn't seem to answer the heat losses from the stored heat over months before winter use ?
They are being built right now so assume they've undergone some critical thing and testing
I’m in the O&G industry and we’ve been telling the government for over 15 years now that grey/blue hydrogen & CCUS is not economically viable. However the green lobby continues to support this without understanding the engineering and energy involved to make it happen.
Capturing and compressing CO2 when electricity is abundant is more practical, then using the compressed gas to drive turbines when we need power makes more sense.
so hydrogen coming into your home from the gas grid is stored in a metal hydride to feed a fuel cell to power a heat pump system or even a whole house.
that's what comes to my mind providing the national gas grid is converted to hydrogen by whatever ratio of colour coded hydrogen
DW Planet A in its documentary _The truth about hydrogen_ also mentions Robert W. Howarth's paper on the efficiency of Blue Hydrogen which, as you say, isn't that good. I reckon the gas boiler industry is at stage three in the five stages of grief: bargaining with the market to buy hydrogen.
this might need a update for that hydrogen battery option, electrolysis is reportably now 95-98% efficient with the new capillary fed electrolyser xd
using the numbers from 12:12 that seems to reduce the energy required to 225 - 233 TWh
OK, so this is intriguing. Ive said it before - with the housing stock of this country being old and little or no insulation, thats obviously the target the government SHOULD be focussed on in the next few years. But lets say I add internal insulation in my Mid-Terrace home with its front - north facing living room and cellar underneath, and a gennel running along side the home - which would help with the COP for a heat pump - which would by the way sit in my small south facing - sun trapping yard) - the question would be - what about Solar panels? Would they power the heat pump? would that make the ultimate difference in cost saving? Bare in mind that today we have been told that the energy prices will be higher this autumn than previously thought.
Only during the fringe months (early autumn and late spring). In general it gets cold because there is less sun to warm us - less sun = less solar. If you have an idea of how much energy you use for heating in kwhs, you could soon work out your daily needs.
From where I see it, hydrogen only makes sense if you use times of green energy over production (I.e not switching wind turbines off when it is windy AF). Therefore the hydrogen essentially becomes an energy store. Have you considered the energy efficiency of either using an IC engine running on gas to run the compressor on a heat pump: the waste heat from cooling the engine and lost in exhaust could be recovered by dumping it into the heat pump evaporator coil. Alternatively a fuel cell to run the heat pump and recovering it's waste heat also through the evaporator coil? Pay me royalties later :-)
we need huge batteries in the national grid too, by storing energy we will also be able to increase the amount we can rely on renewables, unfortunately batteries are also very underdeveloped because of we have such a cheap and easy way to provide energy through oil and gas.
Surely it would cost a lot more in the long run to increase cable sizes in the uk (digging up all the roads esp in London), than using existing gas pipe work to run hydrogen in.
We can't use existing gas pipe. So we're spending 130 billion pounds upgrading the gas pipes.. cables don't need upgrades for all the reasons I give in part 2 due next week
Britain has de-industrialized, so our electricity grid already has loads of spare capacity in many places. And because we are an island it's quite easy (and cheap) to upgrade the grid by laying HVDC cables in the sea. Yes places like London will need some upgrades but it's not impossible.
But people seem to forget that all the wind and solar make polution as wel to make it, so in fact there is no real clean solution to it all, but its the cleanest we have is the correct way to say it.
But great info thx for this explanation.
I am a welder so i know how mutch polution it takes to make wind mils, and then i am not talking on all the maintenace on those things.
It's been studied. ALOT. Its called full life cycle carbon intensity.. and its 1000s of x better
Although I’m self building shortly, the current boiler I have is about 10 years old (probably not very efficient), I wonder how well a ASHP will run after 10 years.
Also, gas engineers are readily available, which keeps repairs some what reasonable. I can imagine the cost associated with replacing parts of a ASHP being a lot more expensive.
EDIT: Also, what about the noise of the fan after 3-4 years!?!
Hp should last 20 years
@@HeatGeek at the same SCOP? Most fan based systems tend to see degradation.
@@davidcalvert-smith4633 I couldn't answer that.. depends on level of servicing
Yeah and the national grid needs upgrading nationwide as higher usage and higher loads is only going to cause blackout and higher maintenance costs.
Grid needs upgrading urgently
We cover this in part 2
Great if you have room in your yard for a heat pump, and room in your house to store water. Not to mention the noise of a rows of terraced houses all running heat pumps constantly in winter.
Yep there is areas they don't work as meantioned in the video
Spot on, I think this message needs to get out & have the widest publicity particularly to our politicians some of who seem hoodwinked into Hydrogen for heating by our Gas Company’s. cf: NW Hydrogen Alliance
The biggest problem with this theory is the rising price of electricity at the moment makes a ashp and any electrical equipment used to heat a home unrealistic until and if the energy prices drop
completely unrelated to your video - do you know why Pex A pipe / plumbing isn't a thing in the UK? - the kind that uses an expansion tool to stretch the pipe over the fitting. Seems to be the best copper alternative to me, yet looks like its only a north America thing.
There is 1 company over here doing it.. I forget the name now.. its not very impressive though and seems to kink.. not sure if the US stuff does.. if not using copper the best thing to use for us is mlc pipe (pex-al-pex) much more rigid formable, less kinks..
Great vid, I've been moaning to everyone I know about this. Nice to have a concise video to send to them for them to never watch!
Remember the Hindenburg THAT make Quite a few trips before it exploded
Nice video! However, I wouldn't underestimate the seasonal storage argument in favor of hydrogen. If we're going for a fully renewable grid, especially with the low solar irradiance in European winters, we're going to have a huge problem in winter. If emerging hydrogen storage technologies prove reliable, hydrogen could be a very compatible and flexible energy storage vector. I agree that hydrogen boilers are not the way to go, we should couple hydrogen to large scale heat pumps in district heating if possible imo.
From a purlry financial perspective is still cheaper to run a gas boiler due to the higher electricity prices, although hopefully if all these renewables work should decrease the electricity cost over time?
Not necessarily
It really seems the "key" to the ":hydrogen economy", isn't related to energy efficiency, but the cost of energy storage (round trip cost, rather than roundtrip "efficiency").
- Any electricity already on the grid, which has a "home" -destination, is better used as electricity - with thermal storage for peak shifting if there is a real surplus,.
Natural Gas in the Gas Grid - is better being converted to heat at the retail user rather than loosing out at the power plant (if direct heat is needed) - gas leaks in the distribution grid needs to be quantified (for "greenhouse potential" - with costing applied.).. We would all love silent 400% efficiency (4COP) reverse cycle heat pumps - don't let Downing Street force ppl to put in non reversable heatring "pumps" (defining AC use in summer as a luxury, which should not be subsidised - even if the unit is essentially the same as a "air source heat pump") - and go for reverse cycle splits (add in a hydronic loop and air to water exchanger for "thermal storage heating")
Ammonia conversion eliminates the complexity of hydrogen storage - ok another set of conversion steps.
Thank you for a very lucid explanation indeed. Perfectly understandably, the video doesn't mention that hydrogen is chemically an extremely useful gas and any green hydrogen will be needed far more for such things as fertilizer production. I normally prefer cock-up theories to conspiracies, but I've become increasingly suspicious that the considerable hydrogen-for-home-heating lobby is a front for the continued use of fossil fuels, at great cost to consumers, and that technically illiterate politicians (ie nearly all) are in grave danger of swallowing the sales pitch. ("We'll have to use natural gas-derived hydrogen for now, then add carbon capture and eventually move to 100% green hydrogen.") BS
Solar and wind locally generated. The excess energy stored into any type of battery is the most effective way.
I'm looking at a Tepeo electric boiler, a Sunamp hot water tank and another Powerwall.
Those solutions aren't interseasonal unfortunately
Heat demand in winter is 3-4 times higher than electricity demand. The cheapest and most efficient way to seasonally store excess wind and solar is via H2. Plus, heat demand does not overlap with solar production. So good luck installing a heat pump + PV + battery. High CAPEX and still high energy bills.
Why not use Hydrogen LENR boilers like the Brillouin Energy Hydrogen Hot Tube? Why not flameless Hydrogen catalytic heating technology?
Because, as per the video, generating and using hydrogen will cost an absolute bomb and generating the amount if h2 needed is night on impossible
@@HeatGeek lol you did not read the comment...hydrogen LENR boiler? Brilliouin Energy Hydrogen Hot Tube? Umm not traditional hydrogen tech.
Great video, but there's more to consider here; Hydrogen does not need to be stored as a gas at high pressure, it can be converted to methanol, which is much safer to handle and gets us closer to the energy densities that we need. Methanol can be split back into hydrogen or used with existing fuel cell technologies. In fact fuel cells (that are already available on some cars) are ideal for the home too. Plenty of electricity on demand and stack cooling provides additional home heating benefits (CHP). If we tried to store enough hydrogen as a gas there simply wouldn't be enough steel in the world to make the tanks, and the CO2 emissions from making the steel would dwarf any environmental benefits.
Most heavy power requirements for industry and transport such as shipping, trucks & trains will use methanol or ammonia as the energy source for a variety of fuel cell technologies.
Added to this is the ability to produce hydrogen directly from algae. Non-arable land & deserts could become the zero carbon energy sources of the future. All technically & commercially achievable before 2050.
(1 bar = 1 atmosphere btw, a small correction needed in the video)
As meantioned in the video a few times, we ate the uks number 1 domestic hydrogen fuel cell installer. Very aware fuel cells can be fitted in homes. The storage we talked about accounted for 13-14% additional loss. So not a great amount. Conversion to methonol and back will give more losses.
@@HeatGeek Microalgae can produce methanol directly, so it's only conversion to hydrogen that's needed. That can be done efficiently. Methane pyrolysis with CCU..
@@4mlextension917 right but you have to house and manage that process... let's say storage uses 0 energy though, you still need 370tWh to power the h2 boilers
Yes, fuel cell micro-CHPs are available for residential applications. I have one in my home and at current spark spreads it is at least 30-40% to run than a boiler or a heat pump :) Not to mention that I produce electricity locally, reducing strain on the grids caused by additional electric loads.
As the oil barons control (alongside the weapons manufacturing barons), the government. Which colour hydrogen do you think will be chosen?
Heat pumps with a bit of h2.. as per the video
@@HeatGeek Sorry, I was asking (ironically), weather the H2 would be primary blue or green. "Following the money", most likely blue, as the oil barons will benefit more.
@@mrhignettshorses yes we cover both sources in the video
@@HeatGeek scardeycat. It will be blue and you know in it.
@@mrhignettshorses haha it will probably be a bluey green colour!?
With Hydrogen the really big problem is compression/storage or transmission. Hydrogen is really not dense, to get the same energy as CH4 you need to at least triple the gas flow rate, and if you are going to store it you need to compress it alot. This takes alot of energy. In Hydrogen-electric cars where you are compressing the Hydrogen to 10,000psi (700bar) you get a round trip storage efficiency (electricity-electricity) of 33% compared to batteries which give over 90%. Hydrogen storage systems cost slightly more than batteries and batteries are still getting cheaper. This is no mass storage of Hydrogen. Its just not feasible because of the inefficiency. It always better to use batteries for storage than Hydrogen, and other methods might be better for long term storage.
I favour resistive heater-Natural Gas Hybrids. Air sourced heat pumps are not that great in the cold winter, cold day COP figures seem to be hard to get but I would be surprised if its more than 1.5, unless you keep the flow temp super low and use the heating all the time (reducing efficiency because its not wanted heat). Reducing the heat output to increase efficiency and then running it when you don't need it is cheating, this is not the definition of efficiency (wanted output / input).
Heat pumps are too expensive to install!
Would love to see gas networks repurposed for hot water from a district heat pump.
Wait for next week's video
@@HeatGeek sounds interesting!
Assuming all heat will be electrified via heat pumps, how high will peak demand be in winter months? Research shows that peak demand could increase by 2-300% even when using very efficient heat pumps. How much wind and solar is needed to meet that additional electricity demand, bearing in mind the sun only shines 30 h per week in winter and wind blows intermittently? Compared to today's levels, wind and solar will likely have to be scaled up 10-20 times. Is that realistic? By when will it be achieved?
Meanwhile, the super expensive heat pumps are running on super expensive gas generation, barely saving any energy and reducing any emissions.
It doesnt really matter. Even if electrical demand was completely gas generated this would still be a 40% reduction in co2 from gas boilers
A good vid and I agree with most points, although are your hydrogen figures correct? I thought in order to create green hydrogen around 30% is lost in conversion during electrolysis and a further 26% lost in transport and storage, giving an efficiency of only 52%.
Also in relation to applications where electricity simply isn’t a viable alternative, Ecotricity have started the first ‘Green Gas’ plant down in reading using mainly grass cuttings to produce methane. I’m aware it’s carbon neutrality is questionable but I wonder it can be seen as an long-term option.
The figures have ranges (whichbyour numbers fit in) and I used the absolute best case for h2 to account for future development.
Grass cuttings (anerobic digestion) will never produce anywhere near the volume needed. There are many plants already unplaced feeding in to the grid making very little difference.
I was disappointed to see ecotricity go down the "green gas" nonsense route. To assume that the land used to generate this green gas couldn't sequester carbon, or provide food in a more sustainable way (or both) is ridiculous. It's not remotely green, and you'd expect a company like ecotricity to recognise that.
@@HeatGeek great, yeah electrolysis is such an energy intensive process and hydrogen such a tricky element to work with I just question whether those best case numbers are even ever achievable.
I’ve long questioned the hydrogen revolution as the 52% figure doesn’t even include the losses at the boiler, which would push it well below 50%. Hydrogen use in cars currently stands at around a horrific 22% efficiency. I agree insulation and heat pumps (electric tech and minimising energy use) will likely be the solution for many.
That’s also why I don’t agree with hydrogen storage for electricity production as it’s efficiency figures are appalling. Large scale battery storage makes much more sense.
@@ricos1497 yeah I agree, and we’d never produce enough methane from anaerobic digestion to power everyone’s heating or stoves. However I do wonder if it can be utilised in specific industries where electric simply isn’t an alternative. I wouldn’t want us to simply have 000’s of acres of fields purely for methane production. However many people simply throw away their grass cuttings and wonder if this personal waste can be put to better use.
This is all based on a centralised system. If it was personalised ie every home had a tank of water and electrodes and produced their own hydrogen by electrolisis, it would cost about a pound a day in winter for the electricity, that's it. They trying to stay in charge of it and keep the £billions flowing in every year.
It would be much better to store energy in vanadium flow batteries (expensive atm) rather than switch off wind turbines when "too much" electricity is being produced, which can't be used at the time.
I noticed you glossed over how to safely transport this hydrogen (when it becomes cost effective and greener to manufacture ) from source to homes, we know that the old gas mains are not up to the job any they are a colossal amount of those buried underground in the UK so until we can safely upgrade/replace the existing old gas mains which I read that there is over £39 Billion in the current distribution network for the UK this task will take decades to accomplish so do we realistically have that precious time to achieve this?
That's all in part 2 due next week
Nice video. Don’t forget nuclear power as a carbon free source of green hydrogen. Thanks!
Yes bit a very VERY expensive one!!
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
So... Why are you bothering with domestic hydrogen boilers? Why is there a demand for something 4x more expensive to run? Do you have to have a truck bring hydrogen to your home when the tank runs out at the moment?
Well said and my useless fact of the day.
Cal val (HHV) of atmospheric Hydrogen is about 13 Mj/m3, Methane is 40 Mj/m3 and the vacuum of space is zero.
So hydrogen is closer to the vacuum of space than methane cos as a molecule its largely empty space.
The low density problem then ripples through storing it, piping it, compressing it and shipping where its characteristics are truly awful.
Good energy carriers need to have high energy density, its what drove the industrial revolution, hydrogen aint, but some of the clean derivatives we can make from it are high density and more easily shipped/stored and could firm our electricity grid instead of hydrogen.
We need green ways of generating electricity to create Green H2, so why don’t we (as one way of helping) get people to have solar panels installed via a Gov scheme in which energy can then be sent back to the grid who can then use it to aid the process of generating H2.
Did you watch the video?
691 standard atmospheres 🤓
and their we go again.
If all the system's where set up correctly than we had no problems and usage would be 20 to 50% less .
maybe focus more in that .
i think someone who's specialized in optimizing central heating wil make a good living
what if the home owner installed their own electrolysis hydrogen generator?
if hydrogen is created and stored at home, this means the owner doesn't have to buy a house battery
Hydrogen = water = rain = flooding
Isn't it true the cables down the streets aren't big enough to power electric and heating demands also power to run cars. Upgrade costs would be trillions of pounds. Doncaster council about 7 years ago put PV panels on the roofs of there council houses. But couldn't do all the houses on the street incase they all back fed and exceeded the capable capacity of the cable in the street.
Heat pumps need an average of 3kw supply.. a kettle is 2.5.. oven 3kw..
Some will some won't. There's 20% more capacity than 20 years ago due to energy saving measures, and this will increase with time of use.
Hydrogen grid cost is 130 billion
But wouldn't a extra 3kw be a problem for the grid at peak if we consider most cars will be electric as well. 3kw would be a similar load to the PV feed in load at peak. The reason the council could only install so many on the same street. If we all come home from work put electric heating on 3kw, boil a kettle 3kw, cook dinner 1 ring and oven 5kw, and plug electric car in 7kw. I know this is a exaggeration but it would be a large load all at once to consider. Plenty of upgrades on the electric grid would be needed and some form of point of use battery storage, along with modulation for car charging would be needed in most homes (not sure if this is already a thing)
Im sure my mate said when he applied for MCS for his Heat pump (fairly big one 8kw in a big house in a small village) checks had to be done to make sure the street cable capacity was large enough. Is this a usually check carried out during MCS application?
Just to prove how shit the electric grid is at dealing with large loads. A village near to where i live has had 100s of power cuts within a few month blamed on cannabis farms. Basically there lights switching on at a similar time, causing overloads. Basically the police had to become pro active at sorting the problem.
Brilliant channel. Love the content. But I just listen. I can't bear watching the hands swinging about.
I have heard a lot of moaning about heat pumps, but as you said if they were fitted badly or are underpowered, they will not heat the property. Resulting in the heat pump running at peak times on electric tariffs. Evening using electric elements, to make up the shortfall in heat which cost alot more to run. Personally, I'm going to wait and let the industry mature, prices will fall and reliable, trusted companies will emerge.
How the fook can you exceed 100 percent efficiency????
By extracting heat out of the air. For example it takes 1 kwh to power a heat pump that creates 3.5 kwh of heat as it pulls free latent heat out if the air.
TVP ?
You need to put insulation first. Only joking,I watched video
Hdrogen for heating is just a dumb idea. After all the hydrogen will have to come from renewable energy sources.
So we take 1kWh of electricity and we'll always get much less than 1kWh of heat into our homes. This can't and won't improve. Unless you finde a way to break the laws phyiscs (which you won't).
With heat pumps you take 1kWh of electricity and you get 3-5kWh of heat into your building. It's just not comparison.
What people often forget is to look at how the UK can create an energy system without fossil fuels. There are tons of studies about this and it's very clear that we don't have enough energy to heat our homes with hydrogen. Furthermore hydrogen will be needed in other areas of the energy transition much more urgently, since there's no alternative there (shipping, air travel, steel production, maybe long haul trucking etc.).
Hydrogen will absolutely be needed for the energy transition, but using it in heating or in cars is a dream that people have, who haven't read the studies about how we can build full renewable energy systems.
Hydrogen doesn’t have to be chilled or use s much volume see new developments for hydrogen solid storage rival beyond conventional gas for volume, I still say we should increase store regardless beyond 30 days as it has been proven now that European countries are halting beyond there winter needs already we are subject to huge increase because of it ,we should use the old sites that used to store coal gas all over the U.K. granted it will need its main rubber ballast replaced but th4 tech is still sound its just that they didn’t want to use it in favour of the common open market they let them go into disrepair if we commissioned all of these up to modern gas standards but still used the water bladders that allows would give us a 2 years supply. The big problem though with solid storage is it can release only at a particular rate. I still fell that to much emphasis has been put on electric only for properties off grid I still feel a locally used well on site (normally to water the plants on big properties) could easily accommodate a 500 litre equivalent tank those that are lpg already would only need possibly a new pipe into the home with sensors and a hydrogen boilers plus the mods needed for the oven. They can then carry on as normal or using a 5kwh h2 generator from the water supply then stored or delivered the same way as lpg the only difference is if using solar at home a 10kwh array with all the excess and off peak electric could easily store enough for a month at a time , so even with the low sun and poor generation in winter it will still heat your home. The other issue you failed to mention as well with the downside to heat pumps are it needs the grid to be up, as a former Scottish holiday hone owner I can tell you brown outs and blackouts still exist especially after strong winds or a good ice storm, it wasn’t that long ago it took one electric company over 6 weeks to reconnect everything. For the elderly with no heat that can be a death sentence
You are assuming that all that has was just to heat but your wrong. That figure includes industry cooking. Not to mention the generators that actually give you that electric
No.. as I said at the very beginning, we could be talking about transport, indusrty etc etc but for this video and Hanney were focusing on heating
Channel not henney
Nice video - sums up the major problem with hydrogen that I keep trying to explain to people, I'll just point them to this video from now on!
Hydrogen supply chain is just too inefficient to make it cost effective so will never take off in any big way domestically, no matter how the fossil fuel companies try and spin it.
Hopefully the "but hydrogen will cure all our problems" excuse many currently use as a reason to not start making changes now will stop.
natural gas is about 1/3rd price of electricity, people don’t care about kWh, just £. and chasing low carbon in UK is pointless with China, India etc. emitting it like crazy.
Between 2040 and 2050 we will see the complete ending of internal combustion engines and the switch over will be completed ending the use of oil for road transport. We will see electric cars that charge from the roadway, likely be charging lanes on the motorways, this will make a lot of sense for trucks, so on long journeys we won't need to stop to charge. Self driving vehicles will be the norm, so we can kick back and relax on long journeys.
The electric grid will be powered from solar, nuclear, hydro and wind, with larger amounts of energy storage. I see many households investing in solar panels on their roofs and battery storage systems to either offset usage or to charge up on cheaper off peak times. The smart grid will eventually become a true marketplace, where the prices fluctuate with supply and demand. The car battery will also be plugged in to the home to buffer the battery storage capacity of the home when the car isn't used much as more people work from home.
However, that leaves the heating debate. We may see both the introduction of hydrogen powered boilers in small properties and flats and electric heat pumps in the small to medium properties. The other technology is a Gas/Hydrogen Absorption heat pumps which is around 150% efficient and can put out high temperatures, these would make a lot of sense as a replacement for LPG/oil boilers in larger homes. These also will not require 3 phase electricity 12kW of heat output and could be supplied via a tanker like oil/LPG.
Lots of choices and many solutions. I don't think one particular solution will dominate, but in 5-10 years from now, the the technology will be much better, especially the battery/storage technology. We may see batteries made from organic materials, so far more sustainable than current technologies. Also, currently in development is a much more energy efficient simple push/pull solenoid type compressor for heat pumps, these potentially will further increase the efficiency and lower the cost of electric heat pumps.
I keep asking why are we spending so much upgrading the gas main for hydrogen, we should spend it on renewables!
Science = Gas works better
Maths = Gas is cheaper
And that's the Truth .
OK, you fellas are doing really well, good job.
And your work is brilliant .
But who employs you ?
What do you think the minimum income is to the homes in which you fit this new kit ?
Oh, and do these new customers have excess CASH to throw at this?
I have quoted on my own house , its galloping towards £30k.
Insulating the outside .
Then the roof .
Then rip out my new boiler(fitted before June 15th)
OK, you are doing a great job.
Not being fitted here mind .
Oh , I will Rob a bank 🏦 🤣
Did you watch the video? H2 will be 5 x more expensive than heat pumps.. at a least!
P.s. I'm self employed
Fair one .
But don't tell me about HS2
What's it going to cost to convert a 3 bed semi.
Say , from gas boiler with tank .
What's the cost to overhaul this home.
Don't want to read about other issues .
You are a important cog in reality today .
What's the cost .
Collective cost, to make this thing work?
Cheers ✌
So what’s your solution to everyone that has…. A combi boiler? No from for a cylinder or they don’t want one added back in because they want the airing cupboard to store crap. I like heat pumps but my customers would rather spend 3k on a boiler change rather than the additional thousands required for a heat pump. I don’t even have spare money to cover the cost of a heat pump.
Money.. the gov should help.. with the ones that have hot water issues there are many solutions.. it may not be heat pumps.. but it certainly isn't hydrogen. Unless you ate incredibly rich
@@HeatGeek Doesn't the largest part of the heat pump system have to go outside? And wouldn't that mean you don't lose any more cupboard space?
@@mrhignettshorses still need a hot water cylinder. Many houses don't have them now.. although they used to all have them
@@HeatGeek lol…gov should help…hahaha. You know the saying “money goes to money”. I did my heat pump course about 4 years ago - haven’t been able to sell one install. It’s certainly a way forward but can’t see anything changing until the cost of living crisis is resolved and managed. Martin Lewis is really concerned that October will be worse than expected.
@@HeatGeek Thanks, good point. Is it possible to split the heat from the pump to store in a thermal battery (to save space vs a water cylinder)?
While I agree with a lot here, renewables really do struggle when it comes to grid supply. Clearly they do a fantastic job when it comes to wind and solar when they are both providing the input, but given hydro is about 2% of current load then you really are looking as gas fired power stations or nuclear. Nuclear takes ages to build and we have plants that are old and will come to the end of their lives before too long and that leaves us with gas fired power stations to ramp up and down to make up the shortage when renewables aren’t producing what they need to.
Looking in to the number of coal fired power stations in China, India and Germany the I seriously doubt the logic of the uk going on a green streak and rip out current capacity all for the sake of a target that is meaningless given other countries situations with coal.
Frankly I think the government would do better to mandate all new build have to be passiv haus standard and have ground source heat pumps but in the real world that want suit the house building lobby who want to pump out new builds asap at the minimum standard for the least amount of cost and the maximum profit.
The next thing I would do is to work on retro fit of improved heat saving which is windows, doors, roof and air leakage. You will have to deal with the air quality in the house so MVHR systems will need to be included in the mix, but if we really want to be green then that is the way before we look at the source of the heat. Aerogel insulation is massively efficient so we should be looking into that.
People are buying more appliances and fitting things like air conditioning in the UK which will mean energy consumption per household will not fall substantially, even with better insulated homes. I think we will have to bite the bullet and order some of the small modular reactors that Rolls Royce has designed. Trying to retrofit the housing stock with internal or external wall insulation could just create widespread damp problems and another mis-selling scandal.
That sounds nice and cozy but all the updates from climate scientists are reporting bad news and worst case scenarios. We have to aim high as one of the richest nations. If globally we all fail so be it but I would rather we (UK) had a proper go rather than prevarication and whataboutery.
@@chessfan7784 ahh “whataboutart” the word that people bandy about when they don’t like the reality that doesn’t fit the narrative they have selected.
In terms of actual co2 outputted we are 17th in the world behind Turkey and have reduced our CO2 output by a greater percent than any other nation above us and below in the list.
While I agree that producing less CO2 is great and we should strive for this goal we should do it in the context of our emissions now.
Are you willing to sacrifice your house and lifestyle or children’s future to commit to reductions that will make minimal difference all the while countries like India see their rich benefit to vast amounts and scraps from that get to the general population?
Reducing co2 is a goal but we should be looking to ensure we do this while actually saving money at a personal level first.
You have to worry about talk of truth as it is just in practice a perception not shared by others and the more intolerant a person is of other opinion the truer his view seems to be. This was an interesting video and heat pumps and solar seem to be a good backup or hopefully a main system but is that in 5 years time? Saying not the heat pumps 5 years ago is alarming as will they be saying that in 5 years time? If 5 year old technology is wanting it is an incentive to hang on. A bit like with cameras as if you buy the current one a spanking new improved model comes out in the next month with more video codecs, megapixels, processor speed, faster focusing......... This is a problem with the technological load carried by any equipment nowadays. Also companies hold back innovation and release in dribs and drabs to milk the upgrade market which has created the term Cripple Hammer in camera buying circles. It is not just the fossil fuel companies playing games with us.
If the government solared up everyone's roofs that would seem a very good idea if not essential but the upfront costs of this are formidable and the personal funds available are even less and diminishing by the day in the current chaos. The winter gas prices are going to wipe out a lot of funds that were available for this brave new energy world. I have stopped saving and relying on past savings as a buffer and there is talk of pensions not being inflation proofed so no plans for changing anything unless absolutely necessary. I am afraid the planet will have to look after itself.
I am interested in how you forecast the market for what seems to need what appears on You Tube generally to be an affluent clientele and if people have been unable to settle your bills. Are people swapping viable gas systems for heat pumps and what is the payback period? These gas price hikes are born from extreme political crisis on the brink of global war rather than natural shortages so they will probably normalise again so difficult to predict a need to switch out of gas. Apparently this week there are the nuclear war rehearsals Steadfast Noon going on and the tiny groups of climate change loons are out in force making everyone's life a misery.
Heat geek dont worry greta thunberg will sort it out
Even if it is 20% efficient, it is still free of change and falls out of the sky, or, can be obtained via turning on the water tap.
It's free. You are clearly being paid by an industry from somewhere.
Didn't realise you could ignite water. Do, tell us more.
Nuclear energy is the way to go
Global warming will save us all, it will be so warm we won’t need all this 😂
basically we are screwed,, heat pumps not the answer for most homes,, hydrogen not the answer,, but its a mish mash of the two
Having a mish mash of the two doesn't make us screwed. I can't see many, if any, home solutions calling for hydrogen though???
@@HeatGeek As it stands heat pumps make sense for new builds and rural homes hydrogen is the way forwards for many homes but tech is evolving so fast that in 5 years time the solutions will maby be more apparent
@@davidblurton7158 Hydrogen will always remain inefficient, no matter what.
We import most of our gas now More and more countries are producing hydrogen from solar and we will end up importing it How much electricity are we going to need if we all converted to heat pumps. Anybody can come out with figures but in reality they never meet these figures
Lol did you watch the video???
With a COP of 3:1 I think you need 1/3 of the electricity that you previously needed. Plus getting the gas is not free and probably highly subsidized just like oil. I may be wrong of course.
@@HeatGeek yes I did and all I get from you is excuses as to why we should use heat pumps At the moment as you say we import oil and gas from abroad and that is more than likely where we will get hydrogen from just as we import all your heat pumps from abroad
If small modular reactors become a thing I can’t see why they can’t create green hydrogen with them
They call it Pink Hydrogen from Nuclear ... The same applies... for hydrogen heating you need 4 times the number of reactors , than if you use the 'lectricity for heat pumps ..... .. And Cost ... currently ( I love a good pun) the new reactor Hinkley C , is sounding expensive per KWH?
So this begs the question: Why, since you have an excellent grasp of the subject, do you STILL install H2 versions for a living?
If the UK went the absolutely daft Rees Mogg road, it would have to rip out most, if not all, of its preexisting natural gas pipe network & grapple with the seemingly neverending private property access hassles to be replaced by one for one plastic versions which, in & of itself, would cause even more fossil fuels usage in the manufacturing of the plastic pipes, connectors etc and their accompanying emissions; hydrogen makes metals brittle hence need to replace pipework. Let's not kid ourselves: this WOULD NOT be paid for by industry. Taxpayers would fund most if not all of the bill.
Hydrogen, for those who may read this & aren't aware, is a very small molecule that tries to & will, escape containment if not properly confined. It's also far more highly combustible than natural gas, & when burned, produces Nitrous Oxides which, it could be argued, produce more harmful greenhouse gas emissions than natural gas; this could mean worse air quality in the home if used for cooking because if we're going to replace domestic natural gas usage as a direct replacement for heating, we'll also be doing so for cooking. There could be a corresponding knock-on effect on the NHS as a result.
Simply put, as so clearly & excellently delineated in the video, the full electrification of heating & cooking is by far & away cheaper, simpler, more efficient & will require far less resources & time to do so. #STOPBURNING #STUFF.
P.S. Worth noting that we already have a pre-existing 'pipe' system that, admittedly, needs upgrading, but is readily accessible & quite capable of beginning the rapid rollout of heat pumps; it's called the 'National Grid' - wires in other words & mostly aboveground. Little to no disruptive digging required.
Because sometimes the customer cannot afford a heat pump and if they don't get a fuel cell they will just have a gas boiler. We offer heat pumps first..
@@HeatGeek But as you yourself pointed out, they will very quickly become obsolete technology & will require replacement with a heat pump anyway. Don't know if you are aware of this, but it is possible to try to fund Heat Pump installation via a 'green' loan or convert a mortgage to a 'green' mortgage. There's lenders out there that look very favourably on properties with such tech because it normally means it's easier for households to afford their energy bills & thus their loan/mortgage repayments. Octopus Energy are in the process of training new heat pump installation engineers & installing heat pumps which will eventually help to bring costs down. The current £5,000 incentive is a big help. It's like mobile phones: when 1st on the market, they were £2-2,500 bricks. Now you can fairly readily pick one up for a few quid.
As you so rightly pointed out there is no quick straightforward solution as continuing gas boiler usage merely encourages gas companies to carry on charging/price gougingly high prices and emissions keep rising. I did really LOVE your video. It was truly exceptional.
@@pinkelephants1421 hi. Yes aware of green loans, octopus have distorted market as they don't charge labour. Most of yhe cost is labour cost not heat pump so won't come down as many hope.. we have stuff on the horizon for this!
All you do is push heat pumps hydrogen is still in its early years compared to your so called efficient heat pumps
Hi Grumpy Git. First of all, as per the video, we are the uks number 1 hudrogen boiler installers so cannot be accused of bias! Secondly all our figures used were at the extreme and unlikely higher end of efficiency for hydrogen, and lower end for heat pumps.. and the numbers still came out as shown.. the numbers speak for themselves
Hydrogen is still in its infancy but is coming along in leaps and bounds How long have heat pumps been on the go 10 years or so and people are still not convinced .you say you are the main hydrogen boiler installer but where are you installing them
@@grumpygit447 all over the UK.. can you give an example of an evolutionary leap? For example a hydrogen boiler can't really leap and where from 90% efficient.. heat pumps have recently leaped with the new r290 units to great efficiencies and higher temperatures in thr last year.
Hydrogen has been used in rockets since 1926.. heat pumps have actually been around since slightly before that believe it or not
Or you could just keep using a natural gas furnace and not worry about all of this because the carbon isn't harming the environment anyway.
Yes, you could think that 99% of scientists are paid off and its all made up for sure. But extreme though
@@HeatGeek science by committee then? We took a vote, and this is the way it is, even if we are wrong. Extreme? More extreme than rearranging the global economy for a hoax?
@@letmeseeit66 no.. science by probability. If the people that actually study this, collect the data, test theories etc all come to the same conclusion.. and the public that are made up of people that mainly don't do these things the probability is that the professionals are correct.
Additionally, science bends towards truth. Climate change was not considered, then contentious, then became consensus. Science had been wring before but its never gone from correct to incorrect.
Lastly, going back to probability, is highly HIGHLY unlikely that all scientists are paid off and no one has either whilst blown or been caught out.
@@HeatGeek appealing to authority is a logical fallacy, just because someone is an "expert" in their field, doesn't mean that they are not wrong. Also the pressure to go along with the crowd is immense. Additionally, not all of the "experts" do come to the same conclusion, there are many dissenters and skeptics, but they don't get much attention because there isn't any money to be made from telling everyone that nothing is wrong.
Finally, speaking of theories and probability, when the predictions based on your theory don't match the observations, the theory is probably wrong.
@@letmeseeit66 there are millions of outcomes so outcome may be inaccurate. But where the studies and real world results do align is that they both appear to show the binary result that alot of climate change is man made. According to 99% of scientists. Yes 1% do disagree.. but that's shrinking still and as I say, science bends towards truth.
Lastly, remember that time a random guy in the comments on a science article on social media disproved a mainstream theory and won the Nobel Prize for his revolutionary discovery?
Because that litrally never has or will happen.
This guy is a heat pump contractor. Sorry but too conflicted. His presuppositions based on the notion that the British state can't produce electricity cheaply which is a fallacy
But CO2 is not causing climate change. CO2 is needed for plants and trees to survive. The change to hydrogen is a pointless waste of money and benefits only the investors who happen to be MPs and other rich people. It just costs the public more
INDUSTRY needs NUCLEAR