Army Shun Heat Pumps In Favour Of £20,000 Electric Boilers!
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
They’re lurching from one silly idea to another:
The military is shunning heat pumps and instead warming soldiers’ homes with cutting-edge electric boilers that cost less to run.
Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials have been working on “Project Nixie” since 2020, The Telegraph can reveal, focusing on finding alternatives to heat pumps for barracks.
Much of the MoD’s domestic building stock is not suitable for heat pumps, which have only been fitted in a “very small proportion” of military homes.
An MoD spokesperson said that the project was launched to find a cheaper alternative to heat pumps, which require comprehensive and expensive work to a property before installation.
One possible solution is by using Cylo boilers, which the Telegraph understands are currently being fitted in four homes at the Duke of Gloucester Barracks in South Cerney, Glos, as part of a pilot project due to start early in 2024.
Cylo is a fridge-sized, emission-free electric boiler that is cheaper to run and more effective than a heat pump.
It is also greener than a gas boiler and requires no major works to a building before it can be installed.
The boiler uses a pressurised water tank as a thermal battery, using off-peak and cheap electricity to create a “heat reservoir” that then powers radiators when needed.
Standing around 6ft tall and weighing around 250kg before being filled with water, it can be fitted in a ground floor room or on the outside of a building.
The product currently costs around £20,000 per unit, but manufacturers believe that the cost of the product will lower with time.
It is not available commercially but is being sold to large landlords, such as government departments and councils.
Documents show that the MoD paid about £5,000 to install each of the four trial devices, similar to the cost of installing a traditional gas boiler.
It warms water as effectively as a gas boiler, its makers claim, is cheaper to run and can be used with variable tariffs.
Heat pumps, however, are unable to warm radiators as effectively, meaning measures to improve home energy efficiency are often needed, such as roof and wall insulation, new windows and doors and bigger radiators – costs that can run to tens of thousands of pounds for older houses.
The Government offers a grant of up to £7,500 for heat pump installation but does not cover the costs of making a house ready for a heat pump.
The Government admits that solid wall insulation itself can cost £15,000 on older houses.
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At least they’ve the good sense to recognise that heat pumps are totally unfit for purpose. But a solution that costs £20,000 plus £5000 installation is hardly any better.
As for the claim that it is cheaper to run than a gas boiler, they are gaslighting. Electricity prices are about four times those of gas, and there are no efficiency savings with a Cylo, which also cannot provide hot water, meaning yet more costs.
Even off peak electricity rates are much higher than gas. I pay Octopus 26.52p for standard electricity and 6.83p for gas, per KWh. Their off peak rate is 15.91p, still more than double the price of gas. But they also charge a much higher peak rate of 42.43p between 16.00 and 19.00, offsetting some of the savings:
As for the army, whoever thought it a good idea to waste £100k on this project should be court-martialled!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
According to the blurb here
https://remitzero.co.uk/
uses water to store energy, which it draws from mains electricity at off-peak, low-cost times or from a local renewable source where available. It stores the energy until it’s needed as hot water in your taps and radiators.
Basically like the good old fashioned copper hot water tank. I would guess for something of the size it is you’d be lucky to get an hours worth of heat out of it.
This is them:-
We’re on a mission to decarbonise Britain’s homes and buildings and help organisations with large property portfolios reach their Net Zero targets.
From our base at Exeter Science Park, our team of engineers have created cylo®, the first zero emission thermal energy store and boiler capable of providing the heat and hot water most UK homes would need on the coldest winter day.
And it’s just the first step on our journey.
“And it’s just the first step on our journey.”
The second step being to find a government entity with taxpayers money to burn.
“… the first zero emission thermal energy store and boiler…”
Using electricity generated by fossil fuels.
What happened to the Trades Description Act and where’s the Advertising Standards Authority?
“…first zero emission thermal energy store…”
What a silly lie! My hot-water bottle does exactly the same and its cost as a store is now essentially zero as it will never wear out. It is also far cheaper to warm oneself in bed with a bottle and a good duvet than to warm the bedroom itself. More healthful too as the air is not Sahara dry.
The basic domestic unit looks to be about 2mx0.6mx0.6m, or 0.72cu m. Call it 700kg of water, which is quite a significant floor loading, especially if you need several units for a barracks. However, half the volume is probably just insulation. If we assume an operating temperature range of 30C, e.g. between 50C and 80C, then we have 30×4.2kJ/kg of energy store, or about 50MJ in 400kg water. About 14kWh. Loss through the insulation is likely to be around 2kWh a day, but at least heats the boiler room. Compare with annual gas consumption of 12MWh in a Home, or about 33kWh/day, and rather more 8n winter.
What would the heat loss be if it was outside?
As I understand it IDAU, the water is pressurised hence superheating is possible. (“The boiler uses a pressurised water tank”)
The vessel is quoted as weighing in at 250kg without water (presumably a tonne when filled) which indicates it is a fairly hefty pressure vessel. If my inference is correct, they may well be going significantly over 100°C which will raise the specific heat as well (at 350°C it is 8.14kj/kg)
I may be wrong but that is the only way I can see that enough useful heat could be stored in such a small unit.
So potentially a pressurised unit that literally weighs a tonne (floor loading?) with lethally hot water to burst out. What could possibly go wrong?
AFAICS you’d need ~200bar to get to 350C
https://enghandbook.com/thermodynamic-calculators/water/?temperature=350.0&pressure=200
and you’d have a serious problem in that density will have dropped to only around 600kg/m^3, so your tank will have to expand as it heats up. The real gains in SHC only happen at higher temperatures, even at 200bar. At 50bar and 200C you are looking at density dropping to 867kg/m^3, which is already challenging.
I am getting rather intrigued by this company Remit Zero LTD who have patented this Cylo system.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/13194045
Only been around 3 years and include Professor Jeremy Miller as a director
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jeremy-Miller-13
I genuinely do not believe this is a standard pressure vessel system and is more likely some form of extravagant water superheating notion. Anyone involved in “Trilateral Flash Cycles” is unlikely to be trying on some standard system.
“The product currently costs around £20,000 per unit, but manufacturers believe that the cost of the product will lower with time.”
It’s little more than a glorified ‘Immersion heater’ in a hot-water storage cylinder. Available from all plumbers’ merchants. Many for under a £grand.
https://www.vpshotwatercylinders.co.uk/product/gledhill-stainless-lite-plus-solar-unvented-direct-cylinder-250-litre-pludr250s/
As I comment above to IDAU, they are somewhat coy with detail but do claim it is “pressurised” and that it is a very heavy unit at 250kg unfilled. This implies they are using pressurised water to allow superheating which is rather different than just a conventional HWS tank. If it really is seriously pressurised it would be, in my humble opinion, bloody dangerous.
Hi Ray.
I strongly suspect that when companies refer to ‘pressurised’ in connection with a domestic heating and/or hot water system, they’re referring to ‘mains water pressure’ to distinguish it from a tank-fed gravity system.
Hence the expansion vessel(s) shown in images of ‘pressurised’ systems.
E.g. The two vessels shown left/below the two water storage cylinders in the top image of the BBC’s puff piece about Octopus’s Heat Pump ‘school’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64710225#
What’s interesting, is that the upper cylinder appears to have a couple of immersion heaters fitted. When Octopus & others boast about a HP’s CoP, they never mention the immersion heater has a CoP of only 1.
Hi Joe, you may well be right but I do find it a bit of a stretch for anybody to get away with charging £20,000 for a basic system. Surely even a government official wouldn’t fall for that. Superheated water systems though do exist for commercial applications as per these sorts of things
https://www.schusterboilers.com/products/industrial-369/superheated-water/384/wwg
So maybe these guys have tried to develop an electric version. Obviously it will not change the economics but I really cannot think of any other way they could claim enough thermal storage in such a small volume.
Superheated water (steam) systems in domestic properties have to be a rarity (i.e. non-existent) in UK. The consequences of an accident, especially where there’s a realistic chance that kids are around, would rule them out. Especially for a property owner such as MOD that’d get sued-to-hell if an accident occurred.
Surely even a Government official wouldn’t fall for that? You jest?
Actually Joe with a bit of further research I rescind any “giving them the benefit of the doubt” I may have suggested.
Here is one of Remitzero’s founding directors
https://www.gov.uk/government/people/richard-nugee
Old boys trick?
There is no end in sight to the madness of Net Zero. I wonder who the MoD officials are? No doubt more unqualified civil servants.
Some years ago, a near neighbour of mine was a procurement department head
for the large MOD sites in Folkestone Kent. He was such an impractical person he used to pay my son to pump up his bicycle tyres because he could not figure out how a Presta valve worked. I kid you not.
I believe you!
“Surely even a Government official wouldn’t fall for that?”
It does seem that in the mad, mindless dash to net zero, government officials, and indeed most of our politicians, will fall for any snake oil salesman telling them that he can provide some sort of “green” and “sustainable” energy source or heating system. So bemused are the politicians by the dream of net zero that they’ll swallow any claim without seeing any sort of proof of viability or economic performance. It seems this sort of madness has now taken hold our military as well – I despair!
Oh dear!!! This is just a 12kW resistance heater run off a 60 amp fuse. The rest is just smoke and mirrors.
At Paul’s quoted Octopus rates with 6 hours daily at £0.1591per kWh means 72kWh (not enough for a cold winter’s day for heating alone) costs £11.45.
N.B. there will be storage losses so not the 100% oft misquoted efficiency means it will be no more efficient than a condensing combi boiler.
72 kWh gas @ 6.83 is £5.46. – less than half price.
Just for space heating alone this system will be a minimum of £500 more expensive for the winter quarter alone. I would estimate nearer £1,200 more expensive for a year when domestic hot water for a family of 4 is included.
Either Court Martialled, sued for gross incompetence, or charged with corruption, take your pick.
Sadly the reason as it so often is will be gross incompetence based on an intellectual deficit.
Indeed Ray!
I have a relative who has a similar device in a holiday let on their property. They say it DOES work, providing hot water and running the radiators but is extremely expensive to run . thankfully for them the running cost can be factored into the letting fee, but as soon as guests leave its turned off and entrophy takes its toll back on the property untill the next guests arrive.
In a continually occupied property It would prove impossible to afford if the property was funded by the folks living in it, obviously we are all picking up the tab for this.
+1 Ray.
It’s all part of the great deception. No doubt this will tick a few boxes for the MOD to meet it’s Net Zero targets whilst contributing to massive increases in electricity demand. Tax and bill payers will have to bear the cost of course.
As for the effect on global CO2? Nothing.
Ditto global temperature? Immeasurable.
The military’s function is to hurt people and break things.
Heat pumps or electric boilers is corruption. Politicians should be charged with treason for subverting your military.
i worked at this place in South Cerney, the housing stoke is poor. They need to replace these houses with thermally efficient properties they all have gas boilers. What a waste of money on an unproven technology.
Possibly they are looking ahead, to increased “dynamic pricing”. It is conceivable there will be very cheap power available under certain conditions. It’s already happening to a certain extent, for those on the Octopus tracker tariff.
Although I do suspect, in winter during a prolonged calm spell, there won’t be any cheap power available and it could be financially painful.
There won’t be any cheap power will there?
The lowest tariff will be where we are at now , and it will rise dramatically from there. IMO.
With our current installed wind fleet and the windier weather we have been having and the lower demand over the holiday period we have been seeing extended periods of negative prices at the wholesale day ahead and balancing mechanism level as we have had essentially a surplus of wind. That has resulted in extensive curtailment – some paid for, but some not, with wind farms having to switch off rather than produce at negative prices. Wind farms not on ROCs that haven’t taken up their CFD face market pricing, and even those on CFDs may have terms that mean that the CFD doesn’t pay out when there are six or more contiguous hours of negative prices. AR4 and later wind farms will face no CFD protection any time prices are negative.
The result is that there may be times on flexible tariffs when prices go negative. Overnight on Christmas Eve was a case in point:
https://agileprices.co.uk/?fromdate=20231231
“It is conceivable there will be very cheap power available under certain conditions.”
Absolutely correct. With certainty, folk will be able to run their central heating systems in mid-summer at 2pm when a million solar panel owners simultaneously attempt to dump their excess onto the grid. 😉
I cannot understand why it is so costly. We have (as thousands of others) a thermal store which is heated up on cheaper gas, and supplies heating and hot water throughout the day via heat exchange-type circuits within the tank. Other thermal stores are heated by solid fuel stoves, roof installations, in fact anything at all that will heat them up. Water board pumps keep the pressure high without a cold water storage tank in the loft. Brilliant and efficient, and little more costly to install than a standard gas water heater. All the new builds around here seem to have them.
‘I cannot understand why it is so costly.’
It’s the Obama Plan . . . payoffs to friends of Grant Shapps.
Obama was big time, with the likes of Solyndra and Tonopah. When this program “works,” Shapps will escalate to bigger programs/bigger payouts.
It can only be because it is s a pressurised water store which is why it weighs a quarter of a tonne empty and the only way it could conceivably store enough heat energy in such a compact space. To put that into context the world’s most common form of nuclear power plant is known as a PWR i.e. Pressurised Water Reactor. They don’t come cheap either!
Given that a domestic gas boiler is something like 95% efficient, and electricity generated by even the most efficient combined cycle gas and steam turbine power stations is less than 50%, then it is certain that these glorified immersion heater systems will actually generate more CO2 than the domestic gas boiler solution. Then there are the losses in the distribution system to take into account – simple Ohms law calculation which clearly the MOD types do not understand.
Another thermodynamically incompetent system !
The proponents will argue they use renewable electricity, but that is a smokescreen, most electricity in this country, and that imported via the interconnectors, is generated by conventional means.
An yes, we the taxpayers will pick up the bill !
I have also installed a thermal store heated by gas, like Hamish above. An excellent system which also lets the boiler run most efficiently. And the waste of heat and water associated with a combi boiler is eliminated. My change from Combi to heat store reduced water consumption by 15% and gas consumption by 10%, some of which of course is attributable to a modern condensing boiler.
Paul
What about a collaboration with the well informed Dr Euan Mearns, and a long letter to each and every MP in parliament setting out the facts, which the vast majority have yet to grasp.
John, whilst I agree with most of your comment, I have to point out that a condensing combi boiler is significantly more efficient than a system boiler. I really do not understand your comment “And the waste of heat and water associated with a combi boiler is eliminated.” which makes no sense at all. The whole concept of a combi boiler is the separation of the two distinctly different functions of space heating and hot water heating and eliminating the waste involved in storing heated water.
I would suggest your gains have purely come from switching to a condensing system rather than an older non condensing one and have nothing to do with the combination to system change.
Ray,
The improvement going from a combi boiler to a system boiler, in my opinion, is that there is no need to run the boiler for a long time while the DHW heats up from cold. The thermal store system ensures mains pressure water, hot enough to use, arrives at the taps almost instantaneously. My experience with combi boilers is that it takes a long time for the DHW to reach an acceptable temperature especially for washing dishes, so all that time gas and water is being wasted.
I agree there is a loss of heat from the stored hot water, but with modern insulation, and all pipes well insulated this is 1.5 to 2 kWh per day. And for at least 8 months of the year, as this heat comes back into the house, it goes towards keeping it warm, so is not wasted. An the tank cupboard is ideal for proving home made bread !
I don’t understand how a condensing system boiler can be considered less efficient than a combi boiler. Both run at 90%plus efficiency. The system boiler, in heating the tank, comes on, runs up to full temperature and maximum efficiency and stays at that for some time thus maximising the heat recovered from condensing the flue gases.
Interesting discussion !
I recall “geysers” in my grandparents’ house: one over the sink, and another over the bath – a slightly later model than this one at the Science Museum!
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8408016/ascot-water-heater-water-heater
“It doesn’t add up” refers to old-fashioned geysers. They made taking a bath a wonderful experience! I once (1959) stayed in a large Victorian house in Cambridge, divided into bed-sits, each of which had a feeble electric light and hob, and a gas fire, but no washing facilities. You had to announce to the house that you were “going to take a bath” in the one huge tub in the sole bathroom, and start the geyser, which then steamed up the place for half an hour. Meanwhile one made boiled eggs with bread toasted with a fork in front of the dull red fire. The sense of anticipation on a black, silent, winter night was delicious, and the ultimate soak (and long read*) never disappointed.
As my Irish mother-in-law used to say, “Get down on your knees and thank God you are still on your feet!”
* Sometimes ended by dropping the library book in the water.
“a long letter to each and every MP in parliament setting out the facts, which the vast majority have yet to grasp.”
A good idea but I’m afraid that most MPs wouldn’t have the ability to read a long letter setting out the facts and, even if they did, they couldn’t or wouldn’t understand it. Far easier for them just to chant net zero and “climate collapse” slogans.
We are being “led” by donkeys!
That is an insult to donkeys
If the main benefit over a simple immersion heater is the ability to store energy that’s been bought at cheaper rate, then using https://sunamp.com/ would make more sense.
You are now moving into a completely different area of physics with these units.
Storing heat in water utilises “sensible” heat storage and capacity is determined by the specific heat of the storage medium. Water has a high specific heat of 4.187kJ/kg/k compared to say aluminium at just 0.9kj/kg/k. So water is cheap for this type of storage.
Sunamp, however, use latent heat of fusion i.e. the additional energy required to make a material change phase from solid to liquid. For comparison the decahydrate of sodium sulphate (Na2SO410H2O) has a latent heat of fusion of 252kJ/kg/k at 32 °C . This allows for much more energy to be stored in a more compact volume – in this case 60 times more than water would at that temperature. 32 °C is also much easier to insulate than higher temperatures as losses are determined by the differential to surrounding. It is an interesting area as it can store heat from any source and is not dependent on electricity at all.
Taking the concept of storage of heat a step further goes to thermochemical storage where a reversible reaction A + B ⇌ C + Heat.
This is a good explainer https://www.e-hub.org/thermochemical-materials.html
The energy density of this is high enough to allow inter-seasonal storage of solar thermal energy collected in summer and used in winter.
I worked on part of an experimental demonstration unit some years ago for ECN and the theoretical concept was proved. The costs and practicality were more difficult to demonstrate but there clearly could be a case for top end new builds to incorporate such technology.
Sorry boring old waffle over!
Well, I’m impressed!
There is also this:
https://polarnightenergy.fi/technology
which I think we have discussed before.
If it’s a typical estate of force’s houses then a fossil fuel CHP plant would probably be ideal, although with some redundancy to avoid the risk of every house losing heating and power.
Could probably specify plant with the option of running on whatever military fuel oil is readily available in case there is an oil tanker drivers strike or similar.
For 40 years I worked in the nationalised and later privatised electricty industry. Back in the 1970s one of the products we were promoting was called Centralec. This consisted of a large very heavy water tank heated by immersion heaters on off-peak tariff and the hot water pumped to radiators. As far as I remember only a few were installed in private homes, most were in council homes where the tennant didn’t have a choice. Eventually the sales faded away. Just goes to show there is nothing new under the sun.
The real whopper in that article is the statement that a gas boiler would cost £5,000 to buy and install. No wonder the taxes are going up.
As with all government procurement, you can stick noughts on the normal price.
Friend of mine years ago worked in the stores at a BaE establishment using stacker trucks with VW engines using spark plugs sold at £1 for four in supermarkets, BaE paid a fiver apiece for them.
He was an excellent source for aero quality fasteners, Rose joints and the like, they have date stamps and get scrapped when their time runs out, how does a nut and bolt have an expiration date?
These things still need electricity at least most of the time.
How many hours will there be heat when there is an outage?
What is the source of emergency heat?
A word of caution* concerning ‘The product currently costs around £20,000.’
The US military had its cases of a $600 hammer and an $800 toilet seat.
Military contractors embed the cost of their engineering into the product. The military needed an impact device; the contractor’s engineers determined that a plain hammer would work just fine. Full up cost: $600/hammer.
What’s the alternative? The brouhaha in the press and culture made it clear to contractors: screw hammers; create something new and expensive! The public would rather pay $5000 for a new device than $600 for a hammer.
*I have no idea if it applies in this UK situation.