Giant heat pumps could turn retirement haven into nightmare
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Utter insanity in the name of saving the planet!
Giant heat pumps powering a district heating network could turn the retirement resort of Worthing, West Sussex into one of the UK’s greenest towns under government plans.
The £500m plan will see heat extracted from the atmosphere and then pumped first to public buildings and eventually to households in the area.
Worthing is one of the UK’s most gas-reliant towns with boilers installed in 77pc of its homes, and has an ageing housing stock that generally has below-average levels of insulation, according to constituency data.
The work will be led by Hemiko, a company specialising in district heating, which will invest £40m in the scheme along with £7m from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Lord Callanan, minister for energy efficiency and green finance, said: “We hope this will benefit the whole town by delivering cheaper energy bills and lower carbon emissions.”
The Worthing heat network will initially use three large air source heat pumps in an energy centre by a car park in the town centre.
At first they will heat large public buildings, including the town hall and local hospital. Homes will be connected later, with plans for the entire town to be hooked up by 2050.
Worthing has one of Britain’s oldest populations, with around 35pc of its 113,000-strong population over the age of 60, compared with 25pc nationally.
Sophie Cox, Worthing’s cabinet member for climate emergency, said the town planned to be a carbon neutral council by 2030 and a net zero borough by 2045.
A spend of £500 million works out at £4462 for every man, woman and child in Worthing. I wonder how many residents have that sort of money to spare? And that does include running costs, which we know are higher than gas boilers.
As for the potty heat network idea, it can work within very small areas, but to pipe hot water all around the town would entail a huge heat loss.
I somehow don’t see Worthing’s old aged pensioners being very warm in winter!
Of course, this is the sort of nonsense you get when you have a Cabinet Member for Climate Emergency.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
<i>”Would entail a huge heat loss”</i>
Considering heat pumps don’t produce much above 50c to start with, that’s a pretty serious problem!
Meanwhile sunny weekend days in May have been driving power prices strongly into negative territory: the day ahead price reached minus €200/MWh for the Netherlands on Sunday, and you can bet that the price to curtail solar farms will be even more negative on the day.
With peak solar output now worthless, what is the point in adding to it?
https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-data?market_area=&trading_date=2024-05-11&delivery_date=2024-05-12&underlying_year=&modality=Auction&sub_modality=DayAhead&technology=&product=60&data_mode=map&period=&production_period=
That damn Duck Curve…
What could possibly go wrong
Another problem with community heating is that as there is no competition there is no brake on charges. Probably better named communist heating.
Why don’t they use water-source heat pumps as they’re by the sea? I saw them being used in Switzerland back in the early 90s. The lake was a little cooler than expected for swimming!
The Festival Hall had one in 1951 using the Thames with two RR Merlin engines converted to town gas.
District heating by electricity hungry heat pumps peddled by a – sounds like another budget busting Council Tax rise incoming for Worthing inhabitants – and paying god knows how much a year to a Minister for Climate Emergency, when there isn’t one – you should be really careful who you vote for
energywise – as you imply …
Auto
Will they heat the town with lukewarm air, or lukewarm water? (Make the heat pump output warm instead of lukewarm, and the “efficiency” nosedives).
I am all in favour of this. When it turns out to be a total failure it might, just might, make some of our ‘leaders’ think again. In the meantime how many 1,000s of £ wasted.
NO, when it fails that’s an indication that you didn’t spend enough money on it in the first place. Try again.
A district heating system in action elsewhere:
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/anger-heating-costs-double-thousands-8185475
I love the idea that the State gets heating before the people – which, by the time they get it will be luke-warm, like their enthusiasm for voting. As always, follow the money: who is going to living the high-life in a few years’ time?
“who is going to living the high-life in a few years’ time?” See my other post on here Harry……DIF Capital Partners.
If they do the hospital first, maybe they will keep the old system in place for backup or argumentation.
There was no mention of how each household would be billed. If the cost is a flat rate, based on square footage or incorporated into local real estate taxes then a home owner can’t do anything to reduce his bill. So no one will make any effort to improve the efficiency of their house because there’s nothing in it for them.
Absolutely. A commodity delivered at a fixed price will result in gross wastage. Power cost must be linked to usage, else disaster.
100% correct, whether you are at the front of the line or the back, if you are paying the same there is no point in caring, but importantly, will the victims, sorry, residents, will they have a guaranteed temperature set for their property?, because once the mid hot water has moved thru the public buildings, the hospital and onwards, the temperature will have dropped, and by the time it gets to the end of the loop, it will be significantly lower than that at the start, do they plan to place midpoint heat boosters to get the temperature up?. The Public Buildings and Hospital have mandated minimum room temperatures, these will be maintained and monitored aggressively, the residents side is another matter and that should be of primary importance to the residents. This has all the right conditions for a “ground rent” scandal at some point in the future, where residents will not be able to opt out to cut their rising heating bills, where residents will not be able to take actions to reduce the heating bills, and in the end, after a lengthy and expensive “investigation” a report will be published, beautifully bound, with lots of legal terminology but covered by a simple statement of undeniable truth “lessons will be learnt, going forward we will take these lessons and ensure that it never happens again”……………………….until the next time.
I understand this is done using a meter inside the property to measure the incoming water temperature and subtract the temperature of the return, to calculate the heat energy used within the property and charge per kjoule.
“At first they will heat large public buildings, including the … local hospital.“
That’s a good idea: our local hospital is always grossly overheated. I hadn’t thought of curing the problem by installing heat pumps.
On heat pumps: it’s dead easy to make dual use devices that provide warmth in winter and coolth in summer. Yet I never see them mentioned in a British context. Does that mean that the Nut Zero fanatics don’t really believe we’ll get catastrophic summer heat waves?
If councils are idiotic enough to have “ministers for the climate emergency” then you have to expect these people to dream up these sorts of schemes to justify their inflated salaries.
The idea that a local council could have any effect at all on the world’s climate is for the birds, so why are they wasting money on it?
If it wasn’t the ‘climate emergency’ it would be Gaza – another thing the council can’t do anything about.
The Swedes were using Combined Heat & Power (CHP) generated by burning waste providing hot water and electricity for businesses and households going back long before I studied Climate & Environment in the early 1990s. Instead we bury it which produces lots of unwanted CH4 (Methane).
Go back to proven technology!
Fixing potholes gets boring. Hey, I got an idea! Let’s blow everyone’s money on a crackpot heating scheme! It will be fun!
Criminal failure of fiduciary responsibility.
What kind of ’emergency’ is this, that you can take 6 years? You justify blowing the town’s budget on this emergency, then take out to 2045? First of all, you are lying. Your own actions show there is no emergency. Secondly, the town has no duty to provide heat. A fabricated responsibility.
They take on an enormously expensive bogus task. Sophie Cox, et al, should be sent to prison.
What about some hard technical information. Power consumption, COP, end user costs, payback period, maintenance costs. Any comparable systems actually running.
Lord Callanan has a degree in Electronic and Electrical engineering, and worked for Scottish and Newcastle brewery as a project manager. I have the same qualification and cannot see anyway that our electrical generating and transmission system will ever be able to cope with the net zero deadline of 2050. Confirmed by his “Smart Secure Energy Systems Programme” making smart meters compulsory, Smart Appliances with “kill switches” controlled by your smart meter and Time of Day pricing. Leading to “big brother” deciding when you can have electricity.
What ever happened to reliable, affordable electricity for everyone. Then there is the disaster that is OFGEM who just rolled over when the government told them, forget looking after customer interests and push net zero. Only one director resigned (Christine Farnish) in protest.
All this in a farcical scenario to reduce carbon dioxide, emitted from using fossil fuels for energy, although carbon dioxide is a benevolent trace gas, responsible with water and sunlight for photosynthesis in plants, producing all our food.
Didn’t Harry Chapin have a song about “Old Folkie” could be really missing them old ones.
I suppose by starting with public buildings first the system will fail before it is inflicted on the housing stock. And what happens if you tell them to go do one if they want to connect you?
OT
The heat pump propaganda seems to be increasing in volume.
Saying extracting heat from the atmoshere to heat the home is very misleading. Heat is not warmth but merely temperature, which can be as low as minus 272 degrees Kelvin. (Minus two seven three degrees is absolute zero, no heat)
You equally say the heat that is readily available outside your home, just open the doors and let it in.
Heat pumps are also seemingly described as ‘renewable energy’ again false and misleading to most people.
The worst is saying that Coefficient of Performance is efficiency which it is not unless comparing another heater powered by electrcity.
That should read You could equally say.
Presumably this all has to be powered by electricity. So what’s the point of it?
In my historical experience, the biggest issue with traditionally fuelled and traditionally operated district heating systems is the lack of redundancy in design, meaning that the failure of a critical component can lead to an extensive and extended outage. There have also been issues with the competence of those who manage and maintain district heating systems.
For domestic premises, the long-term solution has generally been to scrap and replace with individual gas boilers.
London Borough of Southwark have had issues with district heating systems for decades.
https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgAi.aspx?ID=69717
(I’ve had no historical involvement with Southwark)
Worthing has an above average over 65’s so rather than given them winter fuel allowance spend it on improving insulation. Then use the rest of this money to improve the efficiency of the housing stock.
It’s high time the lie that replacing a gas boiler with an air source heat pump is called out. The calculation is simple. Average electricity cost per kWh 24p. Average gas cost per kWh 6p. Typical coefficient of performance for heat pump 3 (maximum but reduces as outside ambient drops).
24/3 = 8 so equivalent cost for heat pump = 8p. That’s 30% more expensive than gas.
This doesn’t include minor factors such as boiler efficiency and heat pump ancillaries, but these will probably balance out.
If anyone can see any fault in the above please comment (especially you, Paul.
But you save no planets.
“The £500m plan will see heat extracted from the atmosphere and then pumped first to public buildings and eventually to households in the area“.
What a wonderful statement which sums it all up. The worthless bureaucratic cancer looks after it’s self. “Eventually” means Joe Public who will pay for this can go to hell for all they care.
The work will be led by Hemiko, a company specialising in district heating, which will invest £40m in the scheme along with £7m from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Well more to the point a small company, based in Cumbria, ( Pinnacle Power) were effectively taken over by DIF Capital Partners end of 2023 and changed their name to Hemiko. Pinnacle Power could not have financed a village hall jumble sale prior to that.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08331646
So what we are looking at here is big finance (with filled brown paper envelopes distributed around the back of the local “public conveniences”) moving in to cream in the dosh from the “Climate Emergency” scam.
https://www.pinnaclegroup.co.uk/news/pinnacle-group-sells-district-heating-business-pinnacle-power-to-dif-capital-partners/#:~:text=Pinnacle%20Group%20Limited%20has%20signed,team%20retaining%20a%20minority%20stake.
And we vote in the people that do this to us YCMIU
Yep. How hard would it have been to convince yokel Cox? Bought her a dinner? Told her she’d be a “world leader?”
The objective of the climate change movement is dekulakization. ‘Giant heat pumps powering a district heating network‘ is a great way to destroy middle-class wealth.
Hemiko is happy to assist in taking their money.
Specializing. So they surely know it’s bullshi+.
They will still need electricity which is going to be in very short supply.
Each house will have to install a hot water cylinder and immersion heater.
The disruption digging up the streets, people’s garden paths and driveways will be magnificent. It raises the questions, will installation costs be met by the Council only up to the property boundary or to the point of connexion to the existing radiator system, and who will pay to have the old boilers and gas supply removed?