The title of this post is taken from the title of this Telegraph article:
All Paul Robinson really wanted were some solar panels on his roof.
The company director, who had recently moved to a quiet market town in Mid Wales, is a firm believer in green technology. In the 12 years before he moved, he had benefitted from solar panels and a home battery, both of which shaved money off his power bill.
The Government offers homeowners grants towards solar panels through its Energy Company Obligation (ECO4) scheme. But to take advantage of the generous initiative, Robinson was also required to install an air source heat pump, an endeavour that proved to be more trouble than it was worth.
“I’m so glad I didn’t pay for any of it,” he says. “The amount it cost is crackers.”
Robinson estimates that around 18 tradesmen – a team of electricians, plumbers, plasterers, and supervisors – descended on the stone barn conversion in Welshpool, with the entire installation costing at least £40,000, according to estimates seen by The Telegraph.
Mr Robinson is understandably glad he didn’t pay for any of it.
UK taxpayers, are you glad you did?
Heat pumps are utter bollocks – air heat pumps even more so. They have some very niche applications but dometic heating in Wales is not one of them. You might as well warm your chilly hands on the back of your fridge because that is to all intents and porpoises the same principle. Much the same argument (though to a lesser extent) can be made about solar panels in Wales.
Apart from that the issue nobody in the Green lobby wants to hear mentioned is that of the energy used / CO2 emitted to create such perverse devices and how that compares to the energy / CO2 they “save” over an expected life-cycle. Much the same argument can be made about electric vehicles.
As to the government bribing people… Really subsidising companies that… Well I bet that gets murky… Whatever. Ultimately there is one actor in this tragedy who is playing it straight. That is The Laws of Thermodynamics. In the spirit of Scotty – ye cannae bribe the laws of physics! The “trans” ideologues are trying it on with biology so it hardly surprises me that their green allies are trying it on with physics but ultimately it’s all wishful thinking.
Oh, and there is China’s role in all this. A lot of the green tech is made in the PRC one way or another which is why China is pushing the green agenda and utterly ignoring it domestically. I think the PRC opened 50 coal powerplants in 2023 alone!
It puts in sharp focus the quote from V.I. Lenin, to wit:
” . . . .they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.”
llater,
llamas
Take away the CO2 panic and there is no need for heat pumps to replace domestic central heating using oil or gas. The CO2 panic does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. It is a madness of crowds. Check out https://tinyurl.com/CO2Delusion
Heat pumps are indeed a mess. Solar panels can, in some cases, be a good idea – and the technology is improving, hopefully the insane practice of having such things made in the People’s Republic of China and imported, will be ended (Adam Smith would have supported such a move – as would all the great free trade economists, a nation must NOT become dependent on its enemies), if a nation of 60-70 million people can not make solar panels then we really are useless.
However, if the government carries on going down the anti C02 road – then it must allow the RAPID building of lots of modular nuclear power stations – vastly more straight forwards than the vast, ultra complicated, nuclear power stations that take so long to build.
If we do not get energy costs down, especially for industry, then this country is dead.
Dead.
We import food and raw materials – we need to export manufactured goods (“The City” is based on a Credit Money Bubble – it can not support a nation of 60-70 million people).
To export sufficient manufactured goods we must have less expensive energy.
So it is less expensive energy – or the death of the United Kingdom.
I have friends in South Wales who had a new-build home – very nice – and installed a heat pump, which also acts to provide AC during the summer, if needed. It looks very impressive; it sits in a room that is sound-proofed and whirs away without fuss. According to my friend, the pump will pay for itself – in terms of recouping the cost – over five years or more. I presume that one issue is what happens if the pump conks out, and needs an expensive repair.
The pump is pretty large, and the whole unit is simply not going to work in a small, converted 19th century flat such as mine in Pimlico. Realistically, the pump would have to be installed in the back of the property, and require me to no longer use a spare room and utility area at the back. Also, if all these pumps are working, and not sound-proofed, it is going to create a noise issue in densely packed blocks of flats, particularly converted ones rather than new-builds.
As with everything, the idea can work for new-builds, but for conversions, not so much. Given the age of the UK housing stock in much of the country and the towns, this is a killer. Gas is so much more convenient, and I cannot see this technology truly taking off without large-scale demolition of a scale that would put a large amount of C02 into the atmosphere, negating much of the point of it and hugely adding to the cost.
Life is so much fun spending other people’s money, but eventually, this runs out, as Mrs Thatcher liked to note.
Johnathan Pearce – interesting, but I think you would agree that heat-pumps are not going to power factories.
“…Solar panels can, in some cases, be a good idea…”
I have solar panels. They became a good idea with the announcement of Gordon Brown’s insanely lavish Feed In Tariff.
Apart from that the issue nobody in the Green lobby wants to hear mentioned is that of the energy used / CO2 emitted to create such perverse devices and how that compares to the energy / CO2 they “save” over an expected life-cycle.
This.
We’ve been here before, with compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), the government making the wrong decision as affordable LEDs were already on the market.
Whilst hybrid EVs are a viable technology, a battery EV is not, we are at the pinnacle of development of battery efficiency and it is nowhere near enough for energy storage on anything bigger than a phone.
At the risk of going off-topic, isn’t this why the British economy is going nowhere? So much contemporary expenditure, Government expenditure in particular, is destroying wealth. The £40,000 that man’s heat pump cost could have been spent elsewhere – and generated a return. It just wasn’t worth it. Even if you accept climate change is real, studies have shown it would be far cheaper than the current plans simply to mitigate it, by building sea walls, flood defences and the like.
Not off-topic at all, Mr. Dog.
Mad Ed is in the process of concreting over the shale gas stations to ensure they can’t compete with his loony wind and solar plans.
One hopes there won’t be a war or similar emergency coming up and we need an independent local supply of energy urgently.
Then again, if lots of old people die that suits Mad Ed’s master plan anyway.
Indeed. Especially murky when you consider the involvement of troughers like “Lord” Deben in both government policy and green snake oil schemes.
The Climate Con, the Paris COP Con, and now the Heat Pump Con. Doubling down to protect the original Con (and Con Artists).
There are signs that the nested Cons are beginning to fail – although some politicians will hang on trying to extract as much ‘virtue’ as possible.
Mr. Dog, it would be far cheaper and waste less wealth to simply abandon low-lying areas to the sea and move uphill.
And, at the rate Gerbil Worming is happening, the people living there *now* don’t abandon their house. *NEW* *PEOPLE* simply *DONT* move in. The existing owners simply live in it until they die, then the house is abandoned. No “climate migration” needed. It’s a generational thing. Don’t move into your Grandad’s now-underwater-house, simply move elsewhere.
The heat pump concept will work wonderfully in places like the UK, where electricity prices are dropping like a rock.
Especially murky when you consider the involvement of troughers like “Lord” Deben in both government policy and green snake oil schemes.
Or Mad Ed’s brother, who is an advisor to a VC investing in climate change solutions.
Or green energy supplier Dale Vince who donated large sums to Labour (and doesnt want Musk doing the same for Reform).
COME THE REVOLUTION, should we ban green zealots from eating cooked food, unless they’ve used a magnifying glass to cook it in sunshine, but only to cut emissions, ‘natch?
If these heat pumps work like the ones we have in the states, you best hope that the temperature there never gets down in the mid 30*F. They stop working at about 34*F-35*F and typically, below that the heat exchanger coils freeze up unless they have a heat strip integral with the coils. The solution of course is to stick an electric heat strip in the air flow system to provide heat at these lower temps.
Mr Ed. No. They shall have electricity as long as they hand-crank it. When they’re knackered they get mushed up to feed the rest. That is true net zero.
Johnathan Pearce – interesting, but I think you would agree that heat-pumps are not going to power factories.
Given my limited understanding of heat-transfer tech, they would be most useful in keeping factories hot or cold, such as using heat in a factory for some useful purpose, and vice
versa. But for powering heavy machinery, that’s for the birds.
I know you have mentioned this before, but a test of whether a supposed climate change worrier is serious and not just a basher of modern life is whether they consider the case for nuclear energy.
If you look at the charters/constitutions etc. of Green movements then being anti-nuclear is essentially baked-in. They are luddites. They are dangerous and evil. If they took over it would be Year Zero. A World dominated by clueless “Save the Whale” hippies would be worse than one with Stalin or Mao in charge. They are dangerous because they make themselves out as “nice”.
As to use of waste heat… Well, those evil server farms are incresingly being used for local heating – particularly swimming pools. A few years back I thought of building a water-cooled PC with an aquarium as the sink. It was a bit beyond my budget and things could go wrong…
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I have a theory that the CND hippies, who protested nuclear power on the grounds they are used for nukes, found themselves out of a job once the Berlin Wall came down, and migrated to the enviro-fascists taking their stone age policies with them.
Runcie, that makes a lot of sense.
Johnathan Pearce – correct, heat pumps will not work to power factories.
Britain is not Russia – we can not live by exporting food and raw materials, in fact we import both. Britain can only live by exporting large amounts of manufacturing goods (net – much more exports of manufactured goods than imports of manufactured goods).
Every great Free Trade Classical Economist understood this – but the modern supporters of “Free Trade” think they can base an economy of 60 to 70 million human beings on Magic Pixie Dust and Moon Beams (“The City”).
To have a large surplus in trade of manufacturing goods we must have much cheaper energy.
Otherwise we are dead.
Schrodinger’s Dog – as you may know Sir, what is happening is that the land is the south east of this island is gradually falling. It is not really a matter of the sea level rising – it is a matter of the ground level sinking.
Therefore the money spent on the Holy War against C02, rather than in building sea defenses, is totally besides-the-point – a waste.
I live outside of Denver, and in the last 3 years have made about 10 to 15% more electricity off the panels I have than I use, and this includes running fairly inefficient “portable” air conditioners for 2 or 3 months in the summer.
It would be a heck of a deal if Excel hadn’t arbitrarily changed the terms of the deal we had with the.
Bastards.
I don’t understand why heat pumps don’t work in Wales? I have three in my house in Eastern WA. It gets cold here (lows in the 20s and 30s for a couple of months) and it gets hot (highs in the 90s – 100s for three months). In either season, I’m able to pump heat the correct direction (into or out of the house).
The first one I installed myself (DIY), for a bit over $2000. I had a friend, a budding electrician, help with the power install but even if I’d hired that out, the job would have cost about $3500. That’s a 26,000 BTU/hr unit in my garage.
I did a second one of those a couple years later for about $2500. And I had a local HVAC company install a 12,000 BTU/hr unit in my backyard office for about $3000.
All this to say, it’s easy, plentiful, accessible.
Why is it not like this in the UK? And can you fix that?
And sorry about being so late to this and for the temperatures in F, not C!