Heat Network

[Confused_Fred]

What is a heat network?

Heat networks, also known as district heating, work by collecting local unused heat, turning it into hot water and distributing that hot water to local users via a network of underground pipes. They are a low carbon replacement for gas boilers, providing both heating and hot water.

Overall, in the right location, heat networks are 40% cheaper than using individual air source heat pumps for each building. They are commonplace in towns and cities in Scandinavia.

Local councils are installing these systems right now. Apart from Bristol, Worthing, Clapton and a few others are planning these systems for town centers.

Right now they're focusing on public buildings like libraries, schools and town halls but homeowners can also apply to connect to the work. All this will take years to complete while closing roads while installing the system. Its going to be a nightmare local residents and public transport users.

The real question you have to ask is it worth it? The alternative is that all these businesses and public buildings need to install a green energy efficient system which will cost millions and many just wont do it. Economies of scale should reduce the price of heating overall making it attractive. With technology improving each year these systems should become a lot more energy efficient over time reducing the running cost.

Downside is if the system fails parts of the town center will be without heating and hot water.

My opinion on this is simple and pragmatic. 200 years ago the Victorians installed gas pipes for the first time. People complain that the gas was poisonous, dangerous and explosive. In the last 200 years we've resolved a lot of those issues and gas appliances are found in most homes today. Since then we've been looking for a long-term solution to ending our reliance on a fossil fuels. I don't know if this is the answer. Whether or not it lowers heating cost for many homeowners it might be a good start.

I think the real question is if one of our many road workers accidentally cuts through a pipe would you like him to die from a gas explosion or cooked to live by boiling hot water

 

[LadyOnArooftop]

If they can replace heat pumps I'm all for them. One of the neighbours has a heat pump. A big white box in the front garden humming away day and night. Doesn't exactly add to the kerb appeal of this place.

 

[Moriarty]

They don't work, they have been tried and failed so many times.
In winter you get failures in the hot water pipes which are so often that whole areas go down.
Plus the energy requirements are so far off the scale, usually they are heating from power plants, go green and how do we heat them, solar?
So no heat when its cloudy or at night.
Well damn isnt it at night when it gets cold and you need to stay warm?

The whole Green agenda is simly stupid, carbon neutral.
Really.
Ok, so now labour has said we will increase solar and wind onshore, great, but thats farmland they are taking up.
Hello, farmland, food?
So we produce a few kilowatts, megawatts, which we can't store, during the day on a solar farm, then pay for the beef that has to be imported from Brazil to keep customers happy at Tesco's or any other of the supermarkets

Fecking carbon neutral is an idiots choice.
Just keep all the burping and farting cows, all the gas guzzling cars and then simply ask if volcanoes do more harm than man.
Tis a simle question that has been answered, but lobbyists need to get paid.

And now with "Dark Oxygen" you should look it up, it's fascinating.

 

[Confused_Fred]

I have faith in this system. Obviously the weather is changing and its hard to miss.

Carbon neutral is the first step toward carbon reversal.

 

[Moriarty]

I have faith in this system. Obviously the weather is changing and its hard to miss.

Carbon neutral is the first step toward carbon reversal.

No one seems to want to explain it though.
Thats what baffles me.

I mean there was a huge underwater volcanic eruption earlier this year:-

Record-smashing Tonga volcano sheds new light on how underwater volcanoes blow 60-million Olympic-sized swimming pools of saltwater shot upwards, making our climate even warmer

60 Million Olympic sized swimming pools of salt water.
Well thats gonna effect the atmosphere is it not.

I mean thats 39,600,000,000,000 gallons of water and thats just the water, also just one eruption.
Which is a lot of trapped heat, which is.
Warm.

So, I am still waiting for someone to tell me what exactly our weather is doing and why.

The Met office, which has a Cray XC40 supercomputer which by their own statement is one of the top 10 in the world for weather and climate, gets my local forecast wrong about 70% of the time.

Which means they have no fecking idea how the climate works, which they can't, because it's to complex.

They can't model it for sh**.

So all this.. Man made climate change.. have we made a difference, yes, is it detrimental, yes.
Is it fatal.. ?
Is it even bad considering more CO2 = better crop yields?

I don't know.
I have read a lot about it, on one side I see people screaming the worlds gonna end in 5 years, for the last 50 years, on the other I see people saying, "It's just the sun burning a bit warm" which it actually is.

However, when people attempt to silence descenting opinions then I think, yep, theres money involved.

So I don't know.
Heat networks, Green energy, global warming/cooling, climate change, whats the future?

I think we are not smart enough to figure out something as complex as the climate just yet, just like we don't know how the human brain works.
People however seem to care more about the climate than how many people are still in slavery, getting slaughtered in wars, killing themselves because they can't face life any more.

It's sad, we are forgetting how to be human.
Well humans with empathy at least.

Ah well, many parts of Africa can't have fridges to store anti-biotics because we won't allow them fossil fuel power plants, but thats fine.
We have a heat pump.

 

[A_Son_of_God]

The earth will be fine. It is us who are out of balance.