How are we going to de-carbonise heating of buildings?

1. Wind to elec plus heat pumps with ccgt as interim

2. wind to DH with chp as interim

Both routes use gas for windless days back up.

Important question because building heating is the largest use of primary energy apart from transport

Costs

The Elec route needs extra power cables since they are not big enough if all houses in a city had electric heat pumps

The DH route needs expensive DH mains to be laid.

Both need digging up the streets Both need storage Maybe insulation

Relative cost of wind plus HP, wind plus chp dh

Category 1 Category 2 Category 3 Category 40

1

2

3

4

5

6

Series 1Series 2Series 3

CHP is a heat pump, but with COP (Z) of 11.45 compared to HP with 2.8 if you’re lucky

Chpdh can readily cope with intermittency:

Heat stores store and forward surplus wind energy

CHP can coast at lower load with any spinning reserve losses captured as useable heat

CHP can switch to elec only mode with instantaneous increase in power, and vice verse

AND CHPDH can utilise: solar, geothermal,

industrial waste heat

Heat stores are an integral part of CHP and DH – 100 times cheaper than elec storageInter-seasonal have been designed

Inter-seasonal have been designed

Food for thought!