(Burns or burns!!) – Frustrated with that?

Repost from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW IT

JANUARY 3, 2022

By Paul Homewood

The energy study also revealed that hydrogen fuel-powered boilers “will never be a cost-effective option”. According to Bloomberg, the average annual operating cost for a heat pump is £743, compared with £2,784 for a hydrogen boiler.

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The Government has launched a landmark green scheme to give families a £5,000 grant to buy electric heat pumps for their homes.

However, in a poll of 5,605 Express.co.uk readers, held between 24 and 30 December, a staggering 90% of voters said they would not buy a heat pump in the next 5 years, while 6% said they would buy, and 4 percent undecided.

Many readers disagree with the European Consumer Organization study and assert heat pumps are a poor source of energy.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/not-heat-pumps-furious-backlash-at-european-study-on-cost-effective-energy-sources/ar-AASHtV0

The study in question comes from the European Consumer Organisation. Although it is said that heat pumps are the cheapest “green option”, they are still more confused about durability than gas fired boilers!

https://www.beuc.eu/publications/goodbye-gas-heat-pumps-will-be-cheapest-green-heating-option-consumers/html

It is based on four European countries, but below is the analysis for the Czech Republic, which is probably the country that best compares with the UK:

1758 euros is the equivalent of £1,465, looking at it sideways, but based on a pre-1970 house, it’s certainly not energy efficient. Maybe winter in the Czech Republic will also be much colder!

We can debunk it by looking at heat demand, based on 22615 KWh/year. Given that a gas fired boiler operates at 85% efficiency, this means a gas usage of 26605 KWh:

I believe the average UK home uses around 15000 KWh which means a heat demand of 12750 KWh. Thus, we can deduce the heat pump’s electricity consumption to be 5013 KWh – which is an efficiency factor of 2.54.

Costs appear to be based on energy prices as they were before the recent increase; for example, electricity is at 184 Euro/MWh. At this rate, the cost of running a heat pump for our average UK home would be £767 a year (closer to that figure by Bloomberg). However, based on a 2020 gas price of 2.5p/KWh, a gas boiler will only cost £375 a year to run.

This is generally in line with my calculations over the past year or two.

By the way, despite the increase in gas prices, heat pumps are still £406 more expensive to run, as electricity prices have gone up in tandem.

But what really caught my attention was the cost of running a hydrogen boiler. The example above works out to 4289 Euros, but we can reduce this to accommodate lower heat needs. The theoretical hydrogen consumption should be the same as the gas in our UK example, 15000 KWh.

According to the study, the cost of hydrogen is 147 Euro/MWh, or 122 pounds. (This assumes electrolysis). Of course, this is more than four times the cost of natural gas, meaning the annual bill will increase from £375 to £1830.

This is something I’ve emphasized for years, but most people still don’t know about it.

Finally, last year, Andrew Montford published a fact sheet on hydrogen, concluding that green hydrogen would cost £190/MWh. If he’s right, heating bills will still go much higher.