Hi,
I'm new to this but weighing up options for a more sustainable (and cheaper) option for our heating needs. I'm in the UK and our current set up is a traditional gas combi boiler that supplies hot water for wet radiators and domestic hot water on demand.
I'm looking at a thermal store which will supply the radiators and domestic hot water.
The question is how to heat the water in the thermal store.
Initially I was thinking about a combination of solar thermal and air-source heat pump. But in the UK heat requirements = winter = cloudy so the solar thermal is inefficient and cold so the performance of the air source heat pump drops to ~ 2 or less.
The air source heat pump requires electricity so I was then thinking about powering this from solar PV with battery store. But the same issue with cloudy days in winter reducing the efficiency. There's also the risk of losses in the supply/return hot water feeds to the heat pump so these would need to be highly insulated.
In the UK we can now get green tariffs that allow cheap energy at different times of the day (we've had non-green electricity equivalents for a long time but recently smart green energy have started doing this different energy price at different times). So I'm now wondering whether a battery systems fed from the grid is actually the best place to spend the money rather than solar or thermal pv so I can get cheap energy during the night from grid and then store this for when it is needed (I could even sell this back to the grid at peak times). I could then either use this to drive an sir source heat pump for some multiplier or even directly heat the thermal store using immersion heater. In the future we could then get solar pv to reduce reliance on grid.
I'd appreciate some feedback on direction and where's best to start investing?
Many thanks
I'm new to this but weighing up options for a more sustainable (and cheaper) option for our heating needs. I'm in the UK and our current set up is a traditional gas combi boiler that supplies hot water for wet radiators and domestic hot water on demand.
I'm looking at a thermal store which will supply the radiators and domestic hot water.
The question is how to heat the water in the thermal store.
Initially I was thinking about a combination of solar thermal and air-source heat pump. But in the UK heat requirements = winter = cloudy so the solar thermal is inefficient and cold so the performance of the air source heat pump drops to ~ 2 or less.
The air source heat pump requires electricity so I was then thinking about powering this from solar PV with battery store. But the same issue with cloudy days in winter reducing the efficiency. There's also the risk of losses in the supply/return hot water feeds to the heat pump so these would need to be highly insulated.
In the UK we can now get green tariffs that allow cheap energy at different times of the day (we've had non-green electricity equivalents for a long time but recently smart green energy have started doing this different energy price at different times). So I'm now wondering whether a battery systems fed from the grid is actually the best place to spend the money rather than solar or thermal pv so I can get cheap energy during the night from grid and then store this for when it is needed (I could even sell this back to the grid at peak times). I could then either use this to drive an sir source heat pump for some multiplier or even directly heat the thermal store using immersion heater. In the future we could then get solar pv to reduce reliance on grid.
I'd appreciate some feedback on direction and where's best to start investing?
Many thanks
