We would love to hear your thoughts about our site and services, please take our survey here.
London South East prides itself on its community spirit, and in order to keep the chat section problem free, we ask all members to follow these simple rules. In these rules, we refer to ourselves as "we", "us", "our". The user of the website is referred to as "you" and "your".
By posting on our share chat boards you are agreeing to the following:
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that we have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or board at any time should we see fit. You agree that we have the right to remove any post without notice. You agree that we have the right to suspend your account without notice.
Please note some users may not behave properly and may post content that is misleading, untrue or offensive.
It is not possible for us to fully monitor all content all of the time but where we have actually received notice of any content that is potentially misleading, untrue, offensive, unlawful, infringes third party rights or is potentially in breach of these terms and conditions, then we will review such content, decide whether to remove it from this website and act accordingly.
Premium Members are members that have a premium subscription with London South East. You can subscribe here.
London South East does not endorse such members, and posts should not be construed as advice and represent the opinions of the authors, not those of London South East Ltd, or its affiliates.
You're ok thanks.
Markinvestor, I'm more than happy to verify my holdings / email address / former business with the Bushveld Perspective if that's still a thing? I know know from the last few years of lurking that this board is (quite rightly!) skeptical of newcomers.
Absent that, I would invite you to look at my profile and see the username's registation date - way before the majority of people even knew whaa "corona" meant ??
Umm, o.k then.
And Hades comes from the name of my former company - "hadesdragons" - I used to sell pet reptiles before I emigrated.
Oh damn, I'd not even made the connection to the infamous "patient 31" over here :/
Fortunately, it's nothing related to that - my username dates back to 2013 when I first registered - it was adapted my old university email address where I was the 31st person with my initials to pass through the system.
Hades-Greek god of the underworld, 31- S. Korean patient 31, turned virus into an epidemic there. Nice.
You might be thinking more of HK / Taiwan - the modern Korean ones tend to be a centralized aircon system for the building that each apartment can individually switch on or off by remote control. The cold air comes out through the ceiling but individual apartments don't have their own aircon units. Older buildings here still have external aircon units (and often solar panels) hanging off the balcony or window frame. Those might be the ASHP systems? Most new-builds in the last 5-10 years have centralized ceiling aircon and separate underfloor heating though.
Hades - do you have an air-conditioning system with a fan unit on the balcony like most of the asian tower blocks I've ever seen ? Does it also blow hot air ?
The apartment may well do, it was built in 2013 so I guess it's pretty up to date. I generally just pay my bills and don't worry about where the heat is coming from thought. From Snott's link, is the fluid cooled in order to extract heat from the environment? Otherwise it seems a bit like this:
https://mozey.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/heat.jpg
Sure...but if you live in a place where you only get a short period of real cold, it's worth comparing cost of say electric/gas heating support with the extra expense and pullaver of installing ground-source! I lived in an old place once and was quoted over 70k for ground-source system including bore holes (couldn't access space for the alternative system)
Hades the chances are you already have an ASHP then.
Alfa, airtightness is simple if it is detailed for simplicity and then properly carried out. The problems arise if the drawings are not clear (or correct). The Energy Saving Trust published enhanced construction details : https://www.buildenergy.co.uk/tips-and-insight/enhanced-construction-details/
Snott, thanks for the link I'll check that out. I've been living in a multi-storey apartment in Korea since 2013 so I'm completely out of the loop with regards to houses - it's not something that's been on my radar until I saw it on here!
That's... unfortunate!
Hades, have a look at the Energy Saving Trust website: https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/advice/air-source-heat-pumps/
The weakness of ASHPs is that their efficiency is rubbish when the air is cold: just when you most need them! Ground source heat pumps give better seasonal efficiency.
only joking ;)
https://electrek.co/2019/07/18/curtiss-unveils-hades-electric-motorcycle-design/
Alfacomp, forgive my ignorance (and lack of posting history - lurker and holder since 2013, but very rarely post on LSE and never on BMN); do you have any links that could explain how that kind of heat pump works? I'm not doubting you for a second, just a curious biologist who's not heard of anything like that before!
ukmoe - on a new build property you can really build close to Passivhaus standards if you want and then an ASHP will be more than enough. All that air-tightness sounds like a bit of a ballache but if you watch Matt Risingers youtube channel you will see it is not impossible to achieve, and if you look at some of the products he covers from Germany and Austria you will see that the Europeans are even further along than the yanks. The key as ever is finding a builder who is prepared to work in the right way and not just do it the way their boss used to in the 1970s.
This indeed sounds like a very interesting sideline. The notion of making use of by-products is of course not new, but somehow it all sounds very good in the context of the new energy revolution.
I know a famly in central Ireland with an air-source heat pump. It is hardly on at all, yet gives them all the heat they need in a large house (new-build).
For comparison I recently sized up a heatpump collector array for a farmhouse application - the area of the collector was 5,500 m2 - that is about half of the total area of the entire Dalian battery ( https://twitter.com/BMNperspective/status/1354499198847221763/photo/1 ) - given the power rating of the Dalian battery is 200MW it could be that 10MW+ of excess heat power is generated - leading to 100MW+ of useful heating. This works out at perhaps 1000 times the thermal output of the farmhouse I was considering - and all on only twice the footprint.
This is a very interesting angle on the whole Dalian battery project.
Initially it makes it sound like the Heat pumps are dealing with a problem of overheating in the VRFB batteries - i.e. it is taking the heat away from the battery and is getting rid of this 'problem' somewhere else, like a river or cooling tower. Given the fact that the Dalian Battery is actually right next to an old coal fired power station, which indeed has an existing cooling tower nearby, you might be tempted to think that this is the result - heat pump solves battery cooling problem.
However this is completely missing out on the incredible Coefficient of performance of the Heat pump of something like 10. i.e. that for each joule of electrical energy used to run the heat pump 10 joules of heat are produced at the point you want it. Bear in mind that a traditional ground sourced heat pump has a COP on between 3 and 4 in the UK and an air source HP typically 3 or less. How is it then possible that this heat pump produces a COP of 10 - the answer is that it is taking in heat at a much higher temperature than the usual 5 deg or so of the ground - perhaps 25-30 degrees from the flowing liquid electrolyte in this application - and then generating the 50-70 deg C that domestic heating and hot water systems need to provide a nice toasty shower and building warming with rather conventional radiators.
And the best thing is that it is doing this using the otherwise wasted heat from the battery that would otherwise be having a negative effect on the battery round trip efficiency. Thus this VRFB may be initially trying to store 10 joules of electrical energy, but may only return 8 joules of electrical energy, because 1 joule of electrical energy goes into heating the electrolyte. This 1 joule of electricity can then be turned into another 10 joules of heat, with the further addition of 1 further joule of electrical energy.
Thus we put 10 joules of electricity in and get 7 joules back in electricity whenever we like plus another 10 joules of heat, most likely spread out during the day.
Apart from the rather obvious point that you are getting peak shifting and are able to turn 3 joules of electricity into 10 of heat what else makes this such a clever idea ? The answer is that the heat is generated in the power stacks but is then removed by the flowing electrolyte - thus it only needs to be passed over another rather small heat-exchanger in order to transfer its heat to the heatpump system - gone is all the size of a huge ground source horizontal collector array.
19.45p to buy
Brake is released
The Dalian battery farm consists of large vanadium redox-flow batteries. The energy storage capability is based on ion reactions of the electrolyte solution flowing inside the batteries. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, vanadium batteries are free of fire safety issues and are also long-lived. They can be charged more than 20 000 times without reducing the storage capacity, and they allow charging and discharging at the same time.
Vanadium batteries are being used increasingly in grid-connected energy storage facilities around the world. The Dalian battery farm is a demonstration project approved by the Chinese government to test the functionality of vanadium batteries connected to the power grid.