RE: £60 bln investment?!4 Jun 2024 19:21
"so it’s only an additional £30 bln."
It's still £60 Billion over 5 years, or £8 Billion a year in Capex, it's a lot of cash.
NG say "We expect our Electricity Distribution network to invest around £8 billion over the five years to 2028/29 in asset replacement, reinforcement and new connections, facilitating the infrastructure for electric vehicles, heat pumps and directly connected generation"
Reading that I think they're assuming there'll be an increase in demand, due to a move from ICE to EV, and from Gas heating to Heat pumps, but I'd question those assumptions.
Before I get accused of de-ramping, I'm not, I'm just telling you my experience with a heat pump.
My previous house was a renovation job, or as the surveyor described it "a doer up er". The house in question is a 5 bedroom detached, built around 1990 so not particularly old and well insulated with full double glazing; I had solar panels fitted on the roof and a Grant Aerona 13Kw Air source heat pump replacing the Oil fired boiler. The solar panels were great, it was around 2010 and we received the full tariff and allowances for electricity generation, it was even better until our electricity supplier found that the meter was going backward and actually giving a lower reading than the previous reading, which meant a meter change and assessment with some payback to our supplier. The heat pump was a different matter, it was good for hot water in the summer, not so good for heating the house in the winter. Most houses in the UK use 10mm microbore pipe to connect to the radiators, because heat pumps need to operate at low temperatures to be efficient, most houses will need larger radiators with 15mm pipe feeding them to heat properly, or underfloor heating. The problem with microbore is that it has quite a low heat carrying capacity and isn't suitable for low temperature systems requiring larger radiators, like heat pumps, just check out peoples experiences online. My current house also has 10mm microbore pipe feeding the rads, which isn't a problem since I have gas central heating and the water is pumped through at 70 degrees, as opposed to heat pumps that are efficient at around 40 degrees, and less so at 50 degrees. The efficiency of an air source heat pump also depends on the outside temperature, I lived in the South West in my previous home and the winter temperatures weren't nearly as harsh as the North, so that's another issue. Ground source heat pumps are considerably more expensive to install than Air source, so there's that to consider. What I'm saying is that I wont be giving up my Gas central heating anytime soon, unless I'm forced to.
I know people who have EV's, I've avoided them myself, they have range issues due to charging and tyre issues due to the weight, and the second hand valuations for Tesla's are falling through the floor. In the US, motorists are turning to hybrids, don't take my word on this, check it out yourselves, so it'll be a long time before cha
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