Heat pumps

Matthew Wright

On the cloudiest day in the gloomiest weather, when I check my solar system I find it is still generating and exporting clean renewable energy into the grid. My solar system, like all rooftop solar systems, generates even when it's cloudy. That's because solar technology is able to produce electricity under diffuse light conditions.

Generally speaking, in the darkest, cloudiest hour on the gloomiest day, your solar system will be generating as much as 25 per cent of a normal clear day output. On a day with light cloud cover, your system could be achieving as much as 50 per cent of a normal clear-day's hour of production.

By Matthew Wright

CLIMATE SPECTATOR reports:It's time to set a date to phase out Australia's old 19th century gas networks. In their place, the electricity network can take on all of the energy tasks of the old gas networks and do it with higher efficiency and better economies of scale, bringing cost saving to all consumers at a time when the cost of living is constantly rising.

Simply put, all the services provided by the gas network today can be provided more efficiently by electricity. Some of the money saved from the expense of keeping the old legacy gas network will be rolled into upgrading the electricity network and the rest will be delivered as savings to energy consumers, who will pay less when they pay once for electricity, rather than paying twice for both electricity and gas.

Here we have a big long-term productivity opportunity. It is completely inefficient and costly to be running an extra, redundant and inferior energy network. Already, in the 1930s, the role of gas was diminishing, being replaced by much safer and more controllable electricity for lighting. Since that time, the ever expanding energy needs of our modern economy – for powering computers, refrigeration and televisions – have been met by electricity and not by gas.

By Matthew Wright

CLIMATE SPECTATOR reports: Showering in solar hot water, it feels good outside and in. But what if your decision to shower in solar was, in part, misguided and is propping up the gas industry?

Well that's the case with most of Australia's existing solar hot water, backed by perverse government subsidies which favour domestic solar boosted by fossil gas.

Now, if you've reading this and you've got a gas-boosted solar hot water heater already, don't get me wrong, you did the right thing at the right time.

But times have changed and the now climate solution is renewables boosting renewables. Edson, an Australian hot water services manufacturer, has released their Heat Pump boosted solar hot water heater – or, as they put it, their Solar boosted heat pump.

Edson are combining the two most abundant renewable resources available to Australians: renewable ambient heat, which is the biggest source of domestic renewable resource, combined with direct solar through a set of evacuated tube collectors, which is our second biggest renewable resource.

By Matthew Wright

CLIMATE SPECTATOR reports: A year ago I retired my old, dirty and inefficient gas wall heater, when I had it confirmed that it was using a significant amount of energy heating up outside rather than just inside my house like I would have expected.

Australians are generally unaware about the renewable heat resources available to domestic households, as a clean, safe and efficient competitor to dirty fossil gas.

That's why I bought six air conditioners. Air conditioners have a bad name and a bad wrap and it's completely unearned and unfair. Air conditioners are wonderful technology, like a laptop computer, smartphone or radiology machine. Air conditioners should rightly be called heat pumps, because they pump heat from one location to another. In doing so they concentrate that heat. They can pump heat out of our room making it feel cooler. Or than can pump heat into your room making it warmer.

There is nothing to feel guilty about here.  What you should be feeling guilty about is if you don't have a reverse cycle air conditioners, and you're heating with gas or electric resistive (bar radiators, oil filled heaters, electric fan heaters etc).

By Matthew Wright

Gas-fired cogeneration is often presented as a climate change solution for Australian households and commercial buildings. But before policymakers get carried away and encourage the mass deployment of decentralised gas electricity/heating plants, we should take a good look at the benefits of heat pumps.

Put simply, heat pumps employ highly efficient space-heating technology that uses much less energy and emits less greenhouse gas than almost any other, including their gas-fired competitors. Heating in Australia is predominantly provided by gas (government incentives allowed gas to propagate for water and space heating), but in Japan, it’s common for heating and cooling to be provided by heat pumps. With a focused policy, governments can move Australia towards the same technology widely used by the carbon-efficient Japanese.