Your Domestic Energy for the 21st Century
In the UK we have located our electrical power stations away from the
centres of population, thus throwing away the waste heat in cooling
towers instead of heating our houses.
This is about to change with the introduction of 'boilers', which
generate electricity and use the waste heat to drive the central heating.
The electricity at a 13amp socket only delivers one sixth (16%) of the
energy available from the fuel burnt at the power station.
The new boilers will deliver up to nine tenths (90%) of the energy in
the fuel because it uses the waste heat and does not have the
distribution losses of the National grid.
This type of boiler works well with Solar Power because in the summer
when you don't need the central heating, hot water can be supplied from
thermal solar collectors and electricity can be supplied by
photovoltaic (PV) solar panels.
A major factor in this philosophy is the use of the National Grid as a
buffer to soak-up (buy) spare generated electricity. New legislation
will allow customers to fed back electricity into the mains but tariffs
may not be as beneficial as in Germany.
Here they encourage users to generate local electricity by paying them
more for their spare electricity than the normal cost of taking from
the supply.
Once electrical power is being generated locally the efficiency of
electric traction for bicycles, mopeds and cars becomes more of an
environmentally friendly proposition. While batteries are not an efficient way
of storing electricity or environmentally friendly it would give an
alternative service to store spare locally generated electricity.
All these ideas require investment now, to save money and resources in
the future.
Road Noise
Air Polution
Aircraft Noise