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Britain will need to boost its generation of electricity by about a quarter, Scottish Power has estimated.
The energy firm said electric cars and a shift to electric heating could send demand for power soaring.
Its chief executive also said there would have to be a major investment in the wiring necessary to handle rapid charging of car batteries.
Is the net demand for energy really spiking, or is it merely shifting from one source to another?
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Scottish Power Says UK Will Need to Boost Capacity
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday September 26 2017, @07:39PM
Ground source heat pumps are able to handle temperature extremes better, because the carrying solution coming out of the ground is always 55F. In the winter you spend a little energy to boost that to 72F, in the summer you blow air across the coils and there's your cooling. A lot of GSHP systems also tie in the water heater to handle that as well.
The real limiting factor is what kind of soil your house/building is sitting on. If you're on a solid slab of rock, with not enough top soil to get down the requisite 6 feet where that 55F is, then you're out of luck. Drilling into solid rock to drop enough coil to heat/cool your house will never pay for itself. If you have at least 6ft then you can at least use a trench formation to lay your coil out horizontally.
It's worth checking that out. If you have the subsoil to do it you'll save yourself tens of thousands of dollars (here in the Northeast oil heat for a normal 1-family home can run $5K/yr) in heating costs and cooling costs, plus the heat pump will run forever.
Air source heat pumps you're talking about are limited. Water source ones have problems with fouling, though close-loop ones are OK; the city of Toronto in fact uses one of those to pull up frigid water from Lake Ontario to cool buildings downtown in the summer.
Washington DC delenda est.