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BBC news article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63834755

It "will take years" to get energy prices back to pre-Ukraine war levels, the boss of one of the world's biggest energy firms has told the BBC.

Enel's Francesco Starace said bringing prices down depends on new sources of energy such as renewables and heat pumps.

Someone needs to inform this "energy firm boss" about the fundamentals of the product he sells, energy. Heat pumps are most definitely not "energy sources", in any way, shape or form. It's like saying a gas boiler, or a fan heater is an "energy source", complete and utter twaddle.

All heat pumps are is a way to consume some electrical energy in the process of increasing the usefulness of existing energy that has been provided by solar radiation in the main. Ground source heat pumps usually* make use of the summer warming of the soil and ground water, as a thermal store that heat can be extracted from in winter. Air source heat pumps make use of solar warming of the air, that again acts like a large thermal store.

The principal is absolutely no different to a wood stove burning wood generated by solar energy (via photosynthesis) into heat, burning coal that is exactly the same but using carbon stored for millions of years underground, or burning gas or oil that is yet again hydrocarbons formed mostly from photosynthesis millions of years ago.

We really only have three forms of useful energy that are available for us to make use of. That derived directly from the action of the sun at the time the energy is extracted (solar panels and wind energy), or by the action of the sun millions of years ago (gas, oil and coal), that derived from the effects of gravity and planetary motion (tidal power, geothermal power and hydroelectric power), and that derived from man made nuclear reactions.

The BBC should know better than to describe heat pumps as an energy source.

* "usually", because there are a very tiny number of geothermal sources using heat pumps commercially, I believe.

I suppose anything with a temperature above 0 Kelvin is an energy source.

The thing I took from his article was the effort to produce solar panels and reduce dependence on China.

openspaceman wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 10:34 am I suppose anything with a temperature above 0 Kelvin is an energy source.

The thing I took from his article was the effort to produce solar panels and reduce dependence on China.

Depends on what is considered a source, really. Ultimately the energy in all of the fuels we burn and the energy we harvest using things like heat pumps and wind turbines, comes from solar radiation, so that is the true source. Other forms of energy we use come from gravitational motion and forces (tidal and some geothermal), so trace back to the sun as well. The oddball, about which there could be lengthy debate, is nuclear, which I suppose can mostly be traced back to energy resulting from the Big Bang, locked up within the elements we mutate to produce heat from nuclear reactions.

I think the thing in the title that got my hackles up was the perpetuation of the myth that heat pumps are a source of energy. One of the hardest concepts to get across to people new to heat pumps is that they just do as their name suggests, pump heat. What's more, their operating limitations mean they only pump heat efficiently over a fairly narrow (in absolute temperature terms) range.

I've been corresponding with a chap that has been having a lot of trouble getting his heat pump running costs down for the past couple of years, and 99% of his problems are caused by the installer making some poor choices, the system having been badly set up and the owner being as stubborn as a mule and refusing to accept that a heat pump cannot work just like his old oil fired boiler. Almost all his problems stem from an abject failure by his installer, and the chap himself, to understand how the things work.

Oldgreybeard wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 10:46 am Depends on what is considered a source, really. Ultimately the energy in all of the fuels we burn and the energy we harvest using things like heat pumps and wind turbines, comes from solar radiation, so that is the true source. Other forms of energy we use come from gravitational motion and forces (tidal and some geothermal), so trace back to the sun as well. The oddball, about which there could be lengthy debate, is nuclear, which I suppose can mostly be traced back to energy resulting from the Big Bang, locked up within the elements we mutate to produce heat from nuclear reactions.

Nuclear is hardly the oddball, after all the biggest nuclear reactor we rely on is the sun.

Countrypaul wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:31 pm

Oldgreybeard wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 10:46 am Depends on what is considered a source, really. Ultimately the energy in all of the fuels we burn and the energy we harvest using things like heat pumps and wind turbines, comes from solar radiation, so that is the true source. Other forms of energy we use come from gravitational motion and forces (tidal and some geothermal), so trace back to the sun as well. The oddball, about which there could be lengthy debate, is nuclear, which I suppose can mostly be traced back to energy resulting from the Big Bang, locked up within the elements we mutate to produce heat from nuclear reactions.

Nuclear is hardly the oddball, after all the biggest nuclear reactor we rely on is the sun.

True, but we've not yet really cracked the fusion problem, so for now all our nuclear power generation just breaks up the big atoms left over from the big bang, rather than emulate what the sun does!

Oldgreybeard wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:21 pm

Countrypaul wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:31 pm

Oldgreybeard wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 10:46 am Depends on what is considered a source, really. Ultimately the energy in all of the fuels we burn and the energy we harvest using things like heat pumps and wind turbines, comes from solar radiation, so that is the true source. Other forms of energy we use come from gravitational motion and forces (tidal and some geothermal), so trace back to the sun as well. The oddball, about which there could be lengthy debate, is nuclear, which I suppose can mostly be traced back to energy resulting from the Big Bang, locked up within the elements we mutate to produce heat from nuclear reactions.

Nuclear is hardly the oddball, after all the biggest nuclear reactor we rely on is the sun.

True, but we've not yet really cracked the fusion problem, so for now all our nuclear power generation just breaks up the big atoms left over from the big bang, rather than emulate what the sun does!

Big atoms are products of super novae, not the big bang, so one way or another all the energy comes from a sun.

The energy stored by the Sun, or indeed all stars came from the Big Bang, Stars are just another stepping stone in a long chain. More technically we create Entropy, there is a fixed amount of Mass/energy in the Universe which is not changing. So the reality is there are no sources of energy, it has already been created, we just convert it to other forms of energy.

Regarding the original report though, I can well see how anyone could regard a Heatpump as a source, for a small input it gathers more energy from the Air/Ground, it would be better described as a "harvester". Reporters aren't going to spend ages explaining all this twaddle though as 90% of the audience will have fallen asleep long before the punchline.

Desp

Maybe they ought use a baseball machine demo as an analogy to educate simps (including simp, lazy reporters misreporting too)

The baseball machine requires energy to tick over (like an ashp)
introduce a ball to the machine & the tech inside each machine amps up the output potential by dint of design..
A baseball machine will take low input energy (1) & spit it out at x3 the force ..producing a hefty speed (3x energy) as a result.

Now apply, low input energy to ashp tech that also delivers x3 (heat / cooling potential for the same (1) ..including the bumps in outside temp each season brings..

its a use one unit of energy get 3 free "bogoff principle" ..but definitely not a mythical pink unicorn perpetual motion energy machine & anyone who says otherwise needs a public old fashioned school yard "wedgie" until they renounce & swear to not bastardise & miscommunicate fact, & have their title as energy / tech / renewables reporters at suposedly credible media outlets crossed out.

Hope you ring up the media twats at fault there.

Who wants the position of "wedgie tsar" ?

spread-tee wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 3:33 pm The energy stored by the Sun, or indeed all stars came from the Big Bang, Stars are just another stepping stone in a long chain. More technically we create Entropy, there is a fixed amount of Mass/energy in the Universe which is not changing. So the reality is there are no sources of energy, it has already been created, we just convert it to other forms of energy.

Regarding the original report though, I can well see how anyone could regard a Heatpump as a source, for a small input it gathers more energy from the Air/Ground, it would be better described as a "harvester". Reporters aren't going to spend ages explaining all this twaddle though as 90% of the audience will have fallen asleep long before the punchline.

Desp

I can understand the desire to dumb things down to make them a bit easier to understand, but how many people view their fridges and freezers as sources of energy in their homes, I wonder?

I think the sentence would have been better just adding 3 words and an Oxford comma.

Enel's Francesco Starace said bringing prices down depends on new sources of energy such as renewables, and the use of heat pumps.