In a report published today by the environment agency, if heat pumps were installed in 320,000 home and business properties the goverment would have acheived its 30% renewable energy target by 2020.

Government support is needed for the project to work and up to 1 million is very beleiveable figure with the right kind of funding. The support will come in the way of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) which is to be introduced in 2012 and will pay homeowners and businesses a fixed price for generating renewable energy on their premesis.

Currently there are only about 8,000 Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP) installed across the UK, according to the report the market last year doubled however the UK still lags way behind compared to other European countries, Sweden for example installed 4000 last year alone.

This caught my attention this morning and sprung into the back of my mind about how some people may still get caught out in the coming months.

Basically i saw a shop selling a heat pump/Air conditioner that was running on R-22 Refrigerant. Most of you will be thinking ’so what?’. R-22 is going to be phased out as of the start of next year.

From 1st January 2010 it will be illegal to use any pure r-22, this includes selling a system that is charged with r-22 and recharging a system with fresh r-22, re charging a system with the gas removed will be fine.

This does mean the cost of an R-22 system will be dramatically lower than the cost of any other type of air conditioning or heat pump unit, but come January finding someone who will be willing to maintain it will become very costly!

You might still be a bit confused as to why R-22 is such a bad thing. I’m not going to go into the technical details of it all as that will take a day and about 7 pages of writing, but to put it simply R-22 contributes to global warming and ozone depletion.

New refrigerants such as R410a or R407c Still contribute to global warming, however they will deplete no Ozone if released into the environment. All of the air con units that Cooleasy supply run on R410a or R407c.

In about 20 years time a similar phase out may be put into place as CO2 systems are starting to feature in the heavy industry market, these systems will run entirely off CO2.

To have a look at all of our Ozone friendly units have a look here – www.cooleasy.co.uk

Alex

No not a story about the deep south of America, or even in Japan as i’m sure there could be a tenuous link, but in Bath!

Bath City Farm have installed a £50,000 renewable energy system, which by the earths heating and the suns rays will be powering the office, heating it up and also making the Farm a bit of money by selling the power they are creating back to the national Grid.

The systems consists of solar panels on the roof of the barn to generate the electrisity and an air source heat pump connected to radiators to provide the heating, a much more sustainable and renewable source of heating than the old oil burners the barn used.

Sarah Walker from the Bath City Farm has said ‘We are going to be one of the first places in Bath to have this technology. It should help bring lots of people into the Farm, we can use the technology to eductae children about the importance of renewable energy as well as helping us to save a lot of money’

The system is going to produce 6,600 Kw of heat and 4,460 Kw of electricity. The whole project was half funded by EDF energy and half from the Big Lottery Funded Community Sustainable Energy Programme.

Robert

The housing minister in the UK, John Healey, today announced plans to rool out so called eco-towns across the UK. These so calleed eco-towns would be a flagship for the development of low carbon communities across the UK. The potential sites include Yeovil and Coventry along with one near Leeds.

Mr Healy said that ‘it will help us radically in designing and developing our towns to help us become more eco friendly in the next few years. This announcement goes hand in hand with the government’s communities secratary announcing last month that local authorities need to play a bigger role in lowering the countries carbon emissions.

Robert

Well i suppose its good to hear that a supermarket, possibly one of the least favourite however most essential parts of this country. They take huge plots of land for theirselves, drive small shops in towns out of business, create hell for farmers and put thousands of people out of jobs every year. At least they are cutting down on their carbon footprint I suppose.

Tesco has been recognised by the Institue of Refrigeration for building a store in January 2009 which acheived 70% less carbon emmissions than a store that would have been built in January 2006. Some of the most notable features are the presence of doors on almost all of their chillers and carbon dioxide refrigerant systems.

Now Sainsbury has launched its Home Energy Centres in three stores across the UK. These will be stocking a range of heat pumps in association with EDF energy. Stores across the UK will have the heat pumps in stock but only in Camberley, Kidderminster and Leicester will be have the HEC’s. This is a move they are hoping will help educate people about renewable energy sources in the UK as a lot of people are interested in renewable sources of energy but very few actually know where to start.

Alex

December is almost here now, well its tomorrow actually. I got in my car this morning and finally the window had frosted up, so i tried my usual trick of turning on the air con and leave it run for about 5 minutes to defrost the window completly but i hadn’t used the air con properly to do this since last year and it was lacking slightly!

So i’ve asked the people on our vehicle air con training course to top it up for me and just make sure it’s all running fine, but everyone really should be trying this at this time of year – if you didn’t get your air con serviced in the summer because you forgot, now is the perfect time to have it done.

If you don’t get it serviced regularly there is a chance of doing some damage to the system, so why not drop into your local garage and ask them to top up your car air con, it may seem like a hassle and you think its an unnesecary cost but the money you will save in the long run will make that back very soon. Plus you won’t get cold in the mornings standing outside scraping the ice off the screen!

It’s worth bearing this in mind for your household air conditioning as well though, a lot of people never think to get it serviced but simply by giving the filters a good wash and calling your local engineer to come out and give it a once over check just to check the pressure and gas levels, it won’t cost that much at all and will help the environment and your bank balance in the long run.

Alex

Well looks like all of the talks at the moment to try and get the world to be greener haven’t worked very well. An announcement this morning has shown that the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) reports a 15% decline in sales of Heat pumps and Air conditioners in the US.

Total sales throughout the US for Heat pumps and air conditioners was at 4,239,126, a 15.8% drop, when compared with the same period last year.

Not good news with the sumit in copenhagen right now!

Robert

Well this made me smile, there are really no stories about on the internet about air conditioning at the moment so i’m going to go back four years to a story about the Japanese and one of their great plans to help keep the air conditioning at a minimum

Government workers were encouraged to turn up to work not wearing their jackets or ties to help keep cool. Offices were told to set the air conditioners to 28 degrees to reduce the cost of running the units.

Many workers felt slightly embarrased by this and turned up to work with their jackets in their hand and ties in their pockets. They claimed that they felt embarrased getting the train to work alongside their private sector counterparts who were wearing full suits. This was reduced slightly when the prime minister was shown at many public speakings not wearing a tie or jacket.

The scheme was not as succsesful as originally hoped as the temperature regularly creeped up to 30 degrees and many people found this too hot to work so their work wasn’t getting completed until late in the evenings and this increased the overall carbon footprint.

A similar cheme was planned but never actually went ahead where workers were going to wrap up warm for winter, this was going to be called the warm-biz program

Robert

Samsung has started producing air conditioning units at its India production line in Sriperumbudur, its now the 5th Samsung Air conditioning manufacture line in the world. The company was already manufacturing TV’s and Monitors at the factory which it has owned since November 2007.

President of the comapny Jung Soo Shin said , “The air conditioner business is a key growth engine for our home appliance business. The setting up of the air conditioner production facility will provide a strong fillip to the business on account of world-class, superior quality production at the facility and better supply chain management leading to faster response to the market.” He added “The air conditioner line will have a production capacity of 50,000 units a month,”

Alex

It’s not really something we look at very often, a lot of people are interested in it at the moment though – Geothermal heating and ground source heat pumps.

A ground source heat pump uses the heat that is stored in the ground to heat and cool your home, slightly different to the air source heat pumps we have listed on our website which use the heat that is stored in the air to heat and cool your home.

The systems can cost quite a lot to install asd as you would expect with a heat pump system it requires a little extra power to actually get the pump to run as it cannot run just off the heat in the ground, the electric that it actually uses is about 30% of the amount of power used in a traditional gas powered boiler.

There are several differnt types of heat pump but the two most commonly used are open and closed loop systems. I’ve taken this extract from another website which explains the basics between the two

The heart of the geothermal systems is the ground loop. An open-loop geothermal system uses well water as a heat source. As the water passes through it, the system extracts heat, reducing the water temperature about 5 degrees F. The water is then returned to the earth, usually by running it on the ground and letting it seep into the aquifer.

A closed-loop system extracts heat from the earth by a series of liquid-filled pipes buried in the ground. The plastic pipes are filled with water and antifreeze. The pipe used in closed loop systems is buried beneath the frost line. The pipe can also be run vertically in bored holes. A typical home will have about 2,000 running feet of pipe in the earth loop. The pipe can have a guaranteed lifetime of 50 years or more.

Generally speaking an open loop is the better of the two systems as it is cheaper to install and provides a greater heating/cooling capacity. However in many cases you are better off buying a closed loop system as it will keep all of the water contained within the pipes and reduces any chance of any contaminents getting into the water. It looks like open loop systems are simply a false economy.

Robert