Hacker News Reader

There was an article the other week:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34233719

Obviously it depends on ability to scale, but UK rad heating systems are usually rated for 50 or 60C, thus this seems to fit the bill.

View on HN

Cool! I hope I didn't come across as hating the technology. In a perfect world I hope we'd be using geothermal district heating but while we're still installing units in individual homes I think heat pumps are currently the best way forward. The economics of retrofitting many standard homes simply don't really line up in many cases. Prior to the current energy crisis they were generally more costly than using gas and even after they only really make economic sense for the relatively small number of people stuck on electric heating[0].

Home renewables help but require even more capital investment, often taking 10 or more years to pay off. It doesn't help that where I am solar has extremely limited output in the winter. Domestic wind turbines are difficult to situate and get planning approval for. My cursory impression is that they're also less economical than many solar installs.

I've got some roof repairs coming up soon and I'm hoping the economics of replacing the existing roof with some nice looking solar slate tiles work out favourably!

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/426988/united-kingdom-uk...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com