Utility Week

UTILITY Week 19th June USE

Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government

Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/529950

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 22 of 31

UTILITY WEEK | 19TH - 25TH JUNE 2015 | 23 • 200,000  number of units Flow has the capacity to produce per year • £80 average a customer could save on their bill per month • 1.7m number of boilers replaced in the UK each year • 10  number of years developing the Flow boiler • £60m money spent on developing the Flow boiler • 92%  efficiency rating for the Flow boiler • 18kW Flow boiler capacity Operations & Assets Flow by numbers: Tors stage 2, the proof of concept model Geoff Barker, business development director, Flow Group "We've long had a vision of making power personal in a very different way, and that's led us to dedicate over ten years of research and development to producing a microgeneration technology solution that every household will be able to embrace. The Flow boiler is the first affordable micro- CHP domestic heating boiler and provides a unique opportunity to change domestic energy markets." Tony Stiff, chief executive, Flow Group TM The benefits of micro-CHP There are four types of micro-CHP technology: the Stirling engine; the internal combustion engine; fuel cell technology and the organic Rankine cycle engine, which is the type that the Flow boiler uses. All four claim the same headline benefits over conventional boilers. • Excess heat used to generate electricity – meaning transmission losses are dramatically reduced. • Lower carbon emissions – the Flow boiler oper- ates at 92 per cent efficiency. • Lower costs – by converting otherwise wasted heat into electricity, a household will have to take less from the grid, meaning a reduction in its electricity bill. • Easy installation – a micro-CHP boiler such as the Flow boiler can be easily installed in place of a regular boiler. • Low operation and maintenance costs Why we need to change the way we heat our homes Heating is carbon-intensive, with more than 80 per cent of residential users relying on gas heating for warmth. With UK gas resources in decline, imports have increased to almost 50 per cent, leaving the country increasingly exposed to volatility. In order to address the energy trilemma, the government must encourage UK consumers to radically change the way they use heat in their homes. At least according to Flow Energy. Flow's business development director, Geoff Barker, says Flow's micro-CHP could contribute considerably to the reduc- tion in gas consumption otherwise used in centralised power stations. The installation of 500,000 micro-CHP boilers would produce approximately 650GWh a year. Barker believes the government needs an approach that "puts buildings at the heart of things" by making them more energy efficient, producing locally generated low-carbon or renewable power can go a long way to addressing the three energy goals of affordability, energy security and sustainable low-carbon energy. "If you have half a million micro-CHP boilers deployed in the UK, then potentially you're taking a central gas- fired power station off the grid at peak times. From a net- work benefit point of view, there is a significant bene- fit of having wide deployment." Is a Flow boiler really affordable? Flow Energy has two payment options for its domestic boiler which aim to make it affordable for people in a range of financial circumstances. Flow Freedom: the customer pays for the boiler upfront (£3,675). If they switch their home energy and assign the feed-in tariff to Flow for five years, they will receive a total reduction in their home energy bill of £4,800 over the five- year period. The value of the electricity generated and the feed-in tariff pays off the cost of the boiler over the first five years. After this five-year period the Flow boiler belongs to the customer, generating a potential return of around £500 a year. Flow Finance: Instead of paying for the boiler upfront, a customer can finance the cost through a loan agreement with peer-to-peer lending service Zopa (at 8.9 per cent APR). The total cost of the loan agreement is £4529.89, excluding installation.

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Utility Week - UTILITY Week 19th June USE