Load too heavy for light switch?

[ban-all-sheds]

Steady BAS, we'll be berating evreyone with a 10.5KW instant shower next. Hey, lets do that!

Ye cannae change the laws of physics - you need a given amount of energy to raise water to a given temperature.

There is no shower-equivalent of high-efficiency lamps, or of luminaires which do a better job of lighting spaces than GU10 downlighters. If I could find a shower which worked as well but only drew 2.5kW I'd gladly install one.

 

[markocosic]

There is no shower-equivalent of high-efficiency lamps, or of luminaires which do a better job of lighting spaces than GU10 downlighters. If I could find a shower which worked as well but only drew 2.5kW I'd gladly install one.

Solar pre-heat on an unvented, non-combi system w/ condensing boiler.


Kitchen lights? Full-Spectrum T8 flourescents in HF (electronic ballast) fittings. Run the lights along the walls on top of and underneath the upper units. (keep on-top, under-units and ceiling white)

http://www.lampspecs.co.uk/Light-Bu...97898e84e1f2cb10.e3eSc34OaxmTe34Pa38Ta38MaN50

They don't chew juice, you don't have to replace the bu**ers every 10 minutes, and the colours in the food aren't all fake...

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Solar pre-heat on an unvented, non-combi system w/ condensing boiler.

Too late - abandoned the idea of storing quantities of hot and cold water in my house a few years ago.

I could run a shower off my 28kW gas boiler though...

 

[markocosic]

Probably the better solution for existing houses to be honest - keeps capital and labour costs to a minimum. New-builds (where you're talking incremental costs only) should be solar-gas-electric* by default, with older rural properties on ground-scource heat pumps.

*10 million (5kW?) immersions (50GW) on smart-meters/smart-controls would help generators (especially nukes and renewables) massively - resistive demand that could be switched in and out remotely in distributed/highly granular form to smooth transients (or make use of sporadic generation/sink a large nuke baseload) - lovely stuff.

CHP units and electric vehicles backfeeding the grid are a nice thought but a nightmare from a grid perspective - requiring a fundamental rethink and $$$ on protection/control systems hat I can't see being outweighed by the marginal benefits.