The U.K. government on Tuesday introduced new rules requiring developers to install heat pumps and solar panels in all new homes across England, in policymakers’ latest response to the economic fallout of the Iran conflict.
U.K. ministers say the Iran war and the largest supply disruption in the history of the oil market reinforces the need to leverage clean power as an energy security tool.
The Future Homes Standard — a set of new-build regulations for England from 2028 — will establish requirements to ensure homes are built with on-site renewable electricity generation, the majority of which is expected to be provided by solar power.
The rules will also see homes built with low-carbon heating, such as heat pumps and heat networks.
The government added that plug-in solar panels, which homeowners can install on balconies, would be available within shops over the coming months.
Heat pumps, solar panels and passive house thermal performance should have been code a long time ago.
And batteries. Arguably batteries would have the biggest impact out of all of those; turn every household into a virtual power plant and the grid can self balance, especially during peak usage.
The government is also dragging its feet on V2G which would allow your EV to act as an additional giant battery that can feed the grid and your home when usage is high, then top it back up overnight.
There’s been a big storm in the UK, so wind is generating fuckloads of energy right now, to the point where energy providers are having to pay people to use electric - all that cheap power could be filling up batteries instead.
Imagine productively responding to a problem instead of flipping out, throwing up your hands and then doing nothing?
Wild.
Nah how about i pay you a billion dollars not to build wind turbines on my coast.
I accept cashier’s checks from all major banks.
Literally doesn’t help with the problem right now though.
Yes it’s certainly good to have decent standards,
By the way, Germany just raised the power limit for plug-in solar to 7 Kilowatts, and apparently tries to give incentives to using batteries.
I don’t think that’s quite true. You can have up to 7 kW panels, but only feed in 800 W - the rest has to go into batteries.
The government added that plug-in solar panels, which homeowners can install on balconies, would be available within shops over the coming months.
We have those balcony solar systems here in Germany with several millions of installations. Let me tell you: They do work. They are great. They are cheap. And they will help to keep your energy bill down and have a ROI of only a few years. They are called balcony solar, but you do not have to install them on a balcony. If you have one, great. But you can also put them somewhere in your garden or just onto your wall or even on your roof. They are just normal solar panels with a small inverter that you just plug into your normal power socket.
The US under Trump:
I thought about writing something like “it’s ironic that Trump might inadvertently save the world by forcing everyone else to react to his attempts to destroy it,” but I don’t want to give him even that much credit.
This is the way forward.
They should require all new communities to have a large scale battery for the area as well. There are a bunch of options that could help power the community if something goes wrong, and the solar could top up the communities battery as well.
It should be more affordable having 1 for the area vs 1 small one for each house.
Also every new substation could have a battery added.
Decentralizing everything like this would be huge for national security.
What makes this news even more significant is that the UK produced large amounts of oil from the North Sea around 1980 - 2000 . These reserves are gone.
All while taking money from the US to station in their bombing runs. Interesting.
That should make home ownership more affordable.
Yeah cause petro dependency has made them so much cheaper this whole time!
