Monday 22 January 2024

Is It 'Green' Because It's Hardly Ever Working?

A school has been forced to close six times in three months because its new £358,000 air source heat pump system keeps failing.

Oops! 

The “green” energy source was installed at Kingsnorth Primary in Ashford over the summer as part of a government initiative to help schools cut carbon emissions.

Another example of government initiatives being forced on organisations by bribery, then... 

The school is part of the Aquila, Diocese of Canterbury Academies Trust, which runs 16 schools in Kent.
A Trust spokesperson said: “We apologise for the inconvenience and disruption caused to Kingsnorth Primary School’s pupils and families and we want to assure the community that we have been, and are continuing to, do everything within our power to rectify this situation as quickly as possible.”

You could always rip the damn things out? 

“Our priority has always been to keep Kingsnorth open, but there have been occasions where we have had no choice but to close due to a complete failure of the heating system, electrical power issues and the associated wider safety concerns.
“Unfortunately, the response and site attendance by contractors hasn’t been as quick as we have needed it to be and we have continued to apply pressure and emphasise that the issues need to be addressed urgently.
“We have had electrical and mechanical engineers on-site testing electrical load capacities, as well as finding an alternative option to have a more robust temporary heating solution in place.”

Maybe they'll suggest installing woodburners... 

H/T: farmergeddon via Twitter

8 comments:

DJ said...

Modern Britain in a nutshell: Junior misses a day's schooling to go on holidays and the parents get fined, the whole school misses a day due to the managers getting a heating system from Magic Unicorn Boilers Ltd and it's just one of them things. Just the way it is you guys!

The Jannie said...

This seems strangely apt:

"Cold is God's way of telling us to throw another catholic on the fire"
(Miriam Margolyes' character in Blackadder)

ivan said...

What did they have before they were conned into installing useless electric heat pumps? They should go back to what they had and send the bill for the reinstatement to the government department.

The idiot installers should know that you have to have some heat in the air to extract in the first place - if it isn't there you get no heating. In fact there needs to be at least a 5 degree difference before heat pumps will work. The other thing they are finding out is that the heat pumps need a lot of electricity to work which is fine if the bird mincers are getting wind to turn them but - no wind = no electricity = no heat.

This is what you get when governments want to virtual-signal to other governments but is no good for the general population.

Peter MacFarlane said...

It gets better: they are going to install and "alternative power source".

Translation - they are going to burn diesel in a generator set in order to keep the heat pump going. This is to reduce emissions. Excellent, well done guys!

Next time, maybe do the calculation about how much power your giant fridge needs before you install it?

Anonymous said...

The kids are getting first hand experience of how the Net Zero crap works in reality, basically it doesn't.

James Higham said...

A little birdie told me someone had a birthday on the 23rd. Any truth in the rumour? 😁

microdave said...

"And send the bill for the reinstatement to the government department"

Which will simply be added to the tax/ratepayer burden, along with the £358k already wasted...

"Heat pumps need a lot of electricity to work"

And they need it pretty much 24/7 in cold weather! I'm wondering if this wasn't considered, and part of the problem is gradual overheating of the supply cable & circuit protection devices. Even a substantial oil or gas boiler (and circulation pumps) wouldn't need more than a few kilowatts of electrical power, whereas heat pumps sufficient for this school will be drawing tens of kW's...

JuliaM said...

"Modern Britain in a nutshell"

It really is, isn't it?

""Cold is God's way of telling us to throw another catholic on the fire"
(Miriam Margolyes' character in Blackadder)"


🤣

"What did they have before they were conned into installing useless electric heat pumps? They should go back to what they had and send the bill for the reinstatement to the government department."

As microdave points out, we know who'd really be paying, don't we?

"It gets better: they are going to install and "alternative power source"."

Treadmills for the obese kids linked to a generator?

"The kids are getting first hand experience of how the Net Zero crap works in reality, basically it doesn't."

A true 'teachable moment'!

"A little birdie told me someone had a birthday on the 23rd. Any truth in the rumour? "

I can neither confirm nor deny 😁

"I'm wondering if this wasn't considered, and part of the problem is gradual overheating of the supply cable & circuit protection devices. "

Could be...