{"id":13678,"date":"2023-07-30T18:07:41","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T17:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potbanks.wordpress.com\/?p=13678"},"modified":"2023-07-30T18:07:41","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T17:07:41","slug":"get-your-thermals-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2023\/07\/30\/get-your-thermals-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Get your thermals on&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A decade on, will the geothermal &#8216;Stoke Heat Network&#8217; have to be added to the list of <a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2019\/06\/18\/mythical-beasts-and-places-of-stoke-on-trent\/\">&#8216;mythical beasts of Stoke-on-Trent&#8217;<\/a>? Oh, sure&#8230; they&#8217;ve built the pipe network and are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-66246839\">continuing to do so<\/a>. But have you ever seen even a tiny bit of steam from below ground, in a practical local demonstration of even a basic closed-loop system? I haven&#8217;t. It seems they&#8217;re just assuming we have very &#8220;hot mine-water&#8221; somewhere deep below the old Festival Park greenhouses site and\/or the Chatterley Whitfield mine works.<\/p>\n<p>My guess is that, after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thearmchairtrader.com\/igas-still-reporting-losses-focusing-on-production\/\">next year&#8217;s drilling<\/a>, this \u00a352m (and growing) network of empty pipes will eventually have to carry fibre-optics, when the promised heat either fails to materialise or is just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.resfrac.com\/blog\/why-deep-closed-loop-geothermal-guaranteed-fail\">not constant enough<\/a> to do what&#8217;s been promised. What is promised is feeble anyway, supposedly reducing energy bills for those on the Network &#8220;by up to 10%&#8221; according to the city&#8217;s official figures supplied to the government. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/oldimages\/tenpercent.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/oldimages\/tenpercent.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"572\" height=\"64\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13693\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/oldimages\/gov-ten-percent.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/oldimages\/gov-ten-percent.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"639\" height=\"90\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13732\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So 100% free energy it is not, even if the scheme works and the heat can be sustained for years. I&#8217;ll be as pleased as anyone if it does. But you have to wonder if it would be more cost-effective to buy two pairs of Damart thermals for everyone concerned in central Stoke.<\/p>\n<p>In the meanwhile, I wonder if someone at the city Museum has spotted the opportunity for a &#8220;Hot Rocks!&#8221; local geology exhibition in 2024\/25? Possibly to be wryly paired with an exhibition of all the white elephants in the Museum&#8217;s collections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A decade on, will the geothermal &#8216;Stoke Heat Network&#8217; have to be added to the list of &#8216;mythical beasts of Stoke-on-Trent&#8217;? Oh, sure&#8230; they&#8217;ve built the pipe network and are continuing to do so. But have you ever seen even a tiny bit of steam from below ground, in a practical local demonstration of even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}