Energy bill - To increase energy bills

grizzly1911

kabayiri wrote: »

Re: the nuclear power plants. It will be an interesting power play between the government and EDF/Hitachi as to who holds the better cards in the price negotiations over the new plants. My money is on the suppliers shafting a government forced into a need for action.

Yep I think they will do too.

I still don't know why we using external (non UK) suppliers to do the work and why it couldn't be UK led.

kabayiri

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Yep I think they will do too.

I still don't know why we using external (non UK) suppliers to do the work and why it couldn't be UK led.

I guess it's complex. The cost overruns on the European reactor do worry me, but then the latest Hitachi design has to go through the drawn out GDA.

I am convinced we will be relying on gas for the short/mid term.

The need to decommission coal plants by 2015 to meet regulations won't help matters either. Gas plant replacements are the only feasible replacements; these can be up and running in the short timescales required.

chris_m

howee wrote: »

It just makes logical sense, a clean fuel plenty of it and its ours no some crafty Ruski who can turn it off whenever he likes.

Very little, if any, of our gas comes from Russia. Most of it comes either by direct pipeline from Norway or by LNG tanker from Qatar. A bit comes through pipelines from Holland and Belgium but it's not clear where that originated and, in fact, we push more gas out through those pipelines than we take.

It's southern and eastern Europe that have to worry about Russia turning off the taps because (as they claimed) Ukraine hadn't paid the bill and the pipeline runs through Ukraine.

posh*spice

chris_m wrote: »

Very little, if any, of our gas comes from Russia.

I guess he was talking about this:

BP has held preliminary talks with the Russian government and stakeholders in the Nordstream pipeline about extending the line to deliver gas to the UK.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20495272

chris_m

posh*spice wrote: »

I guess he was talking about this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20495272

Ah, hadn't seen that one. Thanks.

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu

dori2o wrote: »

We pay £130 a month for Gas and Elec in a 2 up 2 down Terraced. We have an A rated Combi boiler, we have cavity wall and loft insulation, e have A rated double Glazed windows, we only have on the items we need on. we only have 1 or 2 lights on at a time, we use the CH very little (2 hours in the morning and 3 hours at night).

There's not much more we can do to reduce our consumption.

That bill is really high, given the property details you have supplied. We have a 5 bed detached farmhouse with a separate granny flat (i.e. 2 kitchens and 2 condensing boilers) and the monthly direct debit for Gas and Electricity is £186. We're currently £132 in credit so the £186pm might be a little high.

To try and reduce our energy consumption we're installing 100mm internal insulation in the walls (we have solid walls), 75mm acoustic rockwool in the ceiling/floor voids and insulating hemp lime plaster over everything. We already have A++ white goods and LED lights.

We have almost finished one room with the insulation install and even now with the frost on the ground outside, the room is warm without any heating (I haven't refitted the radiator yet).

There is always something more that can be done to reduce your energy footprint.

grizzly1911

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu wrote: »

That bill is really high, given the property details you have supplied. We have a 5 bed detached farmhouse with a separate granny flat (i.e. 2 kitchens and 2 condensing boilers) and the monthly direct debit for Gas and Electricity is £186. We're currently £132 in credit so the £186pm might be a little high.

To try and reduce our energy consumption we're installing 100mm internal insulation in the walls (we have solid walls), 75mm acoustic rockwool in the ceiling/floor voids and insulating hemp lime plaster over everything. We already have A++ white goods and LED lights.

We have almost finished one room with the insulation install and even now with the frost on the ground outside, the room is warm without any heating (I haven't refitted the radiator yet).

There is always something more that can be done to reduce your energy footprint.

There does come a point when there are diminishing returns and cost/benefit becomes unjustifiable - this year anyway.

For a good number of people that have made the effort to get to that point continued questionable "green hikes" are an increasingly bitter pill to swallow.

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu

grizzly1911 wrote: »

There does come a point when there are diminishing returns and cost/benefit becomes unjustifiable - this year anyway.

For a good number of people that have made the effort to get to that point continued questionable "green hikes" are an increasingly bitter pill to swallow.

We've had this discussion on the Green and Ethical Moneysaving board. Practically all of the 'green' technologies such as solar, rainwater harvesting, ground sourced heat pumps, etc. have so long a payback period that they're not worth installing. The consensus was that the greenest and most cost effective technology by far was insulation.

Even with that there comes a point of diminishing return. The 100mm of insulation I'm putting into my walls will take the u value to 0.37 W/m2k. I could put thicker insulation in there, but the costs of the insulation start to outweigh the energy savings.

My view is that if I put 100mm of insulation into the walls, and 100mm into the ceinling and floors, use hemplime to make the room more airtight to eliminate drafts and fit decent windows, I have done as much as I can to reduce my energy costs with insulation.

chucknorris

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu wrote: »

My view is that if I put 100mm of insulation into the walls,

Do you mean filling a 50 mm cavity with insulation or are you talking about adding 100 mm insulation to either the internal or external surface of a solid wall. Or are you actually building a house with a 100 mm cavity?

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu

chucknorris wrote: »

Do you mean filling a 50 mm cavity with insulation or are you talking about adding 100 mm insulation to either the internal or external surface of a solid wall. Or are you actually building a house with a 100 mm cavity?

Internal insulation attached to solid wall.