Electric Wet Central Heating - bills!

racymutt

Hi all,

I live in a small 1 bedroom house (rented) which has an electric wet central heating system. I knew nothing about these systems when I moved in and didn't think to do any research beforehand. :doh:

I have only been in my new house for a couple of months so my usage is not yet available on my suppliers website, I am currently awaiting a callback from them to dicuss this.

I am on an Economy 10 tariff, I only heat my water for a couple of hours a day during the off-peak times and I mostly only have my heating on during these times, apart from in the mornings at weekend to take the chill out the room. As E10 rates are not available to see online I have estimated my usage based on a standard tariff and it looks like I am using approx. £120.00 worth of electric a month!

I am wondering if anyone else has this kind of system installed, lives in a similar sized property who may be able to give me any advice on how best to use this system and what their monthly bills are?

It isn't unmanageable for me to pay that much but it is a lot of money for such a small house.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

As E10 rates are not available to see online I have estimated my usage based on a standard tariff and it looks like I am using approx. £120.00 worth of electric a month!

Not sure I understand what you mean by that statement.

It is almost impossible to estimate your annual consumption/cost based on the couple of Autumn/winter months you have lived in the house. £120 monthly would be reasonable for November.

racymutt

Cardew wrote: »

Welcome to the forum.



Not sure I understand what you mean by that statement.

It is almost impossible to estimate your annual consumption/cost based on the couple of Autumn/winter months you have lived in the house. £120 monthly would be reasonable for November.

Hi Cardew, what I mean is, using my meter readings I calculated how much electricity I had used within a 1 month period based on the standard KWh rate to see roughly how much it would cost. I know I have not been in the property long but would my method not give a good indication of what I had already used? Is there a better way to work it out? I know I could just be patient (not my strongest point!) and wait until I get my bill which would tell me exactly, but i'm obsessing over it now as from my research I have a very expensive to run system.

Hope that made sense!

Nada666

Here are edf's prices:

http://www.edfenergy.com/products-services/for-your-home/documents/product-terms/standard-variable.pdf

You should be able to track down Eon's or SSE's, too.

With E10 you need to minimise non-heating/hot water costs as peak rate prices are non-trivial. The biggest challenge is cooking.

Nada666

Which supplier are you with? Have you tried googling for the current prices?

racymutt

Hi Nada, I am with SSE. I have looked online but can only find their standard or E7 rates. Thanks for the link, I will be shopping around to find the best supplier for me so this helps me to work it out.

Cardew

racymutt wrote: »

Hi Cardew, what I mean is, using my meter readings I calculated how much electricity I had used within a 1 month period based on the standard KWh rate to see roughly how much it would cost. I know I have not been in the property long but would my method not give a good indication of what I had already used? Is there a better way to work it out? I know I could just be patient (not my strongest point!) and wait until I get my bill which would tell me exactly, but i'm obsessing over it now as from my research I have a very expensive to run system.

Hope that made sense!

Hi,
The point I was making is that calculating usage in November, when heating is required, is no indication of annual expenditure.

For instance, over the next 3 months you might use as much as 50% of your annual bill.

However you are quite correct that wet electric CH is an expensive heating system. Prices on EDF E10 tariff vary across the country, but even off-peak rates range from 6p+ to 9p/kWh and peak-rate from 16+ to 20+p/kWh and a £69 pa standing charge.

I appreciate your house is rented, but without storage heaters I think you would be better off with a 'normal' 24/7 tariff paying around 11p to 12p/kWh.

Richie-from-the-Boro

racymutt,

Economy 10 tariff

- the E10 tariff is the luxury end of the E7 tariff, you get 10 hours of mixed day and night cheap[ish] electricity

I will be shopping around to find the best supplier

- see above, it has almost no competitors - because of this it is very expensive and almost un-switch[able]
- one option is to lose the luxury of a day time 'top up' and go to an E7 tariff
- another is to go E7 and install a 3.4kW night store heater into your living area charged at night rate
- this will open the world of competitors, and competitive pricing that E10 is lacking

I'm obsessing over it now

- a pointless and excessive exercise in futility
- the elusive figures you are looking for are more to do with insulation & lifestyle
- your quickest and most accurate guesstimate is to ask your neighbours with a similar set up and lifestyle

I have a very expensive to run system

- you do, your best bet is to take the national [increasing] average of £1400pa and ÷ by 12 = £116pm

Assuming a good standard of insulation. Lifestyle will have a lot to do with costs, home all day retired ~or~ out all day at work - in after 7pm, only ever shower ~or~ never shower 7 baths a week. What % of on-peak daytime 20+p/kWh compared to 6+p/kWh off-peak night-time use you have. Getting the % of on-peak off-peak use more biased to the night-time can make an expensive system much more attractive.

Best of luck, racymutt.

racymutt

Thanks all. I know there aren't many suppliers who offer E10 but there are more than one so I can still contact them and make the effort.

Cardew - I appreciate a couple of months readings will not give any indication of my annual usage, but this is not what I am after right now. I want to know what my bill will be in December just so I can gert an idea of the bills i can expect to pay in winter so I can budget correctly (I count all my pennies carefully!), so using my previous month or twos usage would (I believe) help me to give a rough idea. Also, when you say £120.00 a month for November is reasonable, is this based on electric wet central heating system average costs? In my last house where i had gas central heating my quartley winter bill didn;t equate to that amount a month.

matelodave

Make up a spreadsheet and enter you meter readings for the day & night tariff (if you add then together you should get your totals)

Do it as often as you feel is necessary, ideally daily but weekly will do then you can see when you are using electricity and you can try and shift some of your consumption onto the cheap rate (check the times that your meter switches rather than just relying on what the supplier says)

This will give you a good idea of how much you are using and when and will also help you reduce your consumption. As said above, reduce your use of hot water - have showers and make sure they aren't longer than 5 minutes (fit a flow restrictor - usually free from the water company). Don't wash under running taps, put the plug in or use a bowl - the same for washing the dishes. Save them until you've got a worthwhile pile.

Use your washing machine, dishwasher & tumble drier during the cheap periods and make sure that they are full, no half loads. Turn stuff off at the wall when it's not being used, especially TVs, playstations, video recorders, computers & phone chargers.

Low energy bulbs can help as well, we've changed our 10x50watt halogens in the kitchen to 10x4watt LEDs, saving 460 watts for every hour that they are on (that's 9.2p an hour at 20p a unit)

Make sure that heating is only on when you need it and that the thermostats are set to appropriate levels - a programmable thermostat can help by enabling different temperatures at different times of the day.

We are all electric and have got wet central heating BUT it uses a heat pump so it would be difficult to equate your consumption with ours. Our consumption looks horrendous in the winter (1500kw last December) but is quite low in the summer.

We use about 45% of our energy in the 3 months between December and Feb, about 10% each in November and March and approx. 5% per month for the rest - we paid £900 for the past 12 months on a fixed single rate tariff which has just finished, it will be about £1000 next year. We do have good controls and I monitor our use closely to ensure we aren't wasting any energy.

Cardew

racymutt wrote: »

Cardew - I appreciate a couple of months readings will not give any indication of my annual usage, but this is not what I am after right now. I want to know what my bill will be in December just so I can gert an idea of the bills i can expect to pay in winter so I can budget correctly (I count all my pennies carefully!), so using my previous month or twos usage would (I believe) help me to give a rough idea. Also, when you say £120.00 a month for November is reasonable, is this based on electric wet central heating system average costs? In my last house where i had gas central heating my quartley winter bill didn;t equate to that amount a month.

We would need more details of your electric 'boiler' and system; however I assume in a small 1 bed house it won't have a huge thermal store to be heated on E10 off-peak rates.

Depending in the efficiency of your gas boiler, heating with gas costs approx half the cost of your E10 off-peak rate and between 20% and 25% of your peak rate.

Unless you are in the property(and not in bed) I suspect you won't be able to do most of your heating at off-peak rates; and the cost of heating at E10 peak rates is eye-watering.

Depending on your lifestyle you can therefore expect your wet electric CH system to cost at least double the cost of gas and at the outside as much as 4 times the cost of gas.