Pilot Light

obithius

Hi,
I have just had a new smart meter fitted by British Gas. According to it I am using 2p per hour worth of gas. The only gas appliances I have are a back boiler with a gas fire in front of it, both of which are off. The only gas being used is for the pilot light, so can this really be costing me 2p per hour, or £175 a year?!

Nada666

Have a look through the viewing window and see.

A gas ring on full is not more than 2 kW. So does it look like a medium ring on simmer? A large pilot can use 400 W but should be unlikely - unless it is dinner plate sized and decades old.

Do you know definitely the 2p excludes the just over 1p per hour daily standing charge?

(Although, unfortunately, 400 odd watts is in the range. They are usually at least 200 W.)

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

There have been loads of threads on MSE about pilot light consumption. I posted this in 2007 - when gas was much cheaper and no Daily Standing charge:

Someone else posted this earlier this month.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=549860&highlight=pilot+light

He had similar figures, using 0.5 units a day(Metric meter) which is between 5 and 6kWh per day which is around £50 a year. He used tier 1 prices and came to £84.

Anyway having myself commented in the thread that was high, I thought I would check mine when I was away for a couple of days. I had not checked for many years.

Anyway mine was even higher - no less than 0.84 units a day(Metric meter). That is 9.5kWh a day; even at the cheap rate I get gas(2.113p) that is £75 a year.(I have checked that there is no leak)

My boiler is an Ideal Mexico Super CF125 and is 19 years old - serviced annually by BG. It is housed in a boiler room so I never see it unless I specifically check.

I looked at the pilot flame and it was indeed very high. I turned it down as low as I can and checked it again. Whilst it is much lower it is still pretty high at 6kWh per day – approx £46 a year.

I suppose you can console yourself that not all of that is wasted heat, as a small proportion is used when the boiler is running.

.

[Deleted User]

I also would like to know if the smart meter is calculating daily standing charge per hour as Nada666 mentioned. I know they include V.A.T. but not if its inclusive of daily standing charge and have nt found any mention in any suppliers info on smart meters about daily standing charge. Perhaps the OP can switch the pilot light off and check .

System

sacsquacco wrote: »

I also would like to know if the smart meter is calculating daily standing charge per hour as Nada666 mentioned. I know they include V.A.T. but not if its inclusive of daily standing charge and have nt found any mention in any suppliers info on smart meters about daily standing charge. Perhaps the OP can switch the pilot light off and check .

Not very Smart if it isn't showing the full cost when a .99p app for IOS and Android can manage to do it.

r2015

I have 2 pilot lights one use 3 kWh a day for hot water and the other 5 kWh a day for my heating so in the winter I am using 8 kWh a day for pilot lights.


I just had my heating and hot water serviced and that is the lowest they can be set at, according to the service engineer.

quantropy

I did a gas meter reading this morning and, since we haven't used any gas heating in the last quarter I decide to check how much the pilot lights were using. It came to over 500 kWh, costing over £22 (that excludes the standing charge). I found that rather surprising. We've been trying to cut down on energy usage, but had assumed that the pilot light would be negligible. This implies that the pilot light usage is about 40% of our total annual gas usage.

I'm glad, though, that we it isn't the 8kWh/day that others are reporting that would be more than all of our electricity usage.

[Deleted User]

Hengus wrote: »

Not very Smart if it isn't showing the full cost when a .99p app for IOS and Android can manage to do it.

Well so far this morning I dont know if it is or it is nt showing the daily standing charge. The suppliers seem to be omitting that info so I suspect they want to keep the hidden costs of daily standing charge quiet and it does include standing charge. I ve had a skim through on BG smart meter info and they never mentioned it. You can forget your android smart phone stuff with a lot of non techie O.A.Ps struggling on a state pension. Does anyone know, without it getting into an anti smart meter row, if smarts show daily standing charge in their hourly kwhr screen on the monitor ?

Horseunderwater

I just had a new condensing boiler fitted free as I'm on an income related benefit - it is a baxi solo 15 & has no pilot light - so if you're all correct I should see a huge gas bill reduction now. Good to know.

ic

Whilst including the standing charge in the costs displayed by the meter, this will make it harder to see a direct correlation to how reducing usage would result in lower bills - it'd dilute the savings and probably put many off bothering to try for what would appear "small" savings overall.

As for another comment earlier about the pilot light being negligible - once upon a time they were, just the cost of the gas has rocketed and now it matters. I'm not familiar with back boilers, do they also heat tap water? Could they not be turned off completely for the summer months?

obithius

Hi,
thanks for all the replies folks!
I've had a look at the pilot light, looks like any normal pilot as far as I know! I don't know if the meter is including a pence per hour standing charge or not, and without calling BG I don't think I can find out? The energy monitor I had previously added it at midnight, not sure now though. Always assumed the pilot light was negligible, and was surprised to see it showing up so much on the smart meter. I'll continue to investigate....

The back boiler heats water for radiators and a tank for tap water, so can't really turn it off.