British Gas (Homecare) Dropping Support for Solar Thermal

thegrail

About 8 years ago I had a 2-panel solar hot water system (Worcester Bosch) installed by British Gas. They have apparently decided (mid 2014) that they will not provide cover for faults under the Homecare 200 policy (Boiler + central heating cover) which I am paying about £22 per month and I will have to find someone else to provide cover instead


I want the cover as I've had 2 panel temperature sensor failures that stopped the system working and British Gas arranged for these to be replaced. They also used to check the pressure of the system and the anti-freeze concentration, but they stopped doing this about 3 years ago.


British Gas are not offering to drop the cost of the Homecare 200 policy to reflect this loss of cover and so far I have found 2 quotes - both of which will lead to me having to pay an additional £20 per month for separate cover.


As you can guess I am not happy at British Gas just deciding to drop cover, nor the additional cost.


I've looked at other central heating policies but it is unclear if other companies will cover my solar hot water system as part of the standard cover.


Does anyone have any suggestions?

thegrail

Problem now resolved.


I managed to get British Gas to decommission by solar hot water system as it seems I made a very bad investment in the first place.


I thought I could be saving about £200 per year on my gas bill from the system, but then realised this would equate to about one-third of my total gas usage. I then checked with Which? and this estimated the annual saving was only about £50. I then took a 'green energy' study that estimated the saving from solar thermal would only be about £25 per year.


So to pay £240 per year maintenance cover to save £200, £50, or even worse £25 per year makes it not worth it.


I could have just not bothered with maintenance cover, but I'd had two faults already in the preceding 8 years and there is a lot of plumbing, pumps, sensors, and electrics to potentially go wrong, and if it went wrong again the callout charges, including the possible need for scaffolding to get access to the panels, coupled for the need for regular servicing, really convinced me it was time to stop.


I'll keep track of my gas usage over the coming summer to see how much more I use now that the solar thermal system is not working.


If it turns out that I was making a worthwhile saving, I may well purchase a solar PV to immersion box (I have solar PV as well) that diverts spare power to the immersion heater that would have gone out to the grid.

Cardew

Well said!


There was considerable discussion about solar thermal on MSE some years ago. Despite every kind of proof being offered, some people refused point blank to believe that the savings were, and are, so small. The solar thermal industry was largely a disgrace, but people refuse to believe they have been conned and the threads were full of people claiming their panels saved £hundreds a year.


The Government commissioned independent tests of a lot of systems(both types) and the average annual output to your water heating was approx. 1,000kWh. So with gas the saving would be in the order of £35, however the cost of peak rate electricity to run the pump and electronics had to be deducted from that £35.


Naturally the solar industry didn't see fit to publicise the report, and such is the Green hysteria, to criticise anything 'Green' was seen as heresy.


Of course we are now in the era of RHI so things might have changed; but any scheme needs to be viewed with extreme caution.

thegrail

@Cardew - thanks for your comments and apologies for not responding sooner.


Taking your second comment first, in my case, I can realistically ignore the electrical cost of pumps and electrics as I also have the Solar PV system. However, if I'd not bothered with the Solar Hot Water system initially, I could have had even more solar PV panels installed and so made even more from the FIT payments.


As far as savings in gas are concerned, from May to September last year I regularly didn't burn any gas to heat my hot water when the central heating was switched off.


This year, after the Solar Hot Water was decommissioned I am typically using about 11 kWh for hot water per day with the boiler times to come on for 30 minutes every morning and 2 hours each evening.


If I make a gross assumption that 50% of the days per year I can save the 11 kWh, this makes a total annual saving of about 2000 kWh and based upon my current charge from OVO of 4.13p per kWh makes a total annual saving of c. £82.60.


I'm still to decide whether to go down the "Solar PV to immersion" route.

matelodave

When do you use your hot water?


Mine is on for about 1.5hours in the morning and it gives us all the hot water we need, two showers plus washing up & stuff during the day. There is still enough hot left to have two short showers the next day if we don't turn the heater on.


It uses about 2kwh using our heat pump = 25p. Which I guess is around £100 a year. In fact when I discussed solar hot water when I had the heatpump installed the installer said, don't bother they are a waste of money.


Try optimising your hot water