Combined Heat & Power System 27 June 2015 at 12:25PM edited 30 November -1 at 1:00AM in Energy 3 replies 776 views

GingerBob_3

My lad has some fancy combined heat and power set up at his rented house. The electricity meter has four dials, but only two of them are active.


Anyone know what the typical unit prices are for this type of system? He's lived there a while but despite many attempts to get the electricity account sorted, he's still not received a bill with the unit prices (npower, of course!). At the moment he's just paying a monthly DD, but we've no idea how close to the mark it is.

captainhindsight_2

GingerBob wrote: »

My lad has some fancy combined heat and power set up at his rented house. The electricity meter has four dials, but only two of them are active.


Anyone know what the typical unit prices are for this type of system? He's lived there a while but despite many attempts to get the electricity account sorted, he's still not received a bill with the unit prices (npower, of course!). At the moment he's just paying a monthly DD, but we've no idea how close to the mark it is.

Chp is best just meeting base loads, and having conventional heating /electrical supply for peak loads. Do you know which unit he has? If it's a flat I'm guessing the baxi?

By unit prices are you talking price of the chp or electrical/ heating prices per kWh?

GingerBob_3

captainhindsight wrote: »

Chp is best just meeting base loads, and having conventional heating /electrical supply for peak loads. Do you know which unit he has? If it's a flat I'm guessing the baxi?

By unit prices are you talking price of the chp or electrical/ heating prices per kWh?

Thanks for the response. I just found out some more details and it turns out it's a biomass unit, fed from a nearby farm.


The meter has four dials and amongst other things it's an Eco 7 setup. The dials are labelled as:


Day rate (19p / kwH)
Night rate (6p )
Heat rate (7p )


Above figure are rounded to nearest penny.


Here's the thing - there are two so-called 'heat' dials on the meter, one of them is at zero and doesn't move. The other has a reading, but it doesn't move either.


Over the winter period my lad has spent an incredible £1200 on electricity (Oct - Mar)!


The house is small and not occupied at all during the day. I suspect he's heating the whole house by electricity, and for the most past on the Day rate.


Maybe the meter has been set up wrongly, or maybe the biomass unit has been incorrectly installed.


My questions are, what scenario could account for the above?
If something is wrong, who might be at fault - npower (the supplier throughout the tenancy), the landlord, the guy who installed the system, or my lad?

captainhindsight_2

GingerBob wrote: »

Thanks for the response. I just found out some more details and it turns out it's a biomass unit, fed from a nearby farm.


The meter has four dials and amongst other things it's an Eco 7 setup. The dials are labelled as:


Day rate (19p / kwH)
Night rate (6p )
Heat rate (7p )


Above figure are rounded to nearest penny.


Here's the thing - there are two so-called 'heat' dials on the meter, one of them is at zero and doesn't move. The other has a reading, but it doesn't move either.


Over the winter period my lad has spent an incredible £1200 on electricity (Oct - Mar)!


The house is small and not occupied at all during the day. I suspect he's heating the whole house by electricity, and for the most past on the Day rate.


Maybe the meter has been set up wrongly, or maybe the biomass unit has been incorrectly installed.


My questions are, what scenario could account for the above?
If something is wrong, who might be at fault - npower (the supplier throughout the tenancy), the landlord, the guy who installed the system, or my lad?

It just sounds like the rates he paying tbh, 7p/kWh for heat is expensive this is something he needs to negotiate with his landlord/whoever owns the district heating system. Unfortunately ATM this market is completely unregulated .

Also does he have control over his heating system, as many older district networks do not give individual households control over how much heat they take the whole network is either on or off.