Cheapest way to use the immersion heater 12 May 2005 at 10:04AM edited 30 November -1 at 12:00AM in Energy 150 replies 318.5K views

ben37564

Woah....do not.. under any circumstances leave the immersion on all the time. They use a lot of electricity and are hugely expensive to run.

Dinx_2

even using the 2 rate meter? using it during the night?

Magentasue

How much are you paying per kwh for gas? How much for off peak electricity.

Dinx_2

ok let me do some research.

I am on the standard dual fuel trarrif

gas -
tier 1 7.160p per kwh
tier 2 3.410p per kwh

electricity
night flat rate 5.584p kwh
day tier 1 32.379p kwh
day tier 2 12.157 kwh

vat inclu

Magentasue

Assuming you use enough gas to pay for all of the tier 1 kwh, you would be paying 3.4p per kwh to heat your water by gas, or 5.6p by electricity.

Dinx_2

ok I understand that. I just really have to work out how much units are charged at tier 1.

only use the immersion heater while I am in tier one and then let the gas boiler do rest of the work when I hit tier two.

Dinx_2

Tier 1 applies to the first 670 kWh per quarter (2680 kWh per annum for Pay As You Go Energy™) and all subsequent consumption is charged at Tier 2.

thats is copied from British Gas website.

this gets very confusing now becuase bills dated dec says i have been charged first 749kwh at tier one and then my latest bills is 661kwh at tier one. either there has been a change in the amounts of units in tier one or I have been billed wrongly.

Magentasue

DINX wrote: »

thats is copied from British Gas website.

this gets very confusing now becuase bills dated dec says i have been charged first 749kwh at tier one and then my latest bills is 661kwh at tier one. either there has been a change in the amounts of units in tier one or I have been billed wrongly.

Different number of days in those quarters?

Dinx_2

could be then becuase I have always sent a meter reading just to make sure its all correct and I sent a new bill with the updates changing the number of days in a quarter. I need to dig up the past few bills now the online account only lets me go back 3 bills.

Cardew

ben37564 wrote: »

Woah....do not.. under any circumstances leave the immersion on all the time. They use a lot of electricity and are hugely expensive to run.

Within reason it doesn't matter how long you leave them on as they all have a thermostat which switches them off - just like your electric kettle. except the thermostat switches them off at a set temperature, say, 65C.

There really is a lot of nonsense talked about the huge cost of leaving on immersion heaters 24/7.

Whilst I am not in any way suggesting you should leave it on 24/7 the real difference between 24/7 and timed is not more than 1kWh to 2kWh a day.