High Electric Bills with new ASHP

deantrina

Matelodave/ Reed thanks looks like i have found the correct forum .
Your knowledge / thoughts on this would be welcome .Just had big refurb works done on house basically a new house top to bottom so i went for ASHP &PV panels . expecting PV to power ASHP & expecting costs of approx £30/ M electric . Just had smart meter fitted & its saying im using £13/day on electric ie: £390/Month . Tarrif with Bulb is £0.1610p / KWh . I have questioned if this is right as its 6 times more than im expecting , i have queried if smart meter is faulty currently awaiting it being tested . meter says used 450KWh in one week . 4 bed house .Some additinal info is  CONSUMPTION IS NOW SAYING 641KW USED FROM 25TH FEB - 6TH MAR IE: 71KW/DAY  ). (MY PV INFO SHOWS 2.56KWP SYSTEM ,8 EURENER 320w  PANELS & SOUTH FACING). APPRECIATE YOUR FEEDBACK / COMEMNTS .PS - HAD INSTALLATION COMAPNY BACK YESTERDAY & HE SAID BILLS ARE WAY TO HIGH & THINKS IT COULD BE DUE TO THE PUMP BEING TO SMALL SO IS WORKING TO HARD . HE IS SUGGESTING TO HES COMPANY THE PUMP IS UNGRADED TO A 14KW ECODAN ZUBADAN , COMMENTS VIEWS APPRCIATED 

matelodave

I  see you've looked at the Green & Ethical thread and hopefully now understand that PV isn't going to help a great deal in the winter so ignore them for the present.

You'll also be aware that heatpumps will still use a lot of energy when it's very cold. Instead of getting upset at the figures and projections from your smart meter try recording the daily power consumption (in kwh not ££'s) on a spreadsheet so you can understand the daily variations and how the weather and any adjustments will affect it. Bear in mind that heatpumps are quite slow in responding to adjustments so leave it a couple of days between tweak to you give it time to settle down and most of all, only adjust one thing at a time to see what happens (make notes so you can remember the settings and be able to restore settings if you muck it up)

Regarding the heatpump, just bunging in a bigger one wont necessarily reduce your consumption (it could quite conceivably increase it). However if you are still discussing it with the installer who is hopefully properly MCS registered then he should have sized it correctly in the first place. Tweaking the controls yourself may not be such a good idea whilst he is still evaluating it although there's nothing wrong with checking the settings. 

You need a better understanding of how it all works so you can understand whether been properly set up and the controls configured to match your heating system. Have a read of the dedicated thread above regarding Air Source Heat Pumps. There's lots of info which should hopefully help you understand it a bit better and what the various controls mean.

Tells us what you've got - Make, model, size,  flow temperature, hot water tank temperature, settings (times and room stat settings etc) type of heat emitters etc..

Gerry1

Why have you chosen a needlessly expensive tariff with Bulb?

Is it absolutely impossible to get mains gas?

deantrina

matelodave said:

I  see you've looked at the Green & Ethical thread and hopefully now understand that PV isn't going to help a great deal in the winter so ignore them for the present.

You'll also be aware that heatpumps will still use a lot of energy when it's very cold. Instead of getting upset at the figures and projections from your smart meter try recording the daily power consumption (in kwh not ££'s) on a spreadsheet so you can understand the daily variations and how the weather and any adjustments will affect it. Bear in mind that heatpumps are quite slow in responding to adjustments so leave it a couple of days between tweak to you give it time to settle down and most of all, only adjust one thing at a time to see what happens (make notes so you can remember the settings and be able to restore settings if you muck it up)

Regarding the heatpump, just bunging in a bigger one wont necessarily reduce your consumption (it could quite conceivably increase it). However if you are still discussing it with the installer who is hopefully properly MCS registered then he should have sized it correctly in the first place. Tweaking the controls yourself may not be such a good idea whilst he is still evaluating it although there's nothing wrong with checking the settings. 

You need a better understanding of how it all works so you can understand whether been properly set up and the controls configured to match your heating system. Have a read of the dedicated thread above regarding Air Source Heat Pumps. There's lots of info which should hopefully help you understand it a bit better and what the various controls mean.

Tells us what you've got - Make, model, size,  flow temperature, hot water tank temperature, settings (times and room stat settings etc) type of heat emitters etc..

I have  a Ecodan 11.9KW ,PUHZ ASHP , 300lt storage tank , water temp is 50 & heating 45 , UFH throughout , ATM we have it on 24/7 has not had tome to complete my research .

deantrina

Gerry1 said:

Why have you chosen a needlessly expensive tariff with Bulb?

Is it absolutely impossible to get mains gas?

It was the last one i must have been on before i moved out the house 18 months ago . Once i get to sort all this out i was looking to move onto the Bulb Feed in tariff before properly sorting it all out. Happy to take suggestions on companies / tariffs to look into for when i get conclude 

matelodave

I've just had a quick shufti at the spec and its got a reasonable COP rating of 3.01 at -3/35 which is an up lift of around 38 degrees but you'll get a lower COP than that if you run it at the temperatures that you are using. Although that said, the temperature doesn't often go right down to -3. It's worth checking that the back-up heater has been disabled

Do you have weather compensation activated?. My Daikin 11kw unit runs between 30-40 degrees for heating (mostly just under 35) with a hot water tank temperature of just 45 degrees (hot water is only activated for two hours a day and the 200litre tank usually heats up within an hour or so). 

It's on for most of the day and night. Wednesday and Thursday this week it used just over 23kwh a day, whereas yesterday and today have been several degrees colder and it's used about 27kwh a day. It can sometimes get through 40 or even 50kwh when the temperature drops below freezing and sits there for a few days.

I actually have an energy monitor (Efergy Engage) which logs the consumption and shows it in a graphical form - this is what it did today. As you can see it idles gently and increases consumption as and when when the different rooms call for heat, mostly around 06:30 to around 08:30 when the set back on the stats shuts off. Hot water is set from 04:30 to 06:30 but you can see the average is just over 1kwh per hour. We don't let the house drop below 17-18 degrees otherwise it can take several hours to recover. Room temps are set to between 19 and 20 degrees (we have underfloor heating in all rooms and they all have their own programmable thermostat)

deantrina

Thanks , picking up more tips each post . we are going to reset the stats to all rooms for 17-19 degrees depending on time of the day . One thing i clutching at straws is the controller where all the plant is has a monitor & Engineer set at 40 ( so it got set at 0 !!! dont fully understand but sure thats what he said/how it works) so i have just lowered it to 35 hoping that that will make the system more efficent . So combined with the room stats calling for a lower temp 17-19 hopefully that will make a difference to my KW usage . Do you know where is the best place to go & read up about all this tweaking & balancing ?

matelodave

TBH I'm not sure that there is a definitive guide. There are a few people on this Forum who have put in their thoughts (you could also look at the Ground Source thread as well to get some ideas). All the pumps have different controllers and people have different system configurations so we all end up with different settings based on our experiences. Try reading the handbook and installation/commissioning documentation that came with yours (or download it from the web). Also searching t'interweb for info. Look for ecodan setting up videos as there are a few on there which help explain some of the functions of the controller

There's another thread where the OP has an Ecodan and has spent some time sorting it out - I'll see if I can find it for you as there may be a few tips  and there are some explanations on what the controller settings do

Here you go (ignore the title because the thread is mainly about setting up the heatpump) - https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6219931/most-efficient-way-to-run-underfloor-heating/p1

It's best not to just stab around but to do things methodically - just change one thing at a time, leave it for a couple of days to settle down to see what effects it had before changing something else and most of all keep a log of what you did and what happened so you can decide whether it mad e it better or worse (and so you can revert back if it went wrong)
I spent my first winter tweaking mine.

I spent our first winter trying to understand mine.

I got hold of a multi-channel temperature data logger so I could record outside temperatures, flow and return temps and the temps in a couple of rooms. The energy logger gives me data on consumption. I also set up a spreadsheet with all the heatpump settings (temperatures, times, weather compensation) as well as room stat settings.(I've still got the data from then)
  
I then started tweaking. I found if I turned it down to far, then the house just didn't get sufficiently warm at all. I also found that running with weather compensation enable allows the heatpump temperature to vary according to the weather so it runs cooler when its warm outside and warmer when its cold. This means that the flow varies between 30-42 degrees, rather than just at a fixed 40 (the original default setting).

We do have underfloor heating and its slow to respond - it takes about four hours to raise the room temp by about 1 degree and two days to reheat the place if we let it get stone cold but as we are at home all day it suits our lifestyle. If we go way for more than a couple of days in the winter we put the stats into holiday mode at about 12 degrees and then turn the heating back up the day before we are due to arrive home.

matelodave

Lastly, find a better tariff than Bulb. I'm with neon Reef, Aqua One, which is 12.25p/kwh. Your Bulb tariff at 16.10 would cost me roughly £280 a year more (4p x 7200kwh = £280)

Mine isn't available anymore but there are tariffs avaialable between 13-14p rather than 16-17p so just 1p/kwh could make a £50-£100 a year difference to your bill depending on your consumption. Don't get hung up on the standing charge. A 10p difference is only worth £36.50 a year compared to what you save with a penny per kwh less

Bear in mind that if you are running your heatpump during most of the day and evening then an E7 tariff wont really help

deantrina

made adjustments to room stats last night & today whilst in the garden was the first time in couple of weeks that i had noticed the fan on the pump no going round so the temp drops we made on the stats & main system must have worked . I will keep a close eye on the tweaks we make & results & will hunt down a new rate when i get onto the feed in tariff . Will look for the videos as well , many thanks 

matelodave

Keep it up and keep us informed - sharing info is how we all learn to get our systems optimised