Most economical form of electric heating

mnbvcxz

Yup he's a bit stuck. The new quantum heaters are better insulated so you don't overheat from escaping heat at night and then run out of heat during the day. They are more "inteligent" so they try and guess how much heat to store at night to last you through the day and thus save you money, they may even consider the weather forecast! I would think they would be much nicer to live with then the older ones, but an expense not a saving.

If the old ones save you 20% and the new ones 40% thats still only a 20% gain for alot of money. And the worrying thing is economy 7 tarrifs are getting less competitive and the hoped for replacements are slow to arrive and develop, there is basically just Octopus agile so far.

Main idea would be to check insulation, there are lots of squashable cheap draught products available to make sure every door and window seal are snug and secure. Basic secondary diy glazing can help. Thick curtains at night too. Thick jumper and socks for the person... Maybe an electric blanket?

Otherwise it would be faily cheap and easy to experiment with other electrical ideas. Three night storage heaters in a one bedroom flat? Does he have one in the kitchen? Would he be better with a £20 basic plug in radiator in his bedroom turned down low at night and then leave it unheated and unused during the day? Would he be better to leave economy 7 for the cheapest tarrif and just heat rooms individually when needed? Its hard to know, but as plug in radiators are cheap he could get one and experiment. Most night storage heaters turn off and on at the wall easily...

Worse electricity prices are up considerably this year!!!

Still for the future we can all watch danrv who when it gets cold is either about to blaze a trail for all of us or become rather sorry... On paper an air conditioner would be much better than storage heaters, though hard to fit in a flat, not impossible though if everyone aggreed they were good and demanded them...

So in summary - insulate, maybe experiment with peak heaters precisely used, but probably hang on to the older heaters for another year or two while we wait to see if there is going to be a better technology that renders the quantum ones a white elephant.  And while the prices skyrocket maybe plan some long visits to the public library?

Cardew

Someone more gifted than any on this forum*, stated 'you cannot destroy energy'. Thus it is an indisputable fact the ANY heater** using, say, 1kWh will produce exactly the same amount of heat. They are all 100% efficient.

Termed 'magic dust' heaters on this website, loads of firms imply their heater filled with some special ingredient can defy the Laws of Physics. Despite the Advertising Standards Authority  censuring them time and again, they change their wording  to fool the non-technical. A heater can be filled with any ingredient known to man, and coated with any ingredient known to man and the above paragraph applies. If it retains heat for longer, it takes longer to produce heat

* Albert Einstein

** A heat pump isn't a heater. It is a device for extracting heat from outside air/ground/water.

danrv

spiritus said:

My friend lives in a small 1 bed flat and was shocked with his winter bills last year (one month was £ 180!!) though I should add he is retired so is at home most of the day.

Does seem a lot for a one bed flat. At most I paid £160 a month over the cold spell.
That was with a 10kw electric warm air heater on expensive Economy 10 (three bed semi detached house).

Even if the current storage heaters are leaking heat, they’re still heating the flat.
Just not when you’d like.
Direct heaters like oil filled portable rads, convector and Lot20 wall mounted type can work well in small, insulated rooms.
Cheap to buy but doubt they’ll work out cheaper to run.
I have £20 convectors from Toolstation in bedrooms for occasional use. Bought them originally as an experiment to compare with 
running cost of electric warm air.
Good value with thermostat and timer.

I find an hour daily for the hot water immersion is fine. It’s not on a timer but I always switch it on during off peak hours (single element).
I’d look some more into figuring out what’s using the electricity. Maybe the NSH’s have a peak rate element that’s being used.
If one wall switch only, they won’t have this.

Gerry1

spiritus said:

spiritus said:

My friend lives in a small 1 bed flat and was shocked with his winter bills last year (one month was £ 180!!) though I should add he is retired so is at home most of the day.

He currently has 3 storage heaters which are reasonably old but in working condition.

Gas is not an option as the estate will only allow electricity (common practise I think).

Am I right in thinking that his options are fairly limited in trying to get his heating bills down?

I always thought storage heaters were the gold standard when it came to electric heating. Fan heaters, panel heater, oil filled heaters all draw electricity at more expensive tariff rates.

He's looked at replacing the old storage heaters with new ones but the cost is approx £ 3k and he's not convinced this will actually save him much money (if any). Also, the newer storage heaters are less powerful i.e. lowe KW output so would use less power but also would output less heat.

Anyone have any ideas what his best options may be?

How would he be able to identify if the storage heater circuits are switched by the meter?

@spiritus   Switch one NSH off at the wall outlet for a day or two until the NSH gets cold.  Then turn the heat input to maximum and switch it on at lunchtime (or when the meter on the wall shows it's day rate) and see whether it starts to get warm almost immediately.  If it does he has a problem: it shouldn't start to charge up until around midnight.  The meter should have two fat cables going in and three coming out, or it can have four fat cables and two thin wires going to a contactor box which will switch the lower immersion heater and NSHs when the cheap rate starts.

Ideally at least one wall output should have a neon indicator but failing that you'll probably find that jiggling the wall outlet switch will cause an audible spark when the circuit is live and the NSH is calling for heat.

QrizB

For people wanting to compare normal old-tech storage heaters to clever Quantum-type ones, there's a BRE report here:

https://www.fischerfutureheat.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/BRE-Test-Report.pdf

The report was commissioned by Fischer and the report conviently shows that Fischer heaters are not significantly more efficient and will cost more to run. However it also compares Dimplex Quantum ("System 3") with Creda New Era ("System 4") NSHs. The test left the heaters to do their own thing; there wasn't any manual intervention to eg. open and close vents.

If you look at the report, figures 5 & 6  and 11 & 12 show how the control systems in the Quantum (figure 5, 11) do a reasonable job of automatically maintaining a constant temperature while the New Ear (figure 6, 12) doesn't and would need periodic manual adjustment.

matelodave

However it does suggest that it takes roughly the same amount of energy to heat the place to a similar temperature, excepting that gas is less efficient - probably because the boiler couldn't be derated enough to just run a couple of rads and wasn't running as efficiently as possible..

What it doesn't spell out is the cost either of the heaters or the cost of energy that they are using. Although you might get a more precise control of temperature, the fact that Fischer are "dynamic" means that they are using peak rate leccy,

It's interesting that the Quantum uses a fair amount of peak rate energy as well to run the fan and possibly the auxiliary heater. The bog stanard storage heater, although less precise in temperature control only uses cheaper off-peak leccy so woukd actuallywork out cheaper to run than either the Fischer or Quantum

Although gas is using significantly more energy the fact that it costs around 20% less than peak rate leccy and probably 50-60% less than off-peak still makes it the best choice costwise

"Economical" doesn't equate with cheapest ro run

QrizB

matelodave said:

However it does suggest that it takes roughly the same amount of energy to heat the place to a similar temperature,

Which agrees with Cardew's comment above, for electric heaters energy in = heat out.

There a (very basic) comparison of costs here, using tariffs as they then were:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78557202/#Comment_78557202

Using those BG tariffs and assuming 10MWh/yr of heat demand as before gives:

• Gas: £496.50/yr
• E7 NSH: £866/yr
• Single-rate Fischer: £1555.10/yr
• E7 Fischer: £1669.25/yr

Quantum-style NSHs will be slightly more expensive if the overnight charge is too small and the boost heater needs to run in the evenings. OTOH under those circumstances conventional heaters will just make you cold, or you'll switch on supplemental heating.

DiseasedBunny

For economy, jumpers and duvets

knightstyle

When we had little money and all electric we found the best way to use Storage heaters was to switch the upstairs ones off and set the downstairs very low, just giving frost protection and heating the main living room with a normal fire when needed. But we were working shifts so not at home a lot of the time.

theoretica

mnbvcxz said:

Main idea would be to check insulation, there are lots of squashable cheap draught products available to make sure every door and window seal are snug and secure. Basic secondary diy glazing can help. Thick curtains at night too.

This - what is costing the money is the heat escaping and heating the outside.  The less of that there is going on the lower his bills will be.