Coming off the grid. What if 1 million households stopped taking gas and electric from October?

gbphil

Could you live without mains electricity or gas? I’m thinking I could live using 12v or 5v battery storage and use a log burner for heat. Having saved £3400 a year on electric and gas supply, could we all cease taking Ofgem provided energy service. Go back to my grand parents time when you rented your battery from the chemist or hardware store for the wireless. Someone like Amazon could turn their vans into 12v battery charging stations and delivery replacement batteries. My entertainment could be via tablet rather than television, heating via open fire. Would the threat to stop taking energy force the French route of 4% increases and £1300 energy bills again. I remember when I was young, our gas consumption was just £26 in six months!!!!!!! 

k3lvc

Put simply - no

Us Brits are mere amateurs when it comes to protest and given the ownership difference between French energy and UK energy the impact won't be the same

You might be able to manage but the vast majority of the country aren't suddenly geared up to transfer to battery power without significant cost/infrastructure investment

MalMonroe

gbphil said:

Could you live without mains electricity or gas? I’m thinking I could live using 12v or 5v battery storage and use a log burner for heat. Having saved £3400 a year on electric and gas supply, could we all cease taking Ofgem provided energy service. Go back to my grand parents time when you rented your battery from the chemist or hardware store for the wireless. Someone like Amazon could turn their vans into 12v battery charging stations and delivery replacement batteries. My entertainment could be via tablet rather than television, heating via open fire. Would the threat to stop taking energy force the French route of 4% increases and £1300 energy bills again. I remember when I was young, our gas consumption was just £26 in six months!!!!!!! 

Taking your first question, given that the current population of the United Kingdom is 68,604,617 as of Sunday, July 10, 2022 (based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data) - I don't think 1 million people doing anything will make any difference.

I've never heard of this - "go back to my grand parents time when you rented your battery from the chemist or hardware store for the wireless" - my grandparents were householders in the early 1900s - once they'd returned from living in India. They had electricity and gas. When I was a child we had just British Gas and Yorkshire Electricity (regional in those days) who supplied our energy. I do wish we could go back to that instead of having to have thousands of competitive companies. 

As for this - " I remember when I was young, our gas consumption was just £26 in six months!!!!!!!" - the value of money has changed dramatically since you were young, surely? I remember the days when a loaf of bread cost about a halfpenny (in old money), or something. Times have changed and we've all moved on, thank goodness.

I can't see many people in this country embracing the use of 'batteries' of the kind you are talking about. It'd be like going back to live in Dickens's times and nobody in their right mind wants that.

Norman_Castle

Try it. You might save on gas for heating but will have to pay for logs. How will you heat hot water? Will you give up your washing machine and fridge? You'll also have to invest in batteries and unless the supplies are disconnected you'll still be paying standing charges.

Rented charged batteries would require charging elsewhere so moving the mains energy use rather than ending it.

There's nothing stopping individuals taking measures to reduce their usage but don't expect it to make a difference to the price of supplied energy