So the discretionary fund is.....**drumroll**.......£100 measly quid!?

Apodemus

Spoonie_Turtle said:

[Incidentally while heat pumps are more efficient than storage or panel heaters they're certainly not efficient enough to be equivalent to gas in price.  And oil may currently still be cheaper than gas per kWh.]

But we often hear quoted efficiencies of 3.5x or 4x for heat pumps?  Surely that brings capped price of gas and electricity very nearly to equivalence?  Oil being slightly cheaper.

Mstty

Apodemus said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

[Incidentally while heat pumps are more efficient than storage or panel heaters they're certainly not efficient enough to be equivalent to gas in price.  And oil may currently still be cheaper than gas per kWh.]

But we often hear quoted efficiencies of 3.5x or 4x for heat pumps?  Surely that brings capped price of gas and electricity very nearly to equivalence?  Oil being slightly cheaper.

I will try and keep this short. We have a heat pump installed and designed with the house we bought not a retro fit. However even retro fits now make sense if you have the install cash available. For the following reasons.

It is not unreasonable to run a Heatpump at a cop of 3 (coefficient of performance) so 1kwh in produces 3kwh out. The claims of 4 are possible but it's best to expect 3 as the benchmark.

At the current price freeze caps electricity is 34p kWh and gas 10.3p kWh so that means for every 1kwh of electricity you can buy 3.3kwh of gas.....see where I am going here it's very close. Then you have to take into account gas boilers are not 100% efficient but let's say it is 90% efficient and setup correctly on install them really you are only getting 3kwh for 1kwh of electricity.

So as of 1st October this year it's pretty much bang on comparable with heating and hot water to gas with the added benefit you don't need gas so can save the standing charge so £100 saving.

Francis63

Not if you have electric heating only

If you have electric heating only you are covered in getting help in that the price is capped per unit. So it's a lot less than you would be paying without the cap.
The heating oil price is not capped and has already more than doubled. It is not regulated. The 100 pounds is to help with that but it is nowhere near the same or equivalent help that gas or electricity heating users are getting.

mark_cycling00

That's interesting Mstty.

I've seen articles say that the COP goes down to about 2 in very cold weather. Have you experienced that?

Spoonie_Turtle

Apodemus said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

[Incidentally while heat pumps are more efficient than storage or panel heaters they're certainly not efficient enough to be equivalent to gas in price.  And oil may currently still be cheaper than gas per kWh.]

But we often hear quoted efficiencies of 3.5x or 4x for heat pumps?  Surely that brings capped price of gas and electricity very nearly to equivalence?  Oil being slightly cheaper.

Maybe in theory but that doesn't necessarily mean it's reality.  A COP of even 3 would be nice!
Over the past two years ours has had annual COP averages of 2.66 and 2.44.
Some of them have an issue of consuming power "for heating" even when the heating's off, which is an expensive waste.  Ours says it ate 50kWh in August, for literally zero heating!

Full disclosure, we have only just started to learn how to change the settings - the installers basically told us not to change anything, as does the user guide, and as we don't understand how it works at all, we didn't dare try anything.  Even the guy that came to service it the following years said 'you don't need to know about any of those'.  A lot of electric-only social tenants have had these installed by the HAs/councils without any education or choice in the matter, so unless they feel confident enough and have the time to learn how to get to grips with the settings, they are almost certainly not getting efficiencies of 3+ either.

I'm not saying we've not benefited from the electricity cap, of course we have and what a relief it is, but it's not quite as simple as 'everyone without gas gets extra help on top'.

400ixl

Francis63 said:

The heating oil price is not capped and has already more than doubled. It is not regulated. The 100 pounds is to help with that but it is nowhere near the same or equivalent help that gas or electricity heating users are getting.

Whilst it is not capped and has doubled, it is still lower than the equivalent price that gas has been capped at. So the £100 at the moment will actually be more than the help that gas or electricity heating users are getting.

As a heating oil user, I would rather that there was a trigger point where if heating oil does exceed the equivalent gas price then you can claim the grant (once per year) through your local council on provision of receipt showing the excess price.

I don't believe they should be wasting the money. Same as I don't believe the £400 should have gone to everyone and should have been means tested (well claimed for if you meet the criteria), same as should be the case for winter allowance.

Help those in real need (with probably more help than can be given by just spreading it across more people).

Apodemus

400ixl said:

So the £100 at the moment will actually be more than the help that gas or electricity heating users are getting.

While I agree with everything else that you say, part of our current problems are people confusing "help" with "price".  Paying market price for a cheaper option is not "help".  Having the market price subsidised is help. 

Average homes heating with gas or electricity are getting their price subsidised at a higher average than the £100 that is being quoted for "other fuels".  The oil price doesn't need subsidising at the moment (and there is a debate to be had over subsidising fossil fuels at all!) but there is no way that oil users getting £100 is more help than gas or electricity users are getting. 

400ixl

So if an oil user is an electricity user, they are getting the electricity capped + £400, oil at a lower price per kwh than electricity or gas. So they are already getting a better deal than an all electric or electric + gas user.

So whilst not additional help, they are still paying less overall for their energy supply. So the help they get on electric + price of oil means they are better off.

So add on another £100 of additional help and they are even more advantageous. So it will be more help than a user with all electric or electric + gas.

You can't separate price from help without taking both into consideration and calculating the overall cost.

lohr500

Mstty said:

Apodemus said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

[Incidentally while heat pumps are more efficient than storage or panel heaters they're certainly not efficient enough to be equivalent to gas in price.  And oil may currently still be cheaper than gas per kWh.]

But we often hear quoted efficiencies of 3.5x or 4x for heat pumps?  Surely that brings capped price of gas and electricity very nearly to equivalence?  Oil being slightly cheaper.

I will try and keep this short. We have a heat pump installed and designed with the house we bought not a retro fit. However even retro fits now make sense if you have the install cash available. For the following reasons.

It is not unreasonable to run a Heatpump at a cop of 3 (coefficient of performance) so 1kwh in produces 3kwh out. The claims of 4 are possible but it's best to expect 3 as the benchmark.

At the current price freeze caps electricity is 34p kWh and gas 10.3p kWh so that means for every 1kwh of electricity you can buy 3.3kwh of gas.....see where I am going here it's very close. Then you have to take into account gas boilers are not 100% efficient but let's say it is 90% efficient and setup correctly on install them really you are only getting 3kwh for 1kwh of electricity.

So as of 1st October this year it's pretty much bang on comparable with heating and hot water to gas with the added benefit you don't need gas so can save the standing charge so £100 saving.

I agree that if you can achieve a real world COP of 3, then the running cost of an ASHP is now comparable with gas.

But the problems for me are the upfront investment cost to replace an existing oil or gas system with ASHP and the longevity/complexity/reliability of the ASHP systems.

Even when electricity was at January 2021 prices and oil was £0.60 a litre, I couldn't make the payback calculation work over a seven year period, including the then much larger Govt grant of circa £12k.

Anecdotally, based on several posts on the forum, it also seems as though optimising ASHP systems requires a lot of tinkering and understanding of the variables.

Finally, as it also seems like ASHP/GSHP systems like to run for longer periods (albeit at lower temperatures) to maintain heat in the house, I do wonder if this results in the house being heated for longer and thus ultimately using more energy than gas/oil/lpg. With our heating, we rarely have it on during the week days. Just evenings and over the weekend. I have no proof whatsoever to substantiate this thinking, but given the slow warm up time with ASHP/GSHP I do wonder if this results in people leaving the systems running 24/7 through the winter.

If the payback had made sense back in January last year then I probably would have pressed the button and converted from oil.
But it looks even less attractive now with the reduction in the grant and relative price movements in energy.    

Apodemus

400ixl said:

You can't separate price from help without taking both into consideration and calculating the overall cost.

Yes you can.  Help is help, cost is cost. I already agreed that oil is currently the cheapest option, but you suggested that oil users were getting more help than those heating with gas or electricity, which is just plain wrong.

Let's assume everyone is getting the £400, since very few households are not on the electricity grid.  In addition to that, the average user is getting the cost of their 2,900 kWh electricity subsidised by about £490 (using my local svr price).  The average gas user is getting their 12,000 kWh subsidised by about £504.  If that 12,000 kWh was provided by electric heating, the subsidy rises by about £1920. If it is provided by oil, it is (possibly) £100.

Taking all the subsidies together (and using the mythical "average" consumption) we get the following "help" from the Government:

Dual-fuel Electric + gas:  £400 + £490 + £504 = £1394

Fully Electric:  £400 + £490 + £1920 = £2810

Dual-fuel Electric + oil:  £400 + £490 + £100 = £990

These are all huge sums of support and, somewhere down the line, Government is going to become very unpopular when it tries to unwind all this.