The myth of "Typical Usage" - the Green penalty

deano2099

yoddom said:

We live in a “typical” mid-terrace 3 bedroom house.

5 people –

Don't need to go any further. The "average" is calculated on 2.4 people in a house. You have 5. That's twice as much.
Energy usage, if done responsibly, is more a factor of the number of people than the size of the house. You gain some efficiencies (cooking larger meals and eating together) but it means you're heating more rooms, lighting more rooms, have more people with individual devices.

Your usage is probably average, even below average, for a 5 person household. But a 5-person household is massively above said average in the first place.

QrizB

yoddom said:

Like i said , gas energy is a lot cheaper for heating.

This might be your belief but it is not correct.

You are paying 12p/kWh for your electric heating (via storage heaters and a hot water tank).

Mains gas is currently around 10.3p per kWh, but allowing for even a 90% boiler efficiency that becomes 11.4p/kWh if heat delivered to a home.

The difference between 12p and 11.4p is only 5%.

I can't say why your electricity bill is £4200 a year, but you wouldn't be saving much with gas heat rather than E7.

Freebird53

With your reliance on Electricity, would PV Solar panels not be a good investment?

born_again

TBH.
It would be better if the "Average Household" cap was dropped & they started to use the "Cost per unit" cap as the headline figure.
Blame the regulator for starting the "Cap" & how they set it out. Then the media for the way they have feed this out to the public. Making many think it was the max they would pay, & then all these groups scaring people with the "What you may be paying" Going forward. When all they are doing is guess work.

Live for today, not what someone thinks may happen next year. 👍

EssexHebridean

QrizB said:

yoddom said:

Like i said , gas energy is a lot cheaper for heating.

This might be your belief but it is not correct.

You are paying 12p/kWh for your electric heating (via storage heaters and a hot water tank).

Mains gas is currently around 10.3p per kWh, but allowing for even a 90% boiler efficiency that becomes 11.4p/kWh if heat delivered to a home.

The difference between 12p and 11.4p is only 5%.

I can't say why your electricity bill is £4200 a year, but you wouldn't be saving much with gas heat rather than E7.

I've long said that I suspect we'd not actually reduce our heating spend much if at all if we had gas CH installed - and allowing for the massive upheaval, and the cost of the installation, our feeling is that it would just simply never actually end up being cost or lifestyle effective for us.  

I did have to smile at the reference to gas for cooking being a "luxury" though - realistically these days with the cost of the SC and now a higher unit cost as well, it probably doesn't actually cost us much different than it would if we were using electricity - in fact had we realised when the kitchen was done a few years ago that the days of 0% standing charges being a realistic option were quite so numbered we would almost certainly have gone the electric route with an induction hob back then, and that in turn would have given us the option to now make savings. As it is we're sticking with gas for the time being - but it does cost us very nearly £100 a year before we so much as light a burner. 

As for how you can save OP - lots of good advice already being given here as a starting point. I suspect the person who said you have higher day use than you imagine you do could be on to something - allowing for storage heating not always being as "hot" in the evenings as you might like is there a possibility that some of the other members of the household are using additional heating methods like standard plug in heaters or oil filled rads to boost their warmth in the evenings? You don't say what the make-up of the household is but assuming you have children/young adults in the mix, heavy-spec gaming computers or extended length showers being taken? another thing mentioned above is the savings being made possible by a household cooking & eating together - does this happen or do you have different meals at different times? Again this could be bumping your cooking bills. 

Astria

QrizB said:

yoddom said:

Like i said , gas energy is a lot cheaper for heating.

This might be your belief but it is not correct.

You are paying 12p/kWh for your electric heating (via storage heaters and a hot water tank).

Mains gas is currently around 10.3p per kWh, but allowing for even a 90% boiler efficiency that becomes 11.4p/kWh if heat delivered to a home.

The difference between 12p and 11.4p is only 5%.

I can't say why your electricity bill is £4200 a year, but you wouldn't be saving much with gas heat rather than E7.

I had air conditioning installed in my garage because it worked out cheaper than using gas as you get more heat output per kWh, it's not quite as efficient when it's below zero outside, but it can still easily beat any other kind of electric heating, plus in the summer it doubles up as a cooling unit.

QrizB

Let's take this one step further.

The "typical dual fuel household" uses 2900kWh of electricity a year and 12000kWh of gas and this costs £2500.

Let's imagine that the OP uses that same amount, with 2900kWh a year of day-rate electricity at 47p/kWh and 12000kWh a year of night-rate electricity at 12p/kWh, plus £150 a year of standing charge.

This would cost a total of £2953. Yes that's about 18% more expensive than the dual-fuel cap but it's a lot less than the £4200 the OP is paying.

It seems like the OP is using perhaps 50% more energy than the typical household, and this is the reason for the higher bills.

matelodave

Look at it another way, if you add the gas and leccy together then his household consumption of energy is 2900+12000 = 14900kwh a year

So if he adds his nightime use(heat and hot water = 12,00kwh) and daytime use (2900kwh) together (as kwh) then typically he should be using 14900kwh.If he's using more than that , either overnight or during the day) then he's not typical.

We aren't really typical, as there are only two of us and we are at home all day we live in a large detached bungalow but, like the OP we are all electric.

Our Energy  Performance Certificate estimates that for heat and hot water we should be using around 15,000kwh plus whatever else for lighting, washing, cooking etc, say 2900kwh, so we could expect to need around 18,000kwh a year. BUT we've got a heat pump which is very much more efficient than a storage heater (300% for the heatpump compared with 100% for a storage heater). We actually only use 7500kwh of electricity. even though we use a lot more energy than we actually buy.

I'm also guessing that the OP is using quite a lot of electricity at the peak rate compared with what he's using off-peak, all our electricty is at the standard rate of 34.5p/kwh

based on our consumption of 7500kwh at 34.5p = £2587.5 plus £143.35 we expect to pay around £2750 a year which TBH is pretty good for an all electric house thats occupied and heated for most of the time.

MattMattMattUK

yoddom said:

no, am not charging EV's
90mins of 2.6KW immersion heating water in a triple lagged tank. (showers only)
The majority usage is 3-4 hrs 12KW electric storage heating at night, for use during the following day.
(this is the min we can get away with)

yoddom said:

It is very well insulated

We have a new efficient heating system

Those statements seem contradictory. First a "new efficient heating system" would only really be an air or ground source heat pump, not storage heaters. Secondly I find it surprising that somewhere "very well insulated" would need 36-48kWh of heating ever day.

yoddom said:

Like i said , gas energy is a lot cheaper for heating.

Gas is cheaper than an electric heating system which uses resistance to generate heat but not my much as Qriz shows above, it is more expensive than a well designed, installed and used air-source heat pump and is much more expensive than a ground-source heat pump.

[Deleted User]

Perhaps this thread should be retitled?

The myth of the 'typical user' - you are almost certainly not one.

This would have the benefit of being true for all.