How was your month?

QrizB

October was a pretty low energy month, considering it's the wrong side of the equinox.

As a household we bought 110kWh of electricity (and only 5kwh of those were peak rate) and 25m3 of gas (about 280kWh). It helps that my eldest has gone away to university so for this month we were a three-person household, not four.

We also used 162kWh of electricity from the solar panels on the roof.

mmmmikey

Living on my own in a mid-sized three bed bungalow. Retired so need heat during the day, and health issues mean that I need to keep the bungalow fairly warm. I've been using the woodstove and heaters since early September.

170kWh for me, down from 561kWh last year. This is what I bought, not what I actually used. I have solar panels and a battery system. This time of year, I top the battery up overnight using cheap rate E7 electricity. Of the 170kWh, just 3 kWh was bought at peak rate, with the other 167kWh bought at 6.9p/kWh - so the technology is certainly working for me at the moment Much of the saving comes from switching off the night storage heaters and relying on a wood stove, supplemented by gas cabinet heaters. I now use lpg for water heating and most cooking. As you can see from the chart, this isn't just down to heating, I also made big savings in the summer months, mainly through adding capacity and optimising the use of the batteries and paring my electrcity usage down to the bare minimum

EDIT: the chart shows orange bars for 2021 and red bars for 2022

p.s. as a quick aside, a couple of tips if your woodstove makes the room too hot.....

1. Take a look at Lekto Night Briquettes - these are made of bark chippings and burn very slowly. Light the stove as normal, and as soon as you have a roaring fire, put a bark briquette on. Once the briquette is burning well, turn down the airflow. This will keep the stove running at a low heat for several hours. Works for me - you can do the same using a big, dense, slow burning log instead of the night briquettes, but using the night briquettes at first makes it easy while you are developing the technique.

2. Don't stress about trying to keep the stove lit. If you let it go too low, just put a bit of kindling on and a couple of small logs and re-light it. I found that I was so focused on keeping the stove going when I first got it that I tended to put too much wood on, making it too hot.

Hope these tips help someone.

foshank

Retired couple in 2 bed end of terrace house. Gas only for CH and hot water. Electric cooking. Usage down this Oct compared to last year. Electric 140.9 kWh (183.68 in 2021). Gas 50.31 kWh (60.41 last year). Heating not yet switched on but with dropping temps may not be off much longer.

QrizB

mmmmikey said:

I have solar panels and a battery system. This time of year, I top the battery up overnight using cheap rate E7 electricity. Of the 170kWh, just 3 kWh was bought at peak rate, with the other 167kWh bought at 6.9p/kWh - so the technology is certainly working for me at the moment

Were they fitted in March this year? That's where the big changes start to happen on the chart!

MuckChucker

As the BG site is so rubbish I never thought to check previous years but I've just given it a try after being inspired by some of you kind peoples' contributions. I only have gas figures as electric isn't there - aforementioned rubbish site strikes again!

I need to double check how BGs figures compare to what I pulled from the Bright app but ether way, I'm over the moon with the new boiler performance combined with refining some household habits




What's a little depressing is when you click the "Spent in £" button to see that all the good work is costing much the same. Oh well, it'll stand to us in the future when/if all this madness subsides

Effician

October started great with the Gov't paying for September usage & adding £25 to the energy account as well, October electric usage came in at 85kWh so another free month to come & more credit to the variable d/d account, at this rate we'll have no energy to pay for 'til July next year.

2 of us in most of the time , 3 bed 150yr old mid terraced house in the midlands , electric only plus a log burner & no solar.

mmmmikey

QrizB said:

Were they fitted in March this year? That's where the big changes start to happen on the chart!

March was when I looked at energy prices, thought "something has to be done" and turned off the night storage heaters.

As well as that, there's quite a lot happening behind the total figures shown.

I swicthed to gas water heating at the beginning of July, and did the battery system changes (including increased capacity) at the beginning of September.

Some of the saving over the summer months came from doing an energy audit and turning a few things off. I've done this every now and again in the past, but (a) things tend to creep back in (such as the standby load from an electrically adjustable bed), and (b) the economics have changed drastically with rising prices, making, for example, the cost of leaving the Sonos speakers on standby more than the value (to me).

Anothe big consideration concerns the relative price of E7 overnight electricity and the export tariff. Although I don't have to pay for using solar energy I generate myself, it does cost me in the sense that it reduces the amount I get for selling my export (which is metered). If the export rate is about the same as the E7 overnight rate, I might as well charge the battery overnight when I'm guaranteed to be able to fully charge it. If I leave it empty so I can charge it with solar the folloiwng day I run the risk of insufficient sunshine to fully charge the battery and not having enough when I need it and having to pay full E7 day rate charges. For the period between my fixed tariff ending and moving to the EPG, the difference in cost was enough to make it worthwhile watching the weather forecaste and actively managing the charging regime to use solar energy.

Hope this makes sense

Alnat1

Solar and batteries are the best new toy I've ever had. So much satisfaction from playing with incoming and outgoing electricity and saving £s 😁

michaels

Our leccy import was aboit the same as last year at 1000kwh but part of this is we are heating hot water tank via immersion during our new offpeak rate window.

Gas was 1550 compred to 2100 same month last year but then it has been mild and of course some of the hot water is now done by electric. Rolling 12m has is down to 26k from 38k 12 months ago. Hoise is not as warm and welcoming as it used to be.  Bit then we used to shop aroimd for cheapest deal and pay 2k, same usage on price cap would have been about 8k. Changes put in place should bring this down to below 4k.

Shame the mortgage is likely to go up from 6k pa to 18k when our fix ends next autumn. 

Cautiouslyoptimistic

First time poster so hello everyone

I'm a single dad with three teenagers living in a 4-bed detached in the NW of England. About 6 weeks ago my So Energy gas and electric fixed tariff 'So Cherry' came to an end and I was placed on their 'So Flex' tariff which is essentially capped at the October rates.  The estimated gas and electric cost for the year was £4,687.28 and approximately £3,000 of that was predicted gas use. I must admit I nearly passed out as the bill had doubled.  Anyway, I'm a Contractors Commercial Manager for a job so I don't mind interrogating the costs. So, I scheduled out all of last years gas and electric use and I was quite astonished. 27,500kwh gas used and 5,100 kwh electric. 24,000kwh of the gas was between October and March, so basically last year I had the gas central heating on permanently for 6 months.  Ridiculous. 

So, I've now put a spreadsheet together allowing maximum 1 hour a day between October and March and this will reduce 27,000 kwh down to 4,666 kwh per day. Just in october last year we used 2,048 kwh and this year that same use was 338 kwh. 

My plan which I've put into action already is to use my 5kwh log burning stove in the living room on cold days.  I've increased the log storage at one side of the property to 2,000 Litres in 3 plastic garden Keter boxes with hinged lids.  I get 2 builders 1 ton bags of chopped firewood logs delivered on the 1st of each month for £55 a bag, and he even throws in a large bag of kindling wood for that, so all in a month £110.00 or £660 for 6 months saving £2,340 of that estimated bill.  October has gone to plan and I'm not expecting to deviate. The log burner is great, it really warms up the living room and connected dining room and with the hall door open the heat trickles up the stairs.

I only bought the Blithfield Clock log burning stove 3 years ago as a bit of a feature to replace a 30-year-old gas fire, but what a life saver that has turned into.  Me and the kids love it, and it will save us a packet so much that we are now in a large amount of credit with our energy supplier having built up a credit balance over summer and I'm now going to ask for the majority of that back since we fully expect to manage until at least next April on a monthly payment of just £230 per month.