How does the cost of high retention storage heaters compare with oil fired central heating?

Grum123

I have been looking at how I could reduce/avoid burning fossil fuel to heat my home. I am off grid (ie not on gas) and tried for an air source heat pump through my local authority scheme but have been advised that my property is not suitable for this. In order to “go green” I have been advised to consider high retention storage heaters. The information on line seems to suggest that this is really expensive (especially given current prices). Solar panels, which I would love, are also not suitable for my property so I can’t save running costs there. Am I right to think the hrst’s are expensive to run compared with my oil combi boiler? I would be okay with paying a little more to avoid using fossil fuels but everything seems to be pointing to a significant increase in running costs, unless I have misunderstood the info.
Thanks for your thoughts.

QrizB

Could you give a bit more info on your property and why it isn't suitable for an ASHP or for solar PV?

High heat retention storage heaters are often the best option if you have to have direct electric heating, but they're quite expensive to buy and (depending on electricity tariffs) can also be relatively expensive to run.

Oil prices and electricity prices don't necessarily follow each other but (speaking very generally) at the moment, oil is cheaper than off-peak electricity in most regions with most suppliers.

macman

How exactly do you think that using all-electrical heating is going to reduce your fossil-fuel consumption? 40% of UK generation is from gas-fired plant, and will be for years to come. Renewables won't fill that gap, because off-peak heating demand requires power overnight, when solar is producing precisely zero output. Wind power is not consistent, either, so on a cold, dark and windless night it will contribute very little.
Oil is cheaper now, and is likely to continue to be, once you factor in the capital cost of installing NSH's.
Replacing fossil-fuel burn in the home with fossil fuel burn at the power station doesn't in itself reduce global warming.

shinytop

macman said:

How exactly do you think that using all-electrical heating is going to reduce your fossil-fuel consumption? 40% of UK generation is from gas-fired plant, and will be for years to come. Renewables won't fill that gap, because off-peak heating demand requires power overnight, when solar is producing precisely zero output. Wind power is not consistent, either, so on a cold, dark and windless night it will contribute very little.
Oil is cheaper now, and is likely to continue to be, once you factor in the capital cost of installing NSH's.
Replacing fossil-fuel burn in the home with fossil fuel burn at the power station doesn't in itself reduce global warming.

You have answered your own question. It's exactly because 40% is fossil fuel and the rest isn't.  100% of oil central heating is fossil fuel.      

Replacing 100% fossil fuel burn in the home with 60% (and rising) fossil fuel burn at the power station does in itself reduce global warming.      

Price?  Who knows what the future holds.

lohr500

The other thing to remember is that if high retention storage heaters do run low on heat later in the day during a cold spell, you will need peak rate electricity to keep warm. With oil the price is the same night or day.

Grum123

Thanks for your responses. I get my electricity from Bulb, soon to be Octopus as a “green” energy supplier so, theoretically my electricity doesn’t come from using fossil fuels (and yes I know it’s all the same electricity so you can’t distinguish fossil fuel generated from “green” generated
but it’s the best I can do at the moment). 

As regards an ASHP, the advice I have had is that one can’t be positioned far enough away from neighbouring properties to keep the noise level low enough, it has to be below 42 decibels apparently and also my old, small terraced property would need to have 100mm internal wall insulation which would be massively disruptive and make already small rooms even smaller with little gain as large areas of the external walls (where the insulation would need to be) are actually glazed. As for solar, there is not enough roof space for sufficient panels as there are two large velux windows in the roof on the south facing aspect. I did enquire about having them fitted to the garage roof but as that would involve the cabling going across a road that, apparently, is also not acceptable.

mmmmikey

A quick thought from me on this, doesn't really answer the question but something to consider.....

Whether you buy HHR storage heaters or oil fired central heating, you're making an investment with a life expectancy of the order of 20 years (plus or minus a decade or so).

So you need to consider energy prices over that period, not current prices which are distorted by geo-politics and the EPG and so on. I currently pay 7p/kWh for electricity overnight - I don't know the cost of oil but I suspect that makes electricty significantly cheaper. When the EPG comes to an end in March, if we go back to the previous Ofgem system and use the Cornwall Insight figues as a guide, the cost could go up to something like 29p/kWh - a more than fourfold increase, gulp! That will obviously change the economics considerably.

(The horrific increase arises from the way the EPG price is arrived at by applying a fixed 17p/kWh discount to the current Ofgem rate, artificially lowering the current price. Happy to post my working out if anyone is interested.)