How much have you cut you gas consumption by?

michaels

Petriix said:

Gas:

511 m3 which roughly equates to 5,650kWh. Down from around 8,000kWh last year.

The big difference was a year of David Lloyd membership. Poor from a money saving point of view but saving 1,300kWh on water heating was a slight benefit. We're running the heating at 16.5 degrees now and have turned off the advanced heating algorithm so it doesn't preheat the house to temperature. The saving will add up to more this year as the colder winter months are usually Jan-March but it's dependent on the weather.

Electricity:

For the first time I have detailed data by combining the output from the Octopus and Myenergi APIs. 



A nice round 5,500kWh total usage with ~ 3,000kWh going to the car and 2,500kWh for the house. Just under 4,000kWh from the grid (split roughly 3:1 off-peak:peak); 1,550kWh came from solar (with 2,250kWh exported out of 3,800kWh generated).

Points to note: around 40kWh of peak import was specific to the savings sessions which cost ~ £10 but 'earned' about £70.

I actually stopped trying to use so much of the solar (despite having deemed exports) because the 5p Octopus Go rate made it cheaper to load shift where less than 80% of the power was coming from solar. The goal is to minimise peak imports rather than maximise self consumption. 

I am on a 4.5p night rate so would be better off if I could arrange it) for any PV to displace gas to heat the hot water cylinder.

I have an older iboost which works to stop export and a built in timer for a 'boost' which I use to heat the tank on the overnight rate window but we don't have enough stored in the car V2H to do all our electricity and all out hot water so it would be nice to be able to remotely (without going into he loft where the iBoost is located) add a bit more to the DHW as and when.

I do have a wifi switch that does 16A so may put that onto the second tank immersion but that only heats the top of the tank so is limited in how much it can supply.  Obviously I only want to use 4.5p or PV electricity to displace 10.3p gas if I am certain we can meet all our 45p day electricity usage.

dunstonh

I'm not on gas but oil.   We normally use around 2700-3000 litres a year but only filled 1978 litres in 2022 and the tank is at 90% at the moment.

Much of that is due to mild weather but we have used our woodburners more and mothballed one wing of the house and turned heating off at that end.   I bought some rolls of draught excluder and stuck them on a number of windows and doors that were prone to draughts.  That made a big difference and cost was tiny.    It was enough to persuade the ladies in the house to let me lower the thermostat to 20c.

Raxiel

Electric has gone from a fairly consistent average of 10kWh/day to about 6kWh/day from August, when we started taking things more seriously. Saving us about 600kWh on our projected total for 2022.

We managed that just with behavioural changes. The PV initially dropped that to 4.5kWh/day average, but fairly shortly after installation the weather meant we had to go back to using the tumble dryer, but despite that we're still keeping the average around 6.

Gas (heating and hot water only) went from a projected 13kWh to an actual 9kWh. Some seasonal variation in there, and I know a lot of places have had it quite mild. But according to historical figures found online for our particular part of the country, the last few months have been similar or colder to the same dates in 2021, and it's not just because it was mild.

We had internal wall insulation fitted to a large part of the house (at a similar cost to the PV system) where before there was only a tiled timber frame with a few scrappy bits of rockwool, so a big drop was expected.

Petriix

I think having on-demand hot water is massively more efficient, as long as you use it thoughtfully by only running a hot tap if you intend to use a meaningful amount - for a shower or bowl of washing up etc.. Everyone washes hands with cold water.

Having an iboost or similar works for someone with an existing hot water tank and deemed export payments, and probably anyone without mains gas. But it's usually better to export at 15p and use gas at 10p.

Anecdotally my dad's gas consumption went down massively when he ripped out the old water tank and system boiler for an on-demand combi. 

michaels

Petriix said:

I think having on-demand hot water is massively more efficient, as long as you use it thoughtfully by only running a hot tap if you intend to use a meaningful amount - for a shower or bowl of washing up etc.. Everyone washes hands with cold water.

Having an iboost or similar works for someone with an existing hot water tank and deemed export payments, and probably anyone without mains gas. But it's usually better to export at 15p and use gas at 10p.

Anecdotally my dad's gas consumption went down massively when he ripped out the old water tank and system boiler for an on-demand combi. 

15p export only available on Octopus - otherwise 5p is likely to be your best.

Combi boilers struggle with multiple simultaneous showers or hotting up a bath that has cooled.  A modern DHW cylinder is supposed to lose at most 2kwh per day and good ones only lose 1kwh.  Also hot water cylinders can be heated on a 'long burn' which is much more efficient than on/off every time hot water is demanded.

Oh yes and a large house can be heated using a 20kw system boiler with 15 or 22mm gas pipe to wherever the boiler is whereas a combi might need bigger pipes and 35kw or more

Screwdriva

Petriix said:

Having an iboost or similar works for someone with an existing hot water tank and deemed export payments, and probably anyone without mains gas. But it's usually better to export at 15p and use gas at 10p.

Lately, as relatively stability has returned, we've been paid over .20p via Outgoing Agile and have been  paid to heat via immersion via Incoming Agile's plunge pricing. Our net electricity expenses have been negative and gas consumption has reduced further whenever hot water heating isn't required. 

1961Nick

I have a HW cylinder & a heat only boiler. I use Intelligent Octopus to boost the tank overnight to 70C @ 10p/kWh which is probably 3p/kWh cheaper than using the boiler after adjusting for efficiency. That allow me to lower the flow temperature of the central heating & keep the boiler condensing for much longer. The 70C overnight also serves as the Legionella cycle.

ispookie666

We have oil heating and hopefully will not to fill the 1200L tank before end of spring, its half full ☺️. 
Our leccy consumption has gone up to 25-30kwh per day. Winter is always difficult with dehumidifier and now running A2ASHP as main heating(25kwh per week). Unfortunately we do have high base load. 
On the plus side, solar generation is on the uptick and able to load shift 95% to E7 timing

jimjames

Difficult to tell how much is reduction and how much is due to warmer weather but ours is around 25% lower than previous years.