Winter is coming - are people ready?

Keu

michaels said:

WE were looking at an £8k energy bill based on our usage, being clever with tariffs and frugal reduced this is £3000 (would have been £5300 on standard cap rate).  For example rolling 12 m gas is down from 38k kwh to 17.5k kwh.  House was noticeably cold over the winter and we used electric throws and individual room heating.

WE are changing tariff to one that better suits our winter usage pattern and have added a second hand heat pump into the heating circuit for this winter which we will run using night rate (8p per kwh) electricity from the car battery (V2H) where possible so hoping the bill will be down to £2500.

So you run a pub ???

strawb_shortcake

@Robin9 but that's based on a larger household, I would like to think this will reduce around 20% from the 3300kwh. The gaming PC use being drastically reduced I think will be the main contributing factor. Sorry MSE won't let me quote 

Keu

born_again said:

Keu said:

badmemory said:

I would be wary of trusting the gas usage too strongly.  My heating is always on thermostat at the same temp all yr round.  It has only come on once in the last 4 months, which is absolutely unheard of.  The nearest I have come to that in the last decade is once for 2 full months.  I am prepared for large bills but frankly hoping we don't have a winter of -10 degs again.

Wow, I would never feel comfortable to have the heating on thermostat unless it was below zero outside, never mind in the summer, albeit that we had April showers for a lot of it.

I have found this the cheapest way to heat our home. we use HIVE.
As someone is at home all the time, then just having 2 settings 17C overnight 21:30 to 06:00 & 20C rest of time (suits our home) gave us a good saving, compared to several different on/off settings we had previously.

Sad thing is. It actually heated the radiators this morning... Not what I wanted, but did make for a nice warm bathroom for a shower 🤣

But every home is different. What works for me, will not work for others. 👍

I think that is what my sister does, my home has been 24C with no heating because of the hot weather, I bit cooler today but still 22.5C with no heating or use of hot water, in fact I had the windows all open as it was stuffy.  As you say every home is different.  Mine is not too bad, a bit of a kiln in the sun but feels bloody cold when we have had a lot of rain. 

I feel a kind of duty to cut back, especially with the suffering in Ukraine, so I am kind of in solidarity with them.

RelievedSheff

Are people ready?

Well that will vary so wildly from household to household.

We would like to think we are. We use around 2400kwh of electricity and 6000kwh of gas per year which has been relatively stable over the 4 years we have lived here.

We are currently about £300 in credit with our energy company and our monthly direct debit is set at £113. So we would hope to see the winter through.

We don't skimp on heating. We live in a 4 year old "new build" in the east midlands and the heating is always on the thermostat it comes on when it needs do. Most years that's around November before it starts to kick in. We don't do being cold at home!

JohnSwift10

The temperature in my house when we got up this morning was 18.4 deg C just liveable for a couple of 77 year olds  but by 1 pm it had dropped to 17.2 deg C and we were feeling cold so I turned the thermostat up from 15 deg C where it has been since May. And according to my smart meter the gas usage has been 21 kWh since then.

3 bed semi with combi and 8 radiators 

pensionpawn

RelievedSheff said:

Are people ready?

Well that will vary so wildly from household to household.

We would like to think we are. We use around 2400kwh of electricity and 6000kwh of gas per year which has been relatively stable over the 4 years we have lived here.

We are currently about £300 in credit with our energy company and our monthly direct debit is set at £113. So we would hope to see the winter through.

We don't skimp on heating. We live in a 4 year old "new build" in the east midlands and the heating is always on the thermostat it comes on when it needs do. Most years that's around November before it starts to kick in. We don't do being cold at home!

...and I thought we were doing well with 3468 elec and 8395 gas for a family of three adults (and one gaming PC) in a well insulated 26 year old 4 bed detached. We have Nest set to 20c during the day, 21c in the evening and and 12c from 11pm - 8am throughout the year and the UFH to come before we get up to take the chill off our stone floors. All electric (inc UFH for 2/3 of the ground floor) with gas only for C/H & HW. Solar panels, though no battery / EV. 

wrf12345

Weather cycle is supposed to be 13 years, the last Siberian type winter was about, er, 13 years ago... have already ordered a heated vest and fleece lined trouser from Aliexpress.

110kw per month in Dec/Jan is that per month, nearly 4kw per day, assuming ten hours of daylight that would be 400W per hour or about ten percent efficiency compared to a sunny day - that seems pretty good (although max efficiency is possibly higher on a sunny winter day because panels are cooler), just a pity you don't get the full rate back from the greedy electric companies.

pensionpawn

wrf12345 said:

Weather cycle is supposed to be 13 years, the last Siberian type winter was about, er, 13 years ago... have already ordered a heated vest and fleece lined trouser from Aliexpress.

110kw per month in Dec/Jan is that per month, nearly 4kw per day, assuming ten hours of daylight that would be 400W per hour or about ten percent efficiency compared to a sunny day - that seems pretty good (although max efficiency is possibly higher on a sunny winter day because panels are cooler), just a pity you don't get the full rate back from the greedy electric companies.

Across Dec - Jan you're looking at around an average of 8.5 hours of (potential, you'll probably not see the sun much) daylight. Efficiency is inversely proportional to temperature however at the winter solstice the sun is merely 15 degrees above the horizon at noon, compared to 62 degrees on the summer solstice. Attached are my previous Dec / Jan generation figures. My panels are 4 kWs due east and 3.12 kWs due west.

pensionpawn

My near perfect (I've never exceeded 8 kWhrs) December day profile attached. As you can see, the peak generation of 1.25 kWs isn't long and if cooking, ironing etc isn't going to prevent import, which for that day 22 kWhrs!

RelievedSheff

pensionpawn said:

RelievedSheff said:

Are people ready?

Well that will vary so wildly from household to household.

We would like to think we are. We use around 2400kwh of electricity and 6000kwh of gas per year which has been relatively stable over the 4 years we have lived here.

We are currently about £300 in credit with our energy company and our monthly direct debit is set at £113. So we would hope to see the winter through.

We don't skimp on heating. We live in a 4 year old "new build" in the east midlands and the heating is always on the thermostat it comes on when it needs do. Most years that's around November before it starts to kick in. We don't do being cold at home!

...and I thought we were doing well with 3468 elec and 8395 gas for a family of three adults (and one gaming PC) in a well insulated 26 year old 4 bed detached. We have Nest set to 20c during the day, 21c in the evening and and 12c from 11pm - 8am throughout the year and the UFH to come before we get up to take the chill off our stone floors. All electric (inc UFH for 2/3 of the ground floor) with gas only for C/H & HW. Solar panels, though no battery / EV. 

We only have two adults in the house in a 3 bed detached. No solar panels and no EV with gas combi boiler and electric shower.

Heating is set to 20 degrees for an hour in the morning while we are getting up and ready for work and then it turns down to 16 degrees during the day while we are out, coming back up again to 20 degrees for four hours in the evening and then 16 again overnight.

The house is super insulated and really holds it heat well which is welcome during the winter but not so much in the summer!

We returned home from a two week holiday yesterday and the house was 26 degrees inside. Had to spend the day with all the windows and doors open to air it and cool it down.