Fully electric house

edwardsl1985

Hi

I live up on a mountain so my current heating options are LPG or oil. I have an old oil boiler which is barely hanging on and will need changing before next winter. A new oil boiler is going to set me back around £5000-£6000.

With how the government are clamping down on fossil fuels, and how the price of oil fluctuates daily and they can double it overnight and blame a war somewhere. I feel like I want to move away from it all completely.

My question is will it be possible to run my whole house of electric with solar panels and batteries?

I have a mid terraced house, 6 radiators. The second bedroom is small and used as an office. I am out most days. I have been looking at electric radiators I can run from an app and look to minimise their use as much as possible. My current electricity use is small, only pay £60 a month.

I was thinking:

• 6 x electric radiators
• electric water heaters under two sinks
• power shower (read somewhere that these use cold water and heat it directly, but may have misunderstood).

The whole cost of this would be around 2-3 k, so half what I will pay for an oil boiler.

I have no idea how to calculate this as I have zero knowledge about electricity. Anyone be able to tell me please, if I got a decent sized solar system with 1 or 2 batteries, is it feasible to run the whole house off solar and essentially free myself from relying on corrupt energy companies?

Moneysavingchap

No. Your solar will not generate enough energy in winter to heat your house alone.

Krakkkers

No, but it would help. How big is your roof and what direction does it face?
I have 4kwp of panels (16 panels) and they produce around 4000 kwh a year but it is mainly in the spring/summer/autumn so when you need it most in the winter there is very little power generated.
You would need a large amount of power to heat the house using 6 electric radiators way beyond what panels on a terraced house could provide in the winter.

QrizB

No, your idea won't work for the reasons already given.

Rather than electric radiators, if you're planning on staying in the house for several years you might want to consider a heat pump.

It'll use roughly a third as much electricity as any direct electric heating will. But you still won't be able to run it from batteries all winter.

Reed_Richards

No, it wont work; basically for the same reason that it is cold in winter.  But at least one forumite has such a large array of solar panels that they earn enough money exporting electricity in summer that it covers their costs in winter.  They use an ASHP for heating. 

The price of oil may have doubled overnight but the price of electricity trebled.  Gas too, I think.

There are big subsidies on offer to install an ASHP.    

Scot_39

See energy trust for more general background / introduction to options for electric and heat pumps

https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/energy-at-home/heating-your-home/

Are you aware of and could you qualify for the ASHP grant ?

It might be a better rout - and the 2-3K on panel heating - could be spent on insulation and larger radiators if needed to increase it's operating efficiency etc.

There is a kind of traditional edit "running" cost hierarchy for electric heating - expensive to cheap

1) normal electric radiators powered by normal single rate electric

2) night storage heaters used with an E7 style tariff (your house could potentially need off peak meter fitting and new consumer unit / internal wiring ) and the best ones are not cheap

3) ASHP

Solar and battery can disrupt that model - significantly when taken over the full year. 

But its a potentially expensive route - taking years to pay back - especially if a low user.

markin

You could spend 12k on batteries, charge on E7 in the winter and still not have the power to run heaters, If the oil tank is ok the oil boiler would probably be the cheapest out of option of battery with panel rads or night storage heaters on E7,  The heatpump that has an £8K grant is the winner if you can stand the look of it at the back or front of the house.

MultiFuelBurner

As others have said Heat pump with grant is the first step which I agree with.

Then you can choose

1) just solar
2) solar and battery (or batteries)
3) just batteries and an E7 or Octopus Go type tariff