Is my electric usage too high?

MeteredOut

Petriix said:

Niksi06 said:

I own the property it was built in 1889 has no mains gas the meter is over 40 years old 

So, as a priority, look into getting a heat pump installed. The upfront cost might seem high but it will soon be recovered from the savings on your bill. 

I caution against that without first checking out the home's insulation. A heat pump can be a very expensive way to heat a house that has high heat losses, and this one was built in 1889....

Reed_Richards

MeteredOut said:

Petriix said:

Niksi06 said:

I own the property it was built in 1889 has no mains gas the meter is over 40 years old 

So, as a priority, look into getting a heat pump installed. The upfront cost might seem high but it will soon be recovered from the savings on your bill. 

I caution against that without first checking out the home's insulation. A heat pump can be a very expensive way to heat a house that has high heat losses, and this one was built in 1889....

Well yes, of course it can.  As equally can be gas or oil central heating, night storage heaters etc.  There's a myth that a heat pump is ill-suited to a house with high heat losses.  It's just a myth, so nobody ever explains why it should be so.  The truth of the matter is that a house with high heat losses can be very expensive to heat.  That's all there is to it!  

FreeBear

Reed_Richards said:

MeteredOut said:

Petriix said:

Niksi06 said:

I own the property it was built in 1889 has no mains gas the meter is over 40 years old 

So, as a priority, look into getting a heat pump installed. The upfront cost might seem high but it will soon be recovered from the savings on your bill. 

I caution against that without first checking out the home's insulation. A heat pump can be a very expensive way to heat a house that has high heat losses, and this one was built in 1889....

Well yes, of course it can.  As equally can be gas or oil central heating, night storage heaters etc.  There's a myth that a heat pump is ill-suited to a house with high heat losses.  It's just a myth, so nobody ever explains why it should be so.  The truth of the matter is that a house with high heat losses can be very expensive to heat.  That's all there is to it!  

Yup. A heat pump is just another source of heat. If you are losing massive amounts of energy through the fabric of the building, it makes little difference in how you heat the place. Reduce the cold draughts and improve insulation levels will pay dividends regardless of the heat source.

When I took on *this place, gas consumption was around 8-10,000kWh per year. Improving insulation levels, installing a programmable thermostat, and eventually replacing the CH system has cut gas consumption down to ~3000kWh - Perhaps surprising is the replacement gas boiler has made little difference to actual consumption.

I think the "myth" of heat pumps comes from early days where systems were poorly specified and configured. People expecting them to run hot like a gas/oil boiler would, so crank up the flow temperatures, killing the COP in the process. Correctly specified and set up, a heat pump should not be any more expensive to run than a gas/oil boiler. Pick the right tariff, and it would be even cheaper (except for the coldest of days).

mmmmikey

Niksi06 said:

mmmmikey said:

Niksi06 said:

I own the property it was built in 1889 has no mains gas the meter is over 40 years old 

Probably not a faulty meter but worth getting it replaced with a smart meter that will give you access to a range of tarifffs There are quite a few options around different heater types. Something you can look at is reducing the mount of energy you need to stay warm by delivering it only where and when you need it. For example, you could quite possibly get away with only having heating in the bedroom for 20 minutes at bedtime and 20 minutes in the morning. And if you live on your own, a small infrared heater that focuses it's output on the end of the sofa you sit on when watching TV could keep you warmer and for less cost than an electric radiator that heats the whole room. You get the idea.

At the risk of being a prophet of doom, the Martin Lewis / Ofgem proposal for reducing standing charges for low users is to put the costs on high users like you. The reasoning is that people with high bills are rich and so somehow it's fairer they should subsidise people with low bills who are poor.  I'll leave you to form your own view on that. The reason I'm raising this is that not only is electric heating expensive now there's a fair chance that an unintended consequence of the proposed subsidies for low users is that electric heating will become even more expensive than it is now. So well worth focusing on finding the best tariff and working on ways to reduce energy usage without sacrificing comfort.

Thank you,
I have invested and paid to have a multifuel burner installed in one of the old chimneys, I'm hoping with size of my property it will be sufficient to heat at least the downstairs enough so that I can get rid of the downstairs rads and just use the bedroom one when I need it.

Sounds like an excellent idea to me, and is more or less what I did (but in a bungalow) and works well for me. Fuel for the stove can be expensive if you have to buy it, especialy if you buy it in small quantities. I bought a small piece of woodland to go with mine so most of my fuel is "free", but when I've needed to buy it I've found this to be about the cheapest source of paid fuel, the significant caveat being that depending on where you live, logs can sometimes be bought locally for less.

https://www.foxtimber.co.uk/fox-blox-briquettes/

Note that these are made from genuinely recycled waste from a timber mill and as such there's a finite amount available, so when it's gone it's gone. I've generally found it easy enough to source in the summer. One of the advantages of briquettes is that they stack and are easily stored if you have limited space, and there also very clean burning with a satisfying flame.

You mention "one of the chimneys" - apologies if I'm stating something that's obvious to you, but in case not it's worth making sure that any unused chimneys are sealed off as you can lose a lot of heat up them. You can just stuff a piece of loft insulation up the chimney of you have an open fire.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the fire gives you all the extra heat you need, but if not something to think about is a hight heat retention storage heater in a central location to give background heat in the day. Works well for me - the storage heater uses cheap overnight electricity and keeps the bungalow comfortable in the day, and then I light the log burner in the evening. Saves money on petrol because it creates such a welcoming environment that my friends tend to come to meet at mine rather than me travel to them.

Enjoy the stove when it arrives and have a great Christmas, Mike

MeteredOut

Reed_Richards said:

MeteredOut said:

Petriix said:

Niksi06 said:

I own the property it was built in 1889 has no mains gas the meter is over 40 years old 

So, as a priority, look into getting a heat pump installed. The upfront cost might seem high but it will soon be recovered from the savings on your bill. 

I caution against that without first checking out the home's insulation. A heat pump can be a very expensive way to heat a house that has high heat losses, and this one was built in 1889....

Well yes, of course it can.  As equally can be gas or oil central heating, night storage heaters etc.  There's a myth that a heat pump is ill-suited to a house with high heat losses.  It's just a myth, so nobody ever explains why it should be so.  The truth of the matter is that a house with high heat losses can be very expensive to heat.  That's all there is to it!  

FreeBear said:

Reed_Richards said:

MeteredOut said:

Petriix said:

Niksi06 said:

I own the property it was built in 1889 has no mains gas the meter is over 40 years old 

So, as a priority, look into getting a heat pump installed. The upfront cost might seem high but it will soon be recovered from the savings on your bill. 

I caution against that without first checking out the home's insulation. A heat pump can be a very expensive way to heat a house that has high heat losses, and this one was built in 1889....

Well yes, of course it can.  As equally can be gas or oil central heating, night storage heaters etc.  There's a myth that a heat pump is ill-suited to a house with high heat losses.  It's just a myth, so nobody ever explains why it should be so.  The truth of the matter is that a house with high heat losses can be very expensive to heat.  That's all there is to it!  

I think the "myth" of heat pumps comes from early days where systems were poorly specified and configured. People expecting them to run hot like a gas/oil boiler would, so crank up the flow temperatures, killing the COP in the process. Correctly specified and set up, a heat pump should not be any more expensive to run than a gas/oil boiler. Pick the right tariff, and it would be even cheaper (except for the coldest of days).

I'm not talking about the myth. I'm talking about real-life examples where a properly configured heat-pump cost more to heat the fabric of a poorly insulated building. Whilst gas prices are still (in relative terms) cheaper than electricity, I still maintain it is too simplistic to say that people should swap out gas boilers with heat pumps alone and expect lower energy bills.

Reed_Richards

MeteredOut said:

I'm not talking about the myth. I'm talking about real-life examples where a properly configured heat-pump cost more to heat the fabric of a poorly insulated building.... 

More than what?  More than the same building with added insulation?  Nobody will argue with that.  If it's more than something else then you're not actually giving us any of those "real life examples".

MeteredOut said:

...Whilst gas prices are still (in relative terms) cheaper than electricity, I still maintain it is too simplistic to say that people should swap out gas boilers with heat pumps alone and expect lower energy bills.

I would agree to that but that's not the tenure of your original comment.  Gas is much cheaper per kWh than electricity so the best-installed heat pump will not give you a huge saving, in percentage terms, over the cost of gas central heating.  But the OP has an all-electric house so it's hardly relevant in this instance.     
  

Scot_39

MeteredOut said:

Petriix said:

Niksi06 said:

I own the property it was built in 1889 has no mains gas the meter is over 40 years old 

So, as a priority, look into getting a heat pump installed. The upfront cost might seem high but it will soon be recovered from the savings on your bill. 

I caution against that without first checking out the home's insulation. A heat pump can be a very expensive way to heat a house that has high heat losses, and this one was built in 1889....

Surely with any over unity COP factor at all - it would still be cheaper than conventional electric.

And solid wall housing is common in many parts of UK - and those who use gas - pay more to heat than those in better by build insulated properties.

A lot of the drive to high COP efficiency - low rad temps, good insulation etc - is to drop the costs to what people are used to - that of gas heating.

And of course importantly to constrain peak demand on the grid.

Asking someone to shift say a washing machine cycle - for a few hours is easy - asking someone to switch their heating off for several hours - in a lossy property - something else entirely.

IIRC something like 24m of the 29m domestic homes in the UK are on mains gas and consume 11,500 kWh median TDCV - replacing that energy even with a higher than 3 cop on heating to cover other use like cooking and old gas fires etc - to take that loading down by factor of 3 for electric - would add over 3800 kWh to the current 2700 kWh - to 6500kWh - an increase of 140%.

The planned - 2 year five plans - spend of upto £135bn on grid (upto £77bn to 2030 and £58bn in ESO "Beyond2030" - in next 10 years - isnt just renewables connection and transmission - a lot of which could have been avoided by far better choices of low carbon generation and locations - its grid capacity increase - to transmit that sort of increase in average daily demand.

And many just arent ready for the bill shock that would come with anything worse than that.

So even at a cop on heating to get to that say "overall use of a third energy" - and a price ratio of 4:1 (Ofgem cap ave 24.86 / 6.34 - nearer 4:1) - you still need to cut energy use - to match prices.

FreeBear

Scot_39 said: So even at a cop on heating to get to that say "overall use of a third energy" - and a price ratio of 4:1 (Ofgem cap ave 24.86 / 6.34 - nearer 4:1) - you still need to cut energy use - to match prices.

Switch to an intelligent tariff where off peak rates are lower, and even with a COP of 3, running costs will be lower.

Off peak 04:00 - 07:00, 13:00 - 16:00 & 22:00 - 00:00. Peak rate 16:00 - 19:00.

Scot_39

I wonder how much the temperature would drop in a solid wall property in 3 hours - but at that off peak rate - you could probably go a little higher by 4pm - to ride through some of it.

But the average supplier doesn't offer the same deals.

I was wondering if they would do cosy for nsh and not just ashp - but suspect now they have snug - they would prefer nsh users take that.

The 8 hrs off peak - in a 3+3+2 with decent separation between off peak  - would probably suit me and my lossy heaters better than snugs 6+1 winter only - and a closer fit to my 5+3+2 off peak on E10. E10 is not cheap - I knowingly deliberately pay a premium over e7 for (whilst I can).

But the rates and times of each are different - so it's not a simple comparison.

And its peak rates like that that give succor to the anti-smart meter brigade (despite the savings at other times).  Exactly the sort of peak / surge pricing they have warned folk about for over a decade ago. A response the govt seriously thought would hinder the smart roll out significantly - and so all of us used to have DAPF protection against giving 1/2 hrly data as a result.

Ildhund

Scot_39 said:

I wonder how much the temperature would drop in a solid wall property in 3 hours 

The temperature in this little cottage with 18" stone walls (allegedly with 4" inside insulation) dropped by 3.4ºC in six hours last Sunday night after the fire went out. The outside temperature averaged 4º overnight, with a 16 mph wind broadside on: