Going all electric?

sarahTT

Alnat1 said:

Check your home insurance, most of the policies state that the house must be heated to a minimum temperature at all times, often 10 or 12C. It appears from your post that the house is unheated while you are away.

There may also be a clause that the house cannot be unoccupied for longer than 30/60/90 days, worth checking too.

Hubby is a great reader of policy documents,  manuals and other such documents and we are fully in the clear re all the points you raised. If you re-read my post it should become clear that currently the house is heated... that's precisely why he is concerned while we're away. And it's heated not because of a clause in our insurance (there is none) but simply to make sure that the pipes don't freeze.

Scot_39

Electricity isnt getting cheaper - not on standard tariffs anyway.

And even wholesale renewables costs are increasing - the strike price of offshore wind increased 57% between ar4 and ar6 - we should soon know ar7 pricing.

Let alone the cost of paying renewables not to generate - and the cost of the grid networks - new links and major upgrades to others - still has years - if not decades to run.

The all electric cap has increased 7.4% in the last 3 months / 2 revisions.

Lowering wholesale gas prices have kept the dual fuel cap rise to 2.2% - despite all of the govt policy and net zero strategy cost additions.

And our populist politicians are running scared of sharing that net zero pain with the c85% who are on the gas grid and their cheaper energy costs /kWh.  Those actually generating those nasty greenhouse gas emissions at home.

And those that have dare put a price and a timescale on it - de-carbonising home and public building heating - like the Scottish Greens did - are no longer in a coalition / power sharing govt role.

lohr500

Call me cynical, but once we have all been forced into using electric vehicles and electric heat pumps, I can't help but think the energy producers will have a monopoly.

I suspect the toothless regulator will be inept at stopping them all from making vast profits at our expense.

QrizB

lohr500 said:

Call me cynical, but once we have all been forced into using electric vehicles and electric heat pumps, I can't help but think the energy producers will have a monopoly. 

If you look at other countries like Australia and Pakistan, it's turning out exactly opposite to that.

Solar PV is getting so cheap that electricty demand from the grid is falling, leaving power generation companies with idle power plants that theyre still making loan payments on.

lohr500

QrizB said:

lohr500 said:

Call me cynical, but once we have all been forced into using electric vehicles and electric heat pumps, I can't help but think the energy producers will have a monopoly. 

If you look at other countries like Australia and Pakistan, it's turning out exactly opposite to that.

Solar PV is getting so cheap that electricty demand from the grid is falling, leaving power generation companies with idle power plants that theyre still making loan payments on.

Fair point.
But I guess they have an enormous land mass in Australia to harness solar relative to the population and probably the same scenario in Pakistan.

Netexporter

lohr500 said:

QrizB said:

lohr500 said:

Call me cynical, but once we have all been forced into using electric vehicles and electric heat pumps, I can't help but think the energy producers will have a monopoly. 

If you look at other countries like Australia and Pakistan, it's turning out exactly opposite to that.

Solar PV is getting so cheap that electricty demand from the grid is falling, leaving power generation companies with idle power plants that theyre still making loan payments on.

Fair point.
But I guess they have an enormous land mass in Australia to harness solar relative to the population and probably the same scenario in Pakistan.

A lot of it is domestic solar and batteries, in Australia. Obviously being in the sun belt helps but even in benighted Blighty it would only require about 1% of the land area to be under solar to meet our gross consumption. Would need a lot of storage to even out the seasonality. I think more land is wasted with golf courses.

Spoonie_Turtle

Netexporter said:

lohr500 said:

QrizB said:

lohr500 said:

Call me cynical, but once we have all been forced into using electric vehicles and electric heat pumps, I can't help but think the energy producers will have a monopoly. 

If you look at other countries like Australia and Pakistan, it's turning out exactly opposite to that.

Solar PV is getting so cheap that electricty demand from the grid is falling, leaving power generation companies with idle power plants that theyre still making loan payments on.

Fair point.
But I guess they have an enormous land mass in Australia to harness solar relative to the population and probably the same scenario in Pakistan.

A lot of it is domestic solar and batteries, in Australia. Obviously being in the sun belt helps but even in benighted Blighty it would only require about 1% of the land area to be under solar to meet our gross consumption. Would need a lot of storage to even out the seasonality. I think more land is wasted with golf courses.

And solar panels of course can be put on rooves of buildings, they don't require open land.

But yes storage is the main problem, even if the rest of the infrastructure were there.

QrizB

Netexporter said:

lohr500 said:

QrizB said:

lohr500 said:

Call me cynical, but once we have all been forced into using electric vehicles and electric heat pumps, I can't help but think the energy producers will have a monopoly. 

If you look at other countries like Australia and Pakistan, it's turning out exactly opposite to that.

Solar PV is getting so cheap that electricty demand from the grid is falling, leaving power generation companies with idle power plants that theyre still making loan payments on.

Fair point.
But I guess they have an enormous land mass in Australia to harness solar relative to the population and probably the same scenario in Pakistan.

A lot of it is domestic solar and batteries, in Australia. 

Also in Pakistan.

Sorry, I should've been clearer that I was talking about demand-side generation (domestic, agricultural and small-scale industrial) rather than larger solar farms.

Edit to add CNN link:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/01/climate/pakistan-solar-boom

There are lots of other articles but this one is fairly approachable.

sarahTT

I think my husband's thinking goes in a similar direction to @QrizB's, mind you not for today or next month, but the medium term.

There's also another point he keeps talking about. We sometimes have friends from Germany visiting and they are always amazed that a country that is in some respects so modern (they can't believe that we've basically gone cashless) is in other areas so backwards: for years now they keep telling us that small-scale solar installs (what they call "balcony power plants") are the best thing since sliced bread. We also go to Belgium regularly and they have similar schemes over there. These are clearly no replacement for a full solar install on the roof but then again they're dirt cheap or so it's claimed. So the hope is that even if we don't want to go full solar, we might at some point in the future be able to use a smaller scale solar install to offset some of our electricity usage.

QrizB

Balcony solar gets a lot of love over on the "Green and Ethical" sub forum but by the letter of the law it's illegal here in the UK. The IEEE wiring regs prohibit connection of a generating plant to a final supply circuit, and those regs are embedded in the Building Regulations.

It'll work perfectly well and there's practically no chance of being "caught" but because it's illegal, you won't find the kit being sold in B&Q. Unlike Germany, where you can pick a system up for about €250.

https://www.tepto.de/Balkonkraftwerke-mit-Trina-440Wp-mit-und-ohne-Montagematerial-M

I understand that 27 of the 27 EU nations have legalised it to one degree or another (the only holdouts are Sweden and Hungary) and the UK is consulting on it, so maybe we'll join them before too long.