Electric Boiler Advice

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LDL wrote: »

Help! I am an Architect who has recently moved in to a rural property in West Oxfordshire. The property uses an electrical wet heating/hotwater system with hot water radiators and two Heatrae Sadia Amptec boilers. I understood this type of system was supposed to be reasonably cost effective. However, having reviewed the electricity consumption of the previous tenant with Npower (the energy supplier) the property is using a whopping 20,000KWh units per annum at a cost of £3000.00. Npower have confirmed this is more than excessive for a two-bedroom house with one/two occupant(s) and is equateable to the consumption of a commercial property. They have suggested I contact Heatrae or find a mechanical services company to have the system investigated. Has anyone had a similar experience with electrical wet systems? Can anyone suggest a services company? Any response would be appreciated.

The average property in UK uses 20,500kWh gas and 3,300kWh electricity.

So your property using electricity only for heating is about the UK average at 20,000kWh.pa

So in terms of consumption there would not appear to be anything unusual.
Also all electrical heating is(has to be!) 100% efficient - you can't destroy energy. So it is difficult to envisage a fault that is causing it to use too much electricity; other than it switches on when it shouldn't!

20,000kWh of electricity shouldn't cost anything like £3,000 in Oxfordshire - that is 15p/kWh.

There are still plenty of tariffs available with electricty at under 10p/kWh giving a bill of under £2,000.

That is still about double the UK average, which demonstrates how expensive these systems are to run. They are not, as you have been given to understand, "reasonably cost effective" - there is no more expensive way of heating than using electricity at daytime rates; it doesn't matter what type of electrical heating(other than heat pumps)