Energy Suppliers

Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2002
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6,824
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Bath
the heating/hot water is literally controlled by the company who owns all the buildings around here there is no choice not to use them.
there's a pellet or coal fired boiler down the street that's connected to all the properties for heating/hot water.
our boilers have no heating elements the hot water from the industrial boiler place travels through my boiler via a pipe that circles back to the plant, the heat of this water heats my boiler.

0.041600 per kilowatt hours (only bill I can find for November says I used 69 kilowatt hours for the whole month)
0.235300 standing charge per day


the actual charge per kilowatt hours is probably cheap but 70% of my bill is standing charges.

which is obviously annoying

my electric is different and I can change companies.


the thread is titled "energy suppliers" so I'm guessing hot water/heating still counts as a discussion

Centralised heating systems are very common in northern Europe and Russia, the heat travels as superheated compressed steam and suffers very little loss of temp.
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Jul 2003
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9,595
Or if you have loads of spare time... old laptop batteries.


Not sure I'd sleep all that soundly with a load of old laptop batteries charging in the garage :p

(I haven't watched the video, maybe he addresses the fire hazard)

On that thought, do home insurers cover these home battery systems or have they not caught up? We've seen how hard it is to put out electric car fires so I'm assuming you'd need to inform your home insurance of the risk, they may not deem it any worse than gas though I guess.
 
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Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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14,048
Location
West Midlands
Not sure I'd sleep all that soundly with a load of old laptop batteries charging in the garage :p

It's not in his house, I believe it is in a shed, in a shipping container type thing. He is Australian. :D

On that thought, do home insurers cover these home battery systems or have they not caught up? We've seen how hard it is to put our electric car fires so I'm assuming you'd need to inform your home insurance of the risk, they may not deem it any worse than gas though I guess.

I chose to buy rather than build due to this very issue, a free get out clause for the insurance should anything go wrong with a home made pack.
 
Associate
Joined
19 Oct 2010
Posts
1,991
What's the cost of decent batteries these days? Might be the way to go as it would pay for or at least subsidise the bettery over a few years.

I guess there are two factors. One do you have an electric car/high usage household and two what capacity battery you go for as that would have an impact on cost.

Approx £8k for a 13.5kw Tesla. If you know your usage then you can work it out if it works for you financially. I know my house uses less than 13.5kw daily so it's perfect for me.
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Apr 2007
Posts
13,456
Reminds me to look into doing my own solar install, if only a couple of hundred watts would deal with the idle power of the house. Got plenty of space on the garage roof.
 

TNA

TNA

Caporegime
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Greater London
Approx £8k for a 13.5kw Tesla. If you know your usage then you can work it out if it works for you financially. I know my house uses less than 13.5kw daily so it's perfect for me.
Interesting but bit on the steep side for me to recover enough on it. Will have to wait and see what’s what come April and what happens with the Russia issue. Also we may eventually get subsidies on this kind of stuff or at least no VAT or something. Plus with more and more Gigafactories we may benefit from cheaper batteries due to economies of scale. Well I hope so anyway. If not will see what’s what in a few years time and get the whole thing including solar panels done during a extension being carried out.
 
Associate
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Land of Dragons
Solar and batteries is/will be the way to go, both have come down a huge amount over the last couple of years.
Build your own battery, 7.2kw of batteries + the grid tie can be done for 1K now, 14.4Kw for about 800 more.

I use just three panels, two to batteries and one 330W on a grid tie inverter feeding directly into the house to cover background use like fridge/freezer ect.
The two going to the batteries feed another grid tie that feeds into the house on a timer when its dark. (only 2kw to play with but usually only use 1kw of that)

Works well for me but every ones needs will be different.
 

TNA

TNA

Caporegime
Joined
13 Mar 2008
Posts
27,194
Location
Greater London
Solar and batteries is/will be the way to go, both have come down a huge amount over the last couple of years.
Build your own battery, 7.2kw of batteries + the grid tie can be done for 1K now, 14.4Kw for about 800 more.

I use just three panels, two to batteries and one 330W on a grid tie inverter feeding directly into the house to cover background use like fridge/freezer ect.
The two going to the batteries feed another grid tie that feeds into the house on a timer when its dark. (only 2kw to play with but usually only use 1kw of that)

Works well for me but every ones needs will be different.
I could probably do it watching some YouTube videos but man the idea of messing with electric is not appealing as one day may get back home to a house burnt down and insurance company not being interested :cry:
 
Associate
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Land of Dragons
I could probably do it watching some YouTube videos but man the idea of messing with electric is not appealing as one day may get back home to a house burnt down and insurance company not being interested :cry:

Mine is in the shed/Workshop at the bottom of the garden all feed into the ring main it there, if it burns down I will still have my house !. :)

The grid tie micro inverters you use for each solar panel just plug into a standard 13A socket.
 

TNA

TNA

Caporegime
Joined
13 Mar 2008
Posts
27,194
Location
Greater London
Mine is in the shed/Workshop at the bottom of the garden all feed into the ring main it there, if it burns down I will still have my house !. :)

The grid tie micro inverters you use for each solar panel just plug into a standard 13A socket.
Interesting. I plan on building a mancave/office there in a year or two. Maybe will do something there :)
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Feb 2015
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12,596
Just had the following from Bulb:
Your account:

should have £115.94 credit

showed £290.59 debit on your last statement

That means your account balance is £406.53 behind. So we’ll increase your payments from £173.43 to £242.87 on Thursday 3rd February to avoid your account building up further debit over winter.

They increased my bill from £124 to £173 in October so it's gone from £124 to £242 in less than 4 months. :mad:

Interestingly they openly admitted they want you to have a 3 figure credit balance instead of £0. Perhaps they are willing to pay you interest on that credit balance?
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Mar 2003
Posts
14,059
Interestingly they openly admitted they want you to have a 3 figure credit balance instead of £0. Perhaps they are willing to pay you interest on that credit balance?

Look at the context, they were paying £173 in December so a £117 credit isn’t exactly large when there is still 2 months of very high usage left.
 
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