Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)

new boy said:
We've used 496KWH of electric this week costing us £110 (and still 2 hours to go)

Does that seem completely crazy for 2 adults and 2 kids in an electric only 3 bed semi
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Yes.
new boy said:
on economy 7 with storage heaters, or is that borderline understandable? It’s a 70s build so not so great insulation etc.
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Actually no.

At those costs you could install air to air heap pumps in most of your rooms and get pay back in a few years. One single ducted unit in your left would run the entire upstairs on its own.

If you haven’t already, you can easily up your loft insulation to a minimum of 250, preferably 300mm for a few hundred £.
 
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b0rn2sk8 said:
Yes.

Actually no.

At those costs you could install air to air heap pumps in most of your rooms and get pay back in a few years. One single ducted unit in your left would run the entire upstairs on its own.

If you haven’t already, you need to up your loft insulation to a minimum of 250, preferably 300mm.
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Our loft insulation was upgraded somewhat recently, like in the last 10 years at least and since then I've boarded half the loft by installing loft legs to clear the insulation then boarding on top of the legs. I've still got the scar from where the cordless screwdriver slipped when installing the loft legs so basically, whatever insulation is there looks pretty thick and its staying lol.

I'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to these kinds of things, so please go easy on me.

Obviously we have no central heating. I was under the impression that heat pumps kinda replace a boiler? So we would have to have radiators installed in every room and the plumbing installed to facilitate that etc, just instead of a gas boiler heating the water, its a giant inverted fridge that dumps the heat into your central heating system. Is what you are suggesting a different arrangement?
 
new boy said:
Our loft insulation was upgraded somewhat recently, like in the last 10 years at least and since then I've boarded half the loft by installing loft legs to clear the insulation then boarding on top of the legs. I've still got the scar from where the cordless screwdriver slipped when installing the loft legs so basically, whatever insulation is there looks pretty thick and its staying lol.

I'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to these kinds of things, so please go easy on me.

Obviously we have no central heating. I was under the impression that heat pumps kinda replace a boiler? So we would have to have radiators installed in every room and the plumbing installed to facilitate that etc, just instead of a gas boiler heating the water, its a giant inverted fridge that dumps the heat into your central heating system. Is what you are suggesting a different arrangement?
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If it’s on loft legs, it will be 250mm or more so you are good there.

Air to air heat pumps are what you’d typically describe as ‘air conditioning’, modern ones can heat at very high efficiencies.

You have an outdoor unit which can run multiple indoor units which are usually wall mounted cassettes.

What most people don’t realise is that you can get ‘indoor’ units which you can mount in your loft and then run to multiple rooms via ducts so you can heat the entire top floor with no visible infrastructure other than a small vent in the ceiling. If retrofitting downstairs you’ll have normal wall cassettes, manufacturers are making more of an effort these days to make them look vaguely stylish.

Air to air heat pumps can now also heat hot water cylinders although you can continue to do that via an immersion.

When heating air, they can typically reach a seasonal coefficient of performance of 400% (seasonal meaning a year round average). That means for every 1 kWh of electricity you put in, you get 4 kWh of heat. Storage heaters are 100% in that for 1 kWh of electric you get 1 kWh of heat.

As Simon said, the payback period will be measured in years but there will be one. Decent storage heaters are not exactly cheap to replace either.

You also then have air conditioning for the summer and you don’t need to do every room, just the ones where it makes the most sense.
 
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HungryHippos said:
Right so you didn't say that, you just said that it was bizarre people are spending more than a couple of quid a day, whilst you're just heating one room which obviously costs less, but the rest of your house is cold/unheated.

I'd say what you're doing is not that common, and most people don't want to be relegated to just using one room all winter. Heating my whole house to about 18C or so in the day isn't costing that much more to do, so I do that instead.
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Its why 99% of figures in this thread are meaningless. Everyone situation is different, every house is different.
 
I'm currently on the Flexible tariff for gas from Octopus:
flexible-gas.png


Now my gas meter is finally starting to send readings, I've asked Octopus to swap to Tracker.
I'm still sticking with Go for electricity for now though, for the cheap charging overnight.

[Edit] And just like that, it's been changed. I'm quite impressed how quickly that happened.
tracker-gas.png
 
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We're now in the middle of January, my monthly DD is £188, I'm £900 in credit, and the last bill in December was for £196.50 for both types of energy combined.

What sort of refund would you be asking for? (I'm on Octopus Tracker)
 
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b0rn2sk8 said:
If it’s on loft legs, it will be 250mm or more so you are good there.

Air to air heat pumps are what you’d typically describe as ‘air conditioning’, modern ones can heat at very high efficiencies.

You have an outdoor unit which can run multiple indoor units which are usually wall mounted cassettes.

What most people don’t realise is that you can get ‘indoor’ units which you can mount in your loft and then run to multiple rooms via ducts so you can heat the entire top floor with no visible infrastructure other than a small vent in the ceiling. If retrofitting downstairs you’ll have normal wall cassettes, manufacturers are making more of an effort these days to make them look vaguely stylish.

Air to air heat pumps can now also heat hot water cylinders although you can continue to do that via an immersion.

When heating air, they can typically reach a seasonal coefficient of performance of 400% (seasonal meaning a year round average). That means for every 1 kWh of electricity you put in, you get 4 kWh of heat. Storage heaters are 100% in that for 1 kWh of electric you get 1 kWh of heat.

As Simon said, the payback period will be measured in years but there will be one. Decent storage heaters are not exactly cheap to replace either.

You also then have air conditioning for the summer and you don’t need to do every room, just the ones where it makes the most sense.
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Not who you were replying to but thanks for this. Another one to add to the options list for when we renovate our house in the next 18 months or so. Didn't realise you get such units and was thinking of seperate wall mounted units upstairs (we have no Gas to our house and was looking at other options than normal Heat pump / radiator setups as we don't have huge amounts of wall space available (and don't have radiators as it stands anyway). :)
 
Hagar said:
Leading to damp and mould
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Not necessarily, with some minor effort to control moisture no reason why a 3 bed property with 1 person should lead to damp and mould. 1 human wont produce that much moisture, you would need to make sure you stay on top of water vapour when showering and drying clothes through adequate ventilation.

You have to modify behaviour and practice to suit the conditions, problem is most people just don't know what they are doing. So they keep heating minimal to save the cost and at the same time seal and lock up the house to keep what residual heat they have trapped along with the litres of moisture they output every day.
 
Karl said:
We're now in the middle of January, my monthly DD is £188, I'm £900 in credit, and the last bill in December was for £196.50 for both types of energy combined.

What sort of refund would you be asking for? (I'm on Octopus Tracker)
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December was very mild. I'd be waiting for January and February to be clear first, which are typically the much colder months.

Either that, or ask for your DD to be reduced to £100/month
 
Karl said:
We're now in the middle of January, my monthly DD is £188, I'm £900 in credit, and the last bill in December was for £196.50 for both types of energy combined.

What sort of refund would you be asking for? (I'm on Octopus Tracker)
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I'd wait until March and then ask for the whole lot to be refunded & the direct debit to be adjusted. By March, the expectation will be that your usage will keep falling month on month, so they have no reason not to honour both requests.
 
I’m -£98 in debt and had a Dec-Jan bill off £220.

Was paying £160 but they’ve upped it to £200.

Energy prices in this country are criminal. I shouldn’t be at this stage in my life, with a decent paid job, and worrying about stuff like keeping my family warm. It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s more the principle of having to pay so much.
 
lol, my account is in debit by over £300 this month (so far).
Mostly for the gas as the heating is on most of the day for my father who is getting old and can't move around much anymore.
I only signed up with Octopus in October last year and just pay the full amount each month
 
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Andr3w said:
I’m -£98 in debt and had a Dec-Jan bill off £220.

Was paying £160 but they’ve upped it to £200.

Energy prices in this country are criminal. I shouldn’t be at this stage in my life, with a decent paid job, and worrying about stuff like keeping my family warm. It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s more the principle of having to pay so much.
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You dont have a birth right to very cheap energy unfortunately.
 
I was £2000 in credit, paying £418 a month.

Last bill was £350 for gas/electric last month. Also charge my electric car 3/4 times a week at home.

I asked for £1000 back and they responded immediately with the refund processed.

I'll also wait another couple of months and ask for the DD to be reduced.
 
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