This is getting ridiculous (energy prices - Strictly NO referrals!)

[b0rn2sk8]

Ah yes, the zeb tepeo. I did see that before, but those are quite expensive as I recall and I hate it when there is no prices on a website. But something to consider for sure.

tepeo | ZEB® – Zero Emission Boiler

17% of the UK’s emissions come from heating our homes so we've designed a low carbon alternative, the ZEB, to a fossil fuel boiler. Find out more.

tepeo.com

Thanks for your input by the way. Good to see pros and cons of all this stuff.

That’s the one, something like that should be cheaper than batteries and have a far bigger thermal capacity.

No my whole day electric usage average is 3.2kW. I pull average during sleep 0.04kWh and during day when working around 0.20kWh then with some mini spikes for cooking and similar.

The last quote I had for electric boiler, solar with 9 panels, and a 12kWh battery about was £14,500. Boiler was £2.1k, battery £6k and panels £6.4k so yeah it probably is closer to £20k for a 16kWh battery. But yeah the return (this was 3 months ago) for that and my usage was long because of my low electric usage but was good I could keep my battery stored up relative and basically be grid free.

As you are only using 3kWh a day, a solar set up will never make any sense. The install cost alone will take a decade to recoup.

P.S. kw and kWh are two different measurements which is why I was confused.

As I said, I think you’ll be very disappointed with the performance of trying to run an electric boiler from batteries.

There is far more to take into account than just the battery capacity. The start up power draw will not be able to covered by the batteries, nor will the hot water supply (the boiler will be running at full tilt to achieve that). A huge chunk of the power that is consumed is that start up period.

Have a look at the tepeo product linked above. That is far more suitable for time shifting heat to a ‘battery’ that can be charged off peak. Combine that with solar and you might have something which is viable but I doubt it’s cost effective vs the alternative which I presume is currently gas.

 

[Dangerous Dave]

Smart meter lost its WAN connection which annoyingly also stops the IHD working probably for the best I can’t see what we are using as it was -10c this morning and not been above 1c for the last week.

Recon we’ll be using 100kWh+ of gas a day going by the cold spell from January, likely £400-500 including electricity for December crazy to think I was just over £1000 a year for both until April this year.

 

[rumple9]

Smart meter lost its WAN connection which annoyingly also stops the IHD working probably for the best I can’t see what we are using as it was -10c this morning and not been above 1c for the last week.

Recon we’ll be using 100kWh+ of gas a day going by the cold spell from January, likely £400-500 including electricity for December crazy to think I was just over £1000 a year for both until April this year.

Try using a phone app they work better than IHD's anyway

 

[Dangerous Dave]

Try using a phone app they work better than IHD's anyway

The meter has lost the WAN connection so it’s not uploading any data to DCC so the phone app is also reporting no usage other than standing charge.

I’m surprised this stops the IHD working as it’s still connected to the meter but without the WAN connection it isn’t reporting any data.

 

[squerble]

wow just noticed export prices hit £1.80 today...... (I dont get that, its 4.2p for me!)

I am guessing this cant go on for long and so the rolling blackout could be close. for todays power hr (2 hrs 5-7) i am guessing they must be pretty desperate so to make absolutely sure i am not using the grid then i am trying an experiment and have hit the trip switch on my battery system.............. so i hope the battery wont discharge any more today up until then. it currently has about 3kwh of usable charge left in it which i hope will see me through the 2 hrs tonight

They've told 2 coal stations to be on standby today so looks like we're going to need the extra power. Next Monday currently forecast to be 12ºC here, bet the power companies can't wait.

 

[n111ck]

They've told 2 coal stations to be on standby today so looks like we're going to need the extra power. Next Monday currently forecast to be 12ºC here, bet the power companies can't wait.

These have been stood down…

I thought we were told that France was the gold standard for national energy resilience…

France requests emergency cut in electricity exports to UK as nuclear crisis deepens

France's electricity network operator requested emergency help from Britain as the cold snap caused demand to surge across Europe.

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[The_Bullet]

Just got an email from EDF. I'm on a weird E10 tariff. Electric only. Even though the price guarantee is supposed keep unit rates the same until March, they have found a way to up my estimated yearly cost by £250 even though the estimated usage is the same - no change. They have manipulated the day and night rates. My night rate will drop from 11.00 to 7.8. The day rate rises from 46.59 to 54.47. To me this is very sneaky. They are finding ways to use the system to squeeze people. I don't get how they can do this.

 

[bigmike20vt]

These have been stood down…

I thought we were told that France was the gold standard for national energy resilience…

France requests emergency cut in electricity exports to UK as nuclear crisis deepens

France's electricity network operator requested emergency help from Britain as the cold snap caused demand to surge across Europe.

www.telegraph.co.uk

I could be wrong but isn't the issue regarding exports to UK? if so cutting exports to us does not necessarily mean they do not have energy resilience for themselves.

I suspect number 1 priority will be their own people, number 2) will be EU member states and then number 3 us.

for what ever reason not getting the power stations serviced before the winter seems a bit of a balls up however.

 

[n111ck]

I could be wrong but isn't the issue regarding exports to UK? if so cutting exports to us does not necessarily mean they do not have energy resilience for themselves.

I suspect number 1 priority will be their own people, number 2) will be EU member states and then number 3 us.

for what ever reason not getting the power stations serviced before the winter seems a bit of a balls up however.

Due to "a combination of the cold weather, strikes among its nuclear power workers and delayed maintenance on its fleet of reactors prompted the request."

Doesn't sound gold standard to me.

edit..

"France has been battling to get its fleet of nuclear power plants back to full strength since discovering an issue with corrosion at one of its reactors this winter.

Meanwhile, the UK's nuclear fleet was running at its full available capacity for the first time this winter as the Hartlepool 1 reactor returned after a planned outage at the weekend, EDF Energy said"

 

[Harnser]

The meter has lost the WAN connection so it’s not uploading any data to DCC so the phone app is also reporting no usage other than standing charge.

I’m surprised this stops the IHD working as it’s still connected to the meter but without the WAN connection it isn’t reporting any data.

The last engineer I had out because the WAN connection had dropped told me next time to cut the security wire, remove the WAN portion, wait a minute and push it back on and it'll reconnect.

He didn't leave any replacement security wires though so not going to try that until I have some replacements.
Plus the meter hasn't dropped the WAN connection for a few months now, so touch wood it won't again

 

[b0rn2sk8]

I could be wrong but isn't the issue regarding exports to UK? if so cutting exports to us does not necessarily mean they do not have energy resilience for themselves.

I suspect number 1 priority will be their own people, number 2) will be EU member states and then number 3 us.

for what ever reason not getting the power stations serviced before the winter seems a bit of a balls up however.

They were running them as hard as they could over summer/autumn so they didn’t need to run their gas plants meaning they could fill up the gas reserves in the EU.

We were exporting a huge amount of electricity and gas to the EU during that period to help enable it. Those pipelines normally flow in the other direction. I’d consider that to be a good piece of international collaboration.

It was always going to questionable if they could send significant supplied back in winter for that reason.

 

[bigmike20vt]

They were running them as hard as they could over summer/autumn so they didn’t need to run their gas plants meaning they could fill up the gas reserves in the EU.

We were exporting a huge amount of electricity and gas to the EU during that period to help enable it. Those pipelines normally flow in the other direction. I’d consider that to be a good piece of international collaboration.

It was always going to questionable if they could send significant supplied back in winter for that reason.

oh absolutely... we do need to collaborate for sure. However it is still understandable that they put their own people 1st.

for example......... I bet we would not have been so generous on our exports had we of had storage of our own....... I imagine (or i hope at least) we would fill our own buckets before sending abroad.

mind you that being said....................................... you never know, if there had been money involved maybe we wouldnt have!.

 

[jpaul]

Exactly we were making money out of using our lng terminal for import and the re-exportation of gas, we couldn't use/store, to the eu ... and we just hope the centrica norway 'deal' will supply sufficient gas if needed.

Are there many LNG ships sitting off the coast.

 

[silversurfer]

After using my blanket almost all day on Saturday, I can see my smart meter data its indistinguishable from average daily usage, which is great news, so they are indeed really cheap to use.

Everyone should get an electric throw really, on highest its only going to be 200w I think and they are auto off often

That’s also completely opposite to your solar generation where the vast majority comes in the summer.

At these prices even in winter solar is worth having. Its the bad weather not the short days that is most important. If there is no direct sunlight it barely registers power is I guess how it works.

The high electric is a negative for sure but also ironic in its effect as ratio it makes other ideas much cheaper in their value so the cost of solar comparative to cost has fallen greatly imo. Scotland will lend 10k at no interest for a decade to new solar installs, I tried to tell my northern brother in law he said they are all rip off firms, right now I bet that cost rose as per supply/demand.

 

[Doobedoo]

TNA is quite right re generation - 11.1kwh yesterday.

To take your stats @b0rn2sk8 - 11000kwh is ~30kwh per day (obviously much less in summer, more in winter) is more than 'scratching the sides'.

Yesterday 11kwh was solar, I also have 19.5kwh of batteries that I charged overnight at 7.5ppkwh - so 30kwh of free/cheap heating is a decent chunk.

I can imagine in a few years as batteries become cheaper/bigger, I'll have at least double that - so it's quite reasonable that it'll increasingly bite a chunk off the cost...?

You are in a very small minority of a very small minority. Batteries won’t get significantly cheaper until supply significantly outpaces demand. They haven’t in the last 4 years since I bought mine.

 

[LabR@t]

Had the heating on last night and this morning 5 hours in total and cost me £12!

 

[darkgen]

Had the heating on last night and this morning 5 hours in total and cost me £12!

Pretty bleak really. These last few days I seem to be burning through £3.50 (~31.0kWh) a day on gas. Combined with electricity, my total daily usage costs ~£6.50. Not too outrageous but the house is rarely hitting ~18c.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

Pretty bleak really. These last few days I seem to be burning through £3.50 (~31.0kWh) a day on gas. Combined with electricity, my total daily usage costs ~£6.50. Not too outrageous but the house is rarely hitting ~18c.

Pretty similar here.

 

[HungryHippos]

Pretty similar here.

Also similar here.

Plan to hold temps around the 17-18 mark is working pretty well though, I think I'd have to spend a lot more trying to maintain 19c.

 

[LabR@t]

The stove is running most of the day but need the Ch for a boost in the morning and bath time in the evening to take a chill of and dry the towels