French electricity - just fixed ours to €0.21 peak, €0.11 off-peak. Smugness offset by the fact that I took out our first contract in a bit of a hurry and before I had much practice speaking French. The ‘pay a monthly direct debit which would then be adjusted at six months’ scheme turned out to mean not just adjusted for consumption (which I was expecting) but also for price. I had no idea I was being charged at a market rate that changed every month. Upwards due to market circumstances. The adjustment was €1,600. Ouch. I speak better French now and this new contract can only be changed twice in a year and leaving has no penalty. There’s also a regulated government rate which is similar but we charge the car off peak and this balance suits us better. I have no idea how this is going to work out for the French government but speaking to neighbours they are generally not too worried. The price of firewood has gone up which is more concerning.
There’s been quite a lot of investment in solar round here (government subsidies made it a no brainer for many) so I think there will be some insulation from price rises. We have solar thermal for hot water which is eye-openingly efficient (I’ve even wondered whether you can run heating off it - there are many cold clear days when we have more hot water than we can use which would reduce the amount of energy you needed to input to make heating work. I am not an engineer though.).
Our elec is about £60 per month, oil heating has climbed from around £400 for 1000 litres to £930 currently! Madness!!
Currently £60 a month using Octopus go tariff from last year, however that expires October so been fretting what to do. Taken a gamble on renewing now on a higher rate GO tariff in the hope that it’s cheaper than what would be available when the fix ends. Will cost a bit more over next month or so, but hoping better over long term as we use majority of electric for off peak car charging.
Hopefully this keeps bills to £80-£100 rather than £200+
The gamble has caused a little friction in the house, so I am also hoping to be proven right for the sake of general harmony at home!
Then there is the heating oil problem to come - hopefully got enough to see out the winter…
We’re kicking ourselves as it was down at 73p per litre a while ago, knew it would go up but you just don’t know when…. Just when you think it can’t go higher so we’ll wait a bit and it just kept rising….
I don’t know how some are affording it, my Mum is currently paying £140 pm and I heard some pensioners are fixing at £400 a month as it’s the lowest they can get. Someone needs to find a way of getting rid of Putin
Isn’t EDF owned by the french? amazing that we (UK) are subsidising french energy bills.
I also found out that Spanish company Iberdrola (who own Scottish power) charge € 0.23 plus tax so €0.28 per kWh in mainland Spain on variable contract. How much is it in Scotland?
We are all being conned and it’s sanctioned/enabled by our government.
"Someone needs to find a way of getting rid of Putin”
you drank that Kool-aid then? what makes you think this is all his fault?
(I’ve even wondered whether you can run heating off it – there are many cold clear days when we have more hot water than we can use which would reduce the amount of energy you needed to input to make heating work. I am not an engineer though.).
You can, just need a thermal store or similar and some slightly clever valving. Basically feed the hot water from the roof into a loop in the store (when its at the right temperature/level) and take it out from the other end as you need it (either for hot water, or heating).
I've seen a few homebrew installations, and a couple of professional ones with multiple heat sources.
(ASHP, Solar electric, mains electric and pellet fired, all running into the same 800-1000 litre tank)
I'd love to have the cash to put something like that together as i have 60 sqm of almost perfectly angled south facing roof.
18 seems a lot, there’s got to be significant saving you can get there. We’ve averaged about 10, and that’s for two of us working from home.
Yep, that was my initial thoughts too but I've been round the house and TBH not sure on the exact cause. Nothing on standby other than the A/V amp which loses all the settings if we switch it off at the wall, chargers unplugged etc. There are 2 + 2 in the house though and I'm continually on at Mrs a11y and the kids to switch things off as, apparently, only I care...
I suspect it's simply circumstances. A lot of washing of work uniforms - Mrs a11y goes through 4 sets of scrubs each week, all washed at home at a high temp - and 2 x young kids who love the outdoors, i.e. mucky buggers, but I'm not complaining about that at all. One undercounter fridge, one undercounter freezer plus a fullsize upright freezer. Some tumble dryer action (NOT me, I'd disable the bloody drying function if I could). A bit of hot tub use but not huge amount.
You're right though, definitely savings to be made.
A bit of hot tub use
I think we found the issue. probably 1/3 of your electricity bill is that
1,400kWh ish of electricity per year and wood stove with a back backboiler.
My wood is free.
My electricity has gone from just over £300/yr to just over £700/yr but with the £400 rebate thing should be about the same.
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I suspect that I am in a very small but fortunate minority who are mostly unaffected.
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Some of the consumption figures up there ^ are startling though, what do people do with all that electricity?
breninbeener
Free MemberCam anyone recommend a device for measuring power consumption through a 13a socket? Or, are they all pretty similar?
I think i need to assess and go on an appliance cull
Ian
I've got a few Tapo P110 and they're really good and only a tenner each and often on sale for less than that on Amazon.
The main benefit over the cheap static display ones is that you can see the history on a graph but you can also remotely switch them on and off with the Tapo app or using "okay google" or Alexa etc.
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Some of the consumption figures up there ^ are startling though, what do people do with all that electricity?
I must confess to wondering the same thing! I've done some rudimentary calculations based on Shell's bills, which BTW are an absolute ball ache to decipher but anyway, and in the 6 months I can decipher 'accurately' (I've ignored anything before switch-over and smart meter installation as far as I can tell), my usage stands at:
E = 1495kWh
G = 3097kWh
Admittedly this is not during the coldest and darkest times of the year, but does include 3 adults + one child, me WFH most of the time, 4 TVs, 2 xBoxes, 3 VM boxes, 1 fridge, 1 fridge freezer and 1 freezer in the garage. Fortunately we have no dishwasher but does include tumble drying. Maybe my cavity wall insulation does work and so does the stuff in the loft hidden by boarding out and 3 tons of useful stored stuff/junk* (* delete as applicable). I've also invested in some cheap smart plugs for the TVs and have become somewhat retentive in my use of the app to turn said devices off. In some cases even whilst folks were watching stuff...#oops
all washed at home at a high temp
If that's for anti-bacterial/sanitation reasons, you could use an oxygen bleach stain remover in the wash (like Vanish, or any other own-brand similar one, they're all Sodium Percarbonate based) at a much lower temperature, and that'll sanitise the washing (but won't 'bleach' stuff like chlorine bleaches)
If that’s for anti-bacterial/sanitation reasons, you could use an oxygen bleach stain remover in the wash
@IHN it is and yes, I know. Mrs a11y knows that too - well, she bloody should cos I've mentioned it enough times . We've got a supply of Napisan but she persists with the higher temp washes for the scrubs. Can lead a horse to water etc. Believe me, frustrating.
Just got a 4 pack of those Tapo P110 smart plugs for £27.
I haven't been through this thread but anyone installed a full set of smart TRVs to heat a single room?
I haven’t been through this thread but anyone installed a full set of smart TRVs to heat a single room?
We didn't install it for that reason, but I've used ours in the past to do just that. Honeywell Evohome, 9 separate zones for us. We're happy with it.
So you have a hub, a thermostat that goes where the traditional one goes, and TRVs? I'm struggling to work out how the hallway thermostat interacts with the TRVs.
Current usage per annum:
Gas: 17,000 kWh
Electric: 4,500 kWh
Current avg. monthly dual fuel bill = £235. Here's where i think we'll be per month with the next few rises:
October'22 cap = £430
January'23 cap = £670 (est)
April'23 cap = £820
£10,000 per year on fuel is a terrifying prospect. A couple of years ago (and in a smaller home) we barely spent £1,000 a year.
Isn’t EDF owned by the french? amazing that we (UK) are subsidising french energy bills.
@mrsmith We're not, trust me on this. Theres a reason they're being renationalised and it's not because of how much money they are raking in from the UK.
I also found out that Spanish company Iberdrola (who own Scottish power) charge € 0.23 plus tax so €0.28 per kWh in mainland Spain on variable contract. How much is it in Scotland?
Totally different market. They only generate around 18% of their power from gas, we are more like 35%.
So you have a hub, a thermostat that goes where the traditional one goes, and TRVs? I’m struggling to work out how the hallway thermostat interacts with the TRVs.
@molgrips Assuming it's the Wiser system, the TRV's can be set to work indpendently OR the thermostat takes over as master with X amount of slave TRV's. It's basically there to control a number of radiators at once rather than having them all working independently of each other.
I’m struggling to work out how the hallway thermostat interacts with the TRVs.
Ideally you'd want the thermostat to be controlled along with the TRVs, so if all the TRVs are off, the thermostat is also switched off. Otherwise you can fire up the pump and boiler without any load - which isn't very efficient. Modern CH pumps are supposed to be flow / resistance sensing, so back off if there are few / no radiators open and the boiler should just heat the heat exchanger and then trip out once the water gets to max temp - still not ideal.
So you have a hub, a thermostat that goes where the traditional one goes, and TRVs? I’m struggling to work out how the hallway thermostat interacts with the TRVs.
Basically, yes. With Evohome the main control panel/screen is also a thermostat and you could use it like a traditional non-smart system without adding any smart TRVs. We don't use that thermostat to control our heating as the zone (hallway) ours sits in also has a rad with smart TRV - the smart TRV also being the thermostat/controller for whatever zone/room they're in. In Evohome's case you can add a remote thermostat to put in a more convenient place if the TRV's buried behind a couch or something (which wouldn't be an ideal location to take a representative temp of the zone).
We barely use the main control screen as the app works brilliantly.
https://getconnected.honeywellhome.com/en/evohome
Just checked how much I spent on electricity and gas in last 12 months, £1200 quid up until June this year.
So by my estimations that’s going to cost me around 3600 next year if I use the same amount
Luckily i have savings to be made, I spent the last 12 months not giving a crap about energy usage, I work from home and had the heating cranked up to 21 all day every day over the winter. That won’t be happening in future so I’m fairly confident I can get the costs under 250 per month. Still a big increase however and it’ll definitely be felt despite earning well above average wage
I do wonder how some of you guys are running up such huge bills however. Although I live alone I’m in a 4 bed house, albeit a new build. Some of the figures you guys are throwing about are absolutely crippling😬
Ideally you’d want the thermostat to be controlled along with the TRVs, so if all the TRVs are off, the thermostat is also switched off. Otherwise you can fire up the pump and boiler without any load – which isn’t very efficient. Modern CH pumps are supposed to be flow / resistance sensing, so back off if there are few / no radiators open and the boiler should just heat the heat exchanger and then trip out once the water gets to max temp – still not ideal.
That's what I'm going for but ideally, how modern do you mean? Mine is nearly 15 years old now.
I thought that you could simply run one rad and save loads of money but it may not be that simple. The rad has to siphon off a certain amount of hot water from the circuit, controlled by the lockshield valve (the one on the other side). But whilst you are only heating one room, the rad will get nice and hot but most of the water will still have to bypass it, returning to the boiler still hot. So I guess you still need the ballast radiators in the hallways, which is what I wanted to avoid as I do not need a warm hallway.
Unless the TRVs are smart enough to figure out how many rads are open and adjust the flow accordingly to distribute the heat?
I'm going to have to talk to Drayton.
I do wonder how some of you guys are running up such huge bills
1930s 4 bed detached house , has decent roof insulation,but no wall insulation and an ancient boiler from 1992 , plus WFH = 30000kwh of gas per year.
Arguably a new boiler and some wall insulation could reduce our gas bill substantially and given current prices could pay for itself within a year or two I would guess, so I might get that sorted out this winter.
Just been reading about smart TRV's as they're the last practical step we can take on the house.
Put off by stories of the noise, they would have to be in bedrooms to make the investment worthwhile. We're both light sleepers though, any experience of being woken at 5:30 by the smart TRV coming on?
That’s what I’m going for but ideally, how modern do you mean? Mine is nearly 15 years old now.
I can't recall when they became mandatory via building regs. I remember first buying one when our old pump died, before they were mandatory - maybe 15 years ago.
The sensing ones normally have a little bank of LEDs on them to indicate the pumping strength eg look at this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grundfos-UPS2-15-50-Central-Heating/dp/B00XEU7J5C - three little LEDs on the edge of it.
I am in Spain paying c 15c per kwh off peak, 20c peak fixed for next 3 years. Pure luck I fixed at right time. Current variable rates are about 25c I think. With a bit of planning i can get 75% consumption into off peak - dishwasher on timer, cooking before midday.
Standing charges are fairer as you pay for the kWh amount you need, so you look at peak kWh consumption and contract for that plus a bit. So small flats pay much less than big houses.
Probably already covered in this thread but the boss of British gas seemed to make a very sound and logical suggestion. Loan the energy providers the cash to buy electricity and gas from the energy companies, and keep bills down for the end user. The loan would be paid back by a gradual increase in fuel bills over the next 20 years, rather than crippling us over next 12-24 months
Possibly too sensible a suggestion for the clowns in charge however.
I foresee the only people this government will help out is their pensioner voter base, many of which don’t need assistance. Whilst everyone else will be shafted.
The loan would be paid back by a gradual increase in fuel bills over the next 20 years
Great so we're saddled with increased bills for the next 20 years. What happens when this happens again, and it will, keep adding to the debt, no thanks.
8900kWh in electricity and 900kWh in gas for last 12 months but a hybrid car accounted for 3100kWh of the electricity usage.
I'm now wondering if it would be cheaper just to run the car on petrol!!! 🤣🤣🤣
30,000kWH of gas and 12,000kwH of electricity imported for the last 12 months. 2EVs in the house and Solar on the roof. Don’t dare look what the cost will be based on new rates 😳
So, is it true that wholesale gas prices are now falling?
@molgrips it sounds like you have exactly the same setup as I do, dumb TRV's in every room except the hallway. I have the Wiser system (still to install) and looking to do the same.
My (future) setup is thus:
3x TRVs controlled by Wiser Thermostat in the living room (legacy hangover of knocking 2 rooms into one).
Both bedrooms and bathroom controlled by their own TRVs.
Kitchen has a wet kickplate heater, it does it's own thing but essentially it's another bypass.
Hall has no TRV but for the amount of difference it will make I'll live with it (ie. am I **** messing about draining the system to fit a new TRV. Plus the dog sleeps out there so it doesn't hurt to keep it warm). Hall also has the front door which would play havoc with controls, in an ideal world I'd have a porch as a buffer.
As for lockshields, with smart TRVs are they not redundant since in theory you would never be running the whole system at the same time?
@oldnpastit Maybe? Too early to tell I'd say.
https://www.catalyst-commercial.co.uk/wholesale-gas-prices/
Currently living on solar power electric and tank water, with the insurance company paying the rent that we’re keeping. Admittedly the house doesn’t have any internal walls so it’s not all that great.
Hiya Guys,
For many with wood burners, look to see if you can fit a back boiler to yours. It then potentially heat the whole house whilst your wood burner is running. See my wood burner back boiler add on below as an example:
This is my plan anyway. I also plan Solar and wind power because in 2011 they changed the rules for wind power for domestic use i.e. it come under permissive development providing you have one. Some of them are able to produce a fair bit of power i.e. 5Kw. Just note the permissive development only applies to England and not Scotland for some reason.
BR
JeZ
Ooh my Nan and Gramps used to have a back boiler on their coal fire. They had to come down and light it in the morning to get the house warmed and get hot water. I can still remember them doing that, as clear as day.
Great so we’re saddled with increased bills for the next 20 years. What happens when this happens again, and it will, keep adding to the debt, no thanks.
Shareholders still get paid yeah?
And people think this is a good idea? FFS can you not see the narrative of ‘we have to get through this’ ‘it’s going to be tough’ ’the wholesale price has skyrocketed’ is to con you into thinking it’s all on you the customer while the profits/dividends/executive pay reach record highs?
being bailed out with your (taxpayers) money and asked to pay for it with higher bills in the future??
i’m starting to think some of you actually deserve what’s coming, talk about boiling frogs.
talk about boiling frogs
Can't do that - would use too much energy.
Molgrips
Ooh my Nan and Gramps used to have a back boiler on their coal fire. They had to come down and light it in the morning to get the house warmed and get hot water. I can still remember them doing that, as clear as day.
Our plan is to use gas in the morning to warm up the house, then use the back boiler thereafter. The energy companies making huge profits over the speculation are going to have a rude awakening, when they discover people are going to adapt and switch to self supply heating. I don't even want to mention the Green deal that the Tory's abolished because the house builders complained it cost them too much...
BR
JeZ
I live in a smoke free zone, but given this madness, I can see people lighting up their log fires all the time as it will be much cheaper than running the central heating.
The energy companies making huge profits over the speculation are going to have a rude awakening, when they discover people are going to adapt and switch to self supply heating.
not really - people are inherently lazy and the vast majority would rather get in debt than do some graft.
not really – people are inherently lazy and the vast majority would rather get in debt than do some graft.
also missing the point that not everyone lives in a village with a garden and a chap who delivers a load of logs or space for a heat/ground source pump or even the likelihood of ever getting permission.
There are an awful lot of properties that cannot have solar/woodburner/air or ground source heat pumps.
My current flat does not have a big enough outside space for a heat pump, the dormers and East facing roof mean no solar (and the flats below have no roof) no chimney.
Partners flat is conservation area/listed so no new glazing, solid walls so no obliterating internal features if you insulate inside (not that it would be allowed) no owned outside space for ground source, no roof for solar unless the 3 freeholders agree to share then not enough space to benefit 3 properties (not that it would be allowed) and burning wood/coal in a city is a definate no.
flat we are buying is again in conservation area not allowed to remove crittal windows but can do internal insulation, no solar space (there is a roof but not enough to work for 32 flats, heat pumps are not allowed but they will have to give in at some point. slight possibility of a big ground source unit in the communal grounds but each flat would have convert to wet heating (currently a mix of wet and warm air gas) this would potentially be £20-40k per flat and they would all have to agree.
so it’s get into debt and stay as you are or take on a huge debt to save money down the line, how many households can afford that? go tell them they are lazy...
so it’s get into debt and stay as you are or take on a huge debt to save money down the line, how many households can afford that? go tell them they are lazy…
seperate issue. The uprising the previous poster was speaking about will not happen even with the vast majority of those with the ability and the means choosing not to.
not really – people are inherently lazy and the vast majority would rather get in debt than do some graft.
...or they simply can't afford to upgrade their properties!
I could whack solar panels on my south facing roof. Not quite got the £8k stuffed down the back of my sofa to do it though.
