Ecotricity Customers. I Salute You.

While I may not agree with replacing reliable coal, gas, and nuclear electricity with unreliable wind I salute anyone prepared to put their money where their mouth is. According to The Sunday Times because it is 100% renewable and actually generates renewable power Ecotricity is exempt from the price cap.

Price cap currently £1277. Ecotricity going up to £2179 from November.
Guess renewable doesn’t mean cheap.

So the caps being removed, are you sure? Genuine question!

Another genuine question, how does the current situation impact renewable prices?

Another genuine question, how does the current situation impact renewable prices?

Supply and demand.

Wholesale electric prices don’t care the source of the electric. It’s just a commodity to them. Could as well be turnips or cheese.

Supply is limited right now . Demand is high.

They don’t care your ethics they care their profits.

Gas in new builds ending in 4 years, then manufacturers will rethink the production of new gas boilers, gas prices set to rise, before you know it everyone looking for a gas alternative but their house is not insulated enough to make it viable, it’s not immediate yet but it’s coming.

I reckon the long term is a house price trend toward more efficient homes, starting about 5/6 years from now, as new passive houses are built that heat themselves older badly insulated properties will cost the earth to rip out and insulate for electricity, so naturally drop in value, and I reckon it will turn quite suddenly leaving a lot of people caught out and the price of insulating the 85% of homes that currently use gas spiraling.

 According to The Sunday Times because it is 100% renewable and actually generates renewable power Ecotricity is exempt from the price cap.

And of course it’s not even renewable, because their customers lights and tellys don’t go off when the wind doesn’t blow on dark winter days. 🙄

Blimey if that’s true @espressoal then I and lots of people in drafty 100 year old houses are in for a shock.
What proportion of the houses people currently live in were built before ww2 for instance?

I think what will actually happen is a transition from natural gas to hydrogen. There are plans to start introducing a % of hydrogen to our gas supplies as it is, with successful trials already completed at Keele University and some small village down south. The gas boiler is well-developed as an appliance, pretty efficient, and I think with a couple of changes to the burner assembly and different gas meters they’ll still be around years from now burning hydrogen.

And of course it’s not even renewable, because their customers lights and tellys don’t go off when the wind doesn’t blow on dark winter days

And why would you think that would automatically mean electric would go off ? Do you think renewable simply means wind and solar ?

Blimey if that’s true @espressoal then I and lots of people in drafty 100 year old houses are in for a shock.

Which part of it. Yes gas boilers going. But the rest of it is just babbling. People pay mental money for houses that flood regularly. This won’t stop them

So the caps being removed, are you sure? Genuine question!

No. Ecotricity (and one other company) were exempt from thecap all along because they were so green. Though of course their customers get the same mix as anyone else.

Rather than claiming greenness by buying credits they actually owned generation equivelent to their output. So when the wind blows Ecotricity supply green power to the grid equivelent to what their customers take out. When the wind drops top near zero they need to use gas powered electrons just like anyone else.

I would suggest they are affected firstly because they can’t supply their customers directly from their power stations so are affected by market forces like anyone else. Secondly they only generate their own electricity they are paying the same gas prices as everyone else if they haven’t hedged. Thirdly wind speeds were lower this year so less wind powerthan they planned for.

Page 12 of this link – “Renewables share of electricity generation was 37.3 per cent in Quarter 2 2021, falling under fossil fuels’ generation share, this was largely a result of much less favourable weather conditions for renewable generation with lower wind speeds and fewer sun hours.”

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1022019/Energy_Trends_September_2021.pdf

Rather than claiming greenness by buying credits they actually owned generation equivelent to their output. So when the wind blows Ecotricity supply green power to the grid equivelent to what their customers take out. When the wind drops top near zero they need to use gas powered electrons just like anyone else.

Hmm, but if they generate MORE than they supply to customers when it is sunny and windy, this offsets the fact that they have to use gas etc when it’s not, right?

Sounds to me like some people just want to beat some companies with a stick.

Secondly they only generate their own electricity

They’re doing biogas now.

I’m with Good Energy who are also exempt from the cap. I always accepted it would/could be a bit more expensive, but I do want to support renewable energy.

Got an email last week saying that my bills (for a 2 bed terrace) will be going up to an estimated £1510 a year.

<grits teeth>

Hmm, but if they generate MORE than they supply to customers when it is sunny and windy, this offsets the fact that they have to use gas etc when it’s not, right?

Sounds to me like some people just want to beat some companies with a stick.

I don’t think he was beating them, just explaining why, if they generate their own electricity, they are still affected by changes in the wholesale prices.

think what will actually happen is a transition from natural gas to hydrogen.

not a chance. Not for domestic use. You would need to build an entirely new distribution system – Hydrogen will just escape from gas pipes.

Its also very inefficient – going wind / electricity / Hydrogen gas / heat you lose massive amounts of energy.

Its simply not a plausible solution for domestic use

Hmm, but if they generate MORE than they supply to customers when it is sunny and windy, this offsets the fact that they have to use gas etc when it’s not, right?

Sounds to me like some people just want to beat some companies with a stick.

Depends, Ecotricity are one of the better ones but there are other “green” energy companies that are just playing with carbon credits.

You would need to build an entirely new distribution system – Hydrogen will just escape from gas pipes.

And yet we used hydrogen as a portion of gas delivered in pipe lines in the 70s.

Couple of interesting PhD papers on the concept and the positives and negatives. Oddly your concerns are dismissed quite quickly – there are other concerns though.

Why is the compression and transport inefficiency not a concern?

Did I forget to quote something ?

Town gas was not pure hydrogen

Interesting tho trail rat – I would like to know their reasoning because everything else I have heard states that hydrogen thru gas pipes will not work

Rather than claiming greenness by buying credits they actually owned generation equivelent to their output. So when the wind blows Ecotricity supply green power to the grid equivelent to what their customers take out. When the wind drops top near zero they need to use gas powered electrons just like anyone else.

I think the point was that they generate an ammount of electricity on a good day that more than offsets what they consume on a bad day. The price they sell and buy at is just down to the prevailing economics, some of it they will have to have guaranteed in advance, some of it on the spot market.

Then there’s a seperate trade made with the carbon credits.

So you end up with 3 types of supplier. Ecotricity producing more green electricity than they use, and selling on their green credits.

Some like the green tarrifs from the big suppliers, bulb etc. Just buy up those surplus green credits but aren’t generating any/much green energy themselves.

Others are just buying enough green credits to avoid the taxes/fines imposed for not being green.

They’re all buying/selling at the same prices (although renewables presumably struggle to sell into the future?). I would guess they have to buy a lot of future supply at the market rate to meet their needs and then sell at the mercy of the spot price whenever they’re generating. So the price is always going to reflect the price from other suppliers even if their electricity appears “free” to them.

TJ – some hopefully interesting reading for you: https://www.dnv.com/oilgas/perspectives/heating-homes-with-hydrogen-proving-the-safety-case.html

Ta

Carrying hydrogen in gas networks is possible and shouldn’t be any more dangerous than methane or natural gas, just different. There are a couple of projects looking at technical feasibility and perception. The H21 project is working out what would need to be done to convert Leeds to hydrogen, the logic being start with one large city and go from there.
https://h21.green/

Also hydrogen is currently (more of less now) being tested in some redundant gas mains in South Bank Middlesbrough.
https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/teesside-map-testing-work-set-20920650

The cost is a as you say a big issue. A unit of heat from hydrogen made from electric uses 3 to 5 units of electric to make (estimates vary depending on various technical assumptions). The question is whether it can be done economically using off peak electric. Also in theory if using very deep offshore wind power it may be cheaper to make hydrogen at the turbine then pipe that ashore than run long subsea electricity cables. I think this is still a theoretical though.

There are charts that predict hydrogen will be cheaper than natural gas in a few years (can’t remember how long) as technology improves and carbon taxes increase.

As an industrial fuel for high heat applications (making glass, ceramics, metal etc.) then hydrogen is coming. For domestic use it can be done but whether it will be cheaper than electricity is not yet proven either way (at least from what I can see working on the industrial side).

Why is the compression and transport inefficiency not a concern?

Transporting it where? Caravan sites? We’re talking about grid gas.

Its also very inefficient – going wind / electricity / Hydrogen gas / heat you lose massive amounts of energy.

That’s very true and always will be however if you’re using it as an energy dump then who cares? It’s as good a storage medium as any, for a given surplus.

There are charts that predict hydrogen will be cheaper than natural gas in a few years (can’t remember how long) as technology improves and carbon taxes increase.

Beware. Cheap hydrogen (a relative concept) is made from methane using SMR. Hopefully the carbon is captured and put somewhere that it doesn’t escape.
Hydrogen from electrolysis is less efficient than using batteries but might be more effective for certain applications.
I think there are some issues with hydrogen causing degradation of metal pipes. Not certain. The yellow plastic ones are ok I think.

Poly prop pipe has an acceptated and deemed safe leak rate of 0.00001% or there abouts.

Hydrogen brittling of the high strength steel pipes used in the main lines is the bigger issue.

Hydrogen gets into the lattice of the steel in solution and reduces ductility.

This doesn’t so much cause a leak as a full on rupture.

I have similar fight at work with hydrogen and >85ksi hi CR material in sour service wells. All a trade off though corrosion resistance/hydrogen sulfide cracking/strength. Bit like light cheap strong ….. Pick 2

Blimey if that’s true @espressoal then I and lots of people in drafty 100 year old houses are in for a shock.
What proportion of the houses people currently live in were built before ww2 for instance?

It’s not just houses built before ww2, we are still building houses that are not efficient enough to heat with electricity, somewhere around 85% of UK housing stock.
I’m in the middle of refitting a stable block to live in, as an empty shell it is just insulation, materials and labour, about £10k trade for insulation, this is no where near the efficiency level for electricity, and few start with an empty shell, to insulate to passive levels you need to strip the house out.
If we didn’t have gas at roughly current costs we would have to consider this, personally I think it’s a no brainer for the house buyer already, passive house that generates it’s own free heat, or a house with rapidly rising fuel bills? I know which I’d pay more for.

If we didn’t have gas at roughly current costs we would have to consider this, personally I think it’s a no brainer for the house buyer already, passive house that generates it’s own free heat, or a house with rapidly rising fuel bills? I know which I’d pay more for.

But how much more?

The average house price in SE England is £325k

Average energy bills £1163, and about half that is gas (i.e, heating, the rest is other stuff).

Whilst not great environmentally, how much of a premium are you really prepared to pay to save ~£600 a year on gas? If you adopted a fairly standard 7 year payback timescale and a 3% mortgage rate that adds less than 1% to the actual value of the house.

Double, treble, quadruple, 5x, 6x, ……… the gas price, still within the margins of a years house price inflation in a lot of areas.

The dystopian vision where the entire housing stock becomes worthless and gets demolished isn’t going to come about. Especially when there are the “good enough” alternatives (internal, external cladding, cavity insulation, additional roof space insulation, heat recovery ventilation etc.

They’re doing biogas now.

Biogas is very limited in what it can do. Plenty of digesters are idle/ failed even with their legacy incentives

So are Ecotricity good or bad? We’ve been with them for a few years and just accepted the cost as something to be dealt with.

Whilst not great environmentally, how much of a premium are you really prepared to pay to save ~£600 a year on gas?

You’re doing the wrong sum, the argument is about the cost of heating using electricity only.

The average house price in SE England is £325k

Do you think that is in any way proportional to the material cost?

Sitting here in a drafty solid wall victorian house, not looking forward to trying to workout what to heat the house with when gas boilers become obsolete. Elec / heatpump would work in a nicely insulated house which this isn’t. The loft space is taken up with bedrooms so there isn’t space for any more insulation up there. I guess I could swap out the sash windows for some better double glazed units but that’s not cheap.

I live in a 150 yr old attic flat. Its been insulated as much as it can be with double glazed heritage sash windows and insulation stuffed everywhere behind all the lath and plaster “walls” on the flat roof and so on. Its made a huge difference to the warmth of the flat. cost me a couple of thousand to do. Its of course nowhere near passivhaus standards but it shows what is possible. No drafts, hardly ever need heating on, heating bills halved at least.

Plus there is naturally occurring “white” hydrogen which has been shown to be fairly prolific.

So are Ecotricity good or bad? We’ve been with them for a few years and just accepted the cost as something to be dealt with.

They are good. But about to become rather expensive. We are sticking with them even though we can get much cheaper elsewhere because they are actually a green generating company. We also run an EV and have solar panels. Just getting quotes for battery storage.

Just getting quotes for battery storage.

Interested to know what pricing your getting. I was quoted 9700 for a powerwall 2 in April…..but a 9 month wait…..

Tesla’s are undoubtedly the highest spec option but by far the most expensive. I’d love a powerwall but we just got a quote to retrofit to our existing solar with a 7.5kwh system for £5.5k from EEC Solar.

Also the problem with insulating/sealing everything up in Edwardian/Victorian houses is they weren’t designed for it and so you can get major condensation-related damp issues. With floors and walls directly on damp earth and often without a damp proof course they need to breath. I’ve just spent a while trying to rectify problems associated with an old house being sealed up by modern waterproof materials.

I wonder how much of the UK housing stock is of this era – a large % I suspect.

I’d love a powerwall but we just got a quote to retrofit to our existing solar with a 7.5kwh system for £5.5k from EEC Solar.

Does that have standaloan capacity and also what’s the warrenty.

When I looked at it the Tesla was the only truely standalone option if the grid goes down (we get alot of power cuts due to overhead lines) and with a proper unlimited cycle warrenty.

Undoubtable you pay for that though :/

Interested to hear if that has changed.

They are good.

Thanks! 😎