Energy prices, what's your plan?

E: Have an old and somewhat drafty house
F: Have one million windows
G: Have any form of electric heating
H: Have a child that is perpetually and inexplicably messy and necessitates laundy appliances being in 24/7 operation
I: Have a "smart home"
J: Have abysmal water pressure necessitating a booster pump

Our projections for the next 12m are £6500 electricity and £3000 gas, give or take a few quid between friends, including a very nice fixed rate tariff until December

Though I have since discovered a ridiculous constant drain that has since been ditched that will save £1000+ from those electricity costs.

EDIT: and as Gareth mentions, 24/7 occupancy with two WFHers

 

I don’t know where the government gets the cap info from tbh.. I don’t know anyone who’s using 2.9k units a year electric and 12k units of gas as a split and I must have had this conversation with at least two dozen people. It is on a 2.5bed home though (so average between 2 and 3).

I’m not quiet the highest of my friends at 8.8k electric and 4.5k gas but both of my figures are a factor of roughly 3 out each way.

Given where the caps were heading and ignoring my solar, I’d have been well and truly up the creek without a paddle and facing some excruciating times. Can you imagine a cap of 6.6k based on 2.9/12kwh next April if this 2.5k cap wasn’t introduced? Disaster!!

I think gas is now around 10p a unit for me with electric heading on to 38.5/7.5ppkw. (Or will be coke April). Still, it’ll make my electric average around 30p a unit and gas at 10p. That’s an average of around £300-320 a month. Factor in SEG, battery storage at cheap rate/solar to lower average further and I’m looking at about £150 a month. I’ve been paying in £175 for my bills currently to build a pot and can safely say I have certainly done the right thing for the home and family with the investments put in over the last 6-9months.

 

I had just about given up with the watt meter... 1w here, 2w there - all together add up to something signficant but then as you say I'm not about to start entirely forgoing the modern comforts of always-on-everything, and picking and choosing just a few things to unplug entirely isn't going to have much of an impact.

That was a suprise though... I do wonder if the big UPS I've got is a similar skimming off the top, but I'm not sure how I'd actually go about testing it (esp with a 16A socket). I think that the waste becomes signiticantly less when there's a load though - in the case of the regenerators the consumtion at idle, and with a 100w load meaured independently, was the same 250w.

In other news, anyone in the market for a couple of Power Inspired AG1500 units?

 

^ That's my plan, got another load coming next weekend. Ideally I'll burn the last log in March then feed the pallets into the garden log burner and get my gazebo back in time for spring.

 

How do you stop the logs from getting damp in the cold/wet weather? I've never had, or used, a log burner...

 

If you leave split wood outside it dries, you just need to keep the rain off; that's about as much as I can tell you

I guess it's a lot like laundry on the line, it can be pretty damp but if it's windy it dries quite quickly?

 

Wood was our main winter heating in NZ, there's a big market over there so you buy wood that's been drying out for a year.

Stacked up outside is fine if you keep it dry. Some moisture may get in but the main thing is the centre drying out as much as possible - being somewhere with airflow is ideal.

We used to have to knock sleepy spiders off them when it was frosty. Poor little buggers had a bit of a ride awakening.

 

What. The. ****

Government plans cap on renewable energy revenues
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63224014

"This crisis has been caused by the cost of gas and it's strange the proposed solution is to cap the price of low-carbon generation and to leave the gas sector untouched."

 

Makes sense though?

If the price for energy varies depending on where it comes from then companies should in theory move to the cheaper energy sources (as in it should accelerate ditching the comedy price gas).

Or at least in a normal world it would make sense, in reality companies will probably flock to the most expensive option and just squeeze us even drier

 

Unfortunately it doesn't work in any way that makes sense. As mentioned pages back, electricity energy market is broken. That's why our energy re-saler (aka suppliers) not able to move to cheaper energy source and thus ditching the crazy gas prices.
https://forums.bit-tech.net/index.p...es-whats-your-plan.385215/page-5#post-4913901

The electricity pricing system is broken. Solution: fix the system!
The generation is too reliant on one form of expensive fuel, solution: incentivise to get more cheaper generation built, not cap profits of cheap generation!

 

Yes, but it's not like the UK has an incredible wind resource, generates as much solar as Australia and has some of largest tides in the world

 

Those incredible resources failed last year leading us to have to roll the coal out of moth balls, green is good but reliability is important too, so you still need these old stations until we get more nuclear which is not weather effected.

 

Storage. Build renewables in enough excess to get us through majority of the days throughout the year, no matter the weather. Use storage to match demand to supply.

We still need nuclear, loads of it as base load. But the key is to use weather data to slowly turn up/down nuclear.

There will be millions of battery on wheels in 10 years time, ready to be called on to soak up excess renewable/nuclear when demand drops. Just need to normalise plugging in whenever parked. Think a combination of Octopus Agile and Intelligent.

 

I mean in the sense that the British Isles have these natural resources, they largely go untapped due to a woeful lack of investment. There was due to be a 900MW wind farm off the coast of Bournemouth but a stupid **** of a Tory MP put the kibosh on it because he prefers the look of CCGT plants.

 

I think this is a great idea but in reality will you see this in 10 years time, probably not, so much to be resolved here from a perspective of regulation, safety, battery ownership and liability it'll be a mess, none of the cars built now will suit, only vehicles built after standards have been put in place would be any good so you're talking far longer than 10 years, considering the production and life cycle of a vehicle.

Happy to be proved wrong though, it would certainly help justify an overpriced EV purchase for me (not that I need much )

 

As far as I can see, it was all the local Tory MPs who objected. Both of them in Bournemouth, the Poole one and Drax sans Moonraker.

And what's all this restricting solar on farmland? Even the loathsome JRM is saying it's wrong .
A programme on R4 a couple of days ago was taking about new double sided solar panels for farm sites that are already in use. They generate electricity on the rear face using reflected and indirect light albeit at a lower output than the front.
They also had huge battery banks in stacked containers to store the unwanted electricity or overcapacity electricity generated overnight by wind turbines.
Sounds like a well thought through and impressive model.
That and planting around the panel rows to support wildlife.