Energy prices, what's your plan?

I think air-to-liquid heat pump (direct replacement of boilers being pushed here) will have much less noticeable defrost cycle. For example, my combie boiler isn't inputting heat into my central heating loop as my wife takes her really long shower. House can still be kept warm with residual heat from radiators. But yes it reduces efficiency.

"heatgeek" youtube channel are still getting 2.5x or higher coefficient of performance (COP, aka efficiency) over last 2 days of freezing temperature seems pretty good.
https://emoncms.org/heatgeek
Heat pumps are quoted to be 3x-5x efficient, so their heat pump are probably doing defrost cycles.
Yesterday, 18th, I also used 110 kWh of gas, costing £11.55 according to smart meter.
They had 113 kWh of heat generated, used 40 kWh of electricity, that's £14 at today's 35p price "cap".
Most days in typical (southern) UK winter are above 0c, when COP (efficiency) seems to be way above 3x, cheaper to run than efficient condensing gas boiler when efficiency is above 3x. .

News says there is a price war with heat pumps, British gas are doing £2999 "standard" installs, Octopus are offering same at £3000, but they are probably direct boiler replacement.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/16/british-gas-kicks-price-war-heat-pumps/
Remember you'll need to ensure house is well insulated, pipework and radiator sizes are suitable, etc. If you only replace boiler with HP without all the prep work, you will have a bad time.

So I'm looking at bolstering up insulation before I consider install heat pump. In the mean time, my condensing boiler is running at max of 47c and seems to be able to keep the house warm, if it runs pretty much all the time.

 

We have air source for heating (split AC) installed last year. Anecdotally-ish, when it's been around 0 outside it hasn't struggled to keep 18+ temperatures indoors, and we don't have great insulation. The defrost cycle does happen but it's not incessant/long lasting.

It was a simpler choice though due to lack of gas or central heating, so it was a case of replacing fairly useless/expensive storage heaters and very expensive electric heaters, rather than a boiler. Water is still an electric immersion heater, albeit a smart one. A small hot water heat pump might be considered at some point, but the saving wouldn't be huge compared with general heating costs (the immersion heater switch measures usage).

 

Iirc the one we had was just a plain old air in heat up and bosh it out.

TBH I think it was fighting an uphill battle and shouldn't cloud my judgement. The intake fan was about two floors down as the house was on the side of a hill.

It had a fair old trek to make it up to the room so I'm not surprised it was often in a defrost cycle.

It was just so infuriating. It would just start to heat up the room and go in a cycle, it'd take ages to get warm.

 

Continuing with our wood based heating provision we now have the wood splitter from our farming co-operative and I must say its a lot easier than a splitting maul etc!

Ecd96bb4-a61e-4c42-b898-a7e82e4c0c67 by BA_13 posted 21 Jan 2023 at 21:30

On a separate note we have changed our electricity tariff to what is called "Tempo" here and are with slight modification to our usage are saving about 30-40% each month which is frankly astonishing considering the general state of the world.

 

Email from Octopus energy founder:

Whatever you do, even if not on demand flexibility service (aka Octopus saving session), please try your best to reduce your use during peak hours today.

 

Again today 4:30 - 6pm.

It's really about knowing what is happening with the grid and doing what you can. Most importantly NOT doing optional stuff such as washing machine, dryer and dish washer during that time.

Yesterday during 5-6pm, I saw coal only accounted for 2% of grid supply. I've no knowledge of coal plants but I hope that is just ticking-over rate and haven't been used in anger.

 

Why is it all kicking off now?

We had about a week here in the North where it didn't really go much above zero during the day and there wasn't this talk of powering up coal power stations.

It's almost double figures today.

 

Not sure...... but when coal plants are put on stand by, it's best we make an effort to use it.
https://www.current-news.co.uk/news...ced-actions-as-cold-weather-tightens-capacity

 

There will no doubt be a load of people putting more stuff on in peak time in the hopes they get paid by the energy companies to move it....

 

I mean we've been doing the voluntary hours anyway so I've no problem with it.

@Gareth Halfacree you could very well be right.Iirc wind was producing over 50% of our usage during that spell.

 

I'll be putting stuff on when I need to put stuff on regardless, that these companies haven't properly invested the gazillion's of dollars of profit they make is not reason enough for me to change my habits.

 

I am hopeful that the algorithm is robust enough to filter out that.
It's something like average of previous 10 weekdays (if on weekday) with adjustment for the day.

So for that to work, it has to become a habit. Which then means changing one's habit to benefit, which is the point of "saving session": to be flexible.

The idea of demand flexibility service is not because we are lacking generation capacity. It's because we are too reliant on fossil fuel for this peak time demand.

You could argue we (UK government) haven't invested enough in cheap renewables and nuclear, and I totally agree. Because we have to remember the companies who are making gazillion of profit right now are the fossil fuel companies. Not being flexible with demand precisely is the reason they are making so much profit.

 

We don't have sufficient renewables / nuclear, until that's fixed we're peeing into the wind, which comes down to investment.

Whilst HM government should be responsible for energy security, everything else gets laid at the energy companies door since it was all sold off, which limits the amount of influence any government can have on security

 

Can't argue with anything here.

Government need to, through setting policies, direct most if not all investment into renewable and nuclear. The shift away from gas and coal is happening way too slowly, which is part of the reason for current energy prices.

But remember, energy security and renewable/nuclear grid mix are different things. The former will be expensive and polluting while the latter does not mean we can freely draw power at peak times and zero consequences.

 

Easy to change a charging habit, if you are at home, for example, I charge my car after midnight at home, I have no incentive to so do, I just do so because I know it is not peak, I could quite easily just change Zappi to suck down 7Kwh between 3 and 7pm for the next two weeks, oh except that my car only charges at 3.7, damn.

I don't do this of course, just an example, I mostly charge for free at work.

 

Did Santa bring you a Tesla?

 

He'd have been invited to jog on if'n he had.
Most of December (£245) is gas, I WFH 4 days a week and as much as I wanted to sit here in thermals as much as possible it just got colder than expected, and I have a wife, and this bungalow has shocking insulation and heating