Energy Bills
Comments
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They seem to be falling over themselves where he lives, trying to keep the locals happy.ShootersHillGuru said:
Good to hear. I know energy companies have some obligations to install energy saving equipment. Thing is, it’s such a small percentage of the housing stock that qualifies for these schemes.guinnessaddick said:
My BIL lives up in Scotland, near a wind farm, he lives in an old stone house. The local energy company installed insulation, solar panels and an air pump.ShootersHillGuru said:Not meant as a criticism because I realise the constraints but until the government at national level come up with money and schemes to provide grants for massively upgrading insulation, windows, doors and solar panels and heat pumps then the transition to what Arthur has managed to achieve is going to never happen. I know there are grants available that come and go but it’s pissing in the wind. Millions and millions of homes have zero chance of financing the required upgrades. About a year ago I had a couple of quotes for something that sounds like Arthur’s set up and with all the work required including to pipes and rads I was looking at £15k plus for a four bedroom house that has cavity insulation and recommended levels of loft insulation. It’s just not viable.0 -
I have a bit of experience installing boilers and heat pumps.
Was working on a commercial heat pump installation in Cambridge only a few weeks ago.
We ripped out some boilers that were still working perfectly fine, to be replaced by heat pumps.
I would imagine that a huge government grant would have influenced the decision to replace the boilers.
Could see the cost being in the high hundreds of thousands, if not into a million or two.
I am a bit sceptical on heat pumps being pushed on everyone, as they are not always the best solution currently.
As others have mentioned, in older houses with poor insulation heat pumps cannot provide the required temperatures to heat the buildings, giving around 50 degrees centigrade as opposed to around 80 with a boiler.
I'm not a total dinosaur and realise that gas is not an infinite energy source and heat pumps do have situations where they may be the better solution for more modern buildings.
As with petrol / diesel vs. EVs, we don't currently have the infrastructure for everyone to go all electric yet.
It wasn't that long ago that Gordon Brown wanted everyone to be driving diesel cars, was it?
I've added a few pictures of my recent work if anyone is interested.
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No chance we ever get given free energy in the UK when shareholders and CEO's massive wages have to be paid.cantersaddick said:
I think its much more likely we follow the model that is becoming common across Europe (and elsewhere in the world - 28 countries now doing it) where electricity is given away free or very cheap at times where generation is high in order to flatten out the evening peak in demand. Tech can then be used to auto charge batteries and cars at the times when energy is cheapest.fenlandaddick said:What I would say about the cheap overnight rates is don't bank on these long term. Octopus is already messing around with their Intelligent Octopus Go tariff. My crystal ball tells me about another 5 years of cheap regular overnight electricity. After that I think they will adjust these so fewer slots and more dynamic pricing like the flux tariff1 -
Thanks for the background, I'm unlikely to go to a heat pump (boilers only a few years old). My house is pretty efficient, I pay £360 a month for gas and electric (slightly more than half is gas) but they've just refunded me £700 and I'm still £180 in credit, so in reality I think my electric is around £1k a year and on that I don;t see the value yet in solar.arthur said:I was asked on another (now closed) thread about my Solar panels. There was interest in my personal experience, @CaptainRobbo @Rob7Lee @valleynick66 so I thought I would follow up here. To clarify a couple of things; £3k saving I said was slightly ambitious and slightly tongue in cheek due to possible price rises! £2.5k would have been more accurate but maybe not really the correct answer either! This is because my actual electricity saving is high but it’s a bit of a false figure due to the massively increased electricity use due to a heat pump and the difference between gas and even cheap rate electricity.
System cost:
14 Solar panels (5kwh) & 2 batteries (6.5kwh usable) in 2022 cost: £10.5k (we factored this in as a moving house cost)
Heat pump 2025: a little over £1k with the government grant (our house needed very little upgrading as it is modern and has wet underfloor heating)
Extra battery for additional heat pump requirement: £1k
Total: £12.5k
Our house was built in 2017 and has lots of “smart home” things going on when we bought it! Speakers everywhere, a 6ft tall server rack stuffed full of media things and air con which we only use on the hottest days. When I’ve compared it to my parents, small 4 bedroom house built c.1990, my modern, large 4 bed room house uses twice as much electricity as theirs does just sitting there during the day with no one home!
Prior to the heat pump my yearly savings on just solar were around £1100 in 2022 (only 9 months but high prices), 2023: £1200, 2024: £900. (no battery charging included) So around 9 to 10 years to “pay off” if only using solar generation, 10 years is the figure normally given so I can say that was originally accurate for me. However, there are other ways to save money with the solar that are less obvious (see below!) Also, next to no other home improvements pay you anything back, so to have something that actually can is fantastic!
Solar is great in the summer especially but not so much in the winter. It could produce as little as 56kwh in December but 730kwh is the record for a month in summer. (we did have really tall trees in a neighbour’s garden which shaded the solar panels in any December sunlight, these have now been taken down but I don’t expect a huge improvement!)
What wasn’t particularly explained to me by the solar install company was how useful cheap rate charging is so I didn’t have this set up for the first few years. This is where you can save quite a lot of money in those winter months which negates the argument of a solar install being only a summer thing. I have 3 batteries that total around 11kwh capacity. Currently for electricity I pay 26p regular rate but 11p for cheap Octopus Flux rate. This tariff, which you can only access if you have a heat pump, gives me 3 cheap rate charging times spread out during the day. Because of this I don’t need a huge battery capacity to be able to run the whole house mostly on cheap rate electricity. 80% of the electricity I import is 11p instead of 25p.
If I try and ignore the heat pump, and just look at savings for solar panels and cheap rate charging of batteries only. So far in 2026, its £400 for solar that I use directly, £65 in exports and £330 in cheap rate charging (mostly over winter). That would mean £1900 saving in 12 months at which rate the “payback” for the system for me is 5.5 years. A big difference from 9 to 10 for just using the solar generation alone.
Regarding the heat pump, it is more expensive to run than gas UNLESS you can power it mostly on cheap rate electricity, which I can. So it’s very important that you have a plan for this if you are going to switch. I’ve not had it for long but I think it will save about £350 per year when compared to gas (would be more but I still have a gas hob so can’t ditch gas completely) For me this means “paying back” the heat pump in 5.5 years for the heat pump and extra battery. Day-to-day for my house, if the temperature is close to zero all day, the heat pump is more expensive to use than gas, even on cheap rate electricity. But anything over 5 degree’s and the heat pump is always cheaper. It's very different with the house being heated with a heat pump and underfloor heating. You dont ever really notice the heating being on, its just the temperature that you want it to be. Never too warm and never too cold! I'm pretty happy with it!
That said I am considering Air Con........0 -
Those pictures posted by CaptainRobbo are seriously impressive 👍0
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Thanks, can't take credit for it all, but did a fair bit of the pump and pipe installation.ShootersHillGuru said:Those pictures posted by CaptainRobbo are seriously impressive 👍1
