Heating options

[Glenn586]

Sounds to me like you need you need a 2000 litre LPG tank. I’ve just signed into a new 2 year deal at 45p per litre so it’s more the 6.85p kWh that @Flyfisher refers to. Electric UFH will cost 3 times that to run no matter how clever it is.
Ring around the LPG bulk suppliers. We got our tank for free as long as I dug the hole!

 

[Flyfisher]

I think it's actually LESS than my previous example.

Based on what I can find online, 1 litre of LPG will provide 7.08 kWh, so if that costs 45p then the cost per kWh is 45 / 7.08 = 6.36p/kWh. Electricity will cost around 28p/kWh on a standard tariff, so is way more expensive.

Converting electrical energy into heat will be 100% efficient whereas there will be some losses when converting the LPG into kWh but I understand that modern condensing boilers can be about 90% efficient, so even allowing for that, LPG heating looks to be far cheaper than electric heating.

Interesting comment about the supplier providing a free tank as long as you dug the hole. We had some overhead power cables to our house re-routed underground for free as long I did the trenching work. In fact, I was specifically advised by the utiliy company to do this because they said if they have to do it they simply sub-contract it out and it then costs a small fortune. So, for the cost of a 'local-man-with-a-mini-digger", ie £200 (about 15 years ago mind), we go rid of two unsightly poles and overhead wiring. Sounds like it might a common thing with utility companies!

 

[CliffordPope]

What grinds my gears is the abuse of the 'direct debit' scam. Firstly you have to pay more for your energy if you wish to opt out of DD, but if you opt in to take advantage of the cheaper rates the first sign of winter and your account going into the red will trigger an unnecessary and arbitrary increase in your monthly payments. This is an absolute scam that wilfully ignores the concept of 'average' which set your monthly rate in the first place. The aim of the game is to accrue as much 'credit' in your account as possible which likely gets invested elsewhere, unless you ask for it back.

That has been exactly my grouse about our supplier - EON I think. As soon as winter arrived they increased the direct debit saying our electricity consumption would rise. I argued that on the contrary it would fall, because we would now be using the log-burning Rayburn for all our hot water, as well as heating the downstairs and most cooking.
They then tried another tack and said their policy was to charge enough to build up a credit balance in advance that would cover the cost of the first (inflated) month's usage. I said they had no right to use my money to fund their running capital - that was the function of their shareholders and bankers, not the consumer.
After further arguing they conceded there was no obligation to use their so-called average and pay in advance, I could just pay each month (in arrears) for what I had actually used.
Hooray! They withdrew their demand for an initial payment of £300 in advance, and the next monthly direct debit was £17 instead. They thought their customers would prefer the "certainty" of their method!
And we still get the lower rate for using direct debit.

They are sharks and confidence tricksters. I don't understand the Smart meter business, but I don't trust them an inch, and if the suppliers and the government are pushing something there is bound to be a hidden fraud somewhere. Probably open to hacking by a Chinese AI thing.

I would expect something called "smart" to do something clever, on its own initiative for my benefit. But the first sentence of any of their propaganda always begins "This enables YOU to monitor this, do that ... "

 

[Cubist]

Probably open to hacking by a Chinese AI thing.

Coo, you had me going there for a moment.

The announcement from Trump of a $500 Billion investment coming on top of our crews whatever it was, only for both to be to be thrown into the giggle corner by the new Chinese AI product hitting the streets had me....... Oh, just realised, I've already done that rant a couple of weeks back so I'll just go and get a cuppa instead.

 

[Lacan07]

That has been exactly my grouse about our supplier - EON I think. As soon as winter arrived they increased the direct debit saying our electricity consumption would rise. I argued that on the contrary it would fall, because we would now be using the log-burning Rayburn for all our hot water, as well as heating the downstairs and most cooking.
They then tried another tack and said their policy was to charge enough to build up a credit balance in advance that would cover the cost of the first (inflated) month's usage. I said they had no right to use my money to fund their running capital - that was the function of their shareholders and bankers, not the consumer.
After further arguing they conceded there was no obligation to use their so-called average and pay in advance, I could just pay each month (in arrears) for what I had actually used.
Hooray! They withdrew their demand for an initial payment of £300 in advance, and the next monthly direct debit was £17 instead. They thought their customers would prefer the "certainty" of their method!
And we still get the lower rate for using direct debit.

They are sharks and confidence tricksters. I don't understand the Smart meter business, but I don't trust them an inch, and if the suppliers and the government are pushing something there is bound to be a hidden fraud somewhere. Probably open to hacking by a Chinese AI thing.

I would expect something called "smart" to do something clever, on its own initiative for my benefit. But the first sentence of any of their propaganda always begins "This enables YOU to monitor this, do that ... "

It's more about the fact your monthly debit would have been established as an average of your previous years usage over 12 months, so it matters not one jot what your current usage is in the winter or summer. This has already been taken into account in establishing your monthly debit. When your usage drops in the summer do you see them reducing your monthly debit? No, of course not, it's a scam.

 

[Flyfisher]

To be fair (I'm not sure why when it comes to multinationals!) if they 'scam' someone into a higher monthly payment, it won't be long before it becomes obviously too high and should be reduced. I'm constantly suprised by how many people seem to believe that their monthly DD is the cost of their energy and have no real idea how many kWh they are actually using. I guess that's a consequence of divorcing the payments from the usage, which never used to happen in the days of quarterly bills paid in full by cheque. Sigh.

I don't understand the Smart meter business, but I don't trust them an inch, and if the suppliers and the government are pushing something there is bound to be a hidden fraud somewhere. Probably open to hacking by a Chinese AI thing.

I would expect something called "smart" to do something clever, on its own initiative for my benefit. But the first sentence of any of their propaganda always begins "This enables YOU to monitor this, do that ... "

The main 'smart thing' they do, as far as I can tell, is replace the infrequent meter reader and ensure there are no estimated bills.

Everything else they enable is entirely optional and eminently ignoreable if you so wish. All I can say is that I'm quite happy to be now paying an average of about 10p per kWh instead of paying around 28p. I'm also quite happy that all my excess solar PV can be sold back to the grid for more than the average cost I pay, meaning that my summer bills are negative and cover the cost of the mains gas I use for DHW. I wouldn't be able to do any of that without a smart meter. Plus, as I've mentioned before, my energy supplier allows me to change my monthly direct debit payment online to whatever I like, so I'm rarely in credit by more than £20 or so.

As for chinese hacking, if you even believe that, what's the actual risk involved with them finding out how much electricity you consume each month? I'd be happy enough to just tell them if they asked politely

 

[fernicarry]

Given how embedded Chinese corporations are on the generation side and with their buddies the Russians ready to blow up our offshore infrastructure I don't think we need to worry about anyone meddling with our smart meters.

Smart meters enable Uber style real-time demand-based pricing. I'm pretty sure that in the fullness of time that will be the only sort of tariff that is offered to us. A few weeks back the electricity market was quite tight so you may have seen the stories of gas generators being offered 50x to come online to make up the difference. In no one's wildest dreams will non-fossils provide 100% of our supply 100% of the time. So those generators will always be on standby and will push the wholesale price through the roof when they are needed because they have only a few hours in which to earn a year's worth of revenue. You can't expect the suppliers to take on that sort of commercial risk now can you...

 

[Lacan07]

To be fair (I'm not sure why when it comes to multinationals!) if they 'scam' someone into a higher monthly payment, it won't be long before it becomes obviously too high and should be reduced. I'm constantly suprised by how many people seem to believe that their monthly DD is the cost of their energy and have no real idea how many kWh they are actually using. I guess that's a consequence of divorcing the payments from the usage, which never used to happen in the days of quarterly bills paid in full by cheque. Sigh.

Oh but they don't, at least not back in the period I'm referring too, it may have changed now. I can remember my mum being £100's in credit to her supplier and I had to twist their arm to refund it. The Tories threatened to to abolish the financial toll of quarterly billing but didn't follow through.

 

[Lacan07]

The main 'smart thing' they do, as far as I can tell, is replace the infrequent meter reader and ensure there are no estimated bills.

Everything else they enable is entirely optional and eminently ignoreable if you so wish. All I can say is that I'm quite happy to be now paying an average of about 10p per kWh instead of paying around 28p. I'm also quite happy that all my excess solar PV can be sold back to the grid for more than the average cost I pay, meaning that my summer bills are negative and cover the cost of the mains gas I use for DHW. I wouldn't be able to do any of that without a smart meter. Plus, as I've mentioned before, my energy supplier allows me to change my monthly direct debit payment online to whatever I like, so I'm rarely in credit by more than £20 or so.

As for chinese hacking, if you even believe that, what's the actual risk involved with them finding out how much electricity you consume each month? I'd be happy enough to just tell them if they asked politely

I think its a case of 'knowledge is power'. One of the issues often cited with smart meters is they allow the supplier to build up a comprehensive picture of someone's usage habits which in turn may lead to, for example, the opportunity to exploit variable charging at different times of the day.

Although not really the same thing, the water companies mad desire to get everyone on to water meters is a pretty obvious, not many people have them and they massively loose out if they can only charge you a flat monthly rate. Hence the ridiculous scaremongering every summer about droughts despite it bucketing it down for 5 straight months. Usage increases in the summer for obvious reasons which affects their bottom line and they have no way of pinging you for it.

 

[a twig]

Enthusiasm for water metering is also driven by lack of capacity.

There hasn’t been a new reservoir built in this country since 1992 (although allegedly a new one will finally open in Hampshire in 2029). During that time the population has risen by ~15m people. Add to that under capacity the millions of litres of water lost each year to leaks etc stemming from underinvestment in maintenance of the network and you can see the enthusiasm for incentivising people to reduce their consumption as a “get out of jail” card.

 

[Flyfisher]

Oh but they don't, at least not back in the period I'm referring too, it may have changed now. I can remember my mum being £100's in credit to her supplier and I had to twist their arm to refund it. The Tories threatened to to abolish the financial toll of quarterly billing but didn't follow through.

I'm sure it's true that it's not easy to get accumulated credit refunded and I'm equally sure it will rarely happen without a lot of pestering. Despite my earlier priase of Octopus, I had the same situation with them last year and by not paying attention after my solar PV was installed I accumulated alomost £700 in credit. No problem, I thought, because their website has a link to request a refund of any credit balance, so I did and requested a £500 repayment. Nothing happened. So I tried again. Nothing. So I called them and someone explained that they were having 'system problems' with repayments but it should be fixed soon and they'd refund me when it was. Nothing. Fortunately, as I previously mentioned, they also allow the monthly DD amount to be set online, so I changed it to £1 until I'd clawed back the credit and I now change it regularly to ensure I don't build up any more credit, even in the summer months.

So I'm not pretending they're all angels and definitely agree that they need 'managing'.

 

[Cubist]

Although not really the same thing, the water companies mad desire to get everyone on to water meters is a pretty obvious

And that reminds me....

I used to own a house near Birmingham that I used predominantly as a dormitory before I met the First Lady. Following one of my not infrequent then lengthy overseas trips I found an oddly large bill from the water services company. Puzzled, I challenged and after much faffing about found that - the water meter for my house was connected to a neighbours home and his to mine... for at least the ten preceding years!

 

[a twig]

I’ve found with Octopus that their app seems to work a lot more reliably than their website when doing such operations

 

[Flyfisher]

I think its a case of 'knowledge is power'. One of the issues often cited with smart meters is they allow the supplier to build up a comprehensive picture of someone's usage habits which in turn may lead to, for example, the opportunity to exploit variable charging at different times of the day.

Although not really the same thing, the water companies mad desire to get everyone on to water meters is a pretty obvious, not many people have them and they massively loose out if they can only charge you a flat monthly rate. Hence the ridiculous scaremongering every summer about droughts despite it bucketing it down for 5 straight months. Usage increases in the summer for obvious reasons which affects their bottom line and they have no way of pinging you for it.

I don't believe they exploit variable charging based on an individual's usage habits. That would surely be ridiculously complicated across millions of consumers. But they certainly exploit variable charging based on grid demand, which averages out the nation's usage habits in a more sophisticated way that the old 'white meter' did for a lower price for overnight electricity.

Of course, the advent of EVs and home batteries is changing the simplistic overnight off-peak model and it's conceivable that when everyone has an EV and charges it overnight then 'off-peak' might be more of a daytime thing. Already, the advent of smart meters and smart EV chargers means that I can charge my EV during variable times during the day as well as for a guaranteed six hours overnight. When I say 'I can charge' I really mean that as long as the car is plugged into my home charger, Octopus controls when to charge it based on when the grid demand is low. Typically, this seems to mean afternoons and evenings, from about 2-4pm and 8-11pm, but it varies and some days doesn't happen at all. But it only requires that I plug into the charger whenever I'm at home and set a time by when I need the car to be fully charged and the 'smarts' does everything else. All I know is that I wake up to a fully charged EV every day and it has only cost me 7p / kWh regardless of what time of day the charging occurred.

Similarly, I can set my home battery to charge on the same 7p tariff as the EV, again completely automatically, so that it's full of 7p electricity when the overnight period finishes at 5:30am and the cost reverts to the standard 28p/kWh . . . except at that time the battery kicks in and releases the stored electricity so I don't actually consume anything at the 28p rate. During the winter months when there is minimal solar PV the battery typically runs out by somewhere around 6pm so I'm back to consuming from the grid at 28p, but if my EV is plugged in then the rate will often drop back to 7p after about 8pm, so my consumption of 28p electricity is minimal and is why my average cost is around 10p / kWh. But that's only during the winter months because in the summer the PV takes over from the battery during the day (often charging it for free) and the exported excess means that during the best months the monthly bill is negative. Again, all down to the 'smarts' in the system. I could easily add additional battery capacity to ensure it would always last all day even during the darkest winter months, but that's a matter of economics rather than technology and since my existing battery has already reduced my average electricity cost to around 10p that's pretty close to the 7p lowest it could ever be so it's a case of diminishing returns. Meanwhile, I can always console myself that I'm also saving about £200/month on petrol, which more than covers the few kWh of 28p electricity incurred.

Having said that, battery technology continues to improve and costs continue to fall so who knows how the calculation might look in a few years? It's a dynamic environment while the technology, usage patterns and tariffs are changing. For example, I had initially envisaged being able to charge my EV during the day using free PV power, but in practice that would lose money because I can charge the EV for 7p /kWh and sell excess PV generation for 15p /kWh. I'm sure that will change in the coming years but the 'smarts' means I should be able to make the best of whatever changes are implemented.

Anyway, just a few examples of how 'smarts' need not automatically be 'the enemy' and, in many respects, can enable us to 'game the system' as best we can and kick back a little.

 

[Cubist]

Anyway, just a few examples of how 'smarts' need not automatically be 'the enemy' and, in many respects, can enable us to 'game the system' as best we can and kick back a little.

I concur but.... it's not the technology itself that bothers me. Rather, its the card deck shufflers and stackers in the boardrooms that really control the stuff that I don't/won't trust.

 

[Flyfisher]

I tend to agree but surely it's best to take advantage of what we can while we can?

Like it or not, unless you happen to live like a hermit and grow all your own limited food, we're all totally dependent on things we have no control over. Food, medicine, fuel, clothing, all the materials we use to patch up our period properties . . . basically everything. So whether we trust 'the powers that be' or not makes very little difference and really only affects ourselves.

 

[Lacan07]

I don't believe they exploit variable charging based on an individual's usage habits. That would surely be ridiculously complicated across millions of consumers. But they certainly exploit variable charging based on grid demand, which averages out the nation's usage habits in a more sophisticated way that the old 'white meter' did for a lower price for overnight electricity.

Yes, I wasn't necessarily advocating this is happening right now, some people think it may be coming down the line. Surely a smart meter which communicates with the mother ship can easily implement and chart individual rate changes at different times of the day in a way the old analogue meter never could. The old meters told them nothing about how the power was being consumed.

 

[Flyfisher]

I'm sure it would be possible to track an individual's pattern of usage throughout the day via a smart meter, even today, but I can't see how this would useful to a utility company. but times are certainly changing so who really knows? We'll just have to to react with the times as they evolve.

 

[CliffordPope]

I'm sure it would be possible to track an individual's pattern of usage throughout the day via a smart meter, even today, but I can't see how this would useful to a utility company. but times are certainly changing so who really knows? We'll just have to to react with the times as they evolve.

If eBay can work out my lifestyle just from a few purchases and then target me with offers, not just for repeats but similat things that might tempt me, then I'm sure a really smart electricity meter could very easily do a better job with better data.
I obviously have a washing machine, because it would spot the canny way I set it to come on at night, and see from the rhythym of the current drawn over the cycle that it is an older model, not very efficient. How long before it sells the data to an advertiser and I start getting pestered by ads for new super-efficient washing mchines?
Just like the machines hospitals use for tracing heart patterns, so know which valve is missing a beat or not communicating properly with which other valve.

Mark my words, there's a whole new field of serveilance and detective analysis of domestic electricty use patterns ready to happen. Not to mention criminal use. I bet it's easy to spot when a house is unoccupied, what sort of electrical devices they have, when to break in, what to nick, what sort of EV to pinch, etc.
You heard it here first!

 

[Flyfisher]

So much pessimism on here!

Even if these scenarios come to pass, are they really so bad? So you get an advert or some junk mail for a new, more efficient washing machine. One click on the keyboard and it's gone. Besides, the place you bought the old washing machine from already knows you have it, so they could just as easily sell that information without smart meters being needed to deduce it from your electricity usage. As for tracking heart patterns, wouldn't you rather have advance warning of potentially life-threatening condition while it is relatively trivial to cure?

As for criminal use, I reckon it's pretty easy to stand outside any house in the country and make a pretty accurate guess of the consumer electricals it contains, simply by the value of the house, which of course is easily available online these days, or by looking in the local estate agent windows for equivalent properties back in the 'good old days' before all this sinister tech was being foisted on us all, so no need for complicated smart-meter 'profiling'.

Perhaps it's something to do with owning a period property that turns us into Luddites - well, not all of us, obviously