Energy bills

[Ant]

Cor blimey, you wouldn't have wanted to monitor the air in our bedroom that night I cooked that courgette lasagne

[cheb]

Yes there's a chance, a very small one as I have to try and remember it.

Rega Vent.

[Count Steer]

Oh well, while we're on the topic of air quality, I might as well tell a couple of stories.

Back in the mists of time I was involved in testing they there new fangled condensing boilers and analysing the condensate using liquid chromatography. I found a Fl and a Cl peak but nobody believed it...said it was small hydrocarbons. (It's common knowledge now that the condensate is slightly acidic). Me and another chap did a simple experiment involving a test house, a condensing boiler and a tank of refrigerant gas (a chloro-fluoro carbon). One of us released a jolt of gas while the other took samples of the condensate...which promptly turned black as the heat exchanger erm, dissolved a bit. Sure enough the condensate was a 'bit' more acidic ie had HF and HCl in it.

Some time later, got called in to look at a new-ish boiler in a small factory that made brass door furniture. A fair few solvent baths around, all with approved extracts to outside. (Not carbon tet, but pretty chlorine rich). I needed a dustpan and brush to collect most of the heat exchanger from the boiler. Oops.

(Correction: it was the cast iron burner that I had to sweep out).

So, reducing stuff like refrigerant gas release not only had benefits on the atmosphere etc...it's made your gas boilers last longer. Should you ever be tempted to dispose of an old fridge yourself, don't vent the refrigerant next to your boiler and do your degreasing outside (but not under the balanced flue).

No, no more stories from when I had a 'proper' job boys and girls. Time for my nap.

[Count Steer]

Yes there's a chance, a very small one as I have to try and remember it.

Rega Vent.

Cheers. I'll have a browse.

[Mussels]

You can get heat exchangers which warm in coming air/cool out going air so that you ventilate your house without just chucking all the heat away with it. One of my colleagues has one in his full on 'eco house' (turf roof, heat pumps etc.)

Seems like a brilliant idea to me, but I think quite hard to retrofit.

I could retrofit MHRV here easily but the more I look at it the less I think it is a great idea.
Noise crossover can be a problem, you can fit dampers in the ducts but air needs to flow freely round the house which means so does noise. It's not great with teenage kids or working from home.
It dehumidifies the air a lot, would be great for me at the moment but can cause other people problems.
It doesn't seem to work the other way round, if the house is cooler inside then it can't cool incoming air and a heat exchanger bypass is the only option. I don't understand this limitation and I might have assumed wrong but there's such little info available about them. They make cooling coils for the summer but I expect that's as expensive to run as aircon.
I live in the south, solar is better here but northerners will benefit fom heat exchangers more than me.

There are probably better things I can do with my cash, to improve general ventilation I have an always on extractor in the bathroom and the cooker hood venting outside. I'm tempted to put a forced vent in the bedroom ceiling but in summer it will blow hot air down from the loft, my technique this summer will be opening bedroom windows and putting the extractors on full to drag air through the house.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I usually have the window open anyway

[Mussels]

So do I but that's where the MHVR should help as it's constant fresh air without losing heat, I just don't think it's worth it for the 2 months a year I have the heating on.
The extractor was mainly because the wet room is a pig to dry and someone wouldn't open the window. It's a bonus I can use it for forced ventilation on still days.

[Mussels]

I've had my council sponsored solar quote back in, £10k for 6WK panels and a 7KWh battery. It reckons I'll save 4,500 KWh a year so an ROI of 5-6 years.
Reducing regular outgoings for when I retire is very attractive but I'm still not sure it's worth the extra problems it will bring, if energy companies keep on loading the standing charge then solar is worth less, if my mortgage renewal is 8% interest then that 10k is worth £800 a year.
Now the ROI isn't looking so rosy, a more realistic time might be ten+ years and in five years the cost of the same system will probably be less than half. I think I just talked myself out of it for now.

[v8-powered]

We looked at the local authority sponsored scheme, was actually more expensive that using a local reputable installer

[Mr. Dazzle]

Standing charge needs to do one / be more heavily regulated IMO. Obviously they're gonna use it as a sneaky back door way of maintaining income from customers who are becoming more self sufficient.

'tis an excellent point on mortgage rates too, right now the ROI gets pissed on by paying off your mortgage instead

[Yorick]

You'd think solar panels would be promoted over here, but it's a balls ache.
Our accountant is happy we pay all our taxes, but coz we're not working and in the system, we can't claim all the Govt subsidies.

So it's not worth it for us. So we'll just make them burn more gas.

[Cousin Jack]

Standing charge needs to do one / be more heavily regulated IMO. Obviously they're gonna use it as a sneaky back door way of maintaining income from customers who are becoming more self sufficient.

'tis an excellent point on mortgage rates too, right now the ROI gets pissed on by paying off your mortgage instead

Seems to me that, when energy prices went up X%, most of them took the chance to stick the standing charge up by about the same %.

[Mr. Dazzle]

IIRC the price cap rules from Ofgen were changed to allow bigger standing charges? So it's the same total average bill but the ratio is different.

I could be imagining that.

[Cousin Jack]

Not sure, I didn't look at the detail. I can remember a big hike in energy cost, with a valid reason that everyone knew about, and a sizeable hike in standing charge with no explanation or obvious reason.

[Horse]

Today's the day my 2 year fixed rate ends. Be 'interesting' to see what differences show on the smart meter.

[Hoonercat]

Not sure, I didn't look at the detail. I can remember a big hike in energy cost, with a valid reason that everyone knew about, and a sizeable hike in standing charge with no explanation or obvious reason.

It was to cover the cost of moving customers to new providers when all those small firms went out of business. I remember reading that the cost was approx £2billion, shared between those remaining suppliers with an agreement with Ofgem that the cost could be clawed back by increasing standing charges.

[Mr Moofo]

Thankfully our bills aha returned to about 260 per month
And I am having solar panels fitted - because the energy companies are still taking the piss.

[Cousin Jack]

It was to cover the cost of moving customers to new providers when all those small firms went out of business. I remember reading that the cost was approx £2billion, shared between those remaining suppliers with an agreement with Ofgem that the cost could be clawed back by increasing standing charges.

That seems daft. Competitor goes bust, you get new customers without any extra marketing, and then get to charge everone extra.
That is not how a market works.

[Mussels]

IIRC the price cap rules from Ofgen were changed to allow bigger standing charges? So it's the same total average bill but the ratio is different.

I could be imagining that.

That sounds right. I think they are starting to smart from keeping power stations on standby for cloudy days and aren't selling enough KWh, I can't see this improving so future pricing might make solar even less attractive.

[Hoonercat]

It was to cover the cost of moving customers to new providers when all those small firms went out of business. I remember reading that the cost was approx £2billion, shared between those remaining suppliers with an agreement with Ofgem that the cost could be clawed back by increasing standing charges.

That seems daft. Competitor goes bust, you get new customers without any extra marketing, and then get to charge everone extra.
That is not how a market works.

It does seem daft, but those energy suppliers don't get to pick and choose the customers so they'll be getting lumbered with people who have debts (at a time when many people were struggling to pay their bills). There's also an admin cost involved, and those new customers were free to change providers straight away with no exit fees. The suppliers also had to honour any credit built up with the previous supplier. And because all this happened when energy prices were soaring, the suppliers had to buy in extra at those higher prices to provide the new customers with their energy, while (presumably) charging them the same as their existing customers. Prior to that, the suppliers were only covered for the admin cost.
Standing charges don't go directly to the energy suppliers, they cover the cost of running and maintaining the network so go to the network operators. The network operators had to pay the costs to the energy suppliers then recoup it from the customer through standing charges.
The alternative is for millions to be left without energy until they can find a new supplier, at a time when energy suppliers were going bust left, right and centre due to increasing costs.