The cost of electricity

[Mark Hennessy]

Effectively, these work in reverse. Instead of water from the heat source (boiler or heat pump) going through a coil to heat a mass of stored water to be delivered to the taps, cold water from the mains goes through the coil and is heated by the mass of hot water.

I've got a nagging feeling that I might be wrong about this - as I said, I'm not an expert on these, and it's been over a decade since I last read up on them (and because they weren't a DIY option, and I was happy with the conventional gravity-fed system I already had, I didn't go too deep into the subject).

I had a quick look around, and the ones I'm seeing now do use heat from the coil(s) to heat the mass of water, like the gravity-fed systems, but the change is that there's no cold water storage, and the mass of water is under mains pressure (and that's where it gets complicated enough to require professional installation).

I don't think that my initial recollection was a product of my imagination, but anything is possible. As I mentioned yesterday, I've got quite a bit on my mind at the moment, so I shouldn't really be distracting myself with this. Either way, please don't take this as gospel - not that I'd expect anyone to anyway - and apologies if I am wrong

[Radio Fixer]

In yesterdays TG, Kevin McCloud, him of Grand Designs came out against heat pumps saying they were another Gov "pratfall".  Far better to give the grants for better insulation but apart from better windows how do you do that with older cavity wall homes?  (as we have talked about on the Forum).

Dont remember him mentioning that    

Gary

[Nick]

In yesterdays TG, Kevin McCloud, him of Grand Designs came out against heat pumps saying they were another Gov "pratfall".  Far better to give the grants for better insulation but apart from better windows how do you do that with older cavity wall homes?  (as we have talked about on the Forum).

Dont remember him mentioning that      

Nothing wrong with heat pumps IN THE RIGHT CONTEXT. McCloud wasn't against heat pumps per se, he was against treating them as a magic bullet. His quote from the DT (12/03/22) was:

"I love heat pumps, they're wonderful machines. They really are and I'm a big fan of them. But where you start with a building is fabric first."

The insanity is putting heat pumps in buildings that aren't suited for them - as the heat is gradual, you need well insulated properties to start with - no point at all retrofitting a heat pump into an unsuitable property - our heat pump is in a recent self-build (well, complete gutting & rebuild of original buildings whilst massively increasing the footprint), so totally appropriate for the property.

Fix the insulation issues first.. Then consider energy sources.

[Radio Fixer]

Oh! thanks for the correction. Not against HPs then but the Gov policy of grants for people to get them put in, in unsuitable properties. It seems to me they are only suitable for new builds.

The scammers will be ripping of the grants we can expect !

Gary

[ppppenguin]

Nick is 100% correct. Sort the insulation and ventilation first. You can't heat the average Brisish house properly with a heatpump unless you attend to these first.

For new build it should be a no-brianer to build to the sort of standards that have been common in Germany and Scandinavia for years. The cost of meeting Passivhaus standards is probably now less than 5%. This ignores the knuckle dragging building industry who lobby hard to make sure that the government lags(!) behind in the building regulations. There is also the fundamental disconnect between the housebuilders (and landlords) who want lowest initial costs and residents who pay the heating bill.

Along with insulation you also have to get ventilation right, otherwise the results are horribly mouldy.

Refurbishing to Passivhaus standards is usually both difficult and expensive unless you are almost starting from scratch. I've looked at external insulation for the large and somewhat exposed north wall of my house. Last time I looked, the payback time was decades. I suppose I should now look again as it may only be 15 years. That's still a long payback period. I don't expect to be here that long.

Getting government policy right on insulation grants isn't easy but, to put it politely, the recent attempts have been a mess.

[Sinewave]

Retrofit insulation can be tricky and unsightly. It's doesn't fit in with the roof profile, soffits and facias or the windows.

New builds are very very warm indeed, so apart from the other issues surrounding new builds, at least the insulation is pretty much sorted from the build.

[Sinewave]

Taken from a Bacefook group I follow, I wonder if there's any truth in the maffs?

The rate per unit (kWh) appears to be 10d (from an electricity slot meter book in the group post)
The Bank of England inflation calculator says £1 in 1942 is equivalent to about £33 now.
If my arithmetic is correct that means a unit cost £1.38 in today's money. Compare that with the October cap of 52p

[Paul_RK]

From a 1938-9 Belling catalogue:

"Many people still think that electricity is expensive to use. This, however, is definitely not the case. At the present time electricity for general purposes other than lighting is available at 1d. per unit or less to 10½ millions out of the 11½ million homes in Great Britain. Actually more than 40% of those homes have electricity available at ½d. per unit, or 70% of all the homes in the country can have a supply at ¾d. per unit or less.

Generally speaking, there is always a special rate of 1d. per unit or less available when electricity is used for heating, cooking or water heating, plus a small standing charge based upon the rateable value of the house, or whatever the system in the town happens to be."

The cost rising to 10d. per unit in four years sounds implausible: the slot meter may be a factor, and I'm not sure whether landlords may have had some leeway in setting charging rates. 1942 is a little early for it to have been one of Rachman's properties...

Paul

Oops: posted the above in response to Sinewave, then I looked back in the thread and noticed I'd found and posted part of the same passage back in March! Ah well... We've struck lucky in having a tariff that's fixed until the end of May '23, so it may not be until the winter of '23-4 that we're really motivated to minimise the use of the Belling Champions in our 1680 building.

[ppppenguin]

The site https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/ is very good for comparing prices over time. They explain their methods and provide different ways to compare.

1d in 1938 equates to 27p in 2021 using what is effectively the RPI. That's a factor of about 65. Other comparisons are based on cost of labour etc and are higher.

[roadster]

Unfortunately, not everything on farcebook is true or verified. Using the first verifiable source which I found: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistica...icity-data
The cost of 1kWh in 1942 was 1d or 0.4p or equivalent today of 14p/kWh (using bank of England calculator).
Another huge difference trying to compare with today is that in 1942, most households which were connected to the electricity supply would only use it for lighting and maybe a wireless, heating and hot water would have mainly been by coal. So probably only a tenth of today's electricity consumption (from the above site).
Broadly estimating and using a forecast of £4000 pa electricity bill using the above figures gives approximately £60pa in todays money.
I haven't included the cost of coal for heating as I can't be bothered to do any more research.
Rod
ps
The two previous posts appeared whilst I was composing this, so using Jeffrey's, probably more realistic inflation calculator would double my figure.
R