Energy price comparison

Well, the Ofgem cap for October is out and also, over the last few months. various energy prices have changed quite significantly. So, allowing for the likely efficiencies of the boilers, stoves etc here is the latest chart showing how much energy you get for £1,000. Most houses will need 15 – 20,000kW.hrs over the winter so you can guess the level on (or off) the chart where your house is.

Electricity

Still the most expensive energy you can buy by miles despite a slight fall. Solar panels are still the best way forward and payback is quick if you don’t have too many.

Heat pumps

Now slightly worse than natural gas so there is little incentive to go along with the Government push on boiler replacement. Of course, if you have access to solar power then the picture gets a bit better but remember that in the winter it’s dark and cold by tea time.

Natural gas

As this is what most homes have, and it works very well, there is no great rush to change. An upgrade to a condensing boiler might be timely if you are still nursing an old boiler. (insert predictable joke here)

LPG

The price has risen about 16% to put LPG on a par with oil but a lot depends on the efficiency and running costs of the boilers in question. I once had an LPG gas boiler that was never serviced for 9 years so I could have replaced it on the money saved – that’s not a recommendation, just making a point.

Oil

There have been some big swings over the last year but it looks OK for the time being although boiler efficiency could make the picture worse. Old oil boilers can be very inefficient and servicing and sludge cleaning costs can add up. If an upgrade is needed then LPG should be the top consideration.

See https://www.boilerjuice.com/heating-oil-prices/ for an oil price chart.

Wood

I just bought a huge load of about 6 cubic metres for £500 and the result looks good on the chart although there will be significant variation depending on weight and moisture content and type of wood. I used 70% efficiency for a stove but of course an open fire would slay the calculations, maybe even down to zero gain.

Solar panels

Still worth it? Depends on what you pay of course but a rough estimate goes like this. 3 panels cost £1,200 and make 1,200kW.hrs a year worth 27p x 1,200 or £324. So, your money back in 4 years then. In practice it’s hard to consume all you make, even with a solar diverter driving your immersion heater, and self-consumption falls off with even more panels. Even so it looks like a good plan and the gas boiler will get negligible use in the summer months. You can, however, bump up self-consumption to 100% with batteries, whether car or domestic.

Batteries

They are simply wonderful but the trouble is the cost. Once your electricity bills have been eased by solar panels the remaining savings produced by batteries give rather extended payback periods in line with the life expectancy of the batteries themselves. Cheap energy deals from Octopus and others make for some interesting calculations though. If say you paid 9.5p/kW.hr overnight and used it later driving a mini-split heat pump then the resultant heat would have cost you under 4p/kW.hr. That’s astonishing but you’d need a very big and expensive battery to make it work for a reasonable length of time. Hold on though – electric cars have huge batteries!

This is all very exciting and as soon as your electric car battery can be utilised in the home a new era will arrive. A Nissan Leaf battery is about the same as 4 Tesla Power Walls! If this piques your interest then check out the car battery maths below.

Car battery maths – halve your bills

Your 7kW car charger charges your Nissan Leaf for 6 hours every night on Eon’s 7 hour offer (Octopus only offer 4 hours). The other hour is for the car itself and the 6 are for use back in the house.

Each day we can use 40kW.hrs in the battery to run a small 5kW heat pump for 8 hours and on a COP of 3 that’s 120kW.hrs a day. Totalling 24,000kW.hrs over the 200 day winter that will be more than enough for most homes.

24,000kW.hrs would have cost you just £760 but the chances are you could get under that.

Without any further key bashing the outcome is that your heating bill will be more than halved.

This is such a game changer that it must be part of your future heating strategy and that means you must have a heat pump of some sort even if it’s a mini-split or two. A regular heat pump with a mini-split added as a gap filler would be perfect.

And let’s not forget

Mini-split heat pumps

Mini-splits are just small air to air heat pumps which are easy to install and you could get one fully installed for about £1,200. Yes, a proper heat pump for £1,200.

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating.

My mini-split has been running for over a year so I can tell you how it’s been.

In the shoulder months the PV panels (4kW) run it free a lot of the time

It often draws well under a kilowatt so we run it when needed without worrying about the cost too much

Low power means the solar panels have it covered very often

It often provides enough background heat to enable the main heating to be left off

It blows hot air so makes a great laundry drying machine.

Summer air conditioning is really good, cooling the whole ground floor

It actually cost under £1,000 installed and that took just 4 hours

It was bought from Saturn Sales who gave good advice and delivered on time

Conclusions

It’s still a good idea to go solar. Check out micro-inverters on the panels, a concept that makes sense – ‘Gary does solar’ on YouTube will explain all and get you £50 off if you change to Octopus.

After solar get a mini-split or two. Your bills will plummet and your comfort levels will rise.

Start thinking about an electric car with V2H charging. That is still only a Nissan Leaf as far as I know.

It’s early days but with some solar exports and a bit of insulation, might that car battery get you close to ZERO-COST heating?

While I hope my figures are accurate, please do your own research before making any commitments.

Comment on electric cars.

We’ve seen a massive depreciation hit as electric cars transition from very expensive to near parity with normal cars. A series of price cuts from Tesla, to the chagrin of current owners, and now a wave of reasonably priced EVs such as the MG4 and the rather fabulous Volvo EX30 are setting the tone. The high cost of batteries will halt the slide for a while, and the car makers will have to try to settle into profitability, so it is probably safe to enter the market now. Vehicle to home charging capability should be high on the options list when you do. Before you dive in perhaps consider locking in a nice old-school classic for the potential appreciation when it becomes clear that they are the last that will ever be made.

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