ENERGY MATTERS

[Stanley]

One thing seems certain to me. We are going to see more 'inconvenient' protests as we go forward. Like the NHS ambulance scandal. the effects of inflation are a slow burn and have not yet hit the headlines. I have a feeling this is going to change soon, perhaps when the public service strikes that are now in the pipeline hit home in about a month.

[plaques]

Wait until we get some good old fashioned black outs. or is that an aspiration too far?

Talking of aspirations. The Tory party are now rebranded as the party of aspirations. Putting food on the table is now No1 aspiration. Paying the energy for energy to keep warm is aspiration No2. If you fail at these first two hurdles then don't vote Tory. They don't want failures who haven't enough go in them to go unicorn hunting.

[Stanley]

I fear I may have to write an old fashioned letter of complaint to British Gas. Their latest bill bears no relationship to reality, doesn't even mention Electricity!
As for cuts Ken, we are only just coming into the coldest weather......
I've checked my Tilley Lamps....

[Stanley]

The letter to BG was nagging me and I knew it would be on my mind until I had dealt with it. So I have written the letter and it's ready for the post. Perhaps I can sleep now........

[Stanley]

It worked. I slept like a log and the letter is on its way to Complaints Management at Rotherham. I've made it easy for them this time, I have enclosed a copy of the latest invoice which has no relation to what my account is online. It has me down as a quarterly variable direct debit when it is monthly online and there is no mention of any charges for electricity. As a kicker I have also queried why my gas meter is still not reporting and they haven't delivered my promised home monitor. (I'm not bothered about the latter but thought I might as well get it off my chest.
Now we wait and if there is no movement I shall be looking into how to contact the Ombudsman....
(Or perhaps better still a copy to The Money Programme!)

[plaques]

LED lights, power factors and Smart meters. I post this more as a question than a statement of fact.

LED lamps are sold with power ratings typically of 3, 5 7 or 12 Watts. The Watts value being Amps X Volts. which measured on the old disc meters would equate to the Watts per hour being charged. LED lamps have another feature called 'power factor' where the phasing of Amps and Volts is slightly out to each other. On the disc meters this phasing is ignored but in Smart meters its taken into the calculation for the total power (Watts) used. so if a lamp had a power factor of 0.5 the measure energy would be 50% more ie, taking a bulb up from 5 Watts to 7.5 Watts. A typical lamp would have a 30% increase. (0.65 power factor). Still a massive saving on the 40 watt incandescent lamp but more than is written on the tin.

Having said all this I'm not an expert on Smart meter and would welcome comments on power level cut off values and their effect on the unit charge that the customer is paying. At first sight the effect would to make some very small charges like phone charging, standby setting and small LED night lights being considered rather than ignored as virtually no cost items.

[Big Kev]

I'm no expert on the internal workings of smart meters (I'm only involved with the data transmission) but my understanding is that any of the digital meters are more 'accurate' than the old disc meters. My understanding of the volts x amps = watts measurement on the old 'disc' meters is that these meters use a DC motor to work. My understanding of the 'power factor' is that it uses 'both sides' of the AC current (effectively a bit in and a bit back again) and the disc meter 'motor' would only register one side of this. Newer digital (not necessarily smart) meters will measure both sides. I could be wrong as it's not something I followed up on after a C&G electrical installation course I did back in the 1990s.

[PanBiker]

Smart Meters and LEDS aside, we are having a bit of a battle with our combi boiler. In an effort to save on the costs we just have the boiler on the timer with an hour on in the morning to make the bathroom cosy for our showers. Another boost just around tea time, we dress accordingly to accomodate the new regime. Before all this price hike nonsense we would have switched it on when it dropped cold around November, let it run on the comfort settings and TRV's and then switched it off again in the new year when it was warm enough to do without.

Our boiler seems to have other ideas though and although theoretically it is being controlled by the timer it is firing up the radiators randomly and for varying lengths of time, there is no pattern to it. It is not the auto frost settings as it does it even when it is mild with no risk of a frost.

I have bled all the radiators, checked the pressure in the boiler, replaced the batteries in the remote timer/stat. Final test yesterday was to power it off completely while we were at the Coffee Morning. I switched it back on when we got back. Makes no difference and it was running full bore at 4am this morning when I visited the bathroom!

I have emailed my plumber and asked for a visit from their gas engineer.

[Big Kev]

It may sound obvious but is the receiver, for the remote timer/stat, set to auto?

Voice of experience here, mine has a manual override on it.

[PanBiker]

It's an electric clock timer Kev with a three position switch. Timer in the middle, comfort settings one way and economy the other. Each of the auto settings has its own stat setting. Previously when set in the centre it only fired on timer regardless of the temperature, unless it was so cold that it triggered on the frost override.

When it was affordable we would normally run it over winter on comfort with the stat and TRV's set accordingly.

[plaques]

I'm no expert on the internal workings of smart meters (I'm only involved with the data transmission) but my understanding is that any of the digital meters are more 'accurate' than the old disc meters. My understanding of the volts x amps = watts measurement on the old 'disc' meters is that these meters use a DC motor to work. My understanding of the 'power factor' is that it uses 'both sides' of the AC current (effectively a bit in and a bit back again) and the disc meter 'motor' would only register one side of this. Newer digital (not necessarily smart) meters will measure both sides. I could be wrong as it's not something I followed up on after a C&G electrical installation course I did back in the 1990s.

Thanks Kev.
I think that 'more accurate' means that the measurement takes the power factor into consideration. In the past most domestic customers never got involved with power factors unless you happened to have a great big electric motor running somewhere.(Stanley come to mind ) A house full of LEDs may have a power factor of 0.65 meaning the power company has to supply more power than that registered by the old Disc meters which the new Smart meters take into account. Still a big saving on the incandescent bulbs.

Our boiler seems to have other ideas though and although theoretically it is being controlled by the timer it is firing up the radiators randomly and for varying lengths of time, there is no pattern to it. It is not the auto frost settings as it does it even when it is mild with no risk of a frost.

Ian our boiler control box went on the blink (£75 please) which in turn affected the boiler computer.

Just a thought, have you tried switching all the other consumer unit switches off except the boiler and see what happens.

[Stanley]

Ken, I was always impressed by how little energy welding used at Hey Farm until one of my mates pointed out that when i struck an arc the meter often reversed direction and started cancelling consumption. Don't ask me why!

[PanBiker]

Ian our boiler control box went on the blink (£75 please) which in turn affected the boiler computer.

Just a thought, have you tried switching all the other consumer unit switches off except the boiler and see what happens.

Ken, I assume you mean the TRV's on the radiators rather than the trips in the consumer unit. I can reduce the temps at the rads with the TRV's apart from the ones that don't have them. The towel rad in the bathroom is the balance rad for the system and we have another small one in the smaller bedroom that has no TRV. I can override all the radiators at the boiler by turning the rad temp down as far as it will go or I could set it on frost only. That will obviously effect demand but has the downer to remember to turn it up before we go to bed for the morning boost in the bathroom. A bit inconvenient as it will also impact the tea time boost. It's a bit self defeating if it fires up at 3 or 4 am during the night. It would be OK for Stanley but we are still in the land of nod.

Could be a faulty receiver that's doing its own thing or the transmitter I suppose. I need a definitive from someone suitably qualified hence my capitulation in favour of the cavalry.

[Big Kev]

It's an electric clock timer Kev with a three position switch. Timer in the middle, comfort settings one way and economy the other.

Ah right, different arrangement to my wireless timer/stat.

[plaques]

Ken, I assume you mean the TRV's on the radiators rather than the trips in the consumer unit.

Ian, actually No, I did mean consumer unit. I was thinking along the lines of interference from other equipment like noisy dimmer switches or things that could put a big spike into the supply. Wishful thinking perhaps but it costs nowt.

[PanBiker]

Don't have anything fancy like dimmers and it is totally random. so if switched everything off apart from the downstairs ring that the boiler is on it would still leave the majority of electrical stuff powered on unless I went round and unplugged everything. It's bad enough having a dodgy boiler without having to sit in the dark with no telly and nowt to eat!

My money is still on a faulty transmitter or receiver or the control circuitry that goes with it. Just had a look and it's rocking on 17 years old. We used to pay British Gas for a maintenance contract but we knocked that on the head after this years summer service, the monthly costs were getting silly for one visit a year. If we had continued with the contract we would have already paid them over £100 since it was serviced. So that can be our starter for 10 when we get the man in.

[Stanley]

Re British Gas 'service'. I came to the same decision this year Ian and of course realised that what they did was a statutory check and not a proper service. Jonathan Greenbank spent almost two hours on it and said it was the first thorough service it had had in its life.

[Tizer]

I have bled all the radiators, checked the pressure in the boiler, replaced the batteries in the remote timer/stat. Final test yesterday was to power it off completely while we were at the Coffee Morning. I switched it back on when we got back. Makes no difference and it was running full bore at 4am this morning when I visited the bathroom!

Coincidentally, our CH system started playing up last week. Coming on and off unexpectedly. I noticed the wireless thermostat was misbehaving and then it seemed to give up altogether and left the boiler heating. I changed the 4 AA batteries and tried it again. It worked briefly then gave up again. Out of curiosity I scrounged 4 batteries from elsewhere and put them in. That worked! All the troublesome batteries were from one pack and they must have been reaching the end of their life.

And I now know that there is a tiny, hardly visible, icon in the corner of the screen that turns red when the batteries are flat! You wouldn't notice it unless you had the thing a few inches from your eyes.

[PanBiker]

My timer/stat has a red LED that supposedly lights when the batteries are duff. Never seen it lit as I always change the batteries as a matter of course if there are any problems. Our problem is intermittent and I know how difficult faults like that can be to chase down. Might be a stock fault for those that know what they are doing! I had an armful of those when I was in electronic field servicing.

[Stanley]

My old fashioned programmer that is never altered is powered by the mains and hard wired to the boiler. That seems to be reliable, or at least it has been for the last 25 years!

[plaques]

In round figures we have now hit £5 per day for gas. ONLY £35 per week. Around 20% of the basic pension. Unfortunately pensioners are only the tip of the Iceberg with many part time workers, single parents with young children, medical conditions that necessitate extra heating now face higher bills. With this in mind ask yourselves why is the UK paying the highest price for energy in the world. Not an easy circle to square.

[Big Kev]

Slightly more at Chez Kev, these are for gas for the last 10 days

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[Pluggy]

Sheesh Kev that equates to 14p per kwh for gas. Over 4 times what I'm paying at the moment (slightly under 3p). I'm still on old pricing from a 2 year contract I started just before the prices started increasing. My dad who is still on the same supplier as me but on a more recent contract is paying just ove 7p. Some channels I watch youtube say they are paying just over 10p. but 14p takes the biscuit.

Over the last 10 days my minimum use has been 3.4 m3 which equates to 37.7 kwh and the maximum (yestereday) 8.4 m3 = 95.4 kwh. dearest day well under 3 quid. This is with my presently hybrid heating system with the main living room heated by heat pump and the rest by the gas. The spillover heat from the living room heavily subsidises the rest of the house so but it has a far greater impact when its milder than present. The gas purely does space heating, Cooking and hot water is all electric.

For the same period (1st January - 9th December) for the past 4 years :

Electric has been 1933, 2160, 2301 and 3420 kwh Increasing every year with my increasing reliance on my electric toys for my increasing disability. Big jump this year with the Heat Pump fiited 7th January 2022. An indepenant power monitor just for the heat pump says it has used 1150 kwh since it was fitted although that includes a few days using it as air conditioning in the summer heat waves.

Gas has been 1214, 1187, 1232, 537 m3 - big drop this year with the heat pump fitted 7th January 2022

Since 1150 kwh of electric is significantly cheaper than ~700 m3 (~7770 kwh) of gas. I'd say the heat pump wins .Particulary as a fair proportion of the electric came from my solar panels. I'd say the heat pump wins.

Plans are afoot to expand the heat pump systen to do the downstairs next year using plain electic heating as needed for the upstairs. In 2024 if all goes as expected I'll be taking the gas out.

In answer to plaques, the reason (probably) is that all the cost of the renewable incentives over preceding years was put onto the cost of electricity. and the haedlines just address electricity They are new talking about addressing this since gas is dying (or at least the writing is on the wall) and electric is staying.

[Big Kev]

Sheesh Kev that equates to 14p per kwh for gas.

My fixed tariffs expired just after things hit the fan.

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[Pluggy]

Ahh I wasn't counting the standng charge whch is presently ~ 28p per day. Next year I'll be looking for a zero standing charge option (if they are still a thing) since I;m not planning on using any gas. All things being equal its irrelevant when all my tariff is electricity only.