Electric boilers - effect on power demand of a block of flats

There isn't a "thermal" store as such. just the 10 litres or so in the heater itself and whatever is in the pipework and radiators.


Regards


BOD

The problem for the tenants is that you can't get new Economy 10 contracts.  The electricity suppliers are trying to phase them out.  So that leaves standard rate or Economy 7.

On standard rate, the boilers will bankrupt the tenants, as they are hideously expensive to run.  On E7, the flats will be toasty warm overnight, and freezing cold in the day, because there's no heat storage.

Wet electric central heating is a thing of the past, and shouldn't be installed today.  There are much better alternatives.

Also while better insulated housing will help, I reckon 3/4 of the  buildings we will inhabit by 2050, the zero carbon date, are already built. We will have a slightly titivated version of what we have now, unless there is a massive housing demolition campaign

A surprising amount can be done to existing housing if there's a will.  Nearly 10 years ago we bought our current house (1910-ish stone built and up north) and the first winter alone it cost me over a £1000 in gas barely taking the chill off the place morning and evening - it would probably been twice that to heat it to a really comfortable level all day. As it was a 'doer-upper' as they say (all the original lime plaster was thoroughly perished and generally in a pretty poor state) it was a strip back to brick/joists level of renovation anyway so relatively easy to incorporate a decent level of thermal insulation (not quite PassivHaus but well in excess of building regs for a new build), triple glazing and so on. True there's a solar thermal panel that helps a bit with the hot water in the summer, and very occasionally a fire in the log burner - but our gas bills are now below £250 for the entire year. That's despite SWMBO now insisting that anything below 21 degrees is far to cold, someone now being in all day, and gas unit prices going up significantly in that time.


It was costly initially (but probably has already paid back the materials costs already) and would have been very very disruptive (but we were stripping the place out anyway) and by chance some of the design features of the original house (like not having internal doors immediately adjacent to external walls and some rooms south facing) helped significantly - but I'm convinced at lot more could be done far more widely than is being done.  It doesn't have to be done all at once of course - if people start to automatically think about adding insulation when for instance they just think about getting walls re-skimmed or when a room is renovated (some bathrooms and kitchens seem to get a major overhaul every decade or two these days) it starts to add up.


   - Andy.

If these are private rented homes and you change from gas to electric boilers you need to consider the Energy Performance Certificates as you may make it illegal to rent them out, unless the insulation and other energy saving measures are up to standard.


 I told some landlords not to take the storage heaters out of a flat, now I have to make time to go and survey it and quote to fit new storage heaters to replace the panel heaters they got another electrician to fit to replace the original heaters. 


Do not be tempted by apparently smart and modern electric heating systems, effectively the EPC only considers there to be two types of electric heaters, storage heaters and everything else. 


The EPC only considers the cost of the electricity, storage heaters use cheaper electric then the electric heaters lumped under the heading of everything else, gas is cheaper than both.


There are going to be a huge number of private rented homes being occupied illegally in around five weeks time on the 1st April 2020, so consider the EPCs before getting to involved.


Andy Betteridge

I am not aware of any plans to prohibit gas boilers in EXISTING homes.

It is however proposed that NEW homes will be required to be so well insulated that electric heating will be affordable to run.

Some existing homes can be modified to achieve similar standards, but a lot cant be.

No Broadgauge, they will just turn off the Gas supply! Simple, and there will be another 100,000 deaths per year in winter. Typically green. I want to see an electric cremator in operation, that would be really good and presumably only work on windy days.

davezawadi:

No Broadgauge, they will just turn off the Gas supply! Simple, and there will be another 100,000 deaths per year in winter. Typically green. I want to see an electric cremator in operation, that would be really good and presumably only work on windy days.

Bear in mind that the government is elected by old people, because old people vote, and young people don't.  Any government that suggested just turning off the gas and leaving old people to freeze to death wouldn't remain in power for very long.

Dave, you like me will be old enough to remember a time when most homes did not have anything as soft as central heating. Folk simply wore more clothes, and heated only the rooms in use - usually the one with the fireplace. It may be that there will be an element of that less wasteful approach returning as the gas supply reduces. And yes, life expectancy was shorter back then, but then most men smoked and many folk worked with asbestos, benzene and other life shortening nasties, and a lot of medicine we take for granted now had not been invented. (Scans and various heart and cancer treatments come to mind as big factors.)

Please explain how you can avoid the price of gas rising, when it has been practically pouring out of the north sea for free for the last half century, and now it is having to be brought in from further and further afield. No conspiracy, we have just spent up the great dividend of having nearly free energy, and in future it will not be, we seem to be surprised a higher fuel bill.

Graphs from that most pro fossil fuel source, BP...

 

I not only remember the old days when central heating was not the norm, but I have no central heating now. Old property, too expensive to install, and expensive to run.

I heat only the room in use.

The most used room has a wood burning stove, that can also burn anthracite or patent smokeless fuel. I use wood normally, but keep a reserve of anthracite for emergencies.

No heating in my bedroom, that is what wool blankets are for.

300 watt infra red lamp in bathroom, supplemented by a Tilley radiator if very cold.


Annual expenditure on fuel

wood, £250.

Electricity, £400.

Paraffin, £25.


Propane, candles, anthracite, in reserve for emergencies but consumption is negligible normally.