To think if my energy usage is lower than average my bills shouldn't be almost double average?

[ASHPwoes]

We have an air source heat pump heating system. It's an environmentally friendly technology which heats our four bedroom house efficiently. Our annual electricity consumption (total energy usage) is under 12000kWh. Previously we had it on a "green" tarrif which was supposedly from renewables, although I'm not certain that's still the case since the energy market went insane.

Anyway, because it is an electric system rather than gas, and because the current cost of electricity is 34p per kWh vs 10p per kWh for gas our annual bill looks like being around £4500 compared to about £2500 for a four bedroom house using 12000kWh gas and 2900kWh electricity. As the prices rise further for everyone that difference will be magnified for anyone with all electric households.

AIBU to think that having a reduced energy usage after investing in green technology we shouldn't be penalised with massively increased bills?

I think the only good /cheap way to use an ASHP is alongside solar panels and battery storage. Unfortunately all that costs around £20k so the pay back is 10 years or more.
There is no decent/cheap option for replacing a gas boiler at the moment, the chances of them being banned is next to zero.

Green doesn't always mean cheaper

Yes, we're lucky in that we have the savings to cover solar and battery which we're getting installed asap so that should help next year. We also have a fast running burn running through the garden and are looking into hydro too (glad I name-changed!). I realise though that these may not be options for many who have just been doing their best to follow government led initiatives to move away from gas and find themselves paying through the nose.

Re payback times - they're getting shorter by the second!

Yeah, we are doing all of that, but total electric demand will still be more than total supply from solar, so we will still need to buy from the grid, so there is zero incentive to use ASHP over gas at current prices.

@ASHPwoes I am starting to wonder if you are my neighbour 😅 We also have a burn in the garden. Have looked at hydroelectric but there are a lot of restrictions from SEPA and I haven’t found anything effective yet.

Haha, I don't think so but maybe not too far away? I've spoken to people who've gone down the hydro route. Apparently the paperwork was a bit of a headache but it'd be worth it if it makes us less reliant on the grid.

They require electric for that process and usually heat the water directly using electric.
IF you don't have underfloor systems and ultra good insulation then you've wasted your money.

But why is the cost of electricity still pegged to gas so tightly when most comes from renewables

It's not. It's just that renewables are not reliabile and when there is no wind the costs of gas (and electricity) sharply increases...not infrequently ,when there is no wind, no sun and during peak times gas makes up over 50% of UK generating capacity.

Yep. When we lived in the US we paid higher rates to be on a green energy tariff. You also pay for the bin men on a separate bill there, and we paid extra fees every month to have recycling bins and garden waste bins. Could have chucked everything into a black rubbish bin and saved money…but we didn’t.

You don’t see that here in the U.K. but in places like the US where it’s more capitalist and less green minded, you find out hey, green actually is a bit more expensive.

Yes, it makes no sense to me, I still need to get a little plug in thing that will tell me the cost of appliances etc as I cant really work out why its more than average

? You don’t need that. All you need is to look up the wattage of the appliance by cycle and do a bit of maths.

@bellac11 we have one of these:

TP-Link Tapo Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring, Works with Amazon Alexa (Echo and Echo Dot) and Google Home, Wi-Fi Smart Socket, Remote Control, Device Sharing, No Hub Required(Tapo P110) amzn.eu/d/ay1xUHa

Whilst @Discovereads is right, you can calculate usage to an extent, I found for things like fridges and freezers it's hard to know when/for how long they use maximum power. We've plugged ours into various appliances and moved it around to get an idea of expenditure. We've tweaked our non heating electricity usage down well with it.

Switching to “green” tariffs changes nothing in terms of cost to the grid. The grid cannot be 100% renewable without balancing power plants to keep the frequency bang on 50 Hz. If a wind farm fails, as did happen in 2019, and that cascade drop in frequency hits other plants, it can cause entire sectors of the grid to blackout. By far the largest single energy source of electricity and heat is gas, burning either in CCGT plants for electricity or gas boilers in situ for heating. On blocking pattern days in winters past, there can be nothing coming from wind and if cloudy, solar is terrible too (as it basically is on northern European nations).As such, the margin provider is gas and that is where price is dictated and settled. Even France, known for nukes galore, pays massive amounts to have less than 20% electric capacity fed by gas.

Your per unit price seem high? Mine is a few p less than that on the deemed tarrif for economy7 on the day rate! Are you sure you're not on e7 and shouldn't be?

I can tell you though that electric showers are HUGE super users of electricity.

Running an electric shower for 10 minutes costs between 42.50p and 61.20p depending upon the wattage.
www.sust-it.net/electric-showers.php

I won’t have one in my house. Complete waste of energy.

But yes, absolutely, to your actual point. We're fully electric e7, use much less energy in kWh than the average household does for gas+electric, and pay a fair whack more than the 'average' price.

Most electricity doesn't come from renewables
grid.iamkate.com
I heard an interview a few days ago regarding the pegging of renewables to gas prices, and apparently it's because the renewables generators want to make nice big profits and if prices are lowered they will be less inclined to invest in their production when they can make more from other sources. Who knew, they're just greedy profit-seeking big businesses after all - green suits so long as it makes a big profit.

Green capitalism is still capitalism. Imagine my shock when I recognised that they were in it for profit by simply using a social movement to garner attention, like diversity.

More black women CEOs running green megacorporations. That’s the marvellous future we all want.

It is frustrating. I was looking for ways to green my home…when I fill in my specs on the government website it suggests getting a heat pump but also shows that a heat pump will lose me money annually. I can’t afford the outlay anyway, plus it’s somewhat doubtful that one could be installed in my home. At the very least it will be disruptive and cost space. I know someone who had to abandon installation of a ground source heat pump mid way due to problems installing in their outside space. So this big push for heat pumps can’t override the fact that it isn’t tenable for most people for a variety of reasons.

@Liebig - very well put!

Agreed, it's incredibly frustrating! Especially as when fitted if the cost was marginally more people may have decided it was worth it to be greener but with no way of knowing what it would do to bills in the future (now).

I can't be certain what we'd be using in gas. The ASHP was already here when we moved in. We do live in a much colder than average part of the country though.

I agree with the estimate by a previous poster: if you were using gas for heating, you would probably be consuming three times as many kwh, which would be offset by gas costing about a third as much, so your bills would be roughly the same.

A better way to save on costs is to… use less. Which is going to happen anyway, given there is no conceivable way the European economy can switch away from NG quickly or affordably. We burnt all our own hydrocarbons long ago, and we didn’t replace anywhere near what we use today with REs or nukes.

Good news: we mitigate climate change. Bad news: we had to eradicate most humans through resource wars to achieve it.

Use less? That's exactly my point. We already are using less than a dual fuel family. We are doing just what you suggest and being charged more for our efforts. That's precisely what I'm pissed off about.

The outlay for the system you have is a substantial amount of embodied energy, from the pump and new radiator system to the PV cells and LiFePo4 battery. It’s a nice setup, but in no way sustainable in a true sense.

I mean use less energy total. Using less gas or electricity, but still flying abroad or buying more consumer goods, say, means more energy usage, if not in utility bills. This is a common trope in the green capitalism grift that wants to maintain present consumption, just with a veneer of eco credibility because we all hate fossil fuels now. Just not enough to give them up cold turkey. Because at the end of the day, 85% of our energy comes from them and well under 5% from wind and solar globally.

People need to live simpler. And ASHPs and EVs etc. are just the same system with a green coat. There simply isn’t going to be the net energy in a few years to keep up present lifestyles.