Switching over to all electric home

[IamwhoIsayIam]

Hi,

I'm thinking of switching (over time) from gas to electric. My planned steps are

• get solar panels and battery
• switch out 5 radiators to electric (others already are electric)
• switch out gas oven to electric range with induction - may be Everhot
• switch gas combi boiler to electric water heater

This order to me makes sense to me and is also in the order our current appliances are likely need replacing (oven before boiler).

Has anyone been through this process? What steps have I forgotten? What is going to trip me up?

thank you!

I've never switched or had solar panels but I lived in a completely electric apartment and the cost was huge! I was paying three times more than the same footprint I have here with gas and electricity.

We had eco electric heaters and they were expensive and never warmed the apartment.

How many power cuts do you get? We live rurally so will always keep a gas bottle hob for those days when there is no electricity. Will your solar panels take care of this?

You need to look into getting a heatpump to make it affordable. Solar can “talk to it” and bring the costs to heat your home down especially on sunny days like today . you may be able to use your existing radiators this way, though more likely you’ll need bigger ones. Heatpump can also heat water.

we did all this earlier this year, so far so good. Gas got switched off so we are no longer paying the standing charge. Running costs overall are comparable
to a gas heating system.

@tinselvestsparklepants we don't get power cuts that often although we are rural. We have two wood burners which would take care of heating and eating in total outage.

My father in law who really worries about being left without heating during a power cut has found a local firm which supplies solar panels and battery that creates a completely 'off-grid' system so will still work in a national grid power outage. I could do that but I haven't compared prices yet.

@StillWantingADog what kind of heat pump did you get?

Ours is a vaillant

suggest finding a local engineer that is experienced with heat pumps, you’ll need a full heat loss calculation which they can help you with . you also need a well insulated home.

I think just switching to electric radiators would be exceedingly expensive to run.

We've not got gas anymore but went down the heat pump route rather than electric radiators. Heat pump worked with our existing radiators and cost roughly the same amount as we'd been spending before on gas (though with heating on all day rather than in blasts) then we upgraded our radiators and now is far more efficient. Look at getting a solar diverter that can use excess solar to heat your water. Find a good local heating engineer who can calculate how efficient electric radiators vs heat pump system would be for your house and how much the install would cost for each. Used this company after seeing a recommendation on Mumsnet and they were good: www.heatgeek.com

HSBC and Barclays, maybe some other banks, used to have grants which give you money towards green home improvements if your mortgage is with them. Check if they still exist!

Get a dehumidifier for the damp and black mould you're going to get when you realise how expensive the electricity is and how much less effective it is than gas heating.

Look at IT panels rather than electric rads.

also consider a hot water tank rather than immediate water heating. Our solar panels feed into our hot water tank when we have excess (which isn’t going to the car).

on a cheap overnight tariff you should be able to fill a battery overnight on cheap tariffs, then use that through the day, with the solar topping it up when possible. Not sure if you need an ev to access the best night time tariffs though.

IR panels. Not IT.

Remember you can get £7.5k now grant towards your heatpump. That won’t cover the cost but will help a lot.

if you have an EV you can access cheap overnight electricity prices which help enormously. We run our appliances (washing machine and dishwasher) overnight and also heat the hot water and charge the car between midnight and 5am. On days where the solar doesn’t fill the battery we also fill up the battery overnight which ends up powering us for a big chunk of the day.

it’s quite a complicated set up that my dh spent many many hours/weeks/months researching but it works a treat currently and the house is warm all the time

Oh and you’ll def want a tank for your hot water if possible

As a long term plan I think it could work. The reason electricity is more expensive is that the cost is tied to gas prices. Electricity from renewables is actually much cheaper, and there is pressure to reform the system to reflect this. Longer term an electric boiler and radiators could well be economical to run, without the need to install a heat pump (which may or may not suit your property and current radiators / pipework). Plus if you have solar panels and a battery, you will save money and have a backup supply, as you mention.

I'm considering a similar approach, but won't do anything just yet, as the roof of my future home is not suitable for solar panels as far as I can tell (bungalow with lots of angles and nothing directly south-facing).

NB there are other technologies in development, such as microwave boilers, which don't get much press coverage, but could become more prevalent over time, and be cheap to run.