I’m not going green

A look at solar panels, solar PV and heat pumps

I live in a Victorian Semi with gas central heating. Regular subscribers will know that I spend a lot of time complaining about how high my heating bills are. Over £12.50 a day during the winter. That compares to £2.50 a day during the Summer.

I have a combi boiler. That means it heats up the water instantaneously. I don’t have a hot water tank or a cold water tank. I guess they did this because a combi system takes up less room. In some ways I guess it’s good. I’m not heating up a whole tank of water just for me. But in other ways it’s bad. It means the boiler comes on even if you are just washing your hands.

To make matters worse my boiler is in the loft. So it takes a couple of minutes for the water to come through hot from the boiler two stories above the bathroom. One of the first things I did was get the pipes insulated. Maybe I should get a bucket of something to catch that water. At the moment I am wasting hundreds of litres a year. And don’t get me on the subject of water. That bill’s huge as well.

Solar panels was never going to be the best option for me. The house has a roof that faces East and West so that’s not ideal. I live in East Anglian that gets quite a bit of sun. But not as much as the a South coast or indeed the South of France.

I’m an energy adviser so naturally I was aware of some of the pitfalls. Solar panels generate most of their energy through the summer. Whereas most of mine and indeed most people’s energy requirements are during the Winter. Obviously to make it efficient you have to store the energy.

Electricity prices have gone through the roof. When I worked for Eastern Electricity a unit of energy cost about 6p. Now it’s over 25p a unit. The trick with solar is the try and use what you generate. But most of it is generated during the day when we are at work. Sure you can put dishwashers and washing machines on timers to come on during the day. But ideally you would store it. In a battery or a well insulated hot water tank. Batteries are expensive. Over £7,000! Apparently you can get a modulating boiler that can make use of the hot water.

Obviously if you have electric heating or a heat pump it’s easier use the surplus electricity. You can sell it back to the grid but you will get much less per unit than what you pay for a unit. Plus of course you have to keep the panels clean for them to work efficiently.

With gas at 5p a unit I can’t see me ever getting a heat pump. Even though air source heat pumps typically run at over two hundred percent I still can’t see how they can can compete with electricity at 25p a unit. Even though gas boilers don’t run at 100% efficiency, I can’t see it will work out a lot cheaper. Besides I would need to install bigger radiators or underfloor heating.

Which brings us on to the wood burner. Wood is a renewable source. So as amazing as it sounds log burners release less CO2 than a boiler. That’s because the tree takes up CO2 when it’s growing. Of course this is only true if you buy wood from sustainable sources and it’s grown locally. But burning wood gives off harmful particulates. I only burn dry wood, storing it in a log store and bringing it inside for a couple of days before burning it. But nevertheless I need to use it sparingly.

So I am no further on really. Still trying to find a solution to my big bills. I’ve had a quote to install vents in the soffits. The loft has damp which means it’s not ventilated properly. Next I’ll install a further 200mm of loft insulation. In the meantime I have the vent open in the rotting Velux Window.