Energy Prices

[Busta Nut]

12 minutes ago, MuckleMoo said:

Same, monthly direct debit has reduced from £250 a month to £108

You must be heating a mansion.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Busta Nut

[TheScarf]

Who are you with?  British Gas seem to be after mare money, not giving me some back.  Also, my account is currently £585 in the black.

[MuckleMoo]

1 hour ago, Busta Nut said:

You must be heating a mansion.

I wish! To be fair I was massively over paying. Claimed back over £700 of credit a couple of months ago

[MuckleMoo]

35 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Who are you with?  British Gas seem to be after mare money, not giving me some back.  Also, my account is currently £585 in the black.

OVO 

['WellDel]

30 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Who are you with?  British Gas seem to be after mare money, not giving me some back.  Also, my account is currently £585 in the black.

British Gas are a fucking shambles.

I've posted in here before about the farce I've endured over the last couple of years with faulty smart meters (on my 2nd Electric one and 3rd Gas) and the latter still doesn't communicate properly resulting in me still having to submit monthly readings anyway. Also as a result of this my online account doesn't update properly and half of the information is 'unavailable' when you try to access it

Got an email yesterday suggesting I might want to change my DD amount. Went online to discover my account is £1600 in credit (although some of this will be due to be debited), but you can only increase your payment amount online, to decrease it you need to phone one of their hopeless call centres and wait in an hr long queue. Don't mind taking your money, giving it back - not so keen.

[TheScarf]

11 minutes ago, 'WellDel said:

British Gas are a fucking shambles.

I've posted in here before about the farce I've endured over the last couple of years with faulty smart meters (on my 2nd Electric one and 3rd Gas) and the latter still doesn't communicate properly resulting in me still having to submit monthly readings anyway. Also as a result of this my online account doesn't update properly and half of the information is 'unavailable' when you try to access it

Got an email yesterday suggesting I might want to change my DD amount. Went online to discover my account is £1600 in credit (although some of this will be due to be debited), but you can only increase your payment amount online, to decrease it you need to phone one of their hopeless call centres and wait in an hr long queue. Don't mind taking your money, giving it back - not so keen.

Aye or be on their live chat for at least an hour waiting in a queue.  I'm determined to get that £585 back and reduce my DD as there's no way in fuck I spend £202 a month on gas and electricity.  Unless my smart meter is telling fibs.

['WellDel]

41 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Aye or be on their live chat for at least an hour waiting in a queue.  I'm determined to get that £585 back and reduce my DD as there's no way in f**k I spend £202 a month on gas and electricity.  Unless my smart meter is telling fibs.

Tried to get on the live chat earlier and it wouldn't even load. They give Virgin a right good run for their money in the shite customer service stakes.

[beefybake]

2 hours ago, 'WellDel said:

British Gas are a fucking shambles.

I've posted in here before about the farce I've endured over the last couple of years with faulty smart meters (on my 2nd Electric one and 3rd Gas) and the latter still doesn't communicate properly resulting in me still having to submit monthly readings anyway. Also as a result of this my online account doesn't update properly and half of the information is 'unavailable' when you try to access it

Got an email yesterday suggesting I might want to change my DD amount. Went online to discover my account is £1600 in credit (although some of this will be due to be debited), but you can only increase your payment amount online, to decrease it you need to phone one of their hopeless call centres and wait in an hr long queue. Don't mind taking your money, giving it back - not so keen.

Yes, it's such a mystery how they manage to make £Bilions of profits.........

 

[TheScarf]

1 hour ago, 'WellDel said:

Tried to get on the live chat earlier and it wouldn't even load. They give Virgin a right good run for their money in the shite customer service stakes.

I just spent 57 minutes on the phone with them to get my refund (46 of that in the queue) to be told the gas reading on my smart meter doesn't look right.  The conversation went like this - 

BG: Ok I can see your smart meter is giving me 2 readings 'XXXX and 'YYYY'

Me: Yes, on both your website and my app I can see that too, 'XXXX' was taken yesterday and is the latest reading and is showing in one section of my account, 'YYYY' is last months reading that shows on another section so your system hasn't updated yet, its not giving 2 readings'.

BG: Can you give me the serial number of your smart meter?

Me: (Going downstairs) It ends in 482.

BG:  That's not what I have here that must be your electricity meter.

Me:  It's a smart meter, it does both, there's only 1 meter.  You literally confirmed 5 minutes ago I have a smart meter that does both gas and electricity.

BG: Ok ill have to escalate, I can't refund you until we get your correct readings.

Me:  You have the correct readings?  Its 'XXXX'. It was taken yesterday, 27/07/23 it literally says in one section of my account?  Your system clearly hasn't updated so can you look into that please?

BG: We'll call you within 2 working days.

Me: Sound, bye.

['WellDel]

2 hours ago, TheScarf said:

I just spent 57 minutes on the phone with them to get my refund (46 of that in the queue) to be told the gas reading on my smart meter doesn't look right.  The conversation went like this - 

BG: Ok I can see your smart meter is giving me 2 readings 'XXXX and 'YYYY'

Me: Yes, on both your website and my app I can see that too, 'XXXX' was taken yesterday and is the latest reading and is showing in one section of my account, 'YYYY' is last months reading that shows on another section so your system hasn't updated yet, its not giving 2 readings'.

BG: Can you give me the serial number of your smart meter?

Me: (Going downstairs) It ends in 482.

BG:  That's not what I have here that must be your electricity meter.

Me:  It's a smart meter, it does both, there's only 1 meter.  You literally confirmed 5 minutes ago I have a smart meter that does both gas and electricity.

BG: Ok ill have to escalate, I can't refund you until we get your correct readings.

Me:  You have the correct readings?  Its 'XXXX'. It was taken yesterday, 27/07/23 it literally says in one section of my account?  Your system clearly hasn't updated so can you look into that please?

BG: We'll call you within 2 working days.

Me: Sound, bye.

Fucking charlatans.

[MONKMAN]

I've just moved house and the account with my old provider was sitting £500 in credit after I submitted final readings and they gave me a closing statement.  They're now saying that it'll be 6-8 weeks to get my money back as they need to finalise my account prior to closing it.  They issued the closing statement within a couple of days, so the b*****ds are clearly just hoarding my cash for a couple of months.

[scottsdad]

My mum is £1200 in credit with British Gas. They just upped her bill by £45.

[Granny Danger]

Interesting article on the BBC website about heat pumps, as always the U.K. is lagging behind other countries and it’s own targets.  Here’s an extract:

There were just 60,000 heat pumps installed in the UK last year, making it one of the slowest adopters of this new technology in Europe. 

At current rates of installation, it will take more than 400 years before every British home has a heat pump.

So far fewer than 12,000 grants have been cashed - perhaps because it only covers the cost of the pump itself, and not the installation. 

And even if households are able to pay, there is another barrier to hitting the government's heat pump targets. 

The UK only has 4,000 trained heat-pump installers - it is estimated we will need 33,000 by 2028.

The last bit is particularly damning and seems typical of how government targets are set with no realistic strategy on how to achieve these targets.

[Caledonian1]

21 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

Interesting article on the BBC website about heat pumps, as always the U.K. is lagging behind other countries and it’s own targets.  Here’s an extract:

There were just 60,000 heat pumps installed in the UK last year, making it one of the slowest adopters of this new technology in Europe. 

At current rates of installation, it will take more than 400 years before every British home has a heat pump.

So far fewer than 12,000 grants have been cashed - perhaps because it only covers the cost of the pump itself, and not the installation. 

And even if households are able to pay, there is another barrier to hitting the government's heat pump targets. 

The UK only has 4,000 trained heat-pump installers - it is estimated we will need 33,000 by 2028.

The last bit is particularly damning and seems typical of how government targets are set with no realistic strategy on how to achieve these targets.

Yes, that is definitely part of the problem.  I installed mine a couple of years ago and really struggled to get someone local - ended up getting a company in Inverness which no doubt cost that bit more due to travel time.

 

Did anyone hear the interview with Lord Haughey (labour peer) on GMS this morning - unbelievable stuff.  incredibily ill-informed yet he owns a company that installs heat pumps (Martin Geissler even questioned whether this was Haughey's "Gerald Ratner moment"  Cant see anything on the BBC Scotland website referencing this amazing interview but it was true car crash stuff.  He did concede that heat pumps were a very small part of his business but I could not comprehend how thick he sounded and how ill informed he was on heat pumps. 

I have mentioned it here a couple of time before that I have one and very happy with it. In terms of cost the £10k interest free loan from Scot Gov was instrumental in me installing and the RHI payments (appreciate they have ended and replaced with a grant) are a very nice surprise when they hit my bank account each quarter.

I put mine in at a time when I put an extension into my house - the heat pump heats the underfloor heating in the extension and works very well (it is really well insulated)  It does not work quite so well in the old part of the house (150 years old and granite) but is far better than it was before (storage heaters)  I do have wood burners in both parts of the house and use them when staying in at weekends as a top up and to enjoy the special heat they provide.   I have a Ukranian couple using the old part of the house and the heating is on more than it would be if it was just me on my own.

[Zetterlund]

8 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Interesting article on the BBC website about heat pumps, as always the U.K. is lagging behind other countries and it’s own targets.  Here’s an extract:

There were just 60,000 heat pumps installed in the UK last year, making it one of the slowest adopters of this new technology in Europe. 

At current rates of installation, it will take more than 400 years before every British home has a heat pump.

So far fewer than 12,000 grants have been cashed - perhaps because it only covers the cost of the pump itself, and not the installation. 

And even if households are able to pay, there is another barrier to hitting the government's heat pump targets. 

The UK only has 4,000 trained heat-pump installers - it is estimated we will need 33,000 by 2028.

The last bit is particularly damning and seems typical of how government targets are set with no realistic strategy on how to achieve these targets.

The company I worked for until last year tried to recruit keen subcontractors to learn about installing heat pumps. 99% of these traditional plumbing & heating engineers said they were too busy in their usual work to get into anything new.

A related issue which will rear its head as all these new heat pumps get a few years older is that most of the installers fitting them are not actually qualified to fix them if they break down.

Most heat pumps don't require a refrigeration engineer to fit them, but if there's a problem on this side of the system there are barely a handful of people who can fix them

I suppose 'the market' will sort these things out, in theory.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Zetterlund

[Shadow Play]

9 hours ago, Caledonian1 said:

Yes, that is definitely part of the problem.  I installed mine a couple of years ago and really struggled to get someone local - ended up getting a company in Inverness which no doubt cost that bit more due to travel time.

 

Did anyone hear the interview with Lord Haughey (labour peer) on GMS this morning - unbelievable stuff.  incredibily ill-informed yet he owns a company that installs heat pumps (Martin Geissler even questioned whether this was Haughey's "Gerald Ratner moment"  Cant see anything on the BBC Scotland website referencing this amazing interview but it was true car crash stuff.  He did concede that heat pumps were a very small part of his business but I could not comprehend how thick he sounded and how ill informed he was on heat pumps. 

I have mentioned it here a couple of time before that I have one and very happy with it. In terms of cost the £10k interest free loan from Scot Gov was instrumental in me installing and the RHI payments (appreciate they have ended and replaced with a grant) are a very nice surprise when they hit my bank account each quarter.

I put mine in at a time when I put an extension into my house - the heat pump heats the underfloor heating in the extension and works very well (it is really well insulated)  It does not work quite so well in the old part of the house (150 years old and granite) but is far better than it was before (storage heaters)  I do have wood burners in both parts of the house and use them when staying in at weekends as a top up and to enjoy the special heat they provide.   I have a Ukranian couple using the old part of the house and the heating is on more than it would be if it was just me on my own.

The BBC article @Granny Danger refers to points out - “for every unit of energy you put in you, you get up to three units of heat out”.  Sounds great until you consider “unit for unit electricity typically costs three times as much as gas”.

The article further states”that means even though your new heat pump is three times as efficient as your gas boiler it costs about the same to run”.  That’s not even considering it is entirely possible your existing gas radiators  are too small due to the fact a heat pump does not heat the water to the same high temperature as a gas boiler.  Similarly I don’t think heat pumps can run a mixer shower like people are used to with their gas boiler.

If you are on the gas network and using a gas boiler you will not save money by simply changing your gas boiler with a heat pump.  Just thought I’d mention it in fairness to others who may be considering having a heat pump installed.

[Granny Danger]

26 minutes ago, Shadow Play said:

The BBC article @Granny Danger refers to points out - “for every unit of energy you put in you, you get up to three units of heat out”.  Sounds great until you consider “unit for unit electricity typically costs three times as much as gas”.

The article further states”that means even though your new heat pump is three times as efficient as your gas boiler it costs about the same to run”.  That’s not even considering it is entirely possible your existing gas radiators  are too small due to the fact a heat pump does not heat the water to the same high temperature as a gas boiler.  Similarly I don’t think heat pumps can run a mixer shower like people are used to with their gas boiler.

If you are on the gas network and using a gas boiler you will not save money by simply changing your gas boiler with a heat pump.  Just thought I’d mention it in fairness to others who may be considering having a heat pump installed.

Yeah, I noticed that at the time.  Hopefully as we move to greater use of renewables the benefits of electric powered heat pumps, whilst maybe not helping individuals, will have a wider societal benefit.

I’d like to think that through time renewables will also reduce the cost of domestic electricity but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

 

[lichtgilphead]

20 minutes ago, Shadow Play said:

The BBC article @Granny Danger refers to points out - “for every unit of energy you put in you, you get up to three units of heat out”.  Sounds great until you consider “unit for unit electricity typically costs three times as much as gas”.

The article further states”that means even though your new heat pump is three times as efficient as your gas boiler it costs about the same to run”.  That’s not even considering it is entirely possible your existing gas radiators  are too small due to the fact a heat pump does not heat the water to the same high temperature as a gas boiler.  Similarly I don’t think heat pumps can run a mixer shower like people are used to with their gas boiler.

If you are on the gas network and using a gas boiler you will not save money by simply changing your gas boiler with a heat pump.  Just thought I’d mention it in fairness to others who may be considering having a heat pump installed.

Our heat pump is currently set to heat the water to 50°C. That's easily hot enough for showering etc. However, it's just a matter of increasing the settings if you want anything hotter.

In addition, every now & again, the system runs the legionella prevention program, which heats the water to (I think) 65°C, so it's at least capable of that.

If you don't have the option of mains gas and have been living with storage heaters, it's a no-brainer to fit a heat pump.

[Shadow Play]

49 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

Yeah, I noticed that at the time.  Hopefully as we move to greater use of renewables the benefits of electric powered heat pumps, whilst maybe not helping individuals, will have a wider societal benefit.

I’d like to think that through time renewables will also reduce the cost of domestic electricity but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

 

Yes, the unit price of electricity v gas is key to heat pumps being a genuine cheaper alternative.  

Unfortunately if significant numbers of consumers change to electric cars and heat pumps there is going to have to be a significant financial investment in the national grid infrastructure.  That will be paid by us of course.

Another big issue is that onshore wind farms provide electricity at a much cheaper rate.  Trouble is whenever companies look to build them onshore there are invariably objections because people think they spoil the look of the countryside etc.  Much like people don’t like super pylons because people feel they also spoil the look of the countryside.

Going green is going to be a difficult journey that will upset a lot of people.  Many of the very same people who feel not enough is being done to bring in green solutions. 

48 minutes ago, lichtgilphead said:

Our heat pump is currently set to heat the water to 50°C. That's easily hot enough for showering etc. However, it's just a matter of increasing the settings if you want anything hotter.

In addition, every now & again, the system runs the legionella prevention program, which heats the water to (I think) 65°C, so it's at least capable of that.

If you don't have the option of mains gas and have been living with storage heaters, it's a no-brainer to fit a heat pump.

Regarding showering, does a heat pump not provide hot water into a cylinder / tank as opposed it being instant like a combi boiler?  With a combi boiler you get a strong flow of water like a power shower.  I don’t think you get that with a heat pump.

Regarding storage heaters I agree that is a good example of when a heat pump is likely a better option.

[lichtgilphead]

5 minutes ago, Shadow Play said:

Regarding showering, does a heat pump not provide hot water into a cylinder / tank as opposed it being instant like a combi boiler?  With a combi boiler you get a strong flow of water like a power shower.  I don’t think you get that with a heat pump.

Regarding storage heaters I agree that is a good example of when a heat pump is likely a better option.

Yeah, there's no instant hot water from the heat pump, but the pressure from the tank is better than the old instant electric shower