My electricity bill has just tripled: how about yours? Alternative suppliers?

[SpookyFrank]

Asked my surveyor friend about them this morning. He told me that a lot of new builds have restrictive covenants about erecting solar panels. Because a uniform housing estate is more important obviously

Probably because they're so shoddily built the roofs wouldn't take the weight tbh.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Received letter today from the council informing me that as I pay my council tax by dd, I should be getting my £150 refund paid into my bank account soon.
The letter also contained my new council tax bill, £1900.
Over the fucking moon.

Got my new bill already. It says I should be getting a refund but no mention of when or how. It hasn't been deducted from my bill, which has (of course) gone up since last year.

 

[WouldBe]

I don’t pay my bill by DD as I get credit card points for doing so. Maybe I should switch

Similar here. Just had a letter from council asking for bank details to be able to make payment when it's all being sorted out.

 

[magneze]

Switch Together to lower your energy bill.

Join the collective energy switch and see how much you can save on your energy bills. It is easy, free and without obligation.

bigcommunityswitch.co.uk

This is not a straightforward comparison, this is a grouping together of union members and they then get "several" energy suppliers to tender for however many members are in the pool(?) currently there's over 16,000 showing interest

The claim is that the average saving is in the region of £150 . . . but we'll see

Thanks for this, have registered. Nearly 18k now..

 

[not a trot]

That billing structure. Are you saying that you pay your entire year's worth of council tax in one go? Or is that your monthly figure?

I don't think I could afford to pay annually. Mine comes in monthly. Apparently I paid about £15 last month. That seems a little... low?

£190 per month over 10 months.

 

[Artaxerxes]

That billing structure. Are you saying that you pay your entire year's worth of council tax in one go? Or is that your monthly figure?

I don't think I could afford to pay annually. Mine comes in monthly. Apparently I paid about £15 last month. That seems a little... low?

Mine send me the years total then bill by month

 

[contadino]

I don’t pay my bill by DD as I get credit card points for doing so. Maybe I should switch

I got told that the £150 rebate is conditional on paying by direct debit. So I'll be cancelling my mandate as soon as I've received the rebate.

 

[cybershot]

I got told that the £150 rebate is conditional on paying by direct debit. So I'll be cancelling my mandate as soon as I've received the rebate.

Not conditional, you'll get a cheque or something but it will take longer to process.

 

[Elpenor]

Not conditional, you'll get a cheque or something but it will take longer to process.

My bill said they’d write to me about it. I’m moving this year - don’t suppose I can get 2 rebates

 

[Red Sky]

Total lack of resistance to this is puzzling. No talk on non payment, partial payment, community resistance to people getting cut off.

Just moaning.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Total lack of resistance to this is puzzling. No talk on non payment, partial payment, community resistance to people getting cut off.

Just moaning.

I'm assuming more will happen when reality hits.

 

[JoeyBoy]

Total lack of resistance to this is puzzling. No talk on non payment, partial payment, community resistance to people getting cut off.

Just moaning.

I'm on a pre-payment meter so I have a choice between sitting in the dark because I'm broke or sitting in the dark because I'm resisting capitalism.

 

[existentialist]

I'm on a pre-payment meter so I have a choice between sitting in the dark because I'm broke or sitting in the dark because I'm resisting capitalism.

Resist capitalism!

I have been practising doing without heating. With my lights on, and the computers running, my baseline consumption is ~400W. With two heaters on, it's 5,400W.

My flat is generally at about 13C when I get up. Without any heating, it usually creeps up to 15C when the day gets going. That feels bloody cold, but I'm getting used to it. Though I have to put some heating on if I get visitors, otherwise they tend to keep their coats on.

Next task is to look at whether I can reduce the middle-of-the-night consumption from the immersion heater.

The graph always looks interesting when I have a shower, and suddenly it's something like 10kW, but I am happy that it only lasts 10 minutes and doesn't make a huge difference to the costs.

 

[StoneRoad]

My late Father had an extra circuit for night storage heaters, and used to plug the immersion into the same circuit, as the p/kWh on that overnight tariff used to be at a discounted rate.

[ah. ... I remember, it was "Economy 7" - you got approximately 7 hours use overnight on a special meter, IIRC. It was a cheap rate to take up base load generation that would otherwise be unused. The logic being that the then coal-fired base load power stations couldn't be switched on & off quickly, so it was better to sell the power cheaply and have the capacity ready and waiting for the morning peak in demand ...]

 

[colacubes]

Combined gas and electric was £111 now £163.

Scrap that - just got a new email. Now £242

 

[High Voltage]

. . . I have been practising doing without heating. With my lights on, and the computers running, my baseline consumption is ~400W. With two heaters on, it's 5,400W . . .

I'm assuming that the "baseline consumption" you give here is per hour? I'd really struggle to see how it would be for a 24hr period

IF it is per hour then that's not great tbh - looking at the spread sheet I've kept since the beginning of the month and simply taking our 24 hr consumption and dividing that by 24 I would estimate that our baseline consumption PER HOUR is around 350W and that's with occasional use of dishwasher (every other(?) day, maybe every third day and the washer / drier (I just use the washer part where as Mrs Voltz dries as well)

BUT if that's for a 24hr period I'd be simply staggered - out fridge freezer uses more than twice that in a 24hr period

 

[NoXion]

I'm assuming that the "baseline consumption" you give here is per hour? I'd really struggle to see how it would be for a 24hr period

IF it is per hour then that's not great tbh - looking at the spread sheet I've kept since the beginning of the month and simply taking our 24 hr consumption and dividing that by 24 I would estimate that our baseline consumption PER HOUR is around 350W and that's with occasional use of dishwasher (every other(?) day, maybe every third day and the washer / drier (I just use the washer part where as Mrs Voltz dries as well)

BUT if that's for a 24hr period I'd be simply staggered - out fridge freezer uses more than twice that in a 24hr period

I think existentialist is talking about power draw, not energy. If you were measuring how much energy you used over 24 hours, the unit to use would be kWh, surely?

 

[High Voltage]

I think existentialist is talking about power draw, not energy. If you were measuring how much energy you used over 24 hours, the unit to use would be kWh, surely?

So is the base line usage .4KWh rising to 5.4KWh with the electric heaters on then? which would make sense with 2 electric heaters on

This is a genuine question, I'm NOT an electrician, merely someone wanting to get a handle our power consumption

 

[existentialist]

I'm assuming that the "baseline consumption" you give here is per hour? I'd really struggle to see how it would be for a 24hr period

IF it is per hour then that's not great tbh - looking at the spread sheet I've kept since the beginning of the month and simply taking our 24 hr consumption and dividing that by 24 I would estimate that our baseline consumption PER HOUR is around 350W and that's with occasional use of dishwasher (every other(?) day, maybe every third day and the washer / drier (I just use the washer part where as Mrs Voltz dries as well)

BUT if that's for a 24hr period I'd be simply staggered - out fridge freezer uses more than twice that in a 24hr period

Yep, as noxion says, that number is just the instantaneous power usage. I'm doing a bit of scripting to get a better picture of daily usage, costs...

 

[High Voltage]

Yep, as noxion says, that number is just the instantaneous power usage. I'm doing a bit of scripting to get a better picture of daily usage, costs...

But if you use, say, 400watts for an hour, as you would do with your background usage, then that's .4KWh . . . isn't it? as a "working average, smoothing out peaks and troughs etc

 

[High Voltage]

Honestly, I'm not looking for a row over this, it's just how I "understand" stuff . . . more than happy to be set right as well

 

[DotCommunist]

I've been homeless in the past so have a penchant for watching urban survival/hobo tricks style videos. Most of it is too US centric to be of use but the idea of using teacandles to heat up a terracotta pot till it pumps out heat. Might have to give it a go:

looks a bit shonky though, what do we think about fire risk/safety issues?

 

[existentialist]

But if you use, say, 400watts for an hour, as you would do with your background usage, then that's .4KWh . . . isn't it? as a "working average, smoothing out peaks and troughs etc

Yep, that's right - 0.4kWh. Which seems about right - that accounts for two computers and monitors, and quite a lot of lights (LED, natch). This is a usage graph for the last 24 hours:


(overnight consumption is usually lower, as I put the computers to sleep. The regular spikes are a heater in the office/bedroom, with the big one at about 0300 being the immersion heater coming on - and a little topup just before 6, presumably on the thermostat. That massive spike at 1000 is me having a shower, and the washing machine is running, which probably explains the slightly complicated line subsequent to that).

 

[High Voltage]

. . . what do we think about fire risk/safety issues?

Well, if it were, say dessiato doing this I'd have one answer, but for you, Dottie, you'd be fine

 

[The39thStep]

I've been homeless in the past so have a penchant for watching urban survival/hobo tricks style videos. Most of it is too US centric to be of use but the idea of using teacandles to heat up a terracotta pot till it pumps out heat. Might have to give it a go:

looks a bit shonky though, what do we think about fire risk/safety issues?

Deluxe version here

 

[existentialist]

Deluxe version here

Tealights are going to be a bloody expensive way of heating anything, though...

ETA: calculations...

From this (on quora, so I won't bother linking), we determine that a single tealight can deliver a total or about 34W.

Looking at Amazon, I see that tea candles are a wax cylinder about 1.5 inches in diameter and * 0.5 inches tall. Volume of a cylinder is pi * r**2 * h = 0.883 cubic inches or 14.45 cm**3. The density of paraffin wax is 0.9 g/cm**3, so we're looking at 13.03 grams of wax. The energy content of paraffin is about 42 kJ/g, so we're looking at 547kJ. There are 0.277 watt-hours per kJ, so we've got about 152 watt hours.

If you're looking for the power, the amazon tea candles claim 4-5 hours, so 152 watt hours / 4.5 hours or about 33.8 watts on average. It would take just over 42 tea candles to match the thermal output of a 1440 watt space heater (12A at 120V).

It would thus take 1000/34, or roughly 30 tealights, to provide 1 kW of power. Amazon sell tealights at 100 for £1.99, so that's going to be 60p worth of tealights to provide a unit of electricity - or about twice what my new unit rate will be after March 31st.

ETA: I just weighed 10 tealights (100/£1 from IKEA), and they average at around 8.4g. So those calculations are a bit optimistic - we might expect the total output for each to be 88W over 4.5 hours, = 19.5W. So we'd need 51 of those tealights per unit of electricity...

Tealights do seem to have shrunk dramatically in the last 10-15 years.

 

[dessiato]

I've been homeless in the past so have a penchant for watching urban survival/hobo tricks style videos. Most of it is too US centric to be of use but the idea of using teacandles to heat up a terracotta pot till it pumps out heat. Might have to give it a go:

looks a bit shonky though, what do we think about fire risk/safety issues?

I think it’s fairly safe because the candles are under the pot. When I’ve done it I’ve not plugged the drainage hole. This allows an air flow. There’s a surprising amount of heat in those candles.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Tealights are going to be a bloody expensive way of heating anything, though...

Like a quid a pack from Tiger I think

 

[dessiato]

Deluxe version here

Lucky he didn’t drill his fingers.

 

[The39thStep]

Lucky he didn’t drill his fingers.

there's a youtube video of the one that DotCommunist put up in which the blokes them nail seems to have had something like that