Electricity pricing?

[Dave Liquorice]

Electricity costs vary with who you buy from *and* where you live *and* your useage *and* in the case of E7 your useage pattern. The only way to find the cheapest is to look at each providers tarrif(s) for your location and do the number cruching yourself.

That isn't particulary practical though, much quicker to use uSwitch or one of the other sites. Check across several but pay attention to the layout and information provided, there are only two or three databases out there and the many sites are just various front ends to one or other of the databases. The same database will provide the same answer even if the "look" is different.

[Guy King]

The message from Bob Martin contains these words:

Not everyone has sufficiently large area around them from which to extract the heat.

[Adrian]

It's possible to use deep boreholes instead of 'flat' collector coils

- cost may be similar, depending on what you're drilling into. Also possible to use an air-to-water heat pump - which 'sucks' the heat out of the air, rather than from the ground.

We're having to do some earth-moving anyway - so we're incorporating the pipework at the same time. In our case we're using an area about

18m x 10m, with six lengths of pipe connected via a manifold. Overall system & installation cost will be in the region of 12,000 euro - which attracts a grant of 4,300 euro from Sustainable Energy ireland

Looks good ! Adrian

[John Rumm]

Gas is cheaper still in most cases - and easier to install a CH system round

See that big room outside of the window? ;-)

(the most commonly available types are just standard aircon units that have a heating mode. They extract heat from the air at the external heat exchanger)

[Tony Bryer]

But they are less efficient than ground source heat pumps and running on full price electricity so more expensive than gas. The optimum system is ground source heat pump feeding underfloor heating, so you can bank a certain amount of heat overnight. Some areas have a heat pump or 10-hour off peak tariff with an afternoon boost.

[Dave Fawthrop]

|But they are less efficient than ground source heat pumps and running on |full price electricity so more expensive than gas. The optimum system is |ground source heat pump feeding underfloor heating, so you can bank a |certain amount of heat overnight. Some areas have a heat pump or 10-hour |off peak tariff with an afternoon boost.

Every well insulated house will already ?bank? some heat overnight, whatever the heating system, in the internal walls and the inner skin of insulated outer walls.

[Tony Bryer]

Some, yes, but with a move to timber frame or plasterboard on dab dry lined lightweight blockwork and stud partitions there is a lot less thermal mass in the average new house as compared with an 50+ year old one.

[Doctor Drivel]

You don't want to run a heat pump 24/7. The ground needs to recover. Best run it during the day as it will probably be enough to keep low temp UFH operational.

Best to have two underground heat loops and alternate leaving one loop recovering.

[Guy King]

The message from Dave Fawthrop contains these words:

We don't half notice it when our neighbours in the terrace go away for a fortnight in the winter and turn their heating off!

[Matt]

Persuade them to get a wireless thermostat..... and then hack into it while they are away :)

[Matt]

...and by cooling off the outside you are doing your bit to combat global warming :)

[Guy King]

The message from Matt contains these words:

Nah, if it gets bad I'll just borrow the keys from Ruth over the road and turn the heating on.

[Ian Stirling]

I can't find anywhere that actually lists them!

If you want to extract the e7 number only, you can find a website that lets you enter your e7 usage, and enter 95%

[Colin Wilson]

The only supplier I know that does list their price is

're a non-profit company piggy-backing off Southern Electric, and are supposed to run on ethical guidelines.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:40:23 -0000 someone who may be Colin Wilson wrote this:-

switching sites. There is usually a little information button alongside each offering which will call up the prices.

The smaller suppliers put their domestic tariffs on their web sites. Business tariffs are more complicated and tend not to be available so easily.

[Dave Liquorice]

I have found them on the providers websites but you normally have to wade through pages of marketing puff to find the one tiny link that takes you to the relevant pages. Quite often a "more details..." sort of link rather than an large "Our Tarrifs: The real information" on the homepage.

This is why I suggested using uswitch or similar, they have the tarrif information available under the "info" link for each tarrif shown. Might not be 100% but it's a damn sight easier than wading through providers websites.

[tony sayer]

U can argue with them for better rates sometimes, especially if you have more than the one property and bill to pay...