Nosing around B&Q today (needed fuses :) ) I noticed how cheap electric heaters are.
Given how easy they can be controlled from a mesh of "smart" plugs, I wondered about the idea of moving from CH to individually controlled electric rads ? Especially given how much smart hot water radiator valves are ....
What's the groups thoughts ?
Yes, electric is more expensive (for now) than gas. But only heating the room you are in might offset that.
Then our combi becomes a rather clunky tankless hot water heater.
My collection of non-ferrous 1p and 2p coins is now quite good. V Useful for all manner of DIY fiddles.
You could mount one on a robotic vacuum cleaner, cat-style with a long curly lead (I have a few old curly kettle leads in the loft), and then the heat would move around the house on its own :-)
Although the differential might reduce, I think electricity is likely to move in synch with gas to some extent. Otherwise a lot depends on the detail. If you are well insulated and well draught-proofed, and don't move about between rooms too much then it is certainly a strategy. Fan heaters are good for "instant comfort". Unless you are actually sitting next to an electric radiator, the warm air only gets to you once it has gone up the walls and across the ceiling. But (for example) if you are forced to work in a cold room, a small radiator or fan heater in the desk kneehole can be amazingly effective. Similarly, cold high-roofed workshops are made surprisingly tolerable by radiant IR heaters.
The problem is that air doesn't have a very good heat capacity. So you can run a heater that warms the room up rapidly, but you don't warm the masonry up very much. So as soon as you turn it off the air cools rapidly. Unless you're running the heaters constantly, going from warm to cold areas gets tiresome quite quickly. And if you do run them constantly you risk overheating near to the heater and cold spots further away.
You also have moisture problems, because any amount of humidity will condense on cold walls. So unless you are force-venting all sources of humidity (bathroom, kitchen, drying washing) they will get in and condense in places you don't want them to.
Plus there is no insulation between rooms, so any heat you put into a room will leak into others, so your idea of isolating one from another doesn't work very well.
If you have working CH I see no reason why you would think electric rads are an improvement. If your CH is broken, you don't have much option, and if you live in a flat then maybe it's worth not having a boiler for space reasons. But I doubt you would save, especially not if your CH already has TRVs.
Standard electric heaters probably wouldn?t be much cop but I believe radiant panel heaters that just heat objects in the room rather than the air might have a future.
No personal experience and no connection with this company. Just posting the link for interest.
Here I leave a heater on in this room constantly - because I am in it so much.
I have three spare bedrooms, a hobby roonm and two spare bathrooms that really dont need heating.
So the whole upstairs heating system is off. Since I use most of the ground floor, I leave the UFH on and that warms upstairs to almost bearable 16°C or so.
The OP is suggesting trying to save by turning on the heating when they go into rooms, rather than running them constantly. That suggests air heating (convectors, radiant or fan heaters), which have fast response time and a low thermal mass. If they're using oil filled radiators those have a slow response time and the problem is just the same as a wet radiator, so there is no saving to be had.
That can be done on a wet system with TRVs - basic ones cost about £20 (+fitting). There's no saving by going to electric heat. (the electric heater will cost about £20, for one thing)
RR is shooting for £40/MWh nuclear. Currently oil is costing me £60/MWh I think gas is around £60/MWh at the moment - dunno cos I don't use it. That's the latest spot price anyway.
Basically the current situation that is evolving is that every single source of energy except nuclear looks set to rise.
CCGT at 60% eff and £60/MWh is gonna be £100/MWh ex power station at least. Hinkley point will be less at £90/MWh. Windmills without backup up around £150-£180/MWh. Solar? don't make me larf £400?
Which is why we are paying £200/MWh domestically - 20p a unit.
If we put in nukes at £40/MWh then the end user price once the windmills and solar panels are scrapped would be around £120/MWh delivered.
With a heat pump that is *broadly* comparable to domestic oil and gas.
And its a heck of a lot easier to just pop in oil filled rads instead of wet rads on a per room basis without that heat pump.
We currently generate most of our electricity using gas. Our "renewables" generate electricity at least half the time using gas. So short of a very large increase in nuclear capacity, that seems like the status quo for a good while yet.
(and since we are committed to gas for the next couple of decades, we might as well frak our own to compliment our North Sea reserves, rather than buying it in at daft prices!)
With electricity at 4 times the running costs of gas (and the lions share of it in the UK generated with gas), it's unlikely that resistive electric heating will be cost competitive for a considerable time.
Aircon/heat pumps can be an option for a few rooms, and in some cases for a boiler replacement:
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Unless you ignore some rooms altogether. Even then you can turn down TRVs in those rooms.
It might be that small heat pump aircons could heat some rooms. There are even some who have done DIY replacements for gas boilers:
You could use smart TRVs - wirelessly control each room's temperature. According to my, ahem, calculations for any given amount of heat electricity is 4x the cost of gas (average, taking into account pipe and efficiency losses).
But. the TRVs aren't cheap (although you could achieve the same effect with manual TRVs), and you have to hope they work (mine sometimes wander off in their own world). Then there's the wider (environmental) cost of using more energy to do the same thing.
But they could (and should) shift the green taxes from electric and onto residential gas bills. They could also make domestic electric bills zero rated for VAT while increasing VAT on domestic gas bills. None of which would alter the economics of CCGT
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