Eco 4 solar and heat pumps.

aprilsweetheartrose. · 2023-09-08T14:48:37+00:00

I live in the SW of England and we are off grid for gas. We currently have E7. I have retired recently. OH is retired. We got a call from some company or other saying we could qualify for Eco 4 solar panels and heat pumps( we have top notch insulation in the roof already so that doesn't need doing).I want to know in simple words for me as a XX type person of the old model to understand ;-) whether this is a hoax, is worth it and what catches there are? OH has been hankering after a solar panel and battery system for a while and wanted to DIY it or cost us a sum to get it! So, does anyone know solar panels - will eco 4 give us a battery system? ( if we qualify - I am not sure we do but we are being told we do as benefit rules dont apply to those of us off grid they say??)Heat pumps - I have storage heaters.. How does a heat pump system work?Where would they have to put the pump thingy?Is it driving radiators? We dont have any. We have storage heaters. Would the storage heaters have to be taken out?What about our E7 or would be be put on a higher tariff? How will standard tariffs work out cost wise? We have been spending about £70 a month on electric. In the winter I expect that will go up to around £150 a month ( we are in credit with the electric company and have just had a new E7 "Deal" given us which was not much above the last one. Will that be forced to change?Anything else I dont know about?Any information or experience would be gratefully receieved and considered seriously. Thanks you.

Sep 08, 2023 Last reply: 2 years ago 42 Replies

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John J 2 years ago

That's useful to know. I have an oil boiler sitting in my shed plus the tank and pipe is still in situ so returning to oil as my source of heat won't be a major expense. ☺️

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Spike 2 years ago

I’ve plotted data from the last 18 months, using (monthly gas consumption) and (monthly average outside temperature). This gives a straight line with little scatter, showing that kWh=3640-184T

So for a day where outside temperature is 0degC, gas consumption will be

3640/30=121kWh.

But on those months with no heating demand, i.e. DHW only, gas consumption is 500kWh, or 17kWh per day, or 0.7kW over 24 hours.

Subtracting the DHW from the overall consumption for the 0degC day gives

104kWh for heating, which averaged over the day is 4.4kW.

Adding in the DHW demand gives an average of 5.1kW.

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Theo 2 years ago

For the record:

Our summer whole-house electricity consumption is about 14kWh per day

2-3kWh of that is DHW

In winter the whole house electricity consumption can vary from 20kWh (mild day) to 40kWh (freezing day), implying the heating load is 6-26kWh of that.

Taking the top end of that to compare with your 0degC day and dividing by 24 gets an average of 1.08kW electricity consumption over the day. I don't have any display of the COP on those days but if it was 3 to 4 that would mean an average of 3.25 to 4.33 kW of heat.

Theo

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