OT - Standby electrics - worth consideration?

Every single watt you 'consume' ends up as heat after doing what you want it to. And heat is useful stuff you need most of the year. If you don't get it from your electricals, you'll need to get it from something else that costs you money. So, what you think you'll gain by turning everything off is likely to be considerably less than you calculate.

Besides, you can't escape any 'service charge', so you won't save any of that.

In article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Charlie+ snipped-for-privacy@xxx.net scribeth thus

Prolly stick a 350 or so watt rated solar panel out in the yard and a simple inverter that will now pay for itself quite quickly!...

But your electrical heat costs about 4 times your gas heat, and is also unwanted in summer.

Summer doesn't usually last long, and gas boilers have variable efficiency down in some cases to about 60% whereas electricity conversion to heat is universally 100%.

The best way to save on your energy bills this winter is actually to go on holiday for a month somewhere warm. Turn off everything at home and it could be worth a £500 discount off the price.

Do you know of any talking ones or ones that work with a smart phone? I do have a talking smart meter display of course, but its hard to be sure everything is isolated to measure stuff, even the meter itself uses power. Brian

I knew somebody who did that annually. He had a standing arrangement with a villa owner in the Algarve to live there from December to March. The villa owner was happy to let him and his family live there cheaply because he could show his insurance company that the villa wasn't unoccupied and able to be burgled, and that gave big discount on the premium to be paid.

Unfortunately he died 2 years ago so it no longer happens, but before that he had 6 years of very cheap winter holidays with water and gas and electricity all turned off in his own house.

Jim

On Thu, 1 Sep 2022 13:23:09 +0100, tony sayer snipped-for-privacy@bancom.co.uk> wrote as underneath :

Not bad thinking but the inverter could not be very simple - it would need to sync perfectly to the mains already running.. shut down in a power cut, restart etc. Then there are always "the regulations" ! C+

It's only complicated if you want to sell AC back to the grid. Take a look at "inverter chargers" with built-in transfer switches. Grid up charges the battery, grid down transfers local load to inverter using the battery as backup. Grid not connected then, so no need to sync and no backfeed problem.

When you do this you'll _really_ notice the standby loads on the battery.

bob prohaska

Over the course of a year (don't know where charlie is based, so assume midlands) a 350W panel will average under 1 kWh per day throughout the year, can offset what you'd buy at 52p, rather than expect to sell it for 5p since you'd need a certified installation for SEG tariffs.

A G98 compliant micro-inverter is the minimum you can fit, doesn't need to be a certified installation (get a sparky in, or look into it and DIY) you don't need to ask permission from the DNO to install one, just need to notify them you will/have done so.

£200 for the panel, £150 for a micro inverter, plus some cables and isolators, to save £170 off the electricity bill? You decide ...

That "just under" 1 kW over the year average is that in a 24 hour period

Or is it just the daylight hours whatever they might be?..

He said kilo Watt hour per day, not kilo Watt.

A kilo Watt hour per day is on average (1 kilo Watt * (1 hour / 24 hours)), so on average 1/24th of a kilo Watt, averaged over 24*365.24... continuous hours.

It was something like 340 kWh in 365 days, you'll get more of it in longer days of summer and very little of it in winter.

clearly none of it will be outside daylight hours! but the lower/weaker summer sun means even less that just the shorter day length.

e.g. in each of december and january you'd expect 12kWh per month so 0.4 kWh per day

but in may, june and july you'd get 41 kWh per month, so 1.3 kWh per day

Quite, you're never going to get a kW of power out of a 350W panel, but for about 7 months of the year, you'll get over a kWh of energy.

He did indeed David!, only excuse i can muster was a was severely distracted by a boisterous attention grabbing 3 year i was minding;!