General > General Technical Chat
Building thermal insulation.
Siwastaja:
--- Quote from: Someone on July 24, 2022, 11:13:34 pm ---so even with the UK's broken energy market keeping gas synthetically cheap.... heat pumps still end up cheaper to run.
--- End quote ---
Yes, plus:
It's becoming more and more obvious this synthetically cheap gas is not going to last for long. Also here we have this thing called "moral".
For example, right now Finnish taxpayers are paying for Germany's synthetically cheap gas. The problem just is: Germany has 16x the population. Now that Finland subsidized German cheap gas by some ~10 billion euros - 4% of the country's GDP - divided to each German this is mere ~120EUR. Sure it helps them a bit. But divide the same sum to every Finn, and now it is suddenly ~2000 EUR. You could install five ****king million heatpumps (premium models) with this sum. It would be better investment than just paying for more expensive gas.
The only consequence is slow annihilation of Finland as a country, and transition into total poverty and source of some cheap labor, in eternal debt.
Once you have pumped us dry, then there is no Finland left to pay for your bills. The problem is, due to the small size of Finland, we are already very close to that point.
At some point your fixed price gas contracts just can't be maintained because someone has to pay the actual bill.
Thanks to Brexit we don't likely to have to literally pay your (the UK commenters) gas bills. But the bottom line is the same: your bullshit gas is artificially cheap, and that is not going to last forever.
Meanwhile in Finland, successful people avoid earning too much to avoid 70% income tax, and instead do plumbing work for their own houses. This way we can at least try to avoid sending any more money out of this country. But for long-term productivity, it would be more fruitful if I did EE things as full-time job (because I'm relatively good with this) and let others do the plumbing. But can't do that, because then my wage is sent to Germany, Spain etc., and I still can't afford a plumber.
So I have installed my heatpump myself. I have made plumbing for water energy storage system myself. I have installed heat recovery ventilator myself. I have to, because our heating energy bills have quadrupled during this year. We don't have the luxury of 10-year fixed price cheap gas contracts.
Think about that.
Zero999:
Gas is cheaper than electricity. There's nothing artificial about that. It's a primary energy source, where as electricity is mostly secondary i.e. generated from nuclear, gas and coal. I know some of it is renewable and there are government subsidies for green energy.
Here's my bill showing my usage over the last year. To be fair we did have a mild winter. I've seen higher bills, but even then, I don't see how I could save any money with a heat pump. I don't use enough heating for that.
Annual Energy Usage July 2021 to 2022
tom66:
At present, electricity prices are coupled to the cost of the most expensive generation source, which is currently gas due to the Ukraine invasion. In principle, this exists to ensure that this source is always available for grid stability. The problem is, this is leading to situations like this on Agile (for today, at least):
https://www.energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile/
... where prices rarely dip below 40p/kWh despite somewhere around 33% of energy being generated by wind which typically has a strike price of around 4p/kWh. (You can very roughly calculate the cost paid at auction by taking the per kWh price and dividing by 2.2 for Agile.) The most marginal generator sets the half hourly price, even if it contributes only 5% of the energy. We've had days when renewables are providing upwards of 80% of all demand but prices remain stubbornly high because of this rule.
Ofgem are consulting on changing this, as they believe that the price should be determined by a true supply and demand auction. (Frequency reserve auctions will still exist to provide stability.) The result *should* be lower energy prices, but only when renewables are in high supply. So there's no reason to expect the 4x or so cost difference between gas and electricity to remain true forever, they may well begin to vary considerably.
Zero999:
My gas has gone up more than electricity. If it was purely due to gas prices, then both should have gone up the same.
Last year had a colder winter and April was especially cold, so my usage was much higher, but this year's lower usage hasn't been enough to offset the higher price. I'm not too bothered as it's still not much money for me spread over a year, as my usage is so low.
Annual Energy Usage October 2020 to 2021
Someone:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on July 25, 2022, 08:42:29 pm ---Gas is cheaper than electricity. There's nothing artificial about that.
--- End quote ---
Cheaper yes, cheaper by a factor of 4x or more? Historically true, but not in the past few years (depending on your wholesale market).
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/wholesale-market-indicators
Gas is up around 1/3 to 1/2 the price per unit of energy compared to electricity pretty much around the world, and this started happening before the eastern European conflict (as tom66 mentions above electricity price will track marginal generation costs so they will lift together somewhat).
UK consumers having their energy regulator force the retail price ratio to be different to the wholesale price ratio is a massive market intervention, its artificial, and that amounts to a subsidy for gas users. Its not sustainable economically, someone is paying for it. But you'll make lots of noise and confusion if people point this out because you're the one benefiting. We're headed for Streisand Effect here, keep making more noise and will only get more attention.
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