Do give it a rest!

[Workingman]

We now have some other Think Tank saying that a "typical" family will spend over £4,200 p.a. on energy from January. Err, that's £11.50 per day - every single day.

Just what is this "typical" family doing? Wandering round in shorts and T-shirts in mid-winter. Having the heating on at 25 ºC 24 hours a day. Taking a bath each person every day. Running the washing machine every day.

A typical, ordinary and sensible family is going to come nowhere near these figures, but the media runs with them without question. There is never any analysis or questioning, just the scary headlines.

[Suff]

Our electric bill was €375 for two months. This is our summer bill which is normally much lower than our winter bill. Last year it was in the €200's and nothing has really changed in what we run daily.

I was discussing with Mrs S about Solar. The game changer with Solar is that I can now buy a small battery and a cheap transfer switch (Under £150), which will allow me to automatically switch between mains and solar.

It's going to cost around £4,000 to get the solar, inverter, charge controller, battery and transfer switch. Then I'll have to install it.

Our water heating is electric, we have 2 freezers running and, currently, 3 fridges. This reduces to 2 fridges in winter. We have the pool pump, a hot tub and a hot water boiler in the kitchen. I recon I can get that lot onto the Solar. It should be a large part of our costs.

I'll let you know if I decide to do it.

Needless to say I won't be plugging it into the grid. Bunch of ingrates charge up to €8,000 to connect your home solar to the grid here in France. If you take the government scheme then connection is free but they take all your power and give you wholesale rates back; after having charged you VAT....

[Workingman]

Suff, yours is hardly typical of a UK family home given all the kit you have, and even if you do not do the solar thing you are unlikely to get near the £4,200 the think tanks are quoting.

On the flip side is my place. A large six room flat with central hallway and staircase. It has as much floor area as a two bed bungalow or terraced house. Heating, tap hot water and cooking are all by gas, the rest - power shower, lighting, washing machine etc. - are electric. From Jan 1st to the end of August I will have spent £633.85 on gaslec - so says the spreadsheet. Come Dec 31st, and even with the new rates, I expect the total year to be about £1050: if that.

True, I live on my own, but even a couple would not use much more - a few more showers and washing machine runs per week - but all the rest would stay the same. And remember, as I am retired I tend to be in most of the day, 365.

What bugs me is that the media throws out these figures with no analysis, no breakdown of costs, no questions asked.

[TheOstrich]

What bugs me is that the media throws out these figures with no analysis, no breakdown of costs, no questions asked.

Absolutely! Our combined gas and electric bills are currently around the £1,400 mark (average is supposed to be £1,970 there or thereabouts I think), electric pretty constant month by month, gas obviously much higher in the winter. But we're going to be nowhere near the £4,000 mark.

But we'll turn the thermostat down to 19, and the Solar PV goes in at the end of this month, so we'll see how we go.

Without wishing to bring too much politics into it, whoever sanctioned Ofgem into moving to 3 monthly changes? That's going to increase everybody's bills at the worst possible time. Truss is an eejit; removing the NI increase will help the employed and the companies only, it's the poor, the unemployed and the pensioners who need financial help. Part of me is hoping the "Don't Pay" movement takes off and we have another "Poll Tax Rebellion" ......

[Suff]

What bugs me is that the media throws out these figures with no analysis, no breakdown of costs, no questions asked.

A bit like the monkeypox "epidemic" then....

They don't want to analyse or make sense of it. That doesn't make SENSATIONAL headlines.

[saundra]

I take no notice of the media headline now
I'm waiting to hear how many people are going to die in this heatwave

[Suff]

People always die in heatwaves. Some from health issues, some from bad decisions, some from stupidity.

One of our neighbours had breathing issues during hot weather. In 2003 he decided he would not go to hospital and would try to see it through. In the end he stopped breathing before the ambulance could get there. Had he gone to hospital he would have survived it.

Bad decisions. We all make them.

There are ways of easily surviving these days of heatwave. These do not include opening the windows and letting 35C air into the house because the 25C air in the house is "stuffy". Nor do they include drinking gallons of beer, no water and lying out in the sun to turn into a lobster.

Managing hot conditions is more about attitude and preparation than it is inherent issues with the heat. Plenty of countries deal with much more heat and don't have anything like the drama.

Doesn't sell news though.

[saundra]

You miss my point suff
I'm waiting for the DM to tell me how many deaths this heatwave will cause
I do not need a answer of how to survive it

[Suff]

True. Not just the DM..... All the other howlers too. I don't listen to the DM unless they are talking about something nobody else is, it is of interest to me and I can fact check every word they say....

[Workingman]

I see that the forecasters are outdoing themselves.

The latest is that bills will be £5,038 per year, with January alone coming in at £571 - that's £18.80 per day!

These forecasts, always silly, are getting sillier.

Who compiles these things and what data is used?

I found this from the English Housing Survey 2010.

The majority (81%) of dwellings were houses or bungalows; most
of these being two storey houses. Flats made up 19% of the stock

The average useable floor area of dwellings in England was 91m2.
However some 52% of social sector bungalows, 50% of social sector
flats and 35% of private rented flats had a total floor area of less
than 50m2.

The "average" or "typical" house is not that big, certainly not big enough to be using the energy these forecasts make out.