Averaging 13kWh/day for November, up from 2.5kWh/day during the summer. That’s with keeping the rooms at 20°c during the day, 18°c overnight for us and 19°c overnight for the little one.
The heating has fired itself up a few times, but it’s hardly been needed, even with the colder weather.
The Kindle idea looks really cool too. Would love something like this mainly to display current/upcoming Agile rates, but there are a few other bits from my HA install that would be cool to show.
That’s really good going. We use 7 to 9kwh per day just to heat water for showers everyday.
That is really good going. We’re burning through 40kWh/day currently (7 rooms with rads, plus hot water), 20 degrees during the day, 17 degrees at night.
Yeah property-size will play a big part. We’re only heating two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen / living area so the size definitely plays a part. It’s a new build so proper insulation and a brand new boiler play a part.
I would also add that aside from showers and a bath for the little one, we don’t really use hot water. It takes so long for hot water to reach our taps from the boiler that it’s not even worth using it. Plus we just throw everything into the dishwasher.
I’m moving in at those temps!
If I’m feeling v generous, I’ll bump it up to 16.5 on a really cold night. Never gets put on during the day
Maybe I should clarify…
… is only when most of the family is home. When we’re at work/school, it’s set to 12. The Nest is really good at auto-scheduling and ramping up to temp for when someone ‘usually’ gets home. And ramps up quicker if there are any surprise homecomings (when set to do so).
Looking back again at the sheer costs involved with gas 10 years ago, that thing paid for itself during the first 12 months - a highly recommended piece of hardware.
Oh I got that, I WFH but am a little tight too put it to that. Each to their own, of course
I haven’t posted the specifics about my set up anywhere yet so here are some details;
In Feb 2019:
In August this year;
The myenergi Libbi is an expensive option to be honest. The GivEnergy All-in-one I think is the best value for money at the moment, and supports a “gateway” that allows it to run the entire house off-grid if the grid goes down. The Libbi only supports a single circuit off-grid.
If you’re interesting in going down this route… here are the main factors I think you should consider;
For sizing the system;
kWh requirements per day - how much electricity does your home use in a typical day. Usually this is somewhere between 5-10kWh. You ideally want a battery size that will more than cover a full days electricity usage. If you plan to use more electricity for heating in the future, your electricity usage will increase so you may want to factor that in. Also keep in mind some systems are modular/expandable. I’ve bought 10kWh now, but I intend to add a further 10kWh in the future, and made sure my installer was aware of this so that they laid out the system with space to accommodate future expansion.
Max kW output requirements - this refers to the throughput of the battery and basically determines how much power can be pulled from it at once (also referred to as the max charge/discharge rate). I recommend maximising this as much as possible to avoid pulling from the grid when multiple appliances/electric heaters are running at the same time.
off-grid functionality - different systems have different levels of off-grid capabilities. For ultimate peace of mind in the event of an apocalyptic event, try to find something with full instantaneous grid back up. Otherwise, just having a single circuit with some sockets available in the event of a longer term blackout might be fine. Depending on how prone to power cuts your area is, I don’t think this should be a deal breaker personally. You can get a relatively cheap UPS to prevent your internet/PC from going down if you have occasional sporadic short term power cuts.
For setting a budget;
Annual utility bill - Your annual utility bill represents the absolute maximum ceiling on your possible savings per year, so its worth keeping this figure in mind. So if your annual utility bill is around £2k. £2k per year is the absolute theoretical ceiling on your possible return on investment. In practice, your savings will be some fraction of this annual utility bill figure depending on how much of your usage gets covered by solar (free), how much is covered by off-peak costs (usually around 30% the cost) and how much of your gas usage can be replaced with electricity provided by the battery (either for free by solar or off-peak elec).
Exports - Depending on how you size your system, you could go down the path of buying cheap and exporting at a good price to fast track your returns.
Longevity of the system - If you’re in your forever home and think you’ll keep the system for 20+ years, then you’re more likely to see financial benefits long term
For managing the system once its in place;
MyEnergi app gives control over when the libbi charges. The rest of mostly handled automatically. Pretty sure other systems have similar apps.
Home assistant can pull state of charge from the libbi system. So I’ve set it to send me prompts if the battery gets low so that I can change my behaviour accordingly. Still exploring other ways to automate things, as it starts to get even colder, I’ll probably set some electric heaters to automatically run if the battery state of charge is above a certain threshold and there is a certain amount of solar available.
There is a great youtube channel that covers all of this kind of stuff in more detail: https://youtu.be/x83t1iCMXxw?si=gqONzWqPVm7jDgOk
He also has an online tool that lets you play around with potential system sizes etc to get a sense of how it changes the impact; Solarazma - Daily Solar Modelling Utility