2 minute read
Energy costs
How to combat rising costs
Martyn Bridges, director of Technical Services at Worcester Bosch, discusses the spike in gas prices, and what you need to know in the looming energy crisis.
For months now the news agenda has been talking about the increase in the energy price cap and what people can do to help minimise their heating bills.
The forthcoming huge rise in the cost of gas is concerning for everyone. For some years we enjoyed pretty low and stable gas prices, around 4p per kW/h, and the cost for consumers stayed steady even when suppliers have paid more. This compares favourably to electricity, which we’ve seen come in around 17p.
But with the energy price cap going up by 54 per cent in April and the potential for a further increase in October, we know that consumers and heating engineers will be thinking about how to tackle this. This average £700 price spike will be enough to push some of those who are already on the brink into fuel poverty – and there’s likely more to come later in 2022.
Cutting costs
Before the news about the hike in costs, the incentive for people to try to save money on their gas bills wasn’t so great.
Previously, saving 10 per cent on an average gas bill of £700 a year may not have been enough of an incentive to make changes to the home’s heating systems or controls. But with the new capped annual bill of nearly £2,000 for gas an electricity, there is more incentive for consumers to invest in energy saving measures when it comes to their heating systems.
But what can gas engineers do? One of the best ways to help your customers through this crisis is to tell them how to use their heating system most effectively.
Controls are the most sensible thing to focus on. Ensuring that all radiators have thermostatic radiator valves, a set of controls and at least a programmer and a room thermostat – but preferably a load-compensating thermostat or a weather-compensating controller – will help save money quite quickly.
Then there are the homes with “zombie boilers”. These appliances pre-date 2005 and therefore are not condensing, so replacing the boiler will help save money on running costs.
From the boiler operation perspective, there has been a great deal of discussion in recent weeks suggesting that lowering the temperature of the boiler thermostat can result in lower energy bills.
With a combi boiler, you can lower the boiler thermostat downwards until you find the point where you are still achieving the desired room temperatures when the boiler thermostat is as low as it can be. The suggestion is anything between 50°C-60°C flow temperature would be optimal.
But if the radiators have been quite tightly sized, or accurately sized to run on 80°C, the rooms may not reach the same temperature as previously.
Where the hot water temperature is either pre-set or set on the combi boiler fascia panel, it is quite safe to lower the heating flow temperatures to around 50°C-60°C to see if that can make a difference to gas bills. Ultimately, the lower the temperature, the better it will be for this.
However, we would not suggest you do the same with a regular boiler that has a hot water storage cylinder: the temperature should be kept at 60°C to prevent the risk of legionella.
