Part ownership of a Ripple Wind Turbine, fancy it?

[Oldgreybeard]

We are cracking through just under 700kWh per week to run it all and stay off gas.

Ye Gods!

700kWh is about what we use for the worst month of the year, when it's fairly cold. The plot below is our monthly grid electricity usage so far this year and this includes charging the car. So far this month we seem to be averaging around 60kWh to 70kWh per week, and our ~1,400ft² house is all-electric, no other fuels:

2022 electricity usage.jpg (71.44 KiB) Viewed 1202 times

[Joeboy]

We are cracking through just under 700kWh per week to run it all and stay off gas.

Ye Gods!

700kWh is about what we use for the worst month of the year, when it's fairly cold. The plot below is our monthly grid electricity usage so far this year and this includes charging the car. So far this month we seem to be averaging around 60kWh to 70kWh per week, and our house is all-electric, no other fuels:


2022 electricity usage.jpg

'Each has their own set of circumstances, what doesn't work for you.....'

Once upon a time we used 32,000kWh of gas per year, that has been reduced by 99.645% (Approximately). The house is 2,500 Sq ft or so, doing about 1,000miles per month. All 2 stroke engines removed from the space, Nonetheless... Ah well, the price of all this beauty this far North.

[Mr Gus]

Must be on about the landscape? ..not your grizzled self there joe!? (I hope)

[marshman]

It is impossible to really compare usage between households, location, occupancy, age/lifestyle etc. all have a massive effect. Some are way up t'north where, so "they" tell us it is colder and the days are shorter at this time of year Some live down south , longer days and supposedly warmer

Personally I think when monthly consumption figures are "published" EV's should be quoted separately as they can be a massive proportion of consumption and can distort the figures a lot. Also maybe house consumption would be better expressed in kWh/m2.

[Oldgreybeard]

I agree that we will all have different circumstances, but there are some universal factors, like insulation and airtightness being massively more significant than the energy sources used, in terms of environmental impact.

House size is defined as the net internal floor area usually, so a house that has a 500ft² footprint and two floors of the same area would be 1,000ft², or 1,500ft² if it had three floors of the same area as the footprint. UK houses tend to be smaller than some in other countries, the list below gives some averages for the UK:

Average size of 1 or 2 bedroom flats and apartments = 656ft²

Average size of 1 or 2 terraced houses = 688ft²

Average size of 1 or 2 bedroom bungalows = 828ft²

Average size of 3 bedroom semi-detached houses = 1,033ft²

Average size of 2 or 3 bedroom terraced houses = 1,057ft²

Average size of 4 bedroom detached houses = 1,582ft²

[AE-NMidlands]

If you can up your electricity use you can go in for Proj 3?

but that still has to be electricity from the grid... at 36p a unit, a bit of an own goal when the ripple rate is around 9.6!
A

Each has their own set of circumstances, what doesn't work for you.....

but surely the principle still applies. Has anyone got a deal which costs them less or the same for electricity as Ripple pays? If not, then using more electricity and relying on Ripple is just a bit of damage limitation.

[nowty]

but that still has to be electricity from the grid... at 36p a unit, a bit of an own goal when the ripple rate is around 9.6!
A

Each has their own set of circumstances, what doesn't work for you.....

but surely the principle still applies. Has anyone got a deal which costs them less or the same for electricity as Ripple pays? If not, then using more electricity and relying on Ripple is just a bit of damage limitation.

Yep, my average import is under 9p / kWh and thats including standing charge. And includes all gas thrown in on top.

[Oldgreybeard]

but surely the principle still applies. Has anyone got a deal which costs them less or the same for electricity as Ripple pays? If not, then using more electricity and relying on Ripple is just a bit of damage limitation.

Without wishing to be in any way contentious I agree. I'm not 100% convinced that just switching fuels makes that big a difference in the overall scheme of things and may well be significantly worse for the environment.

For example, decent gas boilers tend to run at around 75% to 80% real world efficiency, gas power stations run at around 50% efficiency (source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/548 ... ations-uk/ ), so in basic terms it's better to burn gas for heating than burn gas for power. Although not a wholly fair comparison, it's close, as additional electricity generation tends to usually come from gas, so if the grid demand increases, say from consumers switching from gas heating to electric heating, it is usually gas generation that gets ramped up first.

[nowty]

but surely the principle still applies. Has anyone got a deal which costs them less or the same for electricity as Ripple pays? If not, then using more electricity and relying on Ripple is just a bit of damage limitation.

Without wishing to be in any way contentious I agree. I'm not 100% convinced that just switching fuels makes that big a difference in the overall scheme of things and may well be significantly worse for the environment.

For example, decent gas boilers tend to run at around 75% to 80% real world efficiency, gas power stations run at around 50% efficiency (source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/548 ... ations-uk/ ), so in basic terms it's better to burn gas for heating than burn gas for power. Although not a wholly fair comparison, it's close, as additional electricity generation tends to usually come from gas, so if the grid demand increases, say from consumers switching from gas heating to electric heating, it is usually gas generation that gets ramped up first.

For global warming issues, it depends on the carbon intensity of the grid at any one time. Typically if the grid is less than 220g / kWh then its better using leccy even in a resistance heater than burning gas. If using a heatpump its pretty much better all the time compared with gas.

Current carbon intensity is shown here,
https://carbonintensity.org.uk/

There is a paper on it, I'll try and dig it out if I can find it.

Then there are massive regional variations, in Joeboy land its nearly always very low carbon but here on the south coast its nearly always much higher carbon.

[Oldgreybeard]

The question I would ask is: "What would happen if everyone switched from gas to electricity this winter?"

My gut feeling is that the carbon intensity of the entire UK grid would rise significantly, as gas, coal and biomass generation went into overdrive to try and keep up with demand.