A homeowner who has invested in solar panels, a heat pump and an electric car to help avoid soaring energy and fuel bills has said he is saving more than £1,000 a year.
Charlie Dearman started thinking about getting off the gas grid following the “shock” of the energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He’s now installed solar panels, a battery and a heat pump in his east London home and reduced his monthly energy bill to £65 per month.
Here’s how his costs have broken down:
Solar
Dearman lives in a 1930s terraced property in Walthamstow. Two years ago he approached neighbours to see if he could convince others to get solar panels, the idea being that they could get a discount from an installer.
“My initial idea was it’s all well and good doing something yourself for the climate, but obviously it’s got to scale. So I thought if you could get three people to do it with you and they inspire three more people then it rolls on like that,” he said.
A group of eight households on his street were able to obtain a discount from an installer, which brought the initial quote for solar panels and a battery on his home down from £10,000 to £7,000. The cost of the solar panels was £4,000 and the battery was £3,000.
Solar panels on the roof of Charlie Dearman’s home in WalthamstowDearman has calculated that the value of the energy produced by his solar panels last year was £784. This is a combination of the cash he saved by using solar power instead of buying from the grid, and the money he made selling energy back to the grid.
His household used 61 per cent of the energy it generated and sold the rest back to the grid at a price of 15p/kwh.
Based on this calculation, Dearman will pay off the upfront cost of the solar panels in just over five years.
Battery
Deciding to invest in a battery has “unlocked loads of value”, according to Dearman. Batteries can store the excess solar energy a household generates, which means it can be used at a later point, for example when it gets dark.
Dearman said many people are not aware that batteries can play another important function that is not related to solar: utilising a “time-of-use” tariff, which varies the cost of electricity based on the time of day.
With these tariffs it is typically cheaper to buy energy during off-peak times, such as overnight, or when there is an abundance of renewable energy in the grid, for example on sunny or windy days.
Dearman utilities his battery in the winter by charging it overnight and using the power during peak times. This means electricity costs him around 6p per unit, compared to an average of 25p per unit from the grid.
He also makes sure to charge his electric vehicle when electricity is cheap. Sometimes he even gets paid to use energy; this happens when there is more renewable energy available than the grid can handle.
“The other day it had been windy and sunny so the electricity price was negative. So I put our car on charge that afternoon and was basically paid £4 to charge the car, which is remarkable as a concept,” he said.
Heat pump
After installing solar and a battery, the natural next step for Dearman was a heat pump. He received a £7,500 grant from the Government, which brought the cost down to £5,000. As he was renovating his property and replacing an old boiler anyway, the investment made sense.
It cost him an average of £27 per month to heat his home using the heat pump last year, compared to an equivalent £80 per month on gas.
Dearman said one of the benefits of using a heat pump was that “you have a constantly perfect temperature inside” as they work most efficiently when they are set to run at a stable temperature at all times.
However, one of the downsides was that installation can be disruptive as most people will need to upgrade their radiators as part of the process.
But for Dearman it is worth no longer being at the whims of global fossil fuel prices. “They came and dug up the gas pipe, which was quite satisfying after our heat pump install,” he said.
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