Gas useage

[UncleEbenezer]

Our Worcester Bosch has a preheat facility, it is supposed to speed the supply of hot water by keeping a small container of water within the boiler preheated, I believe. There is an eco mode which disables this, and I have always used this eco mode. As you say, the water still comes through pretty quickly.

Yep, my boiler used to have the pre-heat turned on. It would fire up every 20 mins or so for perhaps a minute. Don't know how much gas this used. I eventually turned it off (had to RTFM and go through some tedious button clicking routine).

This is interesting. I'm not aware that my boiler has this but will look at the manual. It's quite small so I can't see where a tank would be. BUT - it does fire up randomly day and night (and drives me mad when I've got insomnia) and when I asked the plumber about it he said it was legionella prevention. I wasn't 100% convinced because boilers in other houses have never done that. My mum's doesn't.

But even if it does have it, there's no way it can have recently been turned off, given I didn't know it existed!

Mel

Either way, any difference it makes will be marginal. A long, long way from the magnitude you describe (and the reason I haven't speculated on that is that I have no idea what could have caused such a thing).

As it happens, I have that "eco" setting, and after experimenting with both on and off, I keep it off, so my boiler maintains a small quantity of hot water. I find it helps my shower heat up noticeably quicker, so that's lower water consumption.

[melonfool]

(who spent some of the early part of his career modelling the relationship at UK regional level between daily gas consumption in different market sectors and daily weather).

Interesting. Were you pursuing science as such, or incidentally?

Did you ever look at questions like placebo? People who wouldn't dream of turning the heating on for a cool July day but who do turn it on for the same (or even higher) outside temperatures in this season?

Or worse, the people who turn the heating OFF on principle on 1st April and it stays OFF until end of October no matter how cold it might be, like my employers in 1975. And my skool.

I never used to turn it off. You may have hit on something inadvertently there!

I used to just leave the therm on 19 at either end of the day. If it was 18 in July, the heating came on. If it was 20 in January the heating stayed off. I can't see why I would want any different based on time of year.

But this year, for the first time in my life, the therm has been totally off since early March because it was replaced in Feb and I couldn't work out how to use it (I kept setting it according to the instructions and then it would revert to being just on all the time at about 24deg which is boiling, and I didn't know how to get it to stay on the settings I wanted, so I got annoyed and just turned it off at the main switch).

So maybe I've used less over the summer than I might have in the past because it has never kicked in. I know we had a very hot summer, but there were probably a few days it might have come on in the evening.

I need to dig out the instructions and try and get it to work this year!

Mel

[MrFoolish]

This is interesting. I'm not aware that my boiler has this but will look at the manual. It's quite small so I can't see where a tank would be. BUT - it does fire up randomly day and night (and drives me mad when I've got insomnia) and when I asked the plumber about it he said it was legionella prevention. I wasn't 100% convinced because boilers in other houses have never done that. My mum's doesn't.

But even if it does have it, there's no way it can have recently been turned off, given I didn't know it existed!

Mel

I don't think there's a tank. There's a heat exchanger for the hot water and I expect it keeps this (and the associated pipes) hot.

I doubt this pre-heat is the cause of your different readings, but thought people might be interested to consider if they are burning gas for something they don't really care about. Anyway, you can check if it's still doing the random fire ups.

[melonfool]

Our Worcester Bosch has a preheat facility, it is supposed to speed the supply of hot water by keeping a small container of water within the boiler preheated, I believe. There is an eco mode which disables this, and I have always used this eco mode. As you say, the water still comes through pretty quickly.

Yep, my boiler used to have the pre-heat turned on. It would fire up every 20 mins or so for perhaps a minute. Don't know how much gas this used. I eventually turned it off (had to RTFM and go through some tedious button clicking routine).

This is interesting. I'm not aware that my boiler has this but will look at the manual. It's quite small so I can't see where a tank would be. BUT - it does fire up randomly day and night (and drives me mad when I've got insomnia) and when I asked the plumber about it he said it was legionella prevention. I wasn't 100% convinced because boilers in other houses have never done that. My mum's doesn't.

But even if it does have it, there's no way it can have recently been turned off, given I didn't know it existed!

Mel

Either way, any difference it makes will be marginal. A long, long way from the magnitude you describe (and the reason I haven't speculated on that is that I have no idea what could have caused such a thing).

As it happens, I have that "eco" setting, and after experimenting with both on and off, I keep it off, so my boiler maintains a small quantity of hot water. I find it helps my shower heat up noticeably quicker, so that's lower water consumption.

I'd be happy with higher water consumption in exchange for not being woken at three am!



Mel - hoping that's a thing on my boiler!

[Mike4]

Our Worcester Bosch has a preheat facility, it is supposed to speed the supply of hot water by keeping a small container of water within the boiler preheated, I believe. There is an eco mode which disables this, and I have always used this eco mode. As you say, the water still comes through pretty quickly.

Yep, my boiler used to have the pre-heat turned on. It would fire up every 20 mins or so for perhaps a minute. Don't know how much gas this used. I eventually turned it off (had to RTFM and go through some tedious button clicking routine).

This is interesting. I'm not aware that my boiler has this but will look at the manual. It's quite small so I can't see where a tank would be. BUT - it does fire up randomly day and night (and drives me mad when I've got insomnia) and when I asked the plumber about it he said it was legionella prevention. I wasn't 100% convinced because boilers in other houses have never done that. My mum's doesn't.

But even if it does have it, there's no way it can have recently been turned off, given I didn't know it existed!

Mel

What exact make and model of boiler is it?

You said earlier it was an "Ideal Mini" but there is no such thing. There is an Ideal "Mini C" which is a rebadged Biasi Riva, but this IIRC does not have the preheat facility.

[melonfool]

This is interesting. I'm not aware that my boiler has this but will look at the manual. It's quite small so I can't see where a tank would be. BUT - it does fire up randomly day and night (and drives me mad when I've got insomnia) and when I asked the plumber about it he said it was legionella prevention. I wasn't 100% convinced because boilers in other houses have never done that. My mum's doesn't.

But even if it does have it, there's no way it can have recently been turned off, given I didn't know it existed!

Mel

I don't think there's a tank. There's a heat exchanger for the hot water and I expect it keeps this (and the associated pipes) hot.

I doubt this pre-heat is the cause of your different readings, but thought people might be interested to consider if they are burning gas for something they don't really care about. Anyway, you can check if it's still doing the random fire ups.

I will check. Well, I'll get a friend to check, I don't like going in the loft!

Mel

[melonfool]

Our Worcester Bosch has a preheat facility, it is supposed to speed the supply of hot water by keeping a small container of water within the boiler preheated, I believe. There is an eco mode which disables this, and I have always used this eco mode. As you say, the water still comes through pretty quickly.

Yep, my boiler used to have the pre-heat turned on. It would fire up every 20 mins or so for perhaps a minute. Don't know how much gas this used. I eventually turned it off (had to RTFM and go through some tedious button clicking routine).

This is interesting. I'm not aware that my boiler has this but will look at the manual. It's quite small so I can't see where a tank would be. BUT - it does fire up randomly day and night (and drives me mad when I've got insomnia) and when I asked the plumber about it he said it was legionella prevention. I wasn't 100% convinced because boilers in other houses have never done that. My mum's doesn't.

But even if it does have it, there's no way it can have recently been turned off, given I didn't know it existed!

Mel

What exact make and model of boiler is it?

You said earlier it was an "Ideal Mini" but there is no such thing. There is an Ideal "Mini C" which is a rebadged Biasi Riva, but this IIRC does not have the preheat facility.

Um, probably that then. That's the name I recall being on it.

This, maybe: https://www.wolseley.co.uk/product/idea ... flue-pack/

It's pretty basic. It's five years old. When the pressure kept dropping I called them to ask if it was under warranty and it only has a one year warranty. So, no.

Mel

[melonfool]

Some of those have a five year warranty so it can't be those. But some do have pre heat.

I'll get up in the loft tomorrow and check all these things out.

Mel

[Mike4]

Some of those have a five year warranty so it can't be those. But some do have pre heat.

I'll get up in the loft tomorrow and check all these things out.

Mel

In the LOFT??????!!!!!!

<runs away screaming....>

[melonfool]

Some of those have a five year warranty so it can't be those. But some do have pre heat.

I'll get up in the loft tomorrow and check all these things out.

Mel

In the LOFT??????!!!!!!

<runs away screaming....>

I know right it's full of spiders and really cold!

Mel

[modellingman]

(who spent some of the early part of his career modelling the relationship at UK regional level between daily gas consumption in different market sectors and daily weather).

Interesting. Were you pursuing science as such, or incidentally?

Did you ever look at questions like placebo? People who wouldn't dream of turning the heating on for a cool July day but who do turn it on for the same (or even higher) outside temperatures in this season?

The models were concerned with aggregate demand for gas rather than daily demand at the level of individual consumers.

At the time, around 40 years ago, I was employed by one of the 12 regions of the then British Gas Corporation. The role was to develop and use statistical models (basically fancy multiple linear regression models) relating regional daily gas demand to variables such as weather (broadly represented by daily average temperature and wind speeds), day of the week and season. The models were, naturally, based on historical data and part of the role was to project the parameters of the models to future years. Like all forecasting, this was part science and part art.

In simplified terms, future year models were used to forecast future peak day and average day demands, nationally and regionally, in turn these fed into supply and storage planning - the development of the Rough field as a storage facility was one of the outcomes of the work into which the regional modelling activity provided inputs.

40 years ago, relatively little load research work was done (or practical) at individual household level. A colleague drove through some pioneering work which attempted to measure consumption of domestic consumers on a daily basis. The technology was primitive - a slightly modified index meter with an optical trigger (dot of paint) allowing revolutions of the rotating meter index to be counted. This was linked to a fairly simple electronics board which then wrote on a daily basis the count value to a Walkman type audio cassette recording device. Customers in the panel of around 120 customers (and panel selection was an art and science in itself) returned their cassettes on a monthly basis. It was a favorite activity (not) of new graduate recruits in the team to receive and process the monthly batch of tapes using a specially built tape reading machine. The individual customer units were powered by a pack of 6 D-cell batteries which needed swapping out every 6 months.

The challenge in the 1980s was making sense and best use of limited amounts of data. Technology has moved on considerably since then and, potentially, smart meters provide massive amounts of data. However, the challenges of making sense of these data still remain, though are very different from when I was a practitioner.

It was the behaviour of customers at an aggregate rather than individual level which formed the focus of the work. The effect that you mention was captured, effectively, by differences between models applied to different seasonal periods (typically October-March and aaApril-September). Otherwise, they would be absorbed in the mathematical statistician's get-out clause, the residual.

modellingman

[melonfool]

Looking at the numbers, and taking into account my lackadaisical approach to data collection, it's really interesting to note that my gas consumption is likely to go up ten fold in winter. Not two or three fold as most people probably think it does.

Currently my bill is around £15pm for gas, and £50-60pm for electric. The electric will go up somewhat as lights go on earlier and I use the occasional heater in the bedroom when the heating isn't on. So add £15 to that.

Then multiply the gas by a conservative five times, and my bill is looking like it will be c£150 pm over winter. Even if I use the higher 10x, that still £225.

Not the £400 they are asking me for.

My next job is to try to work out why they have more than doubled my predicted electricity annual usage, which is what I think drives the DD costings. It might be that I had a day early Dept when the oven was on fire several hours over two days. If it's that, it should come down a bit again next billing period.

I'm not sold on this smart meter, it doesn't seem very smart to me! It should surely be able to tell that was just one day, not a consistent repeating use.

Mel

[scotview]

1. I turned down the heating output temperature from 70C to 55C last winter, to ensure the condensing boiler efficiency is maximised. This was recommended by my energy supplier, Octopus. In theory this should make the house slower to heat up from cold, but I can't say I have noticed this. It is difficult to believe this has had such a dramatic effect, so it may be due to...
FD

Many are set to c80 and should be between 55 and 60. Not under 55 I don't think.

Mel

On a 'regular' boiler heating rads and a hot water cylinder, you'll also need to turn down the temperature setting on the cylinder thermostat or the cylinder stat may never be satisfied, leading to it constantly calling for heat but never getting up to the selected setting. This causes the boiler to cycle on and off and the pump to run continuously, perhaps wasting more energy than you are saving.

A couple of observations:

1 By turning the temperature down, it's possible that in addition to improving the condensing effect you would also simply be using less gas for the burner.

2 In respect of a regular boiler, to be able to turn down the water temperature to 55C, could it be possible to install a modern Immersion control stat which would achieve 60C every two weeks for a Legionella cycle. The rest of the time the immersion would be off. Does anyone have experience of these stats?
https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/3e6 ... ochure.pdf

If 2 above is achievable there must be millions of regular boilers which could be running at 55C. For example, my cylinder temperature is 64C to prevent legionella, what a waste of energy.

[modellingman]

I don't care about the credit, or the payment really, I just find their methods bewildering!

There are broadly two aspects to how suppliers determine the level of payments that should be made under a regular payment plan. The first is an estimate of your annual consumption and the second is then conversion of this to a financial amount.

In terms of the first, this should be derived from your meter reading history. There are industry standard methods for this which are performed centrally (not by your supplier) every time a new actual meter reading is obtained. However, these methods have some limitations and suppliers are not obliged to use these centrally produced estimates for the purposes of determining things such as monthly or quarterly estimates of consumption, though most do because it saves them the effort of developing their own, more appropriate estimates.

I covered this aspect of estimating annual consumption in a post about my experiences with Blub 18 months ago. See viewtopic.php?p=416054#p416054 though, be warned, it is a bit nerdy in places.

For the second aspect, supply companies have an incentive to milk as much as possible from their customers. It greatly improves the companies' cash flow and OFGEM has long since ceased to have any realistic controls and monitoring aimed at preventing the undoubted abuses that take place. OFGEM was long ago captured by free market economists whose unbending belief is that competition between suppliers can effectively replace the need for regulation, so why bother regulating? (Duh, because that's your job!)

As a result, I have long since stopped using regular payment plans. I'm much happier paying for the energy actually used on an arrears basis and I ignore the fairly regular reminders to set up a direct debit.

modellingman

[AF62]

As a result, I have long since stopped using regular payment plans. I'm much happier paying for the energy actually used on an arrears basis and I ignore the fairly regular reminders to set up a direct debit.

I have never had a problem with the amount suppliers take by DD - and I have used quite a few different suppliers over the years. Whenever I came to change supplier at the end of the year then the amount I owed them or they owed me once the final bill was produced was always less than £50 and quite often less than £10.

My current supplier, Octopus, allows customers to change the amount of their DD directly on their website with no need to interact with their call centres at all, so it is pretty easy to ensure that the DD amount is in balance with the annual cost.

[modellingman]

Mainly prompted by this thread and Mel's OP containing her gas meter reading history, I went onto my online account with British Gas this morning expecting to see quite a lot of my metering reading history data available for me to look at. Smart meters were installed at my home a good number of years ago and were set to provide half-hourly meter readings. My expectations were not met. The online account tells me that the only meter readings being made available are those used to issue bills. British Gas only issues bills every six months, though the meter readings are probably shown at approximately monthly intervals.

I find this quite unbelievable. If consumers are to get some insight into their patterns of consumption, as Mel is quite clearly attempting to do, then why not make the meter reading/consumption data available to the individual consumer that generated it? No data protection issues involved. If the banks (through the open banking initiative) can get to the stage where individuals can authorise third party services to access their transaction data, I don't see why it should not be possible for the energy supply industry to do something similar with meter reading/energy consumption data. All(!) that is required, as in the case of banking, is a bit of political and regulatory vision with the follow through of regulatory action to make it happen.

Perhaps, stupidly, I have submitted an enquiry to British Gas enquiring as to why I cannot access the detailed consumption data that I am choosing to
provide them with (through my choices of installing a smart meter and allowing it to submit half hourly readings). The text of my enquiry is reproduced below.

I'm not actually expecting anything meaningful in response and I regard the time spent composing my enquiry as a catharsis as much as anything else. But you never know, so I'll endeavour to update this thread if anything sensible emerges. As I note, my expectations are that this will not be the case.

My enquiry to British Gas:

My smart meter sends you half-hourly meter readings. So you have massive amounts of data that I am allowing you to collect. However, when I look at my account on your website there are only a very limited number of my meter readings being made available to me. Why is that? It would be useful to me and no doubt quite a lot of other numerate consumers to have access to the much more detailed meter reading history and consumption data derived from this. It might be smart metering but current practice as evidenced from the above it is far from smart. I used to work in the industry (and was involved at the forefront of load research for daily domestic gas demand in the 80's and 90's) and I have to say the industry and you as a company have gone backwards from the days when I was involved (in an old region of the British Gas Corporation). If the country is serious about the looming energy crisis, net-zero targets and all the rest then providing customers with much better access to the personal data that suppliers such as British Gas hold about them is one of the many keys to doing this. Third party services would probably spring up in a jiffy if the data were made available. So why is it not being made available? Don't even think about telling me that only readings used for billing purposes are made available through the website - I can see that and what I'm asking why the rest of the readings aren't being made available. Please push this one up the line because it is a matter of policy, not operations. If I don't get a satisfactory answer, I will take it further, much further, so please view this enquiry as an opportunity.

modellingman

[Stompa]

British Gas only issues bills every six months...

I always thought that was the case (and I agree it's pretty bizarre), yet so far this year I've had bills from them in Mar, Apr, Jun, Sep & Oct. I don't have a smart meter, so supply readings every month.

[Mike88]

As an aside, is it usual to have a boiler in the loft?

[richlist]

A couple of my neighbours have their boiler in the loft.....they are bungalows......installed in the last 5/6 years I think.
One neighbour has her boiler in the garage.
So, it can't be that unusual.

[AF62]

Mainly prompted by this thread and Mel's OP containing her gas meter reading history, I went onto my online account with British Gas this morning expecting to see quite a lot of my metering reading history data available for me to look at. Smart meters were installed at my home a good number of years ago and were set to provide half-hourly meter readings. My expectations were not met. The online account tells me that the only meter readings being made available are those used to issue bills. British Gas only issues bills every six months, though the meter readings are probably shown at approximately monthly intervals.

I find this quite unbelievable. If consumers are to get some insight into their patterns of consumption, as Mel is quite clearly attempting to do, then why not make the meter reading/consumption data available to the individual consumer that generated it? No data protection issues involved. If the banks (through the open banking initiative) can get to the stage where individuals can authorise third party services to access their transaction data, I don't see why it should not be possible for the energy supply industry to do something similar with meter reading/energy consumption data. All(!) that is required, as in the case of banking, is a bit of political and regulatory vision with the follow through of regulatory action to make it happen.

If you want that information then all that is required is to change to an energy company that offers it.

Octopus issue me an electricity bill every month, and send me by email a 60 page bill detailing the half-hourly consumption on which the bill is based.

But if that isn’t enough then I can download the data as a CSV file.

And if that is too much hassle then they have a web dashboard (and app) where I can view the daily, weekly, monthly, annual, consumption, and all broken down into the half-hour billing periods.

Then for the true geeks they have an API where you can grant third party access to your smart meter data if you want to use some other app to report usage.

And for my non-smart gas meter then they send me a bill whenever I send them a reading which tends to be weekly (I am obliged to send them one at least monthly because of the tariff I am on, which tracks the daily wholesale price of gas).

So given there is damn all price difference between the suppliers at the moment, it would seem to be sensible to just move to whichever offers the best service.