Overuse of Systems

Many people had never been shown how to do this and as a result were using too much energy, mainly in water heating. For others, not using the storage heater controls properly meant augmenting their heat by other more expensive means such as bar heaters.  There were also those who were not using their systems enough resulting in cold houses. 

On average, 211 hours per day of boiler/heater use has been saved in 26 of the 91 homes visited by showing clients how to use their fuel equipment more effectively.  This can be broken down to a reduction of 178 hours (84%) gas usage, 23 hours (11%) electricity usage and 10 hours (5%) oil usage saved each day.  In the six month winter period this equates to over 36,000 hours or over 1,500 complete days of power saved!

Readings from gas meters for the typical central heating systems installed in the area show an hourly average consumption of 3.92 +/- 1.8 kWh depending on how long the system has been running for.  This gives the following daily and monthly gas savings and the corresponding savings in CO2 using Defra’s GHG conversion factors for company reporting (updated in June 2007).  Money savings are based on a cost of 4p per gas unit.

Average daily and monthly savings in houses previously using boilers too much.

To calculate electricity savings in heat reduction in 7 of the 91 homes visited we conservatively estimate that in each hour, 1kWh of energy has been saved.  This gives average daily and monthly saving of 23 and 690 kWh and again using the same Defra figures the corresponding CO2 saving is 12kg daily and 360kg monthly. Based on a cost of 12p per unit, the average saving per household is £0.39 per day and £11.43 per month.

Figures for the oil consumption in the systems affected in this study are not available.