Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Your energy is cheap ....
.... compared to most of the rest of Europe. Quite how or why one can probably only guess but here are the comparisons, taken from this BBC article;
SSE has just announced it is freezing prices till 2016. Over the past 6 years gas prices have gone up by 66% & electricity by 33% (approx.).
Tags for Forum Posts: energy prices
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Milda Rami on
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We ran some comparisons with friends / family living in other countries and - surprisingly - came to the same conclusion.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Hopefully it will get cheaper when the US starts shipping their gas over to us (as Qatar currently does), a plan hatched this week in reaction to Putin's land grabbing gymnastics.
Luckily the UK also has priority on gas from Norway too. Next time you meet a Norwegian give them a hug :)
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Oh I don't know .... Michelle Obama loves the Queen. You can't put a high enough price on that ;)
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Permalink Reply by ElleCarumba on
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The UK has slowly been creeping higher on the list of household power prices. We used to be nearly right at the bottom.
The cost of power is why when you go to Germany, they all have well-insulated houses and double glazing.
We've been used to having very cheap nuclear and coal generated power for decades so we've failed to invest in energy efficiency, particularly in homes. This has to change. Even in the last few years, people will spend money putting in a new kitchen or making their house open plan or putting in an en suite instead of the much more boring purchases of insulation and decent windows.
The above measures the cost per kWh and part of the problem is that in the UK, we use more Kwh per head in our homes than they do in Scandinavia or Germany. I'll try and dig out the data to show this.
Although the Germans and Danes are starting to object to their power prices too- all that wind energy investment there does not come cheap.
We don't have any priority on Norwegian gas, FYI. We have some pipelines to Norway, true, but if the price is more attractive elsewhere, they can sell it into Germany or put it on ships and sell it as LNG to Japan. It's a free market - they aren't selling us gas at mates' rates.
If you were thinking of spending any money on your property in the near future, insulate the hell out of it and cut your energy use.
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Permalink Reply by Jamie Wickens on
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Unfortunately for a lot of older houses (most of the houses in harringay) 'insulate the hell out of it' is not always good advice. Unless ventilation is improved in tandem you'll be increasing the risk of problems with condensation, which judging by the state of some windows on a cold morning is already an issue.
Victorian houses were built with plenty of natural ventilation (leaky windows/fireplaces) but as we block these up and add insulation we introduce a whole new set of problems.
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Permalink Reply by Germana on
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Of course it's good advice. We have double glazed windows, for example, which makes a hell of a difference and we've installed LED lighting to replace the high consuming halogen lights - and it's incredible there aren't more people doing that. There's a house on the Ladder that's been done up to very high standards, up to Germany's PassivHouse level, and it hardly needs any heating at all in the winter. I'll ask the owners to share their experience. It's not cheap, of course, but like someone said above I am always amazed at the amount of money people are willing to spend on other home improvements rather than making the home warmer and with lower energy bills.
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I wasn't arguing against insulation - of course it's a good thing. I was just pointing out that as we insulate our houses and make them much more airtight we run into another set of problems if we don't consider ventilation.
Old Victorian houses provide ventilation through the roof, the fireplaces, the windows and the floors. If you insulate/block these all up without any thought to ventilation you will have issues. Ventilation is key to the Passive House concept.
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Permalink Reply by CanadianMichael on
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Sorry it took me weeks to get around to this.
I posted a little write-up on HOL on how we tackled the ventilation problem as we insulated, removed fireplaces and changed to energy efficient windows.
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