Beating inflation
For various different reasons, the UK is facing inflation of between 4.8 and 7% this year.
This is against the backdrop of a highly priced housing market and fuel shortages (if you’re a big energy provider), driving up the cost of power being delivered to houses.
It’s not uncommon for people to be facing increases of £100 a month for their combined fuel charges.
The average house in the UK is 85m2, ours is nearly three times that at 251m2, but we feel we’re sitting pretty.
The reason is our house is relatively energy efficient, it’s not perfect, but it’s not bad. We’re a high C or low B in terms of our EPC. That means it’s well insulated and using energy efficient devices (bulbs, fridge, cooker, etc). Despite being 3 times the size, we’re only using 75% of the energy of the average house in the UK to heat the building! Our electricity use is a little skewed as we have an electric car, solar cells and are doing vehicle to grid. That means it’s not easy to see what we’re actually using at any time – yes we have a smart meter but cooking Sunday lunch on a sunny day allows us to denote 6kWh over the period!?
It’s also meant our house’s carbon footprint is down to 3.95 tonnes per annum. The average in terms of heating is 2.7 tonnes and 5.3 tonnes for electricity not used for heating. Many options for reducing your carbon footprint will reduce your bills long term. If you’re bill has increased by £1,200 per annum, that’s a great deal of wiggle room to make small and larger improvements. At £10 a bulb for a remote controlled, programmable bulb is much more reasonable if it can save you £40 pa.
Basically, we’re some of the few sitting comfortably, enjoying the fruits of our previous investments. Just everything else to worry about…
Posted: March 15th, 2022 under 42, Driving off the grid.