Electrical Contracting News (ECN) May 2017 | Page 38

SPECIAL
FEATURE
HVAC
EFFICIENCY UPGRADES
A flawed report published in January argues connecting non-gas heated homes
to the existing gas grid could lift nearly 140,000 families a year out of fuel poverty.
Chris Stammers, product marketing director for Dimplex, responds.
O
n the face of it,
the figures seem
conclusive. In a report
published earlier this
year, the Energy &
Utilities Alliance (EUA)
claims connecting
homes to the existing
gas grid can reduce average energy bills by
£922 for homes currently using electricity
as their principal means of heating. This,
it suggests, could help lift nearly 140,000
families a year out of fuel poverty.
It is all part of a lobbying campaign to
realign the balance for gas which feels
disenfranchised after years of government
policy in favour of electric heating to help
deliver targets and decarbonise heating in
the UK.
The EUA makes some valid points but,
unfortunately, the figures relating to the
cost of electric heating are misleading
and the savings are unrealistic. Even
putting that to one side, this report fails to
consider both the characteristics and the
benefits of electric heating, a market which
continues to deliver cost effective heating
for consumers and significant business
opportunities for contractors.
38 | May 2017
Economy 7
The first mistake the EUA makes is to
compare the cost of a gas boiler to that of
electric storage heating using a standard
tariff, rather than an Economy 7 tariff. Of
course, this results in misleading cost
comparisons, because as we all know it
is very unlikely that a home using electric
storage heating would not be taking
advantage of an Economy 7 tariff.
As the report says, ‘the use of gas
heating costs 4.6p/kWh of delivered heat,
compared with 13.86p/kWh of heat for a
system using electric storage heaters’. This
would be true, of course, were it not for
Economy 7, and although it does add ‘the
cost of electric heating could be reduced if
the homeowner is able to take advantage of
an Economy 7 tariff’, the savings have been
calculated based on 13.86p/kWh.
Storage vs direct acting
However, for me, this is not the biggest
mistake. What is more concerning is that
without the insight required to analyse
the electric heating market, the EUA is
targeting the wrong people by focusing on
storage heating.
Figures from the Ofgem December
2015 report on electric and other non-gas
heating households tell us that the majority
of people that have electric heating and
are living in fuel poverty do not use storage
heating, they use direct acting electric
heating appliances like electric radiators or
convector heaters.
In fact, only 13 per cent of households
with electric storage heating are in fuel
poverty – but 10 per cent of households
using gas are in the same position.
Although proportions are not too dissimilar,
in absolute terms the 160,000 households
with storage heaters in fuel poverty are
shaded by the 2.2million on gas who are
fuel poor. Therefore the EUA’s contention
that by simply displacing an electric
system with a gas boiler and radiators will
automatically alleviate fuel poverty is not
borne out by the facts.
It is true however that a
disproportionate number of households
(23 per cent) with direct acting electric
heating are fuel poor. But this is most often
because direct acting appliances have
been incorrectly specified and people are
left relying on panel heaters and electric
radiators for heating around the clock.