I’m spending a fortune running a heat pump in my build! Please HELP 😫

[damspt]

1 hour ago, JohnMo said:

DHW is domestic hot water, so your hot water cylinder used for water that comes out of the hot tap.

 

CH is central heating so radiators and/or UFH (under floor heating - heating with pipes buried in your floor).

 

Hope this helps.

 

So a couple of things for you to do

 

Check your actual heat pump consumption and then you have the house consumption (octopus) and you heat pump consumption (Panasonic controller) and you can really see what your heat pump is doing.

A video here to show you how to get the figures for the heat pump 

 

 

Next do you have a buffer, this is likely to be a smaller cylinder about a quarter to half the size of the main hot water cylinder.

 

Next take some photos of your install both outside and inside, showing pipes and all the main items if the install.

@JohnMo working all day today, will try to have those pictures tomorrow morning and see if i can use the controller. my controller is not the same as the video one but should still be able to do it

[ProDave]

4 minutes ago, damspt said:

yes! that's actually something i don't really understand why we spending so much when having showers if the water is already hot. 

how do i adjust the timer for the water heating? i think from what i remember, they set it up for 2am tho, so not sure how it's still working during shower times

I don't know your particular heat pump, but there should be a way of setting a timer so it only heats hot water at certain times, and you want to set it so that it does NOT heat the hot water between 4PM and 7PM.  Then you will just be using the hot water from the tank and it won't re heat it after use until the expensive period has ended.

 

Same could apply to heating the house, set it so it does not do that between 4PM and 7PM.  See if the house keeps warm with the heating off for those 3 hours, hopefully it will.

[damspt]

3 minutes ago, Marvin said:

Hi @damspt

 

What was the expected kWh year requirement?

Hi, is that on the epc website as well? couldn't see that

[marshian]

7 minutes ago, damspt said:

@marshian i have no idea the temps of each single room, only have 1 thermostat in the lounge. It feels colder in our main room, baby bedroom ( which both are upstairs ) and i guess the lounge which has french doors and a view to a field

get some temp (and humidity) displays for the main rooms - they aren’t expensive and run on cell batteries that last a year 

[Dillsue]

Can you get the installers of the system to come round and explain what they've installed and how you should operate it??

[Beelbeebub]

35 minutes ago, damspt said:

@Beelbeebub Hi, some graphs for the 17th. I guess i'm worrying too much? as some of you are spending more than me but it's very scary what we will end up paying. I have compared cosy tariff using the octopus compare app and agile it's still better than cosy tariff. 

yes we do use a fair bit at peak hours because that's when me & partner come from work and cook and shower the baby. It's annoying how they make sure we use the peak times because there is no other option

 

do you use agile? would like to see a weekly timer setup from you

If I'm honest, there doesn't seem to be much wrong with your setup. 

 

The 17th was pretty cold where I was and I assume where you were, so £5.46 all in isn't too bad. Remember this is for one of the coldest days you are likely to see. In August your per day costs were much lower but it stands to reason your heating costs will be higher in the winter! 

 

One thing that does stand out is you're using the agile tariff whilst also using lots of 4-7pm elec. Because the unit cost changes hour to hour and day to day the cost on any given day can vary wildly.

 

For example here is the cost for the 25th Oct

 

As you can see it was near zero in the early morning and only a few p/kwh for most of thr day with a peak of 30p 4-7

 

Now compare that with a few days before. 

 

 

At no point was the unit price below 10p but the peak was huge (off the gaph, at 60p).

 

You could could charge an electric car up (say 75kwh) on the morning of the 25th for less than running your dishwasher after tea on the 22nd. 

 

Over a year you migbt save vs a Cosy tariff but the day to day costs will occasionally be a real shocker. 

 

For your sanity, look at the monthly or weekly costs rather than daily and try to minimise any use in thr peak eg dishwasher, washing machine.

 

 

You should def make sure your heat pump is not heating hot water in that time slot unless it absolutely has to. There will be settings you can change for that. If your house doesn't lose heat too quickly you could try setting the target temp back a bit in that slot to use a bit less. 

 

Otherwise your usage seems about waht would be expected - unfortunately energy is expensive these days. 

 

Good. Luck! 

[Beelbeebub]

43 minutes ago, damspt said:

do you use agile? would like to see a weekly timer setup from you

I have solar and a battery and gas heating so I currently use old fashioned economy 7.  I charge my battery overnight at 13.5p and then any elec the panels generate that isn't used in the house is exported at 15p. When the sun goes down we run off the battery until the next charge period. If it's been a bad day solar wise and we've used a lot of elec (washing etc) then we migbt use a bit of peak rate elec (30p) for a few hours in the night.  My average cost per unit is about 15p and if I include my PV it"s about 2p at the moment. 

[marshian]

18 hours ago, damspt said:

 

 

Why is your usage low between 10:00 and 3:30 are you running a set back temp during the day?

[JamesPa]

2 hours ago, damspt said:

Hi, I had a professional snagger checking on my property and apparently the insulation is not bad at all, he did say the loft needed more insulation which then the builders added more. Not sure what UFH is, i'm sorry

I bet your consumption  will be going down today, and even more tomorrow.  See my post above which was actually deadly serious despite the light tone I used to lift the discussion, and merely reiterates what others have said.

Edited 11 hours ago by JamesPa

[ProDave]

A valid point to make here even stronger, is a Time Of Use tariff should only be used by someone who understands the different charges at different times of day (and with some tariffs they vary day to day) and then actively manages their energy use to consume as much as possible in the cheap times and as little as possible in the expensive times.

 

If you don't do that and just "use it when convenient" I really don't think a time of use tariff is for you.

[JohnMo]

Some general basics about how heat pump performance is affected.

 

High flow temps, require the heat pump to work harder and results in a reduced coefficient of performance (CoP). This means you use more electricity for each kWh of heat delivered.

 

The use of weather compensation (WC) maximises CoP as you will flow the lowest temperature you can at all times, if set correctly.

 

You say you have a thermostat in the living room is this actually doing anything if so the WC course set too high.

 

To test reduce the hot end (cold outside - hot flow temperature) of the WC curve 2 degs. Does your house still feel ok? Do this once every 24 hrs until the house feels a little too cool, then add on 1 Deg to the WC.

[JohnMo]

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

include my PV it"s about 2p at the moment.

We have sun today, for the first time in weeks

[Beelbeebub]

8 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

We have sun today, for the first time in weeks

We've been getting sun pretty much all week, but my problem not is my damn house is getting in the way!  The sun is so low it doesn't rise above the ridge of the house. I get a brief 2h of direct sun, but fortunately generate 4kw over that time so can top up my battery nicely. At some point I'll lose the direct sun but that was a trade off I was willing to make.