An interesting initiative

Via Scoop.IT and South Werrington's LibDem Councillor Darren Fower:

A scheme which could see every Peterborough resident save money on their energy bill will be discussed by Peterborough City Council's Cabinet at a meeting on Monday 5 November 2012.

The Peterborough Collective Energy Scheme will enable people from across the city, and from other communities in the UK, to join together as a single unit to negotiate cheaper energy bills.

It's expected that residents could see energy savings of between £60 to £200 a year.

If the initiative is approved by councillors, Peterborough would lead the UK’s first ever collaborative scheme for collective energy switching. Fifteen local authorities will join the city council as part of the scheme, which in total will open up potential savings to two million UK households.

The Peterborough Collective Energy Scheme is a response to rising energy prices and an increase in the number of households in fuel poverty. To that end, the scheme will also be the first in the UK to allow residents who use pre-payment meters to register.

Interesting, definitely (horrible txt-spk in the headline notwithstanding!). I shall keep an eye out.

The Green Deal - live Q&A

Just as an FYI for those of our readers who might be interested, Which magazine are running a live chat/Q&A with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey from 11am UK time today.

Its main topic is the Green Deal, a scheme the present government are close to introducing to make renewable energy and energy saving measures more affordable to homeowners.

Solar water cost and ROI

Our panels (a pair of evacuated tube panels) set us back of the order of £9000 in (if I remember correctly) 2004. With hindsight, I think we did this too early - the price of a similar system has now dropped considerably (more like £2500-5000, apparently). We're probably saving £50-80 a year, so the ROI time is... a while yet.

On which topic, it's worth noting that our suppliers went out of business, and were taken to court indirectly over their rather inflated ROI claims, and we did get £4000 back as a result. We're currently using the local Peterborough Boiler Services to maintain our system (not that it needs much!), and are pretty happy with them.

It's also worth noting that there are two government incentive payments for solar hot water, one of which is available now, one to come. The one available now is the Renewable Heat Premium Payment, which is (or pretty much was since the deadline is March 31st) a scheme which pays £300 for any solar water heating install since Aug 1st 2011. The future one is the Renewable Heat Incentive - basically, if you've installed since 15th July 2009 (bother!), you will be eligible for some form of payment similar to the solar PV Feed-In Tariff.

As I said, with hindsight, we should probably have left it a couple of years: I'll get some stats upon a subsequent post for the last few years' gas bills, so you can see how much we've saved. Either that or I'll give Anne posting rights on this blog, and she can!