Winter energy crisis?

It’s really no joke, a desperate situation for people on even moderate incomes, given the base cost of housing here, before you even try to heat it too. There’s very little slack in most people’s finances, and a fractured energy market in which many suppliers are caught between suppliers’ soaring prices and customers who can’t pay. Avoidable deaths and the business bankruptcies that mostly didn’t happen during covid will result.

And no, Liz Truss is very much not the answer.

Of course I know life is different now and our expectations of it are the new normal, but when I think back to my early childhood, despite my parents being rather more than was seen as “comfortably off” the only room that was kept heated in winter in their fairly large and rambling old house in Edinburgh was the sitting room, and that only by an open fire which also served to heat the water by a back boiler system.
The kitchen got warm if there was cooking going on but everywhere else was mainly left unheated.
That didn’t seem to be unusual behaviour at the time. I can clearly remember sitting at a desk in my bedroom doing homework with ice on the inside of the windows.
I guess we just wore more clothes.
Not that I’d enjoy that lifestyle now.

It's absolutely real. Electricity at 52p/unit daytime, probably about 50p during the Economy 7 period. Gas 15p/unit. 

Standing charges on a dual fuel tariff approx £270/pa. 

My annual bill, four bed house with neither of us going out to work, I work at home most days,  is going to be around £4800 based on meter readings that are up to date.  

Thermostat will be lower this winter than last and we're intending to use the oven less. Try to limit running hot taps and reduce boiler hours for hot water. 

He gave advice based on what we knew at the time

It looked then as though Nordstream 2 was about to be commissioned. That avoided the risk of Germany being cut off to spite Ukraine for transit fees.

Hindsight is wonderful.

Back in February So Energy offered me a 1 or 2 year fix called So Guava. Quite a lot more than the cap at the time and not a lot less than the October Cap. I'd have paid over the odds for 6 months followed by, if market prices were lower by then, a significant exit fee.

Just had a second storage battery fitted to complement my solar array. Another 8.2kWh battery in time for the longer days. Not cheap but certainly we are getting immediate benefit as unless we are using more than 2.5kW at any time (and the house ticks over at between 300W and 700W depending upon the fridges, freezers, lights and stuff kicking in), no mains juice is required and we can go overnight without using grid power.

Mind you I had a quotation for an air-sourced heat pump and it was £24,000 to save £1,000pa. Doesn't really stack up at the moment, unless the boiler failed.

Are you still doing the face planting ? If you fit stabilisers you could probably do the next 25 years.

I'm still looking to do the solar panels and battery installation, finding someone that doesn't install Huawei or other Chinese kit is the challenge.

Actually (completely wrong thread I know but hey ho) yesterday was a bit of a red letter one bikely speaking. 53 weeks after “that” incident I finally managed to get myself and the bike properly airborne at exactly the same spot where it all came a bit unraveled last year.
I was, I freely admit, totally bricking myself as I approached the take off point but as I’m still not very good at operating the back brake there came a point of no return and, well, it was in fact just what I needed to remind me why I still go to the bother of slogging up hills!