Snake oil "energy saving solutions"

Feb 13, 2022
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All summer I've been getting web ads about so-called "portable air conditioners" which will "cool a room in minutes". A little fan which you can put water or ice in is NOT an air conditioner, whilst it might help cool you if it's pointing at you, it will not cool a room.

Now we have the energy crisis and are heading into winter all the ads about so-called mini heaters are appearing . "Turn off your central heating" they proclaim. "This little heater will warm a room to 20 degrees in minutes!" "It's 100% efficient!" All electric heaters are 100% (ish) efficient. These plug in heaters probably will save you money, but you'll be flippin' cold! Probably got a little 200w heat element. As I'm sure most of you know, electric heaters and even central heating rads are rated in KW and usually start at a minimum 500 watt. Saying that, I've got a little Dimplex 250 watt mini heater under my desk. I bought it during lockdown and working from home. I suffer cold feet and under my desk can be a cold spot, even with the heating on. This little heater is great for warming my feet up without using a lot of electricity . No way though would I expect it to replace the central heating and warm my whole living room. It was an informed purchase from a reputable retailer and made by a decent manufaturer, and didn't cost me £50+ as a lot of the snakeoil units are price. It depresses me slightly that those less knowledgeable about electrics will buy these overpriced "mini heaters" thinking it is their saviour from energy costs.

Also other plug-in "energy savers" you can buy are "AC waveform correctors" to improve your supply efficiency. :rolleyes: There are stripdowns of these things on Youtube. They are usually little more than a capacitor. In one case, only one of the capacitor legs was connected to the board, basically doing nothing!
I suppose if I get one of these and use in conjunction with the above, I could save enough for a couple of weeks in Barbabados by next year! :LOL::cool:
 
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You are spot on. Since we changed to led lighting even though it’s efficient my gas bill for heating has increased cf when I had incandescent lamps. (TIC)🤣
 
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You are spot on. Since we changed to led lighting even though it’s efficient my gas bill for heating has increased cf when I had incandescent lamps. (TIC)🤣

Ah, but it’s worth remembering that heating with gas is cheaper than with electric generally. So you should be saving more in electric than you are spending on extra gas.
 
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Ah, but it’s worth remembering that heating with gas is cheaper than with electric generally. So you should be saving more in electric than you are spending on extra gas.
Most electric devices are high efficiency. What goes in comes out into the room so even the fan motor on a heater will give out heat due to its “inefficiency “. So in many respects electric items could be said to deliver 100% of the power going in to them. What’s the efficiency of a gas/water domestic heating system?
 
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Not only is energy sector being target, also all sorts of snake oil remedies for adding to the fuel in your car to make it more economic.

On Wednesday I was at home all day making tea and having a meal. On Thursday I was away the whole day from 8.30 am until about 5pm. I used the microwave for 2 minutes to heat up some food and also boiled the kettle.

Strangely on the Thursday which was sunnier than the Wednesday I used more energy?
 
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Not only is energy sector being target, also all sorts of snake oil remedies for adding to the fuel in your car to make it more economic.

On Wednesday I was at home all day making tea and having a meal. On Thursday I was away the whole day from 8.30 am until about 5pm. I used the microwave for 2 minutes to heat up some food and also boiled the kettle.

Strangely on the Thursday which was sunnier than the Wednesday I used more energy?
We find that at this time of year ambient temperature seems to make a significant difference as to the comfort indoors. Just a couple of degrees extra outside and indoors feels warmer. What we have been doing is to leave the kitchen door open which is south facing. Outside is warmer than inside as the house is very well insulated so we let some warmth in. “Air source heating” without the pump. So far this autumn we have not had any form of heating on in the house. Evenings any heat from the gas cooker flows from kitchen to lounge.
 
Jul 18, 2017
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We find that at this time of year ambient temperature seems to make a significant difference as to the comfort indoors. Just a couple of degrees extra outside and indoors feels warmer. What we have been doing is to leave the kitchen door open which is south facing. Outside is warmer than inside as the house is very well insulated so we let some warmth in. “Air source heating” without the pump. So far this autumn we have not had any form of heating on in the house. Evenings any heat from the gas cooker flows from kitchen to lounge.
We do similar for the warm air from conservatory to enter the home. We switched on our heating about 2 weeks ago as I feel the cold however it is only on from 6-9am and then 5-10pm.
 

Sam Vimes

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Most electric devices are high efficiency. What goes in comes out into the room so even the fan motor on a heater will give out heat due to its “inefficiency “. So in many respects electric items could be said to deliver 100% of the power going in to them. What’s the efficiency of a gas/water domestic heating system?

Not realy true. An electrical device thats rated at 1Kw will consume 1Kw. Its what it does with that power that matters and is a measure of its efficiency.

An incandescent light bulb might use only 10% of the power to produce light and the other 90% produces heat. This might be reveresed for an led bulb.

A vaccum cleaner will use some of the power to suck, some to produce noise and the rest to produce heat.

Even the fan heater will not be 100% efficient because some of the energy is used to rotate the fan and make a noise.
 
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Do you live in the tropics? :)

Right now here its 11degC outside but we have 20degC inside. No heating to switch on and I'm not opening a door to warm up the outside :)

Currently 19.7 deg C inside according to Hive. But your house isn’t a conventional build is it?
 
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My place is new build. Only just managed to get the inside temp down to 21 after all the summer heat. Shouldn't need any heat for a while. Im planning to hold off for as long as possible.
 
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I thought it was closer to 50%, but still cheaper.
In our first house we had all electric panel heating installed. It was great with two zones, individual thermostats and timers. Minimal maintenance and very responsive. Cost more to use than a gas central heating system. Had same in Canada. Would love to have all electric house if electric can ever become cheap enough in the future.
 

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Currently 19.7 deg C inside according to Hive. But your house isn’t a conventional build is it?

True a little different than most. Still feel the pain of the increase in electricity prices though and the cost of logs has risen significantly.

Good thing about logs though is they warm you up three times Once when you stack them, again we you split and move them out of the store to the house and lastly when you set fire to them :)
 

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I see in some EU countries they are capping the price that renewable energy companies can charge. In other words decoupling them from the absurd price of gas.
 
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Not realy true. An electrical device thats rated at 1Kw will consume 1Kw. Its what it does with that power that matters and is a measure of its efficiency...

Even the fan heater will not be 100% efficient because some of the energy is used to rotate the fan and make a noise.

There aren't many things in life that are 100% efficient but electric heating is about as close as you can get. and it is virtually 100% Apart from the transmission losses exterior to the home, what current you receive into the house is all converted to heat, even the small resistances in the house wiring turn current into heat so you do get as much heat that you can from a resistance heating system.

Even fan heaters convert all the power they receive into heat, heating elements do what they do, the fan motor which will naturally run slightly warm, - That is heat, the power used to move the air by disturbing the air actually heats it, The noise is sound energy which as is converted to heat as it dissipates.

Where you can get apparent differences, is for example a convector heater may not convert all the electrical energy into convected air, some may be conducted away through mechanical mountings.

A radiant heater will also conduct some heat through mechanical mountings, but also the heater will produce convected heat! But in all these cases you do get 100% of the heat. It just that you may not get all the heat in the form you're looking for. The efficiency is there the question is how effective it might be.
 
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I see in some EU countries they are capping the price that renewable energy companies can charge. In other words decoupling them from the absurd price of gas.
I read that HMG are trying to renegotiate contracts on wind generators placed almost 20 years ago, or to try and negotiate long term gas price contracts up to 15 years. Both are risky either to traduce UKs reputation as a place to be trusted, or could lock us into long term prices when over that period gas may reduce in price as demand reduces as countries move to renewables.

There was an interesting piece in todays paper about how successful new offshore oil/gas licences could, or could not be. The licences in my mind are a distraction to make it look as if action is being taken. Be more effective to boost storage capability.

Apologies but the picture refuses to reorient.


08D3F7DB-5E36-428E-A4FE-152CA12AC70B.jpeg
 
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There aren't many things in life that are 100% efficient but electric heating is about as close as you can get. and it is virtually 100% Apart from the transmission losses exterior to the home, what current you receive into the house is all converted to heat, even the small resistances in the house wiring turn current into heat so you do get as much heat that you can from a resistance heating system.

Even fan heaters convert all the power they receive into heat, heating elements do what they do, the fan motor which will naturally run slightly warm, - That is heat, the power used to move the air by disturbing the air actually heats it, The noise is sound energy which as is converted to heat as it dissipates.

Where you can get apparent differences, is for example a convector heater may not convert all the electrical energy into convected air, some may be conducted away through mechanical mountings.

A radiant heater will also conduct some heat through mechanical mountings, but also the heater will produce convected heat! But in all these cases you do get 100% of the heat. It just that you may not get all the heat in the form you're looking for. The efficiency is there the question is how effective it might be.

Two aspects I would add,

Though electricity can provide high efficiency at the point of use. Inefficiencies occur prior to use. Their will be loss at the power station converting fuel into electricity and losses in transmission and further losses in waste when over production is occurring. Hence the current move towards enticing customers to use power more evenly over each day by giving incentives. To that end I can see smart meters coming into their own.

Convection and fan heating are not good at building up the thermal capacity of structures which, can be wasteful in some circumstances, but can also benefit in terms of comfort and avoiding yo-yo temperatures.

John
 
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Though electricity can provide high efficiency at the point of use. Inefficiencies occur prior to use. Their will be loss at the power station converting fuel into electricity and losses in transmission and further losses in waste when over production is occurring. Hence the current move towards enticing customers to use power more evenly over each day by giving incentives. To that end I can see smart meters coming into their own.

That is certainly true for fossil fuel, But with renewables increasingly taking a greater proportion of the UK's generating capacity those generation losses also diminish.

Convection and fan heating are not good at building up the thermal capacity of structures which, can be wasteful in some circumstances, but can also benefit in terms of comfort and avoiding yo-yo temperatures.

Can you please explain your last statement?
 
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Except when the wind doesn't blow and sun doesn't shine....
Wind farms probably suffer from transmission losses before anything they generate enters the grid. Then once inside the grid the electric that was generated suffers further transmission losses. However the consumer still pays for these transmission losses.
 
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Wind farms probably suffer from transmission losses before anything they generate enters the grid. Then once inside the grid the electric that was generated suffers further transmission losses. However the consumer still pays for these transmission losses.
When any current passes through any conductor that has any resistance, that conductor will produce some heat, because the heat generation is determined by the value of the current squared multiplied by the resistance (I*I*R) determins how much heat losses occur. The generators prefer to transform the power they generate to as higher voltage as possible to reduce the current and minimise heating losses. Once the power is admitted to the national grid, it is no different to any other power the grid transmits.

Wind and solar farms will suffer no more transmission losses of getting their power to the grid than any other type of power generation. Unlike fossil fuel generation you don't end up paying the fuel costs and emission effects of those losses.
 
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When any current passes through any conductor that has any resistance, that conductor will produce some heat, because the heat generation is determined by the value of the current squared multiplied by the resistance (I*I*R) determins how much heat losses occur. The generators prefer to transform the power they generate to as higher voltage as possible to reduce the current and minimise heating losses. Once the power is admitted to the national grid, it is no different to any other power the grid transmits.

Wind and solar farms will suffer no more transmission losses of getting their power to the grid than any other type of power generation. Unlike fossil fuel generation you don't end up paying the fuel costs and emission effects of those losses.

Not sure why you are elaborating with heavy technical details when basically you are stating exactly the same as what I said in simple English for everyone to understand?

The transmission losses or Line Loss Factor are incorporated in the overall standing charge and the cost per kw. Every MPAN has its transmission losses or line loss factor stated. They are digits 6, 7 and 8 of the Meter Point Administration Number.
 

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