A customer with higher-than-average household energy bills, due to medical equipment use in his home, has been successful in securing energy efficiency grants to help cover the costs of making his home more sustainable. He is forecast to reduce his carbon emissions by 10 tons of CO2 every year. He has also successfully secured a National Grid upgrade for his home which will benefit the rural community.
Josh, lives with his wife and parents in West Lutton, North Yorkshire, and began to explore the idea of alternative heat and energy sources in 2021 when the cost of living began to affect the overall running costs within the home. Josh applied to the Energy Company Obligation (ECO4) scheme. “I wanted to get rid of our oil boiler, partly because oil is such an unpredictable fuel, in terms of cost, but also because of the smell and concern this has on the environment.”
“Getting oil deliveries was a huge investment every 3 or 4 months, as I’m required to buy a minimum of 500 litres at a time from the suppliers. There was always the worry about the cost and impact on our outside space should the tank ever develop a fault. Now we’re heating our home through an electricity-only system, we don’t have that worry, and we can manage our finances on a monthly basis, which is much better.”
The family includes three disabled adults which means there is a much greater need to keep the house warm during the colder months. Josh approached Yorkshire Housing to discuss energy efficiency roll-out plans in the area. He and his family decided to invest some of their own funds into the project to increase the number of solar panels and battery storage beyond what was provided by the EC04 scheme. The family home is now off-grid for 22 hours every day.
Josh said: “It was a big change for us, especially my parents, because they were so used to having the heating on for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. But now they can see the huge benefits – the house is warmer and it’s costing us much less money.”
Yorkshire Housing have installed an air source heat pump which has an auto-adaptation setting. This means the heat pump automatically adapts its behaviours and cycles to be as efficient as possible in all-weather settings. We also improved the insulation in Josh’s home, adding in cavity wall and loft insulation to retain heat. This work was carried out by an ECO4 provider, Broadoak, who have installed a 7kW solar panel system, with 21kWh batteries and a 10kW inverter.
Josh has run some numbers for us, with help from Octopus, his energy supplier. He’s expected to save a huge 76% on his heating and electricity costs. He's pleased with these results and said: “When the air source heat pump went live in February we had a few days where it dropped to -5˚C. This was the first big test. It worked really well, better than I expected.”
“We have three disabled adults in the house, so we need to keep the house warm. We normally have the house set at 20 degrees, but turning it up higher if we need it is really simple, and we have plenty of hot water.”