this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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[–] GreatAlbatross 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mandating newbuilds to use AS/GSHPs where appropriate should be a no-brainer for the regulators.

The french difference can be explained a little. Grants to retrofit HPs in the UK are nowhere near enough to cover the cost.
And when a HP puts you only at parity running-cost-wise with a combi at current gas prices, there isn't much incentive.
In france, a brisk internet search puts natural gas at 30% more expensive than the UK, and electric 30% cheaper, tilting the scales more in a HP favor.

[–] Syldon 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where are you getting those figures from? My impression was that the UK pays more than most. This is the first google search I found. This puts the UK at over double the cost in France for (51.85 v's 23.2 pps). It also says higher than France, but does not give a UK figure.

[–] GreatAlbatross 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The cost of electricity in the UK has come down since the chaos, thankfully.
Numbers are a little up in the air at the moment, as governments are shielding people by varying amounts. So picking a good source was a little tricky.

This was the natural gas value I used (Dec 2022) (13p/KWh vs 10p KWH, expressed in GBP) And I used the data from here for electric. (June 2021) (17.3c/KWh vs 25.1c/KWh, expressed in USD)

France has a much larger nuclear fleet, and has generally had cheaper electric than the UK.

NG is about 40% of the price of electricity per KWh in the UK, vs 75% of the cost in france.

[–] Syldon 1 points 1 year ago

Energy prices have changed drastically in the last year alone. France has limited the amount energy firms could increase there rates by a large margin over even the subsidies Sunak passed out. Retail prices may have come back down, but ofgen has allowed energy companies to keep their prices much higher than in the EU. Some parts of the EU have higher prices, but this is down to cost of transport since the ban on buying Russian gas. There is a huge cost from moving to LPG from piped gas. Joebloggs has given many run downs on this on his youtube channel. Though there are no recent ones concerning energy.