Winter heating - storage heaters are not that economical at all!

Storage heaters are false economical solutions - I think.

Although they use the "off peak" night time electricity to charge up (at about half the day time rate), it is still seven hours of electricity consumption per day. To make things worse, they make the room too warm in the early morning - when they are warm enough and start discharging the heat, but the room would not be warm enough in the evenings. As these oldies do not come with a timer, trying to adjust them means really poor quality of sleep for us. Imagine how well you can sleep if at the back of your mind, there is a little voice which says "wake up to turn off heater, otherwise the bills will give you a heart attack".

I just went to check my model and realised that it consumes 2.5kW. Since it is auto on for 7 hours, I use 17.5kWh per day or 17.5 units per day! I checked my unit price and multiplied that by 17.5 for the cost of 1 heater per day.


At 17.5*30*unit price = the price per heater per month. 
That just happens to be equivalent to 2 weeks of groceries money for me and hubby! 


I have two such units, one for the bedroom and one for the living. That is great isn't it. Turn on the both of them and we can succeed in our dieting goal. And ohh, did I mention that I have two smaller heaters for the bathroom and the hall? They just consume a measly 0.9kW each. 0.9*2*30*unit price = £15 - almost what i spend on fuel for my tiny car to get me to the supermarket per month.  I almost forgot about that boiler which takes care of my hot water supply!


Having worked those out yesterday afternoon, I went to the nearest electrical shop and bought a cheap heater fan.. I think that wonderful heater fan which cost me about £3-5 per month to run deserves its own post!