Three of the big six UK energy suppliers have announced modest cuts to their prices this week. On Wednesday, EDF unexpectedly revealed an average 5% price cut for gas from 7th February and today British Gas announced an immediate cut of 5% for electricity, with SSE reducing their gas prices by 4.5% on 26th March. It’s interesting to note that none of these suppliers have reduced their prices for BOTH gas and electricity. Click here to continue reading »

The new Nest Learning Thermostat is undeniably a fantastic and very clever piece of kit, but not ready for UK homes just yet.

The new Nest Learning thermostat caused quite a stir when it was launched last week. Tech writers around the web had themselves fawning over its Apple heritage, having been designed by Tony Fadell, the creator of the original and now iconic iPod. His idea is simple. Traditional room thermostats are ugly and have been the same for decades. Why can’t they be sexy and clever, learning to automatically adjust the temperature of your home according to your family needs and routine? We have to agree that the capabilities of the new Nest thermostat are an exciting leap forward, but this article isn’t a review of the Nest. For sure, Fadell’s new Nest Learning Thermostat seems to be ticking all the right boxes for centrally air-conditioned homes in the US, but it’s expensive, not yet on sale here in the UK, and disappointingly appears to be unsuitable for our standard gas-fired central heating systems which are traditionally fitted with mains voltage thermostats. A quick browse of the Nest installation guide reveals that it’s configured to work only with low voltage (24v) circuits, which are uncommon in the UK.

So, what alternatives are available right now in the UK if you want to make your home more comfortable and take better control of your central heating to save energy and reduce your gas bills?

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Solar PV installations have rocketed under the FIT scheme

The UK coalition government announced this week that it is to carry out a fast track reviewof the Feed In Tariff (FIT) scheme for solar energy. The scheme was introduced in 2008 as a mechanism to kick-start the adoption of small scale energy generation amongst domestic consumers. It was anticipated that this would in turn reduce the costs of delivering such technologies, seeding a wider scale take-up to assist carbon reduction targets. In a blow to the whole UK solar PV industry, this weeks’ announcement signals that payments for generated electricity could be slashed in half for installations not fully subscribed to the FIT scheme before 12th December 2011.

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The last of the big six energy suppliers, EDF, has announced that their prices will increase from 10th November.  The cost of electricity will rise by 4.5% with gas going up by 15.4%.  Along with British Gas, Scottish & Southern Energy, Npower and  E.ON this is the second price increase during 2011, having already hiked prices earlier in the year following one of the coldest winters for decades.

This latest round of price increases from the UK’s energy suppliers will start to hit household budgets over the next couple of months, pushing an estimated further half million homes into fuel poverty – defined as spending more than 10% of household income on energy bills.  With inflation having already risen to 4.5% during the three months to July 2011, the large energy price increases add further to fears that inflation is unlikely to begin to fall back for at least a further two quarters.

UK manufacturer Eco-Eye launched their third wireless electricity monitor this week. The Smart is their most advanced model to date, incorporating a host of new features which will soon include simultaneous and coherent monitoring of both grid (import) and micro-generated (export) power with the Smart PV model. Click here to continue reading »

LED lighting – exploding the myths.  Specialist retailers  have been promoting LED lamps as an alternative form of low energy lighting for several years now. Unfortunately, most people’s first introduction to LED lighting is likely to be those solar garden lights which were, quite frankly, rubbish. This perception seems to have persisted amongst the general public despite the technology having advanced rapidly in recent years to the point where it is now possible to replace many everyday incandescent lamp types with an LED alternative. Because LED lighting is a new technology and radically different to previous light sources, there is a great deal of new information to absorb before being able to make informed choices when buying LED lamps.  In this article, we aim to equip you with that information, and explode some of the LED myths which have emerged in recent years. Click here to continue reading »

In the latest phase of the EU’s strategy to reduce our reliance on inefficient incandescent lighting, an EU-wide ban on the manufacturing and import of 60W incandescent clear light bulbs which fail to achieve an energy label class of ‘C’ or above comes into force today. This effectively outlaws all non-directional 60W bulb-shaped lamps, although they are still permitted to be sold until current stocks run out. Click here to continue reading »

It seems that hardly anyone’s heard of gas tumble dryers, despite them having been available in the UK for nearly thirty years and saving up to 70% on drying costs compared to all-electric dryers. Click here to continue reading »

Current Cost have quietly been field testing optical meter reading add-ons for their extremely versatile and popular EnviR wireless electricity monitor since last year. The first of these devices, the OptiSmart electricity meter reader was launched for retail sale in the UK this week. Click here to continue reading »

Npower have become the fifth of the UK’s ‘big six’ energy companies to announce energy price rises in time for the big autumn central heating switch-on. Npower supply around 3.3 million homes in the UK, who will see prices for dual fuel rise by an average of 12.2% from 1st October. Click here to continue reading »