Electric Heating Systems

Green Energy (Eu) has just launched a line of energy monitors via an OEM deal with their manufacturer. The "Eco Eye" is a device that sits in your house (anywhere: your kitchem, office, living room) and displays your electricity consumption in REAL-TIME whether in Kilowatts or Monetary value! The point is - you see exactly the effect of leaving electrical devices switched on in the house and what happens to your wallet - real-time - when you switch the kettle on.

Its manufacturers estimate that the Eco-Eye gives you savings of up to 15% on your energy bills just through introducing "behavioural change" with the way you use your appliances. The types of target customers is almost endless. This gizmo will benefit domestic users, small businesses, schools, public buildings, housing scheme managers, student diggs etc.

The unit doesn't require an electrician to install. A "sender" is clipped to the supply lead to your existing electricity meter and a transmitter then sends the real-time information to the display unit in your house.

The unit is fully programmable for different currencies and is able to log account history for you to allow comparison over time. There is also a (to my mind very) useful PC uplink capability to allow you to upload data to a PC where you can store it and analyse it using the more powerful capabilities of a home computer.

This item is definitely on my "go get" list.

According to energy industry analyst uSwitch, the cost of household heating bills has risen 114% since 2004 and are now standing at an average of £1,243 a year.In 2004 they were just £540 a year!

That price rise has been due to the rise in energy costs and taxation since 2004 followed by the spike in 2008 which we have written about before (see "Oil Prices and sleeping tigers"). Although prices then equally plummeted (momentarily) the price has since been maintained artificially high by OPEC to encourage supply-side restructuring in the oil industry. The oil price is now back to its highest price - spike excepted - for any time in the last 5 years. See the oil price widget to the side of this blog and you can see the trend. In 2009 alone energy prices for the average house in the UK climbed £381 (42%) to £1,243.

However, the ongoing structural investment in alternative energies and renewables is also expected to add a further £548 a year onto consumer energy bills according to Auditors Ernst & Young and once the recession is over, global demand will pick up again which will cause further inflationary pressure on energy prices. We should not discount the possibility of further oil price volatility either.

As heating accounts for up to 33% of average household energy consumption, Infrared heating offers a compelling means of minimising the effect of these price rises. Being on average 50% more energy efficient and up to 70% more efficient than oil or gas, it really is time to start considering a switch. For a fuller account of this, see "How do I cut my heating bills?"