Each year, the UK Government’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) release statistics that show the consumption figures on clusters of houses. In Linlithgow those clusters are defined as Linlithgow Bridge, Linlithgow North and Linlithgow South.
TL have tracked these metrics since 2005, and each March/April we get the latest update. In this case, the most recent data is for 2011, as the power companies do not release more recent data.
So what we can we tell from these charts?
Electricity, over 7 years, a slight decline. We are still consuming almost as much as we did back in 2005, with improvements likely to be from fitting new CLF lights, turning off instead of using StandBY, A/A+/A++ rated appliances. As the number of houses [domestic meters] hasn’t changed much, as we’ve had a constraint on housing development, this isnt as much of a decline as we would have expected. We still seem hooked on our electrical gadgets. This chart won’t show any impact of Solar PV panels as they were mostly installed after 2011, but the amount of elec that we can gain from circa 200 solar PV panels would be approx 600,000kWh per annum. If all 5,500 houses in Linlithgow had PV panels, we could potentially half this consumption of 27million kWh. While we might find that a challenge to finance, consider this.
In total Linlithgow pends about £3.25m on our electricity bills! What if just 10% per year was re-directed into a town PV solar Scheme? Think of what we could achieve?
Gas, consumption is a great improvement year on year. A stronger downward trend, likely caused by homes having more loft and cavity wall insulation, new more efficient boilers and to-a-degree, less severe winter weather patterns. We suspect we use just as much gas to cook, so this would be mainly space heating that has caused the reduction. Well done to everyone who’s turned down that thermostat, changed your boiler or insulated your home.
Again, we spend about £3.4m on gas collectively. Just 10% of this could make big improvements in the insulation and efficiency of our homes, many of which are EPC – D rated or worse for older properties.
So what’s next?
TL will be looking at a number of projects from 2013-3018. We’d like to see another wave of Solar PV panels installed to help with those electricity numbers. We are looking to get experts to see what might be possible in flats [combined heat and power/district heating], and also for retrofitting homes to be even more energy efficient.
If you would like to join with us on this journey, please get in touch with us.
