Running Costs for a Passive House

As our house does not have any oil boiler so we dont need any home heating oil. We also do not have any fireplace or stove, hence the missing chimney. Our Electricity bill include all our running costs. Being a standalone rural house we have our own well and waste water treatment system along with rain-water harvesting. All of these rely on electric pumps. A house on a serviced site might not have any of these so there would be fewer running costs and lower electricity bills.

Charts showing energy comsumption and cost.


Overall Cost per Billing Period. Note Electric Ireland increased price by 14% on Oct 1st.


Estimated Heating costs.Note Electric Ireland increased price by 14% on Oct 1st. This is a rought estimate as I know we had no heating from March to October. I am using the cheapest bill (€119) as a baseline and taking any costs over this as heating costs. So the figures below are probably a bit higher than the reality as out heating cost in Mar-May were €0.


Units for Heating


Our first bill after moving in on 19th March covers 22-Mar to 23-May.

The first bill was for €133.74



The second bill was for €119.89


The third bill was for €119.15


The fourth bill was for €155.27. Note this bill includes the 14% price increase levied by Electric Ireland.




The fifth bill was for €281.07




The sixth bill was for €226.82


It should be noted that these bills including running costs for
1) All cooking and applicances
2) Pumps for sewage treatement, domestic well, and rain water harvesting supplying toilets and washing machine.
3) Running the solar system pump station
4) Running the Heat Recovery Ventilation Unit (24x7).
5) Computer equipment  and lighting used in my home office where I work four days per week.

7 comments:

  1. Unknown22 June 2013 at 13:24

    Great thinking! There is fantastic about "Running Costs for a Passive House". I am impressed by the quality of information on this website. There are a lot of good quality resources here. I am sure I will visit this place again soon.

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  2. Unknown9 April 2015 at 06:20

    Hi am looking forward to comparing bills. Although UK based, I too work from home 3/4 days a week and have only electricity MVHR for heating, water heating etc etc. on first glance my bills seem much higher so will look more closely.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown30 April 2015 at 08:14

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    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown13 September 2015 at 21:21

    Oh my goodness, where did we go wrong????My Electric bill is now three times higher than when I had gas central heating. I am in a Passive house which is super efficient with the energy but it costs three times as much as any other fuel so I actually pay more but have no heating!!! Thoughts views advice etc. please.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Declan Cunningham14 September 2015 at 15:33

      Hi Emma, i am a bit puzzled by your comment "My Electric bill is now three times higher than when I had gas central heating" if you have replaced gas as you means of heating with Electricity then it would be expected that your gas would go to zero and your electricity would go up. I see you are in the UK so I am not sure what the cost for electricity are.

      Here in Ireland a key factor in my bills is that I use a dual tariff meter so I pay much cheaper electricity at night time. Therefore I run my underfloor electric heating only at night time. After 4 years my total usage upto my last bill (july 20th) is

      15713 Units (Kwh) Day
      20001 Units (kWh) Night

      The current cost per unit for Day rate is €0.17 cent
      The current cost per unit for Night rate is €0.08 cent

      Where possible I try to run most appliances/heating etc at night time to available of the lower rates.

      To get the approx monthly usage averages over the time since I got an electricity supply. I was running heat etc before I moved in it works at approx 58 months.

      15713/58 = 270 kWh per month
      20001/58 = 344 kWh per month

      Of course in my house I use a lot more electricity during winter time as I need to use heating and the immersion for hot water. Here are my bills in euro for past 18 months

      Apr 4, 2014 - €286
      Jun 5, 2014 - €170
      Aug 1, 2014 - €142
      Oct 1, 2014 - €176
      Dec 3, 2014 - €205
      Feb 4, 2015 - €321
      April 1, 2015 - €334
      June 5, 2015 - €204
      Aug 4, 2015 - €149

      Taking last 6 bills (12 months) the total is €1389 (approx £1018). For a large 1900sqft detached house this is a very good figure. I have friends who pay almost as much on electricity but also have to pay for Oil for oil fired central heating and also to pay for timber for a solid fuel stove.

      Hope this helps. I don't really know what you mean by no heating. I cannot believe a house in the UK does not need any heating of any kind from October-April. If you have no heating of any kind then how are you consuming so much electricity?

      Have you engaged the builder/designer of your home? I don't know details of the spec etc.

      Delete
  5. Unknown18 March 2016 at 07:27

    Thanks for sharing very good ideas for passive house

    ReplyDelete
  6. Unknown14 April 2016 at 06:41

    Thanks for sharing information on passive house

    ReplyDelete

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