Winter 2013 Heating

This winter seemed to be longer and colder than previous winters.

My normal mechanism defines the heating season as being when we use more than 50 kWh of gas on average a day.  This year, the winter by that definition was  175 days long, running from 22 October to 15 April.

Using our MetStats program to analyze our weather data gives us a reading of 2090 degree days, which means it was pretty much the same as every winter except for last year (see last years calculations).

Our baseline gas usage appears to be about 12 kWh/ day, and our electricity usage about 8 kWh for high rate, and 4 kWh for low rate.

Below is the table with units of kWh per degree day, once the base line is removed for the 175 days in the heating season.

	Low Rate Electricity	High Rate Electricity	Gas	Total
10-11	0.307	1.024	4.772	6.104
11-12	0.193	0.958	4.983	6.134
12-13	0.176	0.973	5.111	6.261

So a 2% degradation over the previous years, this despite getting our hands on a thermal imaging camera and putting a curtain over a single glazed door which is at the top of the stairs by a radiator.

In addition, we pretty much stopped heating the very back room of the house this winter.  However, the temperature differences were greater this winter, so that possibly contributed to more losses.

Solar generation was also down this winter, generating only 0.245 kWh of high rate electricity per degree day.  In addition, there would obviously be less passive heating available.

Fingers crossed for the results next year, when there will be two fewer members of the household for at least part of the winter, as the children both head off to university.