With news that the UK energy price cap will soar to £3,549 in October, thermal storage experts say householders should be aware that their hot water cylinder could be costing as much as £1.73 every day before delivering a drop of hot water. With the UK average price per kWh of electricity set to rise to 51.89 pence in October, the cost of daily heat losses of 3.336 kWh from old hot water cylinders* amounts to £631.45 in a year.
Andrew Bissell, CEO of thermal storage technology company Sunamp which manufactures heat batteries said:
“Householders don’t have to miss out on comfort to cut costs. Every home with an old electric hot water cylinder that may have been installed for 20 years and probably has a thin layer of green insulation or a red ‘puffer’ jacket, is losing £1.73 each day before residents use any hot water at all. Even modern hot water cylinders have heat loses of 1.344 kWh each day***, that’s an extra 70 pence a day, or £255.50 each year, on fuel bills from October onwards for absolutely nothing in return. Swapping out an old cylinder for an electrically charged Thermino 210e in a family home will immediately save up to 940 kWh of electricity each year thanks to lower heat losses, saving as much as £485, and more if prices continue to rise.”
Sunamp designs and manufactures compact heat batteries based on its patented Plentigrade high performance salt-based phase change material (PCM). The Thermino range contains high energy density Plentigrade P58 PCM that delivers instant, fast flowing hot water at a constant temperature from thermal batteries that are up to four times smaller than equivalent hot water cylinders. Around 20,000 heat batteries have already been installed in homes across the UK and internationally.
The Thermino range comes in 70, 150, 210 and 300 sizes, which are industry-friendly litres-equivalent measurements to allow for direct comparison with traditional hot water cylinders they replace. The use of vacuum insulation gives Thermino thermal batteries industry-leading energy efficiency including class leading A+ rated models across the full range of sizes.
Like other Sunamp products, Thermino thermal storage is easy to install, requires no mandatory routine maintenance, helps to overcome the intermittency issues of renewable energy and lowers carbon emissions. Thermino heat batteries can be charged by air source heat pumps, ground source heat pumps, photovoltaics (PV), grid electricity and boilers.
Sunamp customer Michael Eve recently installed a Thermino model in his four bed house near Brighton. Read about his experience here.
Sunamp is the first and only company in the world to be awarded Grade A RAL certification, the independent quality mark and the only global standard for phase change material (PCM) and PCM products. The award confirms performance with no noticeable degradation to 10,000 cycles, the equivalent of over 13 years of daily use two cycles per day of hot water application. Sunamp’s own testing has so far confirmed failsafe performance to over 40,000 cycles, comparable to over 50 years continuous use.
*Unit rate of 51.89p/kWh
Source: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/what-are-the-price-cap-unit-rates-/
**Reference to ‘old hot water cylinders’ Using heat loss of 139W, taken from this article: https://www.heizungsjournal.de/der-massstab-fuer-warmwasserspeicher-ist-energieeffizienzklasse-a_13870
***Using OSO SX 210-VIP as reference, which has 56W/1.344 kWh per 24h heat losses
Published: 26 August 2022
