It has always been the belief of many that electric underfloor heating is far from energy efficient to run. If we look at sustainable energy then surely electric heating is the only viable option for the future.

Electricity is the only energy that can be generated in many different ways; Solar Photo Voltaic, Wind turbines and Water turbines being the most favoured as they have little environmental impact compared to other ways of generating electricity.

The problem is that self generation has never been seen as a viable option due to high installation costs and low capital return for energy generated or sent back to the grid. 

A new bill has recently been passed to change all this and under the new “Feed-in tariffs” consumers who generate their own electricity could be awarded 36.5p per a Kilowatt hour of electricity they generate irrespective of whether it is used or exported to the grid. 

The new incentive which will be introduced in April 2010 makes self generation a very tasty proposal for households in the UK, not only do you generate free electricity for your home but you get paid for doing it (the actual tariffs may vary to the proposed tariffs).

What has all this got to do with underfloor heating you may ask, well it’s quite simple, if you are generating a large amount of electricity in the summer you can then use the credits in the winter to power the electric underfloor heating meaning not only have you got free electricity but also free heating.

It is possible to heat your home and run your household as normal with a solar array as small 1Kwp, although this does depend on lifestyle.

How is this possible?

In one of our previous news articles we explained how a standard Victorian house was slightly modernised to reduce the overall running costs to £32 a month including standing charges without the usage of solar PV. more on energy efficient house 

If the household has a 1 KW array of solar photovoltaic on the roof in April 2010 it would be expected to generate approximately 900 Kwh / Units of electricity per year for which it would give an annual return of £328.50 however that is not the end of it as they no longer require 900 kwh from the grid giving an additional saving of £108.00 per annum (based on 12p per unit).

The overall saving on electricity will be £436.50, dividing that by 12 months will equal £36.38 meaning they will have an overall profit of £4.38 a month / £52.56 a year with no household energy bills to pay at all.

With all this there are some institutes out there saying electric heating is expensive to run, its not eco friendly and so on.. Allbrite has demonstrated the running costs of it electric flat ribbon underfloor heating and can now demonstrate how it is possible to be self sufficient for years to come.