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Improve my home What is retrofit? Benefits of retrofit
Lower your energy bills
Retrofitting your home improves its energy efficiency, which in turn should reduce the amount of energy you use and lower your energy bills.
As we’ve seen during the recent cost of living crisis, lowering our energy usage plays an important role in keeping our bills affordable. To keep our energy usage low, our homes must be energy efficient. But what does energy efficiency mean?
Simply put, energy efficiency means getting the result we want by using as little energy as possible. So, in the case of heating, we want a warm home without having to use a lot of gas, electricity, or other types of fuel.
Energy efficiency solutions
We can improve energy efficiency in two ways.
Firstly, we can reduce the amount of energy that isn’t helping us get the result that we want – in this case, a warm home. For example, in an uninsulated home, a lot of the warmth produced by our heating system simply leaks out of the walls, floor and roof. We get no benefit from that lost heat, and that lost heat is costing us money.
By adding insulation, we can reduce the heat loss, so that more of the heat we pay for actually stays inside our home.
The second way we can improve energy efficiency is by using technology which yields more energy than we pay to put in. An air source heat pump is a good example.
On average, for every unit of electricity you put in, the air source heat pump gives out three units of heat. As a result, air source heat pumps are around 300% efficient. In contrast, a condensing gas boiler is around 90% efficient.
How to retrofit your home
Retrofitting your home will make it warmer and more affordable to heat. Find out more in our detailed guide.
How does better energy efficiency lower energy bills?
With better energy efficiency, you should be able to get the result you want (a warm home) by using less energy. This means you don’t need to buy as much energy from your supplier, resulting in a lower energy bill.
By insulating your home, you will reduce the amount of heat that’s lost through the fabric of the building. This means you don’t need to run your heating for as long to get your home up to a warm, comfortable temperature. As a result, you will spend less on your heating bills.
By adding renewable technology, such as a heat pump and solar panels, you get a percentage of your energy for free.
Depending on the type of heat pump you install, it will use heat from the air, water, or ground as its main input. Solar panels use the sun’s energy to generate free electricity.
The more free energy you can use, the less you’ll spend on billed energy or alternate fuel sources like oil or LPG (liquid petroleum gas).