I, like probably most other people, don't know how much gas a CH boiler uses - I know it uses gas when its on but not how much.
Well to be honest, neither do I. I know it's rated around 30kW on "full whack" heating water, but my best guesstimate when it's running the heating is a few kW.
It seems to me in our house it depends on 1) what type/ age of boiler 2) size of boiler 3) what movements there are in the house/ whether people leave certain doors open 4) outside temperature 5) how high the room stat is left on.
1 you can't change without spending a lot of money, 2 is largely irrelevant*, 3, 4, and 5 basically come down to "you heat the house warmer, or leave doors open to let heat out, then it costs more".
But again, it really comes down to, unless you routinely "waste" heat by deliberately leaving the stat higher than you need to be comfortable, or leaving doors open, then knowing how much the boiler uses won't in itself save a single penny.
* There is a penalty for having a grossly oversized boiler - which is one of the (many) reasons I think combi boilers are horrible. You need something ike a minimum of 30kW before it's any good at heating water, but by that size it's grossly oversized (and hence becomes inefficient) at heating a property with a heating load that may well be below 5kW.
I've just googled "how much does my gas central heating boiler cost to run" - doesnt seem any easy answer there to me! yes I would prefer an easy answer!
There isn't an easy answer. Well actually there is - if you don't use it** then it won't cost anything to run.
Once you are using it, then it'll use enough gas to provide the heating required. The heating required is a function of the property (not changeable without adding insulation etc) and the temperature you heat it to. It's not exactly rocket science that you can minimise expense by only heating the house to a comfortable level and no more - and of course, not leaving all the doors open
Any further savings have to come from reductions in comfort/lifestyle, which leads on to ...
The
PRIMARY function of smart meters is rationing<period>. Saving energy is simply a load of male bovine manure and the same results could be achieved with much less cost and complexity, without the invasion of privacy, without the security issues, ...
Rationing is the primary function, and it's more or less admitted without using that word. Read up anything but the outright dishonest carp aimed at consumers, and it's clear that they are there to allow for "flexible tariffs" - which basically means that when you get home on a cold December evening, "frozen to the bone" and ready for a nice hot meal - you'll find that your lecky (and probably gas) price has been hiked tenfold because strangely enough, most people like to cook and eat their tea at teatime. And in December, the sun has gone down so all those solar PV panels are doing SFA, and there's a good chance we've got one of those widespread (and long lasting) high pressure calm spells so the windmills are doing SFA, so we're reliant on what's left of the coal and nuclear stations that we haven't shut down yet***.
So people who aren't rolling in cash will turn off their heating, have a cold meal, etc, for the simple reason that they can't afford to heat the house and have a hot meal. Some poor people will die because of it - and I bet there's been no studies to see if this number will be more or less than normally die due to cold and the cost of heating and cooking.
THAT is the one and only function of smart meters - all the rest is greenwash to make them sound useful and acceptable to the proles.
Oh yes, and if it doesn't give enough reduction, there's the means to turn people off remotely - all the smart meters have to have remote turn off capability.
Rationing in all but name.
** Assuming it doesn't have a pilot light, or an energy wasting "keep warm to hide how carp combis are" mode running.
***Last year I wrote to my MP asking him to ask the relevant department why NETA was predicting a shortfall in generating capacity of up to (IIRC) something like 3GW or more during this January (that's something like a 7-8% shortfall against peak demand). I never got an answer, but I did note that more than one coal fired plant was announced to not be closing down (having been paid to stay available). AFter these announcements, the NETA forecast suddenly stopped showing such a large deficit
Now I've got it with a smart meter. I go to bed and set the meter to gas only and at midnight it reads nil. When I get up at 7 on a cold morning it reads "x". When its a not so cold morning, it reads "y". hey presto, I know that ...
Which does not require a smart meter - it only needs a meter that's easier to read.
Lots of consumers are like me IMO. Smart meters will wake them up to actual energy usage and they will see there is money there for the saving. Clearly most people in the energy business will have an interest and insight into how much energy costs so I am guessing its not for them as they'll have an instinct about their level of usage anyway.
For a couple of weeks. There have been studies that demonstrate that hardly anyone saves anything after that - the novelty has worn off, the display gets to the back of a drawer, and there' no long term saving.
BUT the consumer has been conned into having the energy rationing device installed ready for when it's needed
But because by then there will be very very few people still having a working display, the first they'll know that they've been using expensive "rationed" energy will be when they get "bill shock" and any savings they made over the preceding years will be well and truly wiped out.