Give Pensioners Batteries, Not Another £300 Sticking Plaster

Household Energy Solutions welcomes the idea of offering pensioners home batteries as an alternative to another annual Winter Fuel Payment but questions the practicality of the proposed route of using tiny plug-in batteries, put forward by the Government's clean energy tsar Lucy Yu.

The idea’s principle is sound: instead of using taxpayers’ money to provide a temporary sticking plaster every winter, why not use that money to finance a battery lease that could reduce electricity bills year after year? But to make this idea work, we believe we need much larger batteries and a long-term view on payback.

Home Energy Solutions already offers fully installed 10 kWh batteries with standard 3.65kwh converters for a fully installed cost of just £6k, which would reduce to £5k with a large Government contract, and the batteries are fully warranted for 10 years but often last 15-20.

So, if the Government reallocated the £300 winter allowance, it would pay off the installation after 16 years within the batteries’ expected lifespan, and as such it is a no-brainer, because the batteries are fully transferable if they are no longer needed by their original user.

One million 10 kWh batteries installed at £5,000 each would cost the Government what sounds initially like a large £5 billion. But look at the payback!

Assuming each 10-kWh battery delivers 9 kWh after efficiency losses, the pensioner would pay around 90p for a full overnight charge and avoid buying 9 kWh at 27p, saving approximately £1.53 per day, or £558 per year, so nearly double the current £300 allowance.

Meanwhile, if the Government pushed Great British Energy into the logical position of being the chosen reseller for excess wind power, they could collect approximately £4.93 billion in night-time electricity payments over 15 years, virtually recovering the full £5 billion battery investment, while using wind energy that would otherwise have been wasted.

So, this becomes a win for Pensioners, a win for Taxpayers and a massive win for achieving Net Zero without spending a penny in the longer term.

Therefore, although Household Energy Solutions supports the direction of travel of the Government’s Energy Czar’s announcement this week, we do not believe the answer is a tiny battery plugged into an ordinary household socket. These devices may have a role in flats, rented accommodation and smaller properties, but their limited capacity means they are unlikely to make a significant difference to a pensioner’s total energy costs.

Another obvious flaw in both proposals is that older British homes are still heated by gas, so the battery package should also include an efficient portable electric heater in the room the pensioner uses most to top up their gas household heating.

A 10-kWh battery could run a 1 kW heater for 8 hours, accounting for normal battery losses and leaving a sensible reserve. That would allow a pensioner to heat the room they are actually sitting in during the morning or evening, rather than turning on the gas boiler to heat an entire house.

The scheme should also be voluntary, as some pensioners need the winter allowance cash immediately, some live in unsuitable properties, and others may be in rented accommodation or use communal heating. Nobody should simply have their Winter Fuel Payment confiscated and receive an unwanted piece of technology in return.

Every participating household would need a basic energy assessment covering electricity consumption, the heating system, the smart meter, available tariffs, and a suitable battery location.

However, Household Energy Solutions has already developed the capability for remote surveys using mobile phones to take photos of bills, suitable battery installation points, etc., in order to fit houses with large energy bills because of EVs, hot tubs, and home offices with 20-50kwh battery solutions, but this could easily be adapted, with pensioners simply asking children or carers to complete these phone-powered surveys.

The original proposal contains the seed of a very good idea, as Britain needs to stop spending billions compensating people for an inefficient energy system and start investing in the infrastructure that permanently reduces their bills.

However, pensioners need a properly installed battery, an electric heater, access to genuinely cheap overnight electricity and the support required to use it. At the same time, the Government needs to take a long-term view of the cost of this asset finance, because it also gives them a flexible Virtual storage network of batteries that could also store excess Solar energy in the summer.

It’s time to turn this annual winter giveaway into a long-term investment in pensioners, renewable energy and Britain’s future energy independence.

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