5th July 2023

Renewing our company one electric vehicle at a time

Pardon the pun, but our newest electric Maxus van has been on the roads for a couple of months now. One of our four 100% electric vans, it is emblazoned with our new Carter Renewables branding, an exciting division of our company focusing on Solar PV systems, Electric Vehicle Charging, Tesla Powerwalls and Solar battery installations.

As we look to diversify Carter Electrical with its new sister division Carter Renewables, it’s important we showcase the best of what renewable energy has to offer. And what better way than through our electric fleet; the Maxus EDeliver 3 does around 135 miles on a full charge, perfect for our work in and around the Reading area.

Carter Electrical New Electrical Vehicle

Why change to Electric Vehicles?

The electric vehicle (EV) market is booming, according to the latest vehicle stats. Electric car sales increased by 40% in 2022 and EVs enjoyed another record year with more than one in ten new vehicles being electric. The proportion of electric cars within the wider used car market is only going one way – up. Overall, 1.61 million new cars were registered in 2022 – a figure that’s 2.0% down on 2021 due to the impact of the pandemic and the continued global semiconductor chip shortage. Despite this, more battery electric vehicles (BEV) were sold in 2022 than ever with 267,203 registrations (16.6% of all new car sales), while plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) made up 6.3% or 101,414 cars.

Electric car sales are now second only to petrol cars in the UK.

Completing the circuit

With this in mind, more and more clients are reaching out to us to start the conversation about how they can make renewable adaptations to their homes and business premises to reduce their running costs for their electric vehicles. These include projects as straightforward as installing personal electric car chargers, such as the MyEnergi Zappi, or opting for our self-titled Triple Solution, where clients are storing the energy from their solar panels in storage batteries before using that generated power to run their homes. Batteries also let you charge up overnight with cheaper electric to reduce your unit price of electricity in the winter when there is less solar being generated.

Get Carter, go green!

So what are you waiting for? If you’re considering going green with your vehicle in the interests of contributing to a cleaner planet, not to mention adding value to your property or commercial venue, talk to us about an initial quote.

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Jon CarterElectrical, News
Solar panel installation
7th December 2022

2022 and all that

For this our December blog we are going to look back on our blogs posts from 2022. Little did we know how prescient our first blog of the year was going to be. Titled “Coming to your in 2022-Higher Energy Bills” we predicted that the energy cap would rise sharply in April. What we didn’t know was the Putin would order the invasion of Ukraine and send gas and oil prices soaring further. The energy cap will rise to £4,279 in January.

However consumers are protected by the Energy Price Guarantee until March 2024. The Energy Price Guarantee protects consumers reducing the unit cost of electricity and gas so that that a typical dual fuel direct debit bill for January 2023 remains at £2,500 and will be increased from April 2023 to a new level of £3000. Ofgem are also moving to quarterly price cap updates.

Lets hope that energy prices saw their peaks in 2022 and that wholesale prices of gas and oil continue to fall further. We have offered advice in a couple of blogs of how to save money and how to run your gas boiler efficiently.

We further addressed price inflation in our blogs for May and June titled The Perfect Storm-Parts 1 and 2. As well as energy price inflation these two blogs discussed the shortages in the supply chain affecting our electrical business. Some parts have been in acute shortages all year and have affected our work flow and deliverability on projects.

The rapid rise in energy prices has led to a record year for Carter Electrical Installations with our Green Energy projects. We have covered the installation of Green Energy in several blogs this year. Offering advice on the best products to use and how to run things efficiently. We have seen good demand from golf courses to install Solar PV and storage batteries and covered the topic in our July blog-Golf Courses Go Green. We also wrote blogs on Solar Panels and how they work and storage batteries-Battery Power

Carter Electrical are a local to Reading family run company, that has built up plenty of experience in installing Solar PV, inverters, storage batteries, EV chargers and Air Source Heat Pumps. Its this combination of skills combined with our electrical contracting background that makes us quite unique in the industry. The one issue that we continue to focus on is recruiting more electricians with experience of green energy. Though we do offer training in this area for qualified electricians. We covered this subject in our August blog-Are You Looking For A New Challenge?

It just remains to wish all of our readers, customers and suppliers a very merry Christmas and a successful and healthy New Year. Best Wishes from Jon, Matt and the Team

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GPC MarketingElectrical, Uncategorised
Nest heating
9th November 2022

Getting the best out of your gas boiler.

Heating your home accounts for up to 60% of what you spend in a year on your energy bills (Energy Saving Trust). Therefore anything that you can do to improve the efficiency of your boiler and radiators will lead to significant savings.

Depending on your boiler’s age, a new efficient condensing one could save you up to £315 a year. However a new installed boiler will set you back anything from £1,800 to £3,000 depending on the boiler of your choice and the size of your house.

Adjusting your thermostat at home

If you only have one thermostat for your home, turning it down by 1°C would save around £145 a year, according to estimates from the Energy Saving Trust. For most people, the lowest comfortable temperature to set your heating is around 18°C. 

What many home owners don’t realise is that their boiler can be made to run much more efficiently. The ‘flow temperature’ is the temperature your boiler heats up the water to before sending it off to your radiators. Most gas boilers are set up to operate at what is called 80/60 flow and return temperatures. This means the boiler heats up the water to 80°C. The water returns to the boiler after travelling around all your radiators at 60°C, having given off 20°C to the room.

However an 80/60C flow is too high for a condensing gas boiler to achieve the A-rated efficiencies claimed by the manufacturers. Your installer should have reduced the flow temperature to give the boiler a chance to run in what is known as ‘condensing mode’ as much as possible. This is when you will make a decent level of savings.

Efficiently running your heating in your home

The correct temperature setting for heating on a boiler is ‘as low as possible’, but as a guide most older homes can run their heating systems at 60°C and newer homes at 50-55°C. They start to reach their very highest efficiency potential at 45°C flow temperature or lower, but this can be too low for older properties.

Ultimately how low you can turn your flow temperature down will depend on the size of your radiators, how well insulated your home is and your thermostat temperature. For homes with modern double glazing, cavity walls and good levels of loft insulation you should be able to drop your flow temperature down with no impact on comfort. Even older homes, particularly terraced houses, will be able to do this if they have been modernised and draft proofed.

Smart heating in your home

There are also a raft of smart heating controls like Nest and Hive that allow you to control your home heating via and App. Why have your heating on when no one is at home? Or turn the heating on remotely when you are on your way home? If you add smart thermostatic radiator valves to your smart heating controls you can really start to make savings. At Carter Electrical we recommend fitting Nest and have good experiences with that brand.

Thermostatic radiator valves and a smart heating controller allow you to divide up your home into various zones and then offer smart heating in each zone, so your guest bedroom is heated only when required, the master bedroom is warm in the morning and at bedtime, and the kitchen is cosy at breakfast and tea time.

Get in touch if you would like more advice or if we can help with any electrical and heating issues.

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GPC MarketingElectrical, Uncategorised
Solar panels Reading
11th October 2022

Saving Energy-Saving Money

We have written several blogs on the subject of saving energy and there are many great blogs out there that also give excellent tips on how to use less power. Therefore we have decided to share some of our favourite blogs from the internet and highlight the best tips to save money this winter.

6 tips to cut your energy bills:

We like this article from the BBC as it gives six simple tips to cut your energy bills that don’t cost a fortune to implement. They are

1) use an air fryer or microwave instead of an oven,

2) install LED lightbulbs,

3) turn your central heating down,

4) insulate and draught proof your home,

5) use your appliances more economically

6) and finally take shorter showers!!

We have previously written a blog about LED lightbulbs

This blog from EDF goes through the house in more detail giving you some more great ideas on how to save on your energy consumption

There are obviously larger expenditures that will save you money in the long run and many of these investments are now showing good returns as the price of energy has soared. Investments such as the installation of double glazing, solar panels, air source pumps can cost thousands of pounds but can indeed save you thousands of pounds over the long run. There are also government grants to enable households to make these green investments.

Installation of storage batteries

Installing a storage battery can also prove to be a good investment as the battery will store the electricity generated by your solar panels or the cheap electricity that is available to purchase overnight. Our latest blog discusses the merits of Tesla and Huawei Luna storage batteries.

You can also take this questionnaire on the UK Government website to see if your home would benefit from home improvements that could make your property cheaper to heat and keep warm.

Please do get in touch with us here at Carter Electrical Installations if you’re thinking about embarking on any of these projects.

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GPC MarketingElectrical, Uncategorised
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