Goodbye Gas Meter

Goodbye Gas Meter

It has been quite a journey to get to this point, starting with my solar installation back in late 2018.

Since then we have slowly electrified the whole house having started with a gas cooker and gas combi boiler for both heating and hot water.

A quick reminder of projects to date.

• 5.1kW of solar panels on a 3.68kW Solaredge Inverter
• Lux AC 3600 inverter connected to 5 x 3.2kWh (16kWh total) of Hanchu batteries
• 5kW Vaillant Arotherm air source heat pump
• 250L Mixergy water cylinder in a custom built plant room
• Myenergi Eddi solar diverter
• Myenergi Zappi EV charger (and solar diverter)
• Octopus time of use tariffs (Agile, Go and Intelligent Go)
• Investment in Ripple Windfarm

Most of the above projects have their own blog post and write up that you can find here on the blog summary:

Blog Summary

Since installing the heat pump in 2022 the only gas appliance we had remaining was the cooker.

After much searching and getting recommendations from energy-stats Twitter followers we ended up replacing the gas cooker with an AEG induction unit.  It has the snappy model number of CIB6742ACB.

We actually made the decision to replace it around December time, but decided to hold off until the new year as we didn’t want to risk the Christmas dinner with a new oven. LOL.

But this did give us time to get the new electrics installed.  This involved getting my sparky Mike of Practical Property Services to install a new 32A breaker in the consumer unit, run cable and then terminate it via an on/off switch close to the cooker location.

It’s a 600 wide standard combined double oven and hob.

We plumped for this model as the wife and I preferred physical dials rather than touch button operation.

It has been great so far.  The biggest fear we had was how low can you take the hob, ie can you simmer a tin of beans on very low.  Absolutely you can.  I’d say it can go even lower than we used to on gas.

Getting the gas meter removed

So once the cooker was installed and up and running I contacted Octopus Energy to get my gas meter capped off and taken off the system.

There is no point paying 27.47p per day standing charge (£100.27/year) if we are no longer using gas.

The first available appointment was just 3 weeks away.

When the day arrived the process was very quick.  

• Ensure the gas was switched off.
• Remove the gas meter
• Cap off the supply pipe
• Cap off the internal gas pipe

That was it.  Very swift and great work from Octopus.

And the best bit is that in their drive to electrify homes they are currently doing this FOR FREE.

I’m just waiting for confirmation that the gas element of my account will be closed down.

Then that’s it.  I’m off gas for good.

Obviously, if we ever sell the house and the new occupants want to get back on gas, they’d just need to get a meter added in again.   It’s totally a reversible process.

But not sure why anyone would want to go back.