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"Keeping a tank of water hot" seems like an ideal use case of smart metering - There's no reason to draw electricity after you wake up, instead of at 4am when e

• LatteLazy 6y ago
  That's great, but you're little apartment now needs to find room for a huge water tank (enough for a few showers and some other uses). And a big noisy pump so your shower is more than a dribble. Plus you need to keep that tank of water hot all the time. You can insulate it, but since the tank has no idea when you'll want to shower (or do washing or whatever) it will need to be hot 24h a day. So you'll need to pull a lot more energy than you did for a simple combi boiler. Plus now your apartment will be warmer, that's great in winter, but in summer you'll need to turn the air con up using even more energy. Again, you can't really pick when these will kick in, so you'll likely use them at the same time everyone else is using them adding to peak load... Gas combi boilers are really efficient and small and quite and clean. I don't get why people are trying to replace them. I honestly think it would be better to require new buildings not have car parking spaces or have triple glazed windows. I just don't think there is a practical way to beat gas in this context. Maybe if we build bathhouses next to substations and people went there to shower? I suspect (cynic that I am) this is more about giving real estate mogals an excuse to save money and downgrade new apartments. "Sorry, you can't have gas so the shower doesn't really work but it's the law so the price is the same and we didn't have to pay for a plumber and a gas hookup!" but that's probably ott...