ENERGY MATTERS

[Tripps]

Reminds me of me......

I read that and immediately thought of you too.

That's a very good refutation of the use of Hydrogen as a domestic fuel. I recommend that all should read it.

I rejoice that my diesel engined, wonderful car has just been taxed, insured, and MOT'd for another year this week. Also I'm told by 'we buy any car' that it has ony depreciated by about £2k in five years plus. That's a first. My life seems to have spanned the motoring era.

Gott sei dank - as SCG might say.

[Stanley]

Lots of common sense in that post Stephen. I like the bit about personal transport being an unaffordable luxury, I came to that conclusion a long time ago. Same with air transport, Susan and I were saying last month when she had got back from the wedding in Australia that that was probably the last time she would be able to afford to do it and I gave up flying in 2000. It's got to the stage now where many see cooking as being too expensive.
Meanwhile the world is divided into the haves and the have nots and I see no cessation of traffic through airports and the energy companies are making money hand over fist while governments tut tut but do nothing about it.
Life's too short. I shall put my chicken in the oven and ignore the energy monitor clocking up the therms......

[Tizer]

All the good posts!

Electric for land transport, ideally through cables like trains, trams and trolley buses, batteries otherwise.

I agree 100%. Also I love trams, they are so smooth running and they've got preference over other road vehicles. They always contributed to the pleasure of visiting towns in continental Europe and Scandinavia. Our buses in towns are horrid, rattling, vibrating uncomfortable contraptions (even when stationary) that throw you around, especially if you're standing and they belch out unhealthy fumes from their diesel engines. The sooner they get replaced with electric the better, but preferably as trams, not buses.

Stanley...snap! The last flight I made was in the mid-1990s and that was only as far as The Netherlands. My last long flight was to the US in the early 1990s. Giving up flying was initially due to changes in my health but I probably would have given up anyway because I have a strong dislike of airports and being cooped up in a metal tube for hours on end. The advent of high security checks etc added to my avoidance.

Tripps, we're happy with our hybrid petrol-electric Honda Jazz. The hybrids seem to be selling better than all-electric cars because they avoid `range anxiety'.

[Tripps]

Speaking of trams - I was tempted to bid for this picture recently but resisted. I like it and there is the connection that Stevenson Square in Manchester was my bus stop terminus for many years.

"they are so smooth running"

I doubt these were - quite the opposite. I've never been on a modern city tram. My last tram trip was Blackpool to Fleetwood.

tram.jpg

[Big Kev]

I've been on the trams in Nottingham, they are quite smooth running.

[Stanley]

The old trams like the ones in David's painting did rattle a bit. They swayed a lot as well but I never heard of one falling over.

[Tizer]

I haven't been on trams in the UK but the ones I experienced on the Continent were silent, very smooth and didn't `rock and roll'. Heaven!

[Tizer]

No matter what we might think about it some people are still chasing hydrogen as a solution...
`The trucks ditching diesel and drivers' LINK

[Stanley]

Hydrogen and autonomous seems to me to be over complicated. See THIS man making a convincing argument for a different way.
(Privately I don't think we will reach even the lowest targets, If we survive it will be via a miracle of technology like economic fusion, not adapting old technologies like this. The bottom line is that we are hooked on energy.)

[Stanley]

See THIS report onSell Oil's profits.
"Oil and gas giant Shell has reported record annual profits after energy prices surged last year following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The company reported adjusted earnings of $39.9bn (£32.2bn) for 2022, the highest in its 115-year history.
This is the highest profit ever recorded by a UK business. No tax will be paid in the UK as these profits are 95% generated abroad and what is chargeable in the UK is cancelled out by concessions for the cost of decommissioning assets.

[Tizer]

The Times has been campaigning about this for months. Now they report the full results of their undercover investigation...
`British Gas admits agents break into struggling customers' homes' LINK

[Stanley]

And I heard the CEO of Centrica saying how devastated he was to get the news. However, he didn't say that he would immediately see to it that in all cases where the forced change broke the rules about old or vulnerable people he would see it was reversed.
I can set the Ombudsman on for my case next week.....

[Stanley]

I'm listening to the debate about the illegal fitting of pre-payment meters in the homes of people at risk. One of the energy company bosses has just said that if it happens to someone they should talk to the company. I have just spent 18 months trying to talk to British Gas and have still not got a straight answer. I don't think these people know what the real situation is.

[Stanley]

The waiting is over, I can now trigger the Ombudsman to attack BG on my behalf. I shall be doing that tomorrow.

[Tizer]

Good luck with the Ombudsman `special operation!'

After seeing this BBC report about domestic IR heating I went on to look at Homebuilding & Renovating Magazine's web site...
`Farewell radiators? Testing out electric infrared wallpaper' BBC

`Infrared Heating: Is it Right for Your Home?' H&R magazine

[plaques]

Are the wheels already coming off Jeremy Hunt's plan to reduce inflation. As part of the Russian sanctions the EU/G7 price cap on Russian refined oils now starts today. The UK imports £3Billion of refined oil of which 18% is diesel and 5% jet fuel. In 2022 Boris Johnson promised that the UK would become less dependent on Russian imports and that alternative sources would be found. Its not clear if this has happened. Those countries with the capacity to refine their own crude oil will still have the problem in sourcing extra crude in a more limited sellers market. Those already buying refined oil will also meet the same problem. The old problem of supply and demand will inevitably drive up prices. Higher oil prices pushes up the inflation rate which in turn means higher government borrowing and higher bank rates. Of course if Boris's promises come good the UK may be able to avoid this problem.

[Stanley]

Thanks to all of you but the Ombudsman isn't going to be easy.....
Peter, I heard the report about the experiments with infra red wallpaper. I've always thought we would end up with something like that and for lighting as well. I always thought how ugly and crude one light bulb hung in the centre of the ceiling was!
Ken, I long ago gave up trying to make sense of the energy markets and in particular Oil. No doubt the Seven Sisters or their present incarnation will find a way to survive....

[Tizer]

I always thought how ugly and crude one light bulb hung in the centre of the ceiling was!

Talking of that, we're always surprised by the poor lighting in holiday cottages - and we've stayed in many different ones over the years. The owners and holiday companies must think that visitors never read books, magazines, maps etc in the evenings or that they only do so on tablets or smartphones. Or they spend all evening, every evening in the pub!

[Stanley]

I have good news. I have spent an hour on the phone with a young man called Peter at the Ombudsman service who has taken me right through every detail of my case and taken notes. He will be my personal assistant right through the process and I have his direct line.
Apart from the fact it was psychologically so good to be able to talk sensibly with someone, he is a very nice young man and I have offered to adopt him if he needs it......
I do nothing now until I hear from him which will be in about a month. He says that the usual course is that BG make a cash offer for you to go away and he days I am free to take that but I have told him no, we stay on their tails right to the end and try to ensure they change their systems so that ordinary people can talk to them.
Wonderful!!

[Pluggy]

Good luck with the Ombudsman `special operation!'

After seeing this BBC report about domestic IR heating I went on to look at Homebuilding & Renovating Magazine's web site...
`Farewell radiators? Testing out electric infrared wallpaper' BBC
, yet
`Infrared Heating: Is it Right for Your Home?' H&R magazine

The BBC article doesn't make sense to me. The headline says infrared wallpaper yet a few words into the article it says "metallic sheets are hidden behind the plaster of his walls" so unless wallpaper stopped being something you put on a wall after the plaster without me noticing, which is it ?

And the incessant rambling about infra red heating like it was something new. Many, many moons ago before gas central heating became ubiquitous, the standard way of heating a bathroom was with a bright chromium grill thingy with a pull switch with a low wattage red hot electric element inside it. Usually marketed as an infrared heater. Any heater uses infra red if if it doesn't work by convection, r aka directly heating the air. A central heating radiator which gives off most of its heat via convection isn't entirely a misnomer and gives off infrared "waves". When I was a kid I had a "how it works" kind of a book (I had lots of them, I loved this stuff then as I love it now) that explained infrared energy using an old school filament light bulb, you turn it on and hold your hand close to the bulb and you can immediately feel the heat coming off it, but if you then immediately grab the bulb its still cold.
(elfin safety hadn't been thought of back then). Hey presto infra red heating.....

[PanBiker]

And the incessant rambling about infra red heating like it was something new. Many, many moons ago before gas central heating became ubiquitous, the standard way of heating a bathroom was with a bright chromium grill thingy with a pull switch with a low wattage red hot electric element inside it. Usually marketed as an infrared heater.

My mum and dad had one in their bathroom. It was as you describe with a radiant glass element around the rim with a pull switch for that bit. It also had a central domed diffuser which covered a standard lamp socket in the centre which operated from the normal light switch outside the bathroom. That also acted as and isolator for the heating element as you had to have the light on for the heater to function.

[Pluggy]

And the incessant rambling about infra red heating like it was something new. Many, many moons ago before gas central heating became ubiquitous, the standard way of heating a bathroom was with a bright chromium grill thingy with a pull switch with a low wattage red hot electric element inside it. Usually marketed as an infrared heater.

And here's me naively thinking I'd written that rather than Stanley.........

[Big Kev]

And the incessant rambling about infra red heating like it was something new. Many, many moons ago before gas central heating became ubiquitous, the standard way of heating a bathroom was with a bright chromium grill thingy with a pull switch with a low wattage red hot electric element inside it. Usually marketed as an infrared heater.

And here's me naively thinking I'd written that rather than Stanley.........

[Stanley]

It sounds like me but I can't remember writing it.... We certainly had a thingy in the bathroom in the 1940s.....

[PanBiker]

T'was the site that did that. I used my normal method of raising a partial quote from a previous post so not my fault, honest guv!