ENERGY MATTERS

[Pluggy]

I didn't bother, it was more expensive than my fixed price contract that has 10 months to run.

Today, was my best ever single day for output from the solar panels - 16.28 kWh. Previous best 27th May last year at 15.97kWh. Its unusual for a cloudless day at such a long day length to be so cool, their output tails off when they get warm.

[Stanley]

You could have another good day today.....

[Stanley]

I let the stove go out and gave it a good clean. I may well be lighting it again this afternoon! (Just for cooking and comfort this evening....)

[hartley353]

Another record period of below normal temperatures. Where has that global warming gone, perhaps evaporated like the smoke it was.

[PanBiker]

Agreed, but the polar Ice cap is still melting at an alarming rate which I suppose is perfectly normal.

[Pluggy]

You could have another good day today.....

Not quite as good as Saturday, but still over 16kWh (16.12) yesterday. A lot more cloud in the equation today.

[Stanley]

No joy today Pluggy....
No use Ian, save your time. Didn't light the stove yesterday, no cooking to be done. House core temperature is around 23C but if this weather continues there will be a case for a bit of heat to ward off damp.

[Stanley]

Data out in a report that shows that more coal is being burned in generating stations than at any time since the 1990s. This is partly due to a fall in world price of coal in the US due to the increased availability of gas from fracking.
Good piece in PE about the dangers of a move to convert coal fired stations to bio-mass. It's becoming increasingly obvious that in the short term this leads to increased emissions of CO2 , largely because the process generates 30% more CO2 than coal. The benefits of increased absorption of CO2 by trees don't kick in till years down the line.

[Tardis]

Drax is apparently to be fuelled by wood pellets from the US, where they are ripping out their hardwood forests to supply the demand.

Meanwhile people here are still arguing that low grade agricultaural land should be laid down to trees, because returns on forestry are currently 24%

[Stanley]

I-Gas, one of the largest firms involved in fracking have increased the reserves in their area in Cheshire between Manchester and Liverpool by 20 times to I think they said 170 trillion cubic feet of gas. There are even bigger reserves further North in Lancashire.

[Tizer]

Shale oil, shale gas, biomass...it all still produces CO2. The `race to shale gas' is setting back the attempts to curb CO2 emissions, especially in the USA.

On the radio this morning they were talking about the government's move to give local people more say in the siting of wind turbine farms. A minister said it would "reduce the number of inappropriate sitings". This wording is misleading. The phrase is normally used to mean wind farms set up in areas where there is insufficient or inappropriate wind. But the minister was using it to mean inappropriate from the perspective of the local residents. I wonder if he used the phrase in that manner deliberately?

[Stanley]

I heard it as well Tiz and also the CEO of a large firm engaged in wind farm building who said that they had heard nothing of any changes in planning procedure and he obviously wanted to know exactly what the minister meant. I think we are all aware that the first rule of any politician is to avoid precise language and meaning so that when the crap hits the fan the excuse of misunderstanding can be introduced. Gone are the days when a policy was fully discussed and agreed with the stake holders before going public. What they need today is a quick popular fix and a good sound bite.

[Pluggy]

Good program on Horizon last night about fracking :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... ergy_Rush/

Just been checking up on my PV panels. Total output since November 2011 just passed 3000 Units (3 Megawatt hours). Since the beginning of June they have been supplying more than half of what we've consumed. (169 Units consumed, 81 Units imported from grid). .Pity its not like this all the time.......

[Stanley]

BG have moved me onto another tariff because my privileged status under Warm Home rules has been abolished. I suppose I ought to have a look and see what the consequences are but I'm using so little at the moment I am putting it off. I know! I'm wrong but it bores me so much!

[Stanley]

The boiler thermostat on the landing upstairs is very sensitive. I noticed yesterday and this morning that it was cool enough to trigger the CH when the back door was open for a minute or two. It's set at 18C.

[Stanley]

Report this morning that under the new Green Deal only 1,000 homes are being insulated a month, under the old Warm Homes scheme it was 40,000. Progress?
The parliamentary energy committee also reported that the government is on target to miss the emissions requirements.

[Tardis]

Report this morning that under the new Green Deal only 1,000 homes are being insulated a month, under the old Warm Homes scheme it was 40,000. Progress?

Whilst there may be a problem, I wonder how much of this is also mitigated by the Law of Diminishing returns

The parliamentary energy committee also reported that the government is on target to miss the emissions requirements

The only reason for most of the reductions is because the UK shipped out manufacturing to other countries. If you add in the carbon to get all those goods back into UK markets then you actually find that the UK carbon consumption has gone up

[Stanley]

Shock horror story about 'industry power use being rationed' to avoid power cuts. What do people expect when the whole matter of capacity is being allowed to drift? Dual Fuel users have been subject to cuts for years in return for lower prices for gas. They had the capacity to run on oil instead. If power is essential the answer is for companies to install their own generators. Could make some of them do their sums. If a firm has to make process steam it's actually cheaper to have a steam engine on standby to make leccy. Who knows, there may be some innovative thinking going on.

[Pluggy]

Theres already a lot of stuff in place to protect against power shortages, which is called in very occasionally when they lose a couple of big power stations at high load times. Large companies with their own power facilities (or can live without power for short periods - like refrigeration companies) can get reduced tariffs if they agree to being first in line to have their power cut off (called load shedding). In addition many with their own power generation can feed the grid when the worst comes to the worst. The emergency measures won't be included in the total capacity. As total capacity is reduced through closing of old stations which aren't being replaced. they'll become more dependent on those measures. With an ever increasing amount of capacity that can't be depended on (the renewables) whether they have to shed load is likely to depend on how hard the wind is blowing at the time in question. Load shedding occurs a couple of times a decade on average at present.

[Tizer]

We're completing the sale of my father's house today and had to do the usual reading of meters and phoning the companies to inform them. The water company was easy but EDF Energy has been a ?#$!%^&!! nuisance and refused to do anything because the account is in my father's name. We explained that he's moved to a care home and can't communicate with them, that we own the house, that we pay the bills, that all EDF correspondence has been between them and us for years now...but they still wouldn't budge. We asked to speak to a supervisor but that got us nowhere. We threatened to write to the national newspapers about them but they don't care. Everything came back to "Sorry, it's the Data Protection Act, it's more than my job's worth if I were to accept what you say over the phone." They wanted a letter from my father, but he doesn't write and anyway we needed it doing today. In the end they asked for a copy of a letter from the solicitor confirming the completion date and name, address etc. I've emailed it to them but I'm not confident it will work - it'll probably `go missing' somewhere in the bowels of EDF. It's time the big companies were knocked down to size and made more accountable to their customers.

[PanBiker]

Tiz, do you have Power of Attorney for your dads affairs? Sally holds this on behalf of her mum who is now in a local care home. She can no longer handle her own affairs so it was the next logical step. It has eased some of the official stuff that has to be taken care of.

[Stanley]

God knows how you get round that one Tiz. Refuse to pay? Registered letter to the chairman copied to your solicitor and MP? They are bastards!
Pluggy, your mention of cold stores and power cuts reminded me of something the manager of one of the big Union cold stores told me once when I was delivering butter to go into store. It was in an old warehouse building in Liverpool and he told me that the build up of ice in the structure had severely damaged it but at the same time was supporting it. He reckoned that if they ever needed to demolish all they would have to do was let it thaw out! Needless to say, a 12 hour power outage wouldn't affect them, the heat (or cold) sink was so large.

[Tizer]

Ian, we have Power of Attorney prepared for my father but he is not judged ready for putting it into action. It's rather like the business of his driving where the doctor couldn't ask DVLA to stop him because he doesn't have a well-defined medical condition such as dementia or Alzheimer's. EDF asked if we had PoA but they can't understand that there is a vague intermediate zone where you can't get PoA but the person can't satisfactorily look after their affairs. In theory, my father could talk to them - but he'd get confused and do it all wrong (which sometimes suits these big companies because they can get away with over-charging, mis-selling etc). It's a grey area that needs attention from the government.

Mrs Tiz and I each have Power of Attorney prepared for the other, so that if/when the time comes it can be put into action. I would advise anyone over retirement age to try to prepare Power of Attorney (it's now called `Enduring Power of Attorney') for themself with someone they trust. If there is no PoA then it can be a nightmare for anyone trying to sort the person's affairs for them (as we are seeing in this transition zone).

I mentioned earlier about Mrs Tiz being able to reduce her parents' house insurance by about 60% by `shopping around' for them through a broker. My neighbour - who is 90, rather ill and has little money - has just been quoted about £700 for renewal of his motor insurance. His daughter has now managed to get him the cover he needs with another company (as opposed to the cover the old company wanted to force on him) for only about £200. The original company's premium included overseas cover and other things he couldn't use even if he wanted to. And they hadn't taken into account that he does only 1000 miles a year. We've just had our latest policy documents from an insurance company - they were addressed to us but the documents are made out in the name of someone called Mr Mullins, not our name. It really makes you wonder if the companies are `fit for purpose'.

[PanBiker]

I see your dilemma Tiz. It all smacks of a combination of cunning wheeze, jobsworths and all shrouded by the Data Protection act. All a complete nonsense of course. If you can prove your relationship to someone and can be seen as acting in their best interest, that should be it. I have experience of a similar thing with my late son Dan's car insurance company. They were advised of the fatal accident within 30 minutes of it occurring. Did not stop them sending me constant demands for the next monthly instatement on his motor policy and even a renewal notice when it was due. There is no joined up thinking in many of these situations and all it does is cause misery for those individuals who have to deal with it, my commiserations.

[Tizer]

Thanks for your concerns, Ian. Mrs Tiz pointed out that I'd used `PW' in the post as my abbreviation for Power of Attorney, which must have been due to a `senior moment'! I've changed it to PoA. When my mother died we immediately told my dad's bank, Lloyds TSB, and they promised not to block the joint account...but of course they then went ahead and blocked it and we had all the hassle of getting it open again. Then they kept sending post in her name, for years afterwards. The trouble is that once your personal details get into a big company they are spread around, especially for marketing purposes, and you can't get them purged out of the system. I think we need a major investigation into why big companies are so incompetent nowadays and some other sort of penalty rather than fines - which don't bother them because the cost just gets shoved onto the customers.

Some months ago The Times ran a story about a deaf lady whose bank (Barclay's, I think) insisted on speaking to her by phone even though they'd been told she was deaf and her speech wasn't understandable. They caused her various problems of this type and The Times came to her aid and contacted the bank, which promised to put everything right and made much ado about how they pull out all the stops for disabled customers and have special people for it etc etc. Would you believe it, the same problem has occurred all over again with the same bank and same lady and The Times has had to intervene a second time on her behalf! These businesses are simply too big and are not properly managed.