OneGuyFromBarlick

Posted: **28 Feb 2013, 09:48**

In a different time, Centrica would be held up as a great British company. Rolls Royce make more than Centrica and its hailed as a good thing. They are ripping their customers off as well ?

Posted: **28 Feb 2013, 10:36**

Stanley wrote:What I'd like to see in the British Gas figures is how much is taken out of the industry by dividends......

It's there in the accounts, they are available to read

Posted: **28 Feb 2013, 10:37**

this is the email I got yesterday about the energy initiative:

Dear resident,

Pendle Council have joined forces with 12 other Lancashire councils to deliver People Power. It’s a way of consumers coming together to get a better deal for their gas and electricity bills. And with the high levels of fuel poverty in Pendle, along with the rising costs of energy, this scheme could make a real difference to many of our households in Pendle.

Anyone who currently pays energy bills can register, including pre-payment meter customers. Registration is open until 8th April. On 9th April there’ll be a reverse auction (i.e. lowest bidder wins), with the energy suppliers. We don’t know who will win and we don’t know how much people can save. On that basis we cannot offer a guaranteed saving, but we can be sure that it’s no obligation and residents are only registering to help grow the collective.

After the auction, all households that sign up will get an individual offer from the winning energy provider. Residents can then choose to accept the offer and switch providers, or choose to refuse the offer and stick with their current energy provider.

The more people we have in our scheme the better deal the energy companies may offer us - bringing prices down for everyone. Previous schemes saw an average saving of £150 per household.

If you are interested in reducing your energy bills, you can either:

Register online at http://www.peoplepower.co.uk (please note that 1 email address can register up to 5 people)

Phone 01282 661565

Sign up at Nelson Town Hall (there will also be a series of roadshows/ switching surgeries that people can access- details of which will be promoted locally)

To register, all you need is information on your current energy usage and your existing energy tariff, all of which can be found on your energy bill or annual energy statement.

If you would like more information on the scheme please contact Gill Dickson at gill.dickson@pendle.gov.uk.

Here’s to people power!

Posted: **01 Mar 2013, 05:45**

I never realised when I installed the stove in January last year what a valuable saving I could make by using it for cooking. Using leccy for heat is very expensive as we all know but the stove heat is free because all you're doing is holding some of the energy in the food for a while and then releasing it as space heating as it cools down. It's amazing how much cooking can be done in pans! My leccy bill will be down.

Posted: **01 Mar 2013, 10:46**

I just signed up to Tardis's Community power scheme. I suspect my spam will increase, I won't get a price until April when they close the signups and get bids from the energy companies. I'll let you know. The questionnaire wanted to know everything bar my shoe size.......

After a disastrous January with the PV Panels (Half of last year's January) February has reprieved itself with 20% better than last year. Yesterday was the best day this year, just over 10 units.
Just got a request for this quarters Generation, Its 166 units since the 1st of December, About £80, for the worst 3 months of year. We used over half of it ourselves which will come to another £10 or £11 in electric savings. I expect about £1000 over the year in FIT payments and electric savings. Knock it off the £6800 they cost me.......

Posted: **02 Mar 2013, 06:55**

And add in the satisfaction of having actually done something yourself to reduce energy costs. The losers are the people who give no thought to the subject and it will get worse because energy is going to continue to get more expensive no matter what fancy pricing structures are introduced. Look at the projections for Chinese population and energy usage alone, they are frightening! There is only one certainty, government is worse than a chocolate teapot when it comes to energy policy, they can't even guarantee to keep the lights on!

Posted: **03 Mar 2013, 12:48**

It is now 26 years from the first mention of Brown outs in this country,it has not happened up to now,probably due to the recession years,and a massive reduction of power use in the manufacturing industries as they folded. There is still spare capacity in our generating plant. We now need a radicle change in our life styles to benefit from it. Dam'n it the waste heat from my laptop has melted the chocolate on my biscuit,should have used it to keep my tea warm.

Posted: **04 Mar 2013, 07:47**

See this LINK for the clearest warning yet from the Parliamentary Select Energy Committee. They describe present policies as a 'finger-crossing' exercise in which the government hopes against hope that the energy companies will present them with a solution. Problem is that if they do they will want a guaranteed high income from higher energy prices. I've argued for years that energy policy should not be left to the politicians because they always end up with an expensive mess. There is plenty of evidence what needs to be done and it all depends on investing public money. If we are going to do that we should have public control as well but this will never happen. It's a God awful mess and in the end the customer will pay with power cuts and higher prices.

Posted: **04 Mar 2013, 13:45**

If they keep shutting old ones down without replacement capacity in place, it stands to reason, sooner or later there won't be enough capacity to feed the demand. There's a long lead time with nukes, so planning needs to be done decades before the event. Its probably too late now without interim measures until the new ones come online.

Posted: **04 Mar 2013, 19:33**

For the last 50 years we have been closing down power stations,to my knowledge we have not had one power cut or one brown out,because of this,in that time a large number of nukes have been built and run to term. Again we have had no problems with power shortage. For a very long time we have had the facility for importing electricity from europe but this has only lightly been used. My belief is the lights will stay on.

Posted: **05 Mar 2013, 04:49**

Where do you live? All I can say is that you have been lucky! Occasional load-shedding at peak demand times is with us now. I have made my dispositions and will not be cold, short of cooking facilities or light. We'll see if I am a pessimist or right very soon. I remember running Bancroft in the days when we were the only place in Barlick with leccy because we made our own, good training!

Posted: **05 Mar 2013, 09:58**

If the area in which you live has supply problems,it is because of your position on the distribution system,it may be that in case of problems,there is not an easily switchable alternative route to supply power.It will not be because the power generated is not enough. Personally I live in Manchester which has an orbital system of sub stations power can be fed in from all points of the compass. A system i am very familiar with after upgrading these prior to privatisation.all major conubations have this system. When we are given information by the media systems it is quite often not the whole truth,at the present time all sorts of power generation schemes are being thrust on the populace of this and other countries,and the easiest way to get people to accept them is by fear. The simplest way of giving an example has been witnessed many times ,tell the people the bakers are going on strike and watch the shelves empty.
Coronation St used to be a major problem to power supply. I stood in the control room of Hams Hall substation in the midlands during its decommissioning and watched the system manage the power surge as millions of electric kettles were switched on at the end of the program. There is a similar scenario every working day of the week when the infra structure of our country all ask for power at the same time easily solved but no one tries.

Posted: **05 Mar 2013, 10:25**

I copied this from Facebook, not something I usually do as most of the items on there are badly written and full of grammatical and spelling errors. This does, however, make a good point;
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment f
or future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn't do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off.

Posted: **05 Mar 2013, 12:39**

What a good find Kev ,I could add to this list Ad infinitum ,but it shouldnt be touched,maybe it could be taught at school then we wouldn't have so many wasters.

Posted: **06 Mar 2013, 06:28**

Good one Kev and a lot of truth in it. I use a cotton bag for shopping, made by slave labour somewhere in the4 Far East and sent thousands of miles to us, I wonder what the saving is in the long run? Any other plastic bags get re-used for various purposes, small ones for dog muck, larger for ash disposal. Apart from that, excepting my recyclable waste everything bar plastic gets burned on the fire.
Hartley, you must be very young, even Manchester wasn't immune to power cuts in the 1970s. When the usage exceeds the generating capacity there will be rolling power cuts. As things stand at the moment you can expect these inside the next five years. Get ready by having alternative heat, cooking and light available. I may be wrong of course, but time will tell and I shall be quite comfortable thank you!
In the 1970s Newton and I built a home generating plant at Vicarage Road that used gas to power and old engine and extracted heat from the system for his CH. He cut home energy costs by 50% and we didn't realise at the time that we had made one of the first domestic combined cycle generating systems, later patented by Fiat....

Newton built this wind generator but not enough output so he gave it to Paraffin Jack Grayson who never got it up and running. This all fits in with Kev's post actually, we were looking for green efficiency almost 50 years ago!

Posted: **06 Mar 2013, 09:38**

Looks like the blades are made of late 70's / early 80's wall board. Difficult to tell in monochrome, but it could well be the same shade as adorned our kitchen back then.

I've seen Kev's post before , it was in a chain email I got last year sometime. Its true but I suspect the bulk of it is because technology, the supermarkets and development have made all this stuff available only recently. I'm in my fifties and I remember a time when the idea of bottled water was scoffed at.

Posted: **06 Mar 2013, 10:24**

Only 64 Stanley, But my memory is sound, the 70's power cuts affected the whole country,nothing to do with there being a lack of generation capacity. Just a lack of fuel due to the honourable actions of our mining comrades. Fortunately I was not put on a three day week but would have to sit at work in the gloom and await the lights coming on. Perhaps history can teach lessons, many believe a 4 day week could be the way to go. The present day copy the Americans of 24/7 is extremely wasteful of energy.

Posted: **06 Mar 2013, 11:09**

Stanley wrote:Good one Kev and a lot of truth in it. I use a cotton bag for shopping, made by slave labour somewhere in the4 Far East and sent thousands of miles to us, I wonder what the saving is in the long run? Any other plastic bags get re-used for various purposes, small ones for dog muck, larger for ash disposal. Apart from that, excepting my recyclable waste everything bar plastic gets burned on the fire.
Hartley, you must be very young, even Manchester wasn't immune to power cuts in the 1970s. When the usage exceeds the generating capacity there will be rolling power cuts. As things stand at the moment you can expect these inside the next five years. Get ready by having alternative heat, cooking and light available. I may be wrong of course, but time will tell and I shall be quite comfortable thank you!
In the 1970s Newton and I built a home generating plant at Vicarage Road that used gas to power and old engine and extracted heat from the system for his CH. He cut home energy costs by 50% and we didn't realise at the time that we had made one of the first domestic combined cycle generating systems, later patented by Fiat....

Newton built this wind generator but not enough output so he gave it to Paraffin Jack Grayson who never got it up and running. This all fits in with Kev's post actually, we were looking for green efficiency almost 50 years ago!

This looks like the technology of the mid west farmers, it worked well for extracting bore hole water. And yes Stanley I have tilly lamps,and alternative cooking facilities not because I am a survivalist they are just part of my camping equipment.

Posted: **07 Mar 2013, 05:29**

I never said that the 70's cuts were a result of lack of generating capacity. Power cuts can be for a variety of reasons, I can remember the bombing in the war putting the lights out! The point is, that whatever the reason, power cuts are a bugger and it's as well to be prepared.
You're right Pluggy, it was that ubiquitous wall lining plywood mad to look like a boarded wall.
Kev, I wouldn't say I am a survivalist, just a bloke who likes to have choices and be able to manage my own life. You'll be OK, you've got a stove as well! Biggest problem in winter will be the CH systems going down and I hate being cold!

Posted: **07 Mar 2013, 20:47**

Modern research has decreed that you can extract all the energy you can from moving air with 3 blades. Hence the now almost universal 3 bladed wind turbine. Stanley's wall board special is very reminiscent of American bore hole pumps. (I wonder if modern ones have 3 blades ?).

Posted: **08 Mar 2013, 06:06**

Bought six 20kg bags of fuel for £50 from B&Ds this week. Bit like a prepaid meter, I feel more secure when the fuel is sat there and paid for. Could it be the last this year?

Posted: **08 Mar 2013, 07:54**

I wouldn't start thinking like that Stanley.

Posted: **08 Mar 2013, 10:02**

I'm an optimist Plugs!

Posted: **08 Mar 2013, 10:11**

Stanley wrote:Bought six 20kg bags of fuel for £50 from B&Ds this week. Bit like a prepaid meter, I feel more secure when the fuel is sat there and paid for. Could it be the last this year?

I know it's good to shop local but that's a bit expensive. Molloys (Crosshills) will deliver 100kgs of smokeless ( a large dustbin full) for £32.

Posted: **08 Mar 2013, 11:22**

Wait for the Hawthorn blossom,before thinking you can put out the fire.

OneGuyFromBarlick

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