Energy may go even higher
- Thread starter Spectric
- Start date
Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:
clogs
just can't decide
Ozi, I guess ur right on that one....
BUT regarding management.....
North West Water had 100's if not 1000's of smallish reservoir's....
They filled in pract all of them and sold em of as building land.....
Next thing was water shortages....!!!!!!!!!.
U cant trust managemant with anything......
I have worked all over the world and gotta say these managemnt idiots in the UK take the biscuit...
I'm sure they pick the dumbest, small brained people for the job or unless they marry into the job....
I have no respect for anything in a suit.....
I wont say anything about Lawyers or Accountants, it Sunday and day of rest....hahaha....
BUT regarding management.....
North West Water had 100's if not 1000's of smallish reservoir's....
They filled in pract all of them and sold em of as building land.....
Next thing was water shortages....!!!!!!!!!.
U cant trust managemant with anything......
I have worked all over the world and gotta say these managemnt idiots in the UK take the biscuit...
I'm sure they pick the dumbest, small brained people for the job or unless they marry into the job....
I have no respect for anything in a suit.....
I wont say anything about Lawyers or Accountants, it Sunday and day of rest....hahaha....
Was the pun intentional?
MARK.B.
Established Member
Most towns/cities produced their own gas from coal for decades and gasometers were a common sight ,When a reliable supply of natural gas could be transported around the country via pipelines the gasometers became redundant . I knew one old chap that made a fortune from demolishing them.
DrPhill
Cyber Heretic
- Joined
- 15 Feb 2012
- Messages
- 1,153
- Reaction score
- 312
Much as I hate to say it (because I am as guilty as the rest of us) energy is too cheap and needs to get more expensive. This is hard to take because we have got used to cheap energy - and have built our lifestyles and expectations around it. Even though our appliances are more efficient we have more of them and use them more. We live further from the shops, have larger houses with bigger spaces to heat. We expect higher temperatures in every room of our home. But the planet/climate cannot afford these demands.
We can live without some of these (my childhood home had single-glazed windows, and ice on the inside was common). We had one gas fire in the house - I remember grabbing clothing as a kid and running down to get dressed in front of it. I am sure we can do better than that these days without blowing our carbon budget though.
Part of the problem is the disparity in consumption - I cannot remember the figures off hand, but most of the consumption on the planet is by a minority of the population: Here you go.....
I say this with trepidation - both because it could start a politcal thread which will get me censured, and because I am one of the culprits - I have a car (very little mileage these days as I can walk to work), a gas boiler, a powerful computer, I use power tools. At least I don't fly, and I am mostly vegetarian. But I am still consuming more than the global average. Rising prices will help focus my mind on what energy I really need to consume and what I can do without.
We can live without some of these (my childhood home had single-glazed windows, and ice on the inside was common). We had one gas fire in the house - I remember grabbing clothing as a kid and running down to get dressed in front of it. I am sure we can do better than that these days without blowing our carbon budget though.
Part of the problem is the disparity in consumption - I cannot remember the figures off hand, but most of the consumption on the planet is by a minority of the population: Here you go.....
I say this with trepidation - both because it could start a politcal thread which will get me censured, and because I am one of the culprits - I have a car (very little mileage these days as I can walk to work), a gas boiler, a powerful computer, I use power tools. At least I don't fly, and I am mostly vegetarian. But I am still consuming more than the global average. Rising prices will help focus my mind on what energy I really need to consume and what I can do without.
bansobaby
Accustomly titled
I am fairly sure that part of the negotiations around Hinley Point C resulted in a guarantee by the government that the consortium building it would receive a minimum price per KWH.
The number I recall, but have no evidence to back it up, was an equivalent to the consumer of around 80 pence per unit…..
Time will tell…
when you read this it shows not just how much debt we will incur but that it will be for many decades, paying for the french cleanup I dare say.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...deal-behind-worlds-most-expensive-power-plant
Phil Pascoe
Established Member
... by the time it's finished, nuclear power could be a thing of the past ...
Yeah, right . Guardian speak.
Yeah, right . Guardian speak.
Surely it is simply that suppliers like Russia are able to name their price due to lack of competition at the moment, or even possibly a cartel? Plus the increasing demand for green energy, costs to increase those infrastructures, offsets to achieve carbon targets and so extra costs of the alternatives to gas. So we are using gas but need to pay for it as if it were a more expensive energy type.
The issue is that nuclear cannot compete with renewables when it comes to the unit price of the electricity produced, and just the paper work needed to obtain a license to operate a nuclear facility is more expensive than a reasonably large wind farm cost all in. A good solution not being given enough attention is tidal, those tides come and go like clockwork with millions of tonnes of water changing direction every six hours and is a huge source of energy just waiting to be harnessed. Energy for the future must be clean and not leave any toxic waste for future generations and Nuclear cannot meet this criteria, a reason why Germany is shutting down it's old nuclear plants. The other area that must be dealt with is both energy consumption and waste, we are still building obsolete housing which is not energy efficient and I reckon some of you have better insulation in your sheds and workshops.
Interested in why you say that. What reference source gives that data?
John Brown
Freeloading Social media influenza
What reference do I need? I know the relative costs of gas and electricity ( admittedly that could change), and I know the claimed COP figures. After that it's just simple arithmetic.
This sort of comparison can be greatly influenced by local pricing & taxation, but even so I find that strange. We used to heat our house with oil and now we use a GSHP. After switching to the GSHP our total electric bill (i.e. the GSHP, cooking, lighting etc) was about 10% less than we previously spent on oil just for heating.
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
Costs have been far too low for too long and they are going to get very much higher if climate change is to be tackled. Better to have got used to it and adapting early, rather than a sudden shock later. The extra profit could have been heavily taxed to invest in alternative energy R&D. Biggest mistake of the last 50 years has been the squandering of north sea gas and oil.
Ok, let's do some "simple arithmetic". Looking at Energy Cost Comparison (10/2021 figures, other similar tables are available) for example, assuming a new oil boiler running at 90% efficiency (i.e. a perfect installation & commission), that's 6.44p and 0.298 kg CO2 per kWh . The efficiency of an oil condensing boiler drops with age to about 80-85% after 10 years (I need to source a definitive reference for that).
The GSHP figures with a COP of 3.5 (not the more typical 4, newest systems are 5) is 6.76p and 0.083 kg CO2 per kWh - this also doesn't take into account Economy 7 which is about half the cost and where many GSHPs (ours included) run the most. GSHP do not lose efficiency with time - after setup, they run at installation efficiency. Oh, and we're 3-phase, which again improves our COP slightly.
So GSHPs are pretty much the same cost/kWh even if you don't take into account Economy 7 (which it's bonkers not to), plus the GSHP produces about 1/4 of the CO2/kWh - again, many GSHP users get their electricity from 100% renewable suppliers (I know we do!), regardless of what you may think of that. We pay 23.97p/kWh day, 14.33p/kWh nights - as our house has mahoosive thermal store slabs between the ground and first floors as well as under the ground floor, most of our GSHP usage is in the night, keeping the slabs up to temperature.
Then, of course, you have the maintenance, or lack of it in the case of a GSHP - we've not needed annual maintenance on our GSHP for 16 years now - a few very minor things have been replaced (a circulation pump for instance - a standard Grundfos unit) and all you need to do is top up the water lost to osmosis (about 2 litres a year) and check that the filters are clean (10 minute job). How much does your oil/gas fired boiler cost annually?
Last edited:
BearTricks
Established Member
Maslows hierarchy of needs. You can’t expect people to be productive at work when they’re worrying that work won’t pay enough to keep them warm at home even if they’re on the cheapest tariffs.
I make an okay amount, nothing impressive but enough that I shouldn’t be worrying about energy bills, and even though I can afford to pay the extortionate prices at the moment there’s a nagging worry in the back of my mind that the money lost on energy now impacts savings which impacts mortgage affordability if the rates are bad when our fix ends. Then there’s food prices which are also going up.
I’m in an okay position though and it even worries me. It’s the thousands of people who have to decide when to put the hearing on who will go under and it feels like the government aren’t even addressing it.
Cabinetman
Established Member
I quite agree @Spectric, and the good thing about tidal is that on an island like ours somewhere around the edge the tide will always be just right, high tide time changes as it moves around the coastline so you wouldn’t need many farms to give you non-stop power, and no messing about with lack of wind or sunshine. Ian
My working life started in the late seventies, work was plentiful and many good opportunities with fuel costing 90 pence a gallon and no one talked about energy prices because they were a minor part of the living cost. These were the days of technical colleges and the establishment recognised that it was the minority who would venture onto university with the rest joining the trades and apprenticeships. No smartphones, Pc's or Internet and video was a new technology but people were much happier and there was a much better atmosphere. This continued until Thatcher took office and then nothing seemed the same again with cost rising and much more discontentment with many big employers going and in hindsight this was probably when the rot set in. So I do feel sorry for the new generations, they have missed the best days of living in the UK and face a life of debt with far fewer well paid jobs, many young lads now working in coffee shops cleaning tables and serving rather than being a mate to a tradesman or some other more rewarding future. Who knows why, what has gone wrong or who let things slide but for me I look back and realise it was ok once and you could earn the same wages back then except the cost of living was much lower and dare I say a much less materialistic society and we did not need to escape into the fantasy world of social media. Energy is just part of a larger mess that our governments have steadily but surely steered the UK into and Covid may well just be the final push, we need to accept a new lower position on the world stage and settle into it rather than spending huge sums of money competing with the real big boys.
Terry - Somerset
Established Member
Tides are very predictable but tend to occur within an hour of each other - at an extreme Cromer and Falmouth (for instance) are 2 hours apart.
Tides also do not rise and the fall at a standard rate - around high and low tide the rate of rise or fall is one third of that at the max.
As a green power source - 10/10 for reliability, but the capacity to generate power varies over the 12 hour cycle. Bristol channel barrage always seemed a better bet as water can be released to match demand.
Tides also do not rise and the fall at a standard rate - around high and low tide the rate of rise or fall is one third of that at the max.
As a green power source - 10/10 for reliability, but the capacity to generate power varies over the 12 hour cycle. Bristol channel barrage always seemed a better bet as water can be released to match demand.
I guess I have a question for anyone (it happens in the US, too) who believes the cost of staples (energy/food) is too high....what's triggering that thought? Too much leisure spending?
I don't like paying bills - at middle age now, I see it as something that pushes my retirement further back. Though my wife isn't yet convinced, our days of spending lots at restaurants and distance vacations are over. If you save enough for that kind of stuff, you can do it later in life.
When it comes to living on basic staples, it's never been cheaper (relative to median income) than it is now. A look back to what life was like even in the 1970s as far as disposable income goes is enlightening. Cut internet off or back to minimal, don't pay for a TV license and cut cell phone back to phone only (and ditch a house phone if there is one). brand name clothing, expensive shoes, all of it is kind of entitlement for the middle class now that never really was.
Cut meat consumption back and change over to simple carb staples (cutting meat consumption back to 1900 levels for a middle class person is probably a better ideal health-wise, and certainly cheaper).
We're all entitled now. I am, too - fall into the same trap. I don't like paying $200 a month for gas in the winter, but the gas company brings the energy and pays employee benefits and covers the cost of the infrastructure. When I was a kid, we heated with wood. It was "free" all it cost us was a couple of weeks' time in the summer and then off and on time all year (which functionally ends up being more - we still needed supplemental oil heat).
It's just fairly rare that we hear the reality that it's never been easier to make ends meet than it is now, you just figure out what slice you really need and then work from there.
Watch this middle class residential area in LA in the 1940s. These houses may have been beyond the means of many as they were new and there was a lot more voluntary poverty living back then. Not many houses with two cars, I doubt there was much or any air conditioning, most would've had no TV and probably not all had phone. There's no spouting on the roofs except over the porch and they look like they'd have floor plans of about 1000SF.
How many times a week would we guess that these folks got prepared food from the grocery store or went to a restaurant? My grandparents started having kids back then and were of better means than this, but they usually went to a hot dog shop or something on saturday afternoon after finishing working (they worked 6 days a week, and sometimes 7 as one worked on farm, and the other both on and off). They may have occasionally gotten a hot dog and fries and then splurged for ice cream.
There's a million things to do now that cost almost nothing, and one of them is working. Another is finding places to save money or looking through classifieds for things you need that are almost nothing or free. What isn't cheap is having a big house, heating every part of it, paying property taxes for it, owning several cars, having expensive phones, several devices per person plus a computer,.....
