PowerSwitch

Just been listening to Money box live on Radio 4 - they advised fixing your energy bills this weekend while you still can.

Just fixed mine to March 2013

Here's the link to the programme: -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011ttff

Sounds worthwhile, but remember that fixed may not mean fixed !

I bet that in the small print there are exclusions in case of "war, civil war, riot, commotion, natural disaster, or acts of any government" or some similar wording.
At least one of the above is a virtual certainty, indeed it could be argued that some are underway right now.

Fixing your energy bills?

Better to fix you insulation, fix solar panels on your roof and sign up with Ecotricity to get more windfarms built.

The Gov are advising us to vote with our feet on this issue and change suppliers if they put prices up too much. The good old free market, that'll fix things...

I'm with Ecotricity for both, will have to check what their policy is going to be. I'm already insulated up thanks Biff but no solar panels tho'

20% of my energy bill is tax and climate change nonesense.

How are more wind farms going to bring down the cost of energy? When even at todays prices, they require massive subsidy?

A wind farm built with todays money, will provided electricity for many years into the future at a nearly fixed cost, since little in the way of future inputs will be required.
FFs are likely to increase substantialy in price in the same time, therefore a gas or coal burning power plant may be expected to produce electricity at a steadily increasing cost during its life.

Also we are increasingly reliant on imported fossil fuels, and on imported electricity.
These supplies are liable to interuption due to war, terrorism, extreme weather, industrial disputes or unforseen events.
Wind power produced within our own territory is much less vulnerable to such interuptions.
Home produced power is better for the nations balance of payments.

Doubts have been expressed as to the sufficiency of our natural gas storage, every MWH of wind generated electricity is less gas burnt, and therefore more remaining in storage for other needs.
It could reasonably be argued that the building of wind farms reduces or avoids the costs of building more natural gas storage.

Plus the costs of wind turbines - they are obvious and easily calculated - can be recouped within a brief and measurable time frame, unlike the known unknown costs of nuclear, its waste and its vulnerability.

The wholesale cost of natural gas is now over 60 pence a therm, which I think is a record for the time of year.
This appears to be the "new normal" and not a brief spike.
Expect furthur substantial retail price increases if wholesale prices remain at or above this level.

In previous years, gas shortages have appeared to be a risk, this now looks less likely since the increased price has reduced demand.
Storage is filling up well, but at what a price !

Electricity demand has fallen a bit, making rota power cuts arguably less of a risk.
OTOH Nuclear generated electricity is decling, and we remain partly reliant reliant on imports from France.
I doubt that they would continue to export to us if supplies are short in mainland Europe.

More price increases announced in the last few days.
Unlikely to come down again since the wholesale cost of natural gas has declined only slightly and is still high for summer.

Natural gas prices are being driven up by increased demand in Japan after the recent disaster, this extra demand is probably more or less permanent.
Oil prices have also fallen slightly but are still high by historic standards and appear unlikely to decline much. Oil prices are partly being driven up by instability in the Middle East, and again this may be long term.

Most members of these forums are well aware of the need to reduce consumption and to consider alternatives.
Worth spreading the word to others though.
Neighbours of mine have decided to forgo an expensive holiday this year and instead have spent the money on both energy saving measures (insulation, high efficiency appliances, electric cycles, low energy lighting etc) and on disaster preps (stocks of food and water etc, woodstove, batteries, lanterns, spare clothes, blankets, shoes etc)

biffvernon wrote:Fixing your energy bills?

Better to fix you insulation, fix solar panels on your roof and sign up with Ecotricity to get more windfarms built.

+1

emordnilap wrote:Plus the costs of wind turbines - they are obvious and easily calculated - can be recouped within a brief and measurable time frame.

In that case, why do onshore windmills require a subsidy of £45/MWh and offshore windmills £90/MWh, on top of having the costs of their variability, intermittancy, and transmission from the farthest reaches of the UK not attributed to their production?

If wind costs do have the redeeming feature of stability, it's unfortunate that they're just so high compared to FF production.

The government is betting the farm on the cost of coal and gas on the world market staying high and in fact escalating. They've skewed the Mott MacDonald report on energy prices by enforcing that input into the study. In the case of gas, there appears to be little to suggest that gas prices will remain high, given the present production glut. It might well be that the spot market price of gas is being driven by speculation. (And the spot market price for gas may make headline news, but it has little bearing on the price negotiated - in private - for long-term supply contracts)

There's a piece in the Telegraph, written by Andrew Gilligan on the subject.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/ ... -wind.html

(Still paying 8.245 p/kWh; Ecotricty massively more expensive).

Perhaps the speculators realise the implications on fuel availability of a nearly 10% growth rate in the BRIC countries plus increasing Japanese reliance on gas instead of "safe" nuclear.

This caught my eye because I have seen those large wind farms. I agree with all the points about their costs. However, I am wondering about their performance. Will they be able to provide the power that we are used to?

Also, someone mentioned above that adding solar panels would help head the rising costs of traditional electricity. What about updating appliances

ADVERT DELETED

Today, I am feeling somewhat pessimistic.

Wind farms, solar PV, solar thermal, biomass, and all the rest....all pissing in the wind. All of them absolutely hopeless alternatives to the high speed of flow and high EROEI of the dense, portable energy embodied in hydrocarbons that is required by our global industrial civilisation to continue in any way, shape or form that is even remotely recognisable in terms of how we live today. And yet, with peak hydrocarbons looming if not already upon us, we are reduced to poncing around with these non-alternatives and deluding ourselves into thinking that they will save our global human population of nearly 7 billion and rising.

They won’t.

Without the massive, carrying-capacity leverage of hydrocarbons that we have relied upon for the last two centuries or so we are left with the brutal equation of a world with simply too many people and not enough stuff.

At best, the alternatives to hydrocarbons (even fission) will merely extend the fag-end of the industrial age into a long, drawn-out (and very probably bloody) collapse. Indeed, the drums of war are already beating all over the world.

And they're getting louder.

But, hey, let's just assume, for argument's sake, that at one minute to midnight we discover the magical alternative to hydrocarbons, avoid global resource wars and party on like before.

At which point, the global collapse of our ecosystems gets to continue unabated because, of course, we're not just living in a world of peak hydrocarbons. We are living in a world of peak soil, peak minerals etc. Hell, we've even reached the point where we are having an effect on the whole planet's climate!

So, the alternatives can be basically defined as shit or shitter.

Either we don't find an alternative to hydrocarbons, in which case we face the collapse of our modern industrial civilisation accompanied by a very high probability of a global resource war and a massive die-off of the human population.

Or, we do find an alternative to hydrocarbons, in which case we destroy the environment which fundamentally supports us and drag the rest of life on earth down to hell with us.



Tomorrow I may feel more optimistic.






I bloody well hope so.....