The NHS overspend

oobers · Post by **oobers** » 10 Mar 2006, 09:27

I was curious to find out what proportion of the much reported NHS overspend might be down to sudden unexpected energy price rises.

I asked a friend who does some energy management consulting in hospitals if he had a feel for how much energy costs had risen. He reckons ?180M since last year. That's a fair old chunk of the ?800M overspend we hear about. The reasons I have heard given in the media are 'Sloppy financial management because massive investment breeds complacency' and 'wage increases across the board' but nothing on energy. I suppose you could attribute some of the spiralling energy bill to the first excuse, ie little investment in energy management because of large sums coming from the treasury apparently reducing the need to do so. But most must be down to managers faced with inescapable and unbudgeted fuel price rises, right?

Post by **clv101** » 10 Mar 2006, 10:16

Electricity costs in my company have risen 2.4-fold since 2000. However our consumption has also risen significantly, I don't have the actual consumption figure...

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 10 Mar 2006, 10:50

I've been reliably informed that my firm's electricity supply contract (for next 3 years) is currently/has recently been re-negotiated and is going to be almost exactly double what it was 3 years ago.

oobers · Post by **oobers** » 10 Mar 2006, 11:25

'Yesterday in Parliament' on Thurs covered PMQ's as follows:

Tory Peter Tapsell mocks PM on his faith guiding us to war in Iraq. Radio 4 presenter finds this very exciting and juicy.

David Cameron tries to extract more information about departure of Crisp from NHS job and where all the money has gone. Radio 4 presenter finds this even more exciting and juicy.

Menzies Campbell quizzes PM on when the government is going to implement RE measures from the 2003 white paper. Radio 4 calls this a steady performance from the Lib Dem leader but a 'boring' choice of question.

Surely all these issues are linked. PM took us to war to ensure future influence in Middle East and on US over energy

Much of the lost NHS money could be attributed to rising fossil energy costs

Energy costs have risen in part because we have become overdependent on imports when we should have been building RE infrastructure at home.

Ming's question was clearly the most interesting of the lot!

Bandidoz · Post by **Bandidoz** » 10 Mar 2006, 13:56

People so need to have their lights switched off for them. Let's see how long the subject remains "boring" after that....

Post by **mikepepler** » 10 Mar 2006, 17:14

Bandidoz wrote:People so need to have their lights switched off for them. Let's see how long the subject remains "boring" after that....

I wonder how many people around the country you'd need to get to simultaneously turn on every kettle, toaster, electric oven and vacuum cleaner to make that happen? I reckon each household could probably manage a 5KW jump in demand easily, and Dinorwig can go from 0 to 1320MW in 12 seconds ( http://www.fhc.co.uk/dinorwig.htm ), so that's at least quarter of a million households participating just to use that up. There's probably several hundred MW that can come online in a matter of minutes, using open-cycle gas turbines like the ones at Didcot. I guess it would be difficult to get something that big to happen without TPTB finding out, and the organiser would probably get locked up for being a threat to national security or something!

oobers · Post by **oobers** » 10 Mar 2006, 17:33

mikepepler wrote: I wonder how many people around the country you'd need to get to simultaneously turn on every kettle, toaster, electric oven and vacuum cleaner to make that happen? I reckon each household could probably manage a 5KW jump in demand easily, and Dinorwig can go from 0 to 1320MW in 12 seconds ( http://www.fhc.co.uk/dinorwig.htm ), so that's at least quarter of a million households participating just to use that up. There's probably several hundred MW that can come online in a matter of minutes, using open-cycle gas turbines like the ones at Didcot. I guess it would be difficult to get something that big to happen without TPTB finding out, and the organiser would probably get locked up for being a threat to national security or something!

Sounds like just the sort of thing Jeremy Clarkson might like to try out on a jolly Friday night TV show. I can just imagine that lovely chap egging on the audience 'Right - now go and turn everything in your house on, and then go and jump in your car and drive as fast as you can for ten minutes. We are going to break the record for the most fossil fuel consumed at once, just to pee off the greenies. Weheey'

Post by **clv101** » 10 Mar 2006, 17:38

I have a text book here with a graph of electricity demand during the 1990 England v W. Germany semi-final. Half time saw a 1600MW spike, similar 1600 spike at full time. It then went to penalties after a 300MW spike at the end of extra time. After the penalties at the end of transmission there was 2800MW spike over ~10 mantes.

dr_doom · Post by **dr_doom** » 26 Mar 2006, 21:10

Anyone still interested in this subject; panorama is doing a piece on this issue tonight 10:15pm on BBC1:

The NHS Blame Game

Investigation into how Labour ministers are pointing the finger of blame for the NHS's 800m pound spending deficits at a handful of bad managers. Across the country, the NHS is on go-slow to try to recover some of it - posts are frozen, redundancies are planned, hospital bosses have been sacked and patients have even taken to the streets to protest. John Ware finds out if the managers are really the culprits and reveals a tale of mistakes and miscalculation, weakness and wasted opportunity.

Will be interesting to see whether energy is given a mention.

dr_doom · Post by **dr_doom** » 26 Mar 2006, 23:04

Well seems it's all down to those greedy consultants getting over generous pay packets.

Not a single mention as far as I noticed.