Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7171345.stm

Jesus this is terrible news for family's on low income :(
For all of us in fact.
Petrol is sky high here now gas and electric have had there prices increased between 12% and 18% :(
Unacceptable.
I can see many many strikes in the uk this year.
It's just unaffordable.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

I think it's time to move to Canada.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Would agree we must be close to a real recession the way shares are going down and confidence in the banking sector.

I would bet that other companies will follow NPower's lead

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

I dont even know who my gas and electric are with.. Probbaly NPOWER knowing me

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

It only needs one to start the ball rolling mate :(
And npower has started the others will follow suit :(

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

I thought someone mentioned on the radio that wholesale price of energy had gone up 60%

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

we have plenty of bloody gas but nowhere to store it so it goes to europe and sold back to us at a mark up which is just bloody typical of doormat Britain. Im with Npower but I bet a pound to a dollop of crap if I switch they will all up there rates and ill end up having to switch back again. Damn the government in this country for the last 35 years to hell. I love living here but the government are all idiots and everyone wanting to take up politics should be shot at dawn and people put in power cuz of levels of intelligence and common sense and not because they are power hungry pratts. And before you say why am I ranting on political its cuz if the government invested instead of sellings in Thatchers day and didnt join the bloody crap factory thats the common market things would be a whole lot better here

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Yes, because if there's one thing Canada is famous for it's the lack of necessity for heating...

Not sure I follow that, myself.

Not any more, we don't, we produce less than we use, which means we need to buy it off someone else, which means the Russians these days, and they're currently writing historical textbooks praising Stalin, so you can see which way that's going...

We have plenty of coal, but no miners.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Thats different to what they said on the news tonight

BB you and Mr A should be in charge lol

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Well, you know what they say, when someone emigrates from the UK to Canada, the IQ goes up in both countries ;)

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

oh and you you have some power too lol

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

We are Zing, we are.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Canada is great, nice people, everywhere is clean, great mountains and countryside and no reliance on North Sea Gas.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Norway is good - some of the same attributes as Canada, nice people, etc - and an alternative to Russia for our gas supply :)

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

What's North Sea Gas, as our children will one day ask us...

Canada does have large uranium deposits, which is interesting*. Of course, if we all start building nuclear reactors, we'll start to run out of uranium, too. Let's have a tidal barrage or two, then.

* There's a lot in Australia too, and the French have kept a tight post-colonial hold on Niger for precisely the same reason, having thought ahead a bit thirty or so years ago and closed the mining industry (to avoid strikes) and gone big-time nuclear (to avoid having to suck up to too many Middle Eastern sods. Except Saddam Hussein of course, but hey, who didn't?). Russia and IIRC Kazakhstan have a lot of uranium, too. We have, er, zip. Once the oil and gas has gone it's coal, wind, wave or buying it off some foreigners at whatever the market price is at the moment (the pound has just plummeted against the Euro, which oil is starting to be traded in as the US dollar implodes. Still think it's a good idea to stay out?).

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Insane women though, speaking from experience (all the ones I've met or friends have met, including a rather strange second cousin have been rather insane, and only one was a nice loopy insane).


Perhaps we can harness the hot air produced by politicians some how?
One Labour front bencher could probably power the light bulbs in a town the size of Milton Keynes.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Did they mention how many hundreds of millions in profit they made also? Seems strange that a company can have a 'bad' year and still make hundreds of millions and why is it the cost never seems to go down that much when gas becomes cheaper?

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

This is the answer to all our woes:

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2008/01/22.jpg

And this:
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2008/01/23.jpg

Both are available for the consumer to install (or supplier to install) - so nPower, and other energy supply companies can go and screw!

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

No nuclear build more nuclear powerstations

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

near your house?

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

I don't have a problem with that. I have a coal power station no more than 5 miles from me at the moment that pumps out more crap in winter than Gordon Brown at Question time.

Last thing i want is a load of bloody turbines all around me.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/205758

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler..._Power_Station

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Now that's alot of crap there ^^^^

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Would you settle for a sea wind farm?

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

yeah fuel costs very unpredictable.

Whats stupid is that in the governments official inflation figures (which are used for wage increases, benefit increases etc.) they weight cost of clothing higher than cost of fuel. I can probably say that nearly everyone in the lower income bracket spends alot more on gas/electric than clothes.

I think its only a matter of time before the government is forced to bring in a income based heating allowance.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Noth are available but neither are viable domestically yet, the costs are ust too high and the output too low. It wont be long though and i certianly dont mind the commercial wind farms, I find them quite attractive.

Edit: Clearly not attractive sexually..... although I am in a dry spell!

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

yeah man why not? and if the worst happens and it melts down ill be dead straight away instead of suffering for ages lol .Its relatively clean except for the small amount of waste that is very bad but small is volume and shoudl should hope safe with science what it is . Yeah build it in my garden

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

In all, 7 million people in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are believed to have suffered physical or psychological injuries from the April 26, 1986, catastrophe, when reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded and caught fire.

An area roughly half the size of Colorado was contaminated by the accident, forcing the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people and ruining some of Europe's most fertile farmland.
thats why not

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Course, that helps if you actually ignore why Chernobyl actually went bang, doesn't it, otherwise it would negate the scare tactics in the stats.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

how big (or small) is that then?

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

According to wikipedia, Colorado is 104,000 square miles. England is 50,000 square miles, so roughly half the size of Colorado which makes the size of the contaminated area ermm, the size of England...

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Wasn't is somthing to do with a steam valve that failed?

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

They were buggering about with the reactor.

The water pumps on that type of reactor had backup diesel generators, but they took 40 seconds to get up to speed, so that would be 40 seconds of no water pumping around a nuclear reactor.
So they were testing to see if the momentum in the reactor's turbine was enough to cover the power shortfall.
They'd performed the same operation on another reactor without anything going wrong because they'd left the safety systems active that time. It hadn't worked though, there wasn't enough power produced.
With reactor 4 they'd made improvements to the power so were trying again.
The experiment was delayed until the night shift because a normal power station had gone offline and they needed the power for the grid.
The night shift were inexperienced, most drafted from coal power stations, and not suited to run the experiment.
They didn't even realise the reactor shutdown had been postponed so continued following the original plan, causing the shutdown to be too rapid.
To compensate they withdrew most of the control rods.
Even though only a third of the power required for the experiment was being produced, they continued on.
They increased water flow, which required removing the remaining control rods, as water and the gas produced by the rapid shutdown were absorbing neutrons like the rods should do.
When they turned off the steam to the turbine to let it's momentum power the pumps, the water flow dropped, the neutron absorbsion dropped.
The reaction increased.
Pockets of steam were produced in the cooling lines, increasing the reaction.
The neutron absorbing gas that had been produced was burnt off, increasing the reaction.
They tried to shut the reactor down by re-inserting the rods, but that took up to 20 seconds, and by design flaw reduces the coolant, actually increased the reaction.
The boron rods melted, the steam exploded, and radioactive waste was spread across the continent.

So what caused it?
Untrained staff pulling the control rods out of a badly designed nuclear reactor while trying to see if the turbine spinning could power the coolant pumps.

It wasn't a case of happy running reactor one minute, big explosion the next, the staff caused the explosion.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Makes me glad my home is heated by logs and coal. A Bin bag of logs lasts 4 days for £2.15 plus we use a little kindling and a bit of coal. We also get bags of wood off my folks and are going to start to get driftwood when its light evenings again (or when we make it out at the weekend).

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Never let the facts get in the way of a good excuse :LOL:

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

well i wont bother worrying then :)

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

mine to -my cast iron stove isn't likely to wipe out the uk if it overheats, i dont think there is such a thing as a safe reactor[yet] so i say wind power for me please at least i know my grand children wont be born with 2 heads and 3 eyes;)

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Well, wood power is pretty CO2 friendly, as it's recycling the CO2 that was absorbed not so long ago, and actually not releasing as much CO2 as was absorbed in a lot of cases.
This is why there's a lot of investment in some countries with steam locomotives running on wood chips, and powerstations too.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

that maybe so but i was wondering if wood burning or any sort of solid fuel could be carcogenic, (heard somthin before about this)?? found this, dont know if its true? hope it isnt.

http://burningissues.org/car-www/index.html

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

I am very puzzled. I am with npower, v4 online, the cheapest possible (for my postcode and consumption) . Npower will not increase my price.
Who are the unlucky souls that will be clobbered with +17%? How can they screw some of their customers and not all?

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

London, midlands and east midlands are going up the most apparently

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Glad I jumped ship to Southern Electric on their Price Fix 2008 plan just last month from Npower then.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

this may interest some people.

I initiated a move to edf from atlantic start of dec, had a gas balance as was on payment plan and for this reason atlantic blocked the move (for the electric as well).

When I paid anything owed so was 0 balance the very next day they sent out new bills meaning I still owed them money.

The day after I paid a guy turned up to read my meter presumably they about to send another bill, funny I am getting so much attention now edf are trying to initiate the move.

Incidently edf will work about 30% cheaper for me. I am in the east midlands and I have compared to other regions and found this region is already priced higher so I may be asking my mp why this region is targeted more for higher prices.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

talking of edf...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7189593.stm

im waiting a month or 2 to see where all this goes then moving (again)

Does using gas for heating make financial sense?
 

The gas increases always seem to be high and if you work out the cost of installing, running and maintaining a gas boiler fired central heating system, surely we'd all be better of using lots of electric fires to heat our homes.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

with those increase edf still the cheapest in my area before everyone else increases.

To Osem I have noticed electric is a lot cheaper.

In my situation I am the only one in my flat so really only one room needs to be heated at a time the one im in.

When I use my electric heater the impact on my electricity bill is around £10 a month. It also is effective I feel the heat within a minute and is very hot.

When I use the gas central heating I have to wait about 30 minutes before the room is warmish and the cost is about £50 a month.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

I walk about the house with my coat, scarf and wooly hat on more often now.

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

Quote:

British Gas, the UK's biggest power provider, is to raise the amount it charges for gas and electricity by 15%

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7195811.stm

Who'd a Thunk It?

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

It was bound to happen given that the wholesale price of gas has risen considerably. I wonder if I can put in for a 15% pay rise...

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

you better beleive it !!

Re: Double-digit rise in Npower bills
 

DW.... I think we need to soon enough....its only a bit above inflation :erm:

soon enough your wages just go to the council tax and G-E bills..... ARGHHHHHH :shocked: