The energy crisis

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

My Meter says Cubic Foot and I have used 6 of those Units on the Meter in 1 month.

One 'unit' on imperial meters is actually 100 Cubic Feet.
The multiplier to get to units on a M3 meter is 2.93, so you have used just under 18 units, which multiplied by 11.2 gives you the same result of around £190.

[SnoopZ]

When does the price increase kick in as Bulb have recommended I lower my payments from £130 to £99 as I am £311 in credit, surely it is a waste of time me lowering it?

Edit

1st October I guess I will leave the direct debit at £130.

[Jaymoss]

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

When does the price increase kick in as Bulb have recommended I lower my payments from £130 to £99 as I am £311 in credit, surely it is a waste of time me lowering it?

Edit

1st October I guess I will leave the direct debit at £130.

you will be getting £67 back anyway for 6 months so you can see your usage and costs and adjust later. I raised my payments £10 and it will take my credit down about a fiver a month as I was paying £110 but using £90. I want to maintain a healthy credit

---------- Post added at 10:53 ---------- Previous post was at 10:48 ----------

Just checked my Octopus and they have adjusted my DD to £53 ready for it

[SnoopZ]

Originally Posted by Jaymoss

you will be getting £67 back anyway for 6 months so you can see your usage and costs and adjust later. I raised my payments £10 and it will take my credit down about a fiver a month as I was paying £110 but using £90. I want to maintain a healthy credit

---------- Post added at 10:53 ---------- Previous post was at 10:48 ----------

Just checked my Octopus and they have adjusted my DD to £53 ready for it

Doesn't the £65 get paid to the bank account, I'm not clued up on how all this works?

---------- Post added at 11:03 ---------- Previous post was at 10:57 ----------

Just lowered my DD to £99.

[joglynne]

Originally Posted by Jaymoss

you will be getting £67 back anyway for 6 months so you can see your usage and costs and adjust later. I raised my payments £10 and it will take my credit down about a fiver a month as I was paying £110 but using £90. I want to maintain a healthy credit

---------- Post added at 10:53 ---------- Previous post was at 10:48 ----------

Just checked my Octopus and they have adjusted my DD to £53 ready for it

I'm with Octopus as well and my DD has been reduced by £67 per month from my regular 1st of the month payment in October. This link from the MSE site shows how the rebate will be handled by each energy supplier.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ne...ng-support-pa/

If you have gas with one supplier, and electricity with another, how does that work ? will you get the discount twice ?

[SnoopZ]

Originally Posted by Paul

If you have gas with one supplier, and electricity with another, how does that work ? will you get the discount twice ?

It's paid to electricity customers.

Those with a domestic electricity meter point paying for their energy via standard credit, payment card and direct debit will receive an automatic deduction to their bills over the 6 month period – totalling £400.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/4...ds-this-winter

Ah, Thanks.

[Taf]

"The cost of charging an electric car surges by 42% in just four months to 18p per mile, compared with 19p for petrol."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...9p-petrol.html

[Jaymoss]

Originally Posted by Taf

"The cost of charging an electric car surges by 42% in just four months to 18p per mile, compared with 19p for petrol."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...9p-petrol.html

I have seen videos recently of magnetic generators made of of simple motors that allegedly generate upto 10 KW of electricity basically just for the cost of the generators and they are not that massive either. I am not a physicist is this actually possible? and if it is why are there not systems on the market.

I do not get why the power of nature is not getting harnessed more. We have vast rivers in this country surely it would be easy to have multiple run off per mile generating energy. I saw this one guy on you tube living off the grid simply using solar in the summer and then tapping energy from a near by stream in the winter months. I just do not get it.

The billions they are paying for this energy price cut down could be paid towards giving most houses a solar powered system. Yes the one off cost would be massive but the rewards would get that way down the line.

Originally Posted by Jaymoss

I have seen videos recently of magnetic generators made of of simple motors that allegedly generate upto 10 KW of electricity basically just for the cost of the generators and they are not that massive either. I am not a physicist is this actually possible? and if it is why are there not systems on the market.

I do not get why the power of nature is not getting harnessed more. We have vast rivers in this country surely it would be easy to have multiple run off per mile generating energy. I saw this one guy on you tube living off the grid simply using solar in the summer and then tapping energy from a near by stream in the winter months. I just do not get it.

The billions they are paying for this energy price cut down could be paid towards giving most houses a solar powered system. Yes the one off cost would be massive but the rewards would get that way down the line.

There are micro-hydro schemes all over the place, the problem is they just don’t generate enough electricity to be a magic bullet. They do what they can but they’re a small part of the energy mix.

You can’t interfere with a river every mile of its length because that would have a cumulative effect on the character of the river downstream. The energy you get from a hydro turbine isn’t conjured up from nowhere - it is extracted from the kinetic energy of the water, and once it has been removed from the river, the river doesn’t behave in quite the same way as before.

There already is a government grant scheme for solar panels and the recent VAT cut on energy also applies to solar panel installations.

(Edit). This micro hydro scheme is up where I used to live. It can generate 100kW when there’s enough water - and these schemes do particularly well in the Scottish highlands, were there is always a lot of water and plenty of fast-flowing streams running down steep hillsides. There are far fewer opportunities to install similar schemes near the UK’s main population centres. https://buchananhydro.coop/location-and-design/

[Taf]

Every time a hydroelectric plan has been put forward for The Severn, most of the money went to consultants before the ideas were rejected.

And usually rejected due to the effect on migrant seabirds.

Originally Posted by Taf

Every time a hydroelectric plan has been put forward for The Severn, most of the money went to consultants before the ideas were rejected.

And usually rejected due to the effect on migrant seabirds.

The Severn is a different kettle of (oho!) fish. Likewise the Mersey where a similar tidal barrage plan has been mooted.

Schemes like this fundamentally alter enormous swathes of wild habitat and if the whole reason we’re doing it is to be more responsible stewards of the planet, that makes them a non-starter.

There are alternatives, such as building tidal pools in the estuaries and generating power from the filling and emptying of them, but these would be on a much smaller scale.

TBH I think the future of tidal power generation probably lies in free-floating turbines like this one:

https://www.orbitalmarine.com/

There is a fully-functioning prototype deployed off Orkney and it’s rated at 2MW, which isn’t to be sniffed at.

[Jaymoss]

Thanks for info and explanation Chris

Originally Posted by Jaymoss

Thanks for info and explanation Chris

No worries … you’re right about domestic solar though, we really do need more of it and perhaps the schemes available need to be more ambitious. I really hadn’t appreciated just how effective a modern installation can be until I moved into a house with one.

Yesterday I discovered that the inverter (that converts DC power from the panels to AC for the house) also gives an instant readout of what’s being generated. The inverter is in the loft, so it’s not convenient for monitoring constantly, but I went and had a quick look earlier on:



This is a late September afternoon under a watery sun, making enough to run my dishwasher more or less for free. I had started to suspect a week or so ago that it might be most cost effective to run our dishwasher in the afternoon when the solar panels are busiest, having pondered the difference between what it costs us to buy electricity from the grid and what our supplier will pay us for excess solar generation. It is definitely better for us to try to use it than sell it.

So for the last couple of days I have been loading the dishwasher throughout the evening and into the next morning but using the delay timer so it starts around 1pm.