DEAR GOD! ENERGY PRICES! :(

[The_TailGunner]

i still cant believe that in the 21st centuary we still dont have the capabillity to generate power at the local level, otherwise called "micro generation" i think. imagine if ever river had water turbines ever 5 miles, ever house had a solar panel and every area capable had wind turbines. this should be where we are at now! its insane that we are still burning coal for power and relying on russia for gas.

yeah, but the costs of maintenance would be stupidly high, which is why local generation wont work.

nice idea...too expensive to be practical unfortunately

 

[Goldy]

Holy Crips thats going to be a massive bill! Did the letter give some explanation for the rise in price?

 

[Pookie Bear]

I work in the market, and the report on BBC Breakfast was close, but not quite spot on. Another post on this board suggests they're sensationalist and he was right. I like Declan though, he seems a canny lad.

Stupidly, the cost of wholesale gas is linked to the price of oil - so the recent increases in the oil market have had a rather alarming effect on the gas wholesale market. A large portion of Britain's electricity is from gas power stations so increases in oil are like a line of dominoes straight to the consumer's pocket.

This winter a new pipe between the UK and Norway opens which is going to make some difference to the price of gas and therefore electricity. It also means we no longer have such a huge reliance on the Interconnector pipe from Belgium. Add to that a slight drop in oil prices (yay petrol) and we're moving in the right direction.

Part of the blame (not a lot, but some) can also be apportioned to the slow speed of liberalisation across Europe - national suppliers on the continent can see that Britain is starting to rely more and more on imports and they're taking advantage of it before competition opens in their own country (there's more to it, but if you thought the last sentence was boring, it gets worse).

The biggest problem (and some don't see it that way) is that the people supplying your gas and electricity are companies - they exist to make a profit and they exist to make the shareholders, not the customers, smile. Look around, like someone said before, the vast majority of people can make a saving - the number of people who are with the most expensive gas and electricity supplier (British Gas) is astounding.

With regards renewable energy, you can find information on how companies mix their production here (info for the stattos!):
http://www.electricityinfo.org/suppliers.php

If you're having problems with your gas and/or elecctricity supplier, there are ways you can get help. Firstly, speak to your supplier - most people working for suppliers may have their hands tied with regards what help they can give, but they deal with large bills every day - it can't hurt to give them a quick call.

Failing that, try the watchdog, Energywatch. They have some helpful PDFs you can download, a Knowledge Base for simple generic queries and they can, if the company hasn't helped you, take up your complaint on your behalf. They have complaints numbers and all sorts on there. If you really care about your energy bills, do yourself a favour and go have a browse of their website:
http://www.energywatch.org.uk/

Errrrr, sorry for the long post.

 

[D.P.]

yeah, the cost of living over here is insane. i really can't wait to get off this island tbh.

I'm with you on that one!

 

[Celestial Caravan]

Be very very wary when using online energy comparison sites. They *claim* to advise you of the cheapest provider in your area. What they actually do is provide you with the cheapest provider in your area that pays them a cut for introducing new customers. There can be a world of difference between the two as not all energy providers play that game.

And they are not particularly accurate with what they do do. One such energy comparision company also has an 0845 service. A friend called three times in four days - and received three conflilcting answers

 

[Visage]

Here's a question - would these energy increases produce long termn benefits?

My reasoning is this - high energy prices make energy saving measures (loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, emergy efficient appliances/lightbulbs etc) more economically viable.

If/when energy prices drop, the benefits from these measures remain, so we end up in a better situation than we were before?

Or I could be talking cojones.....

 

[D.P.]

i still cant believe that in the 21st centuary we still dont have the capabillity to generate power at the local level, otherwise called "micro generation" i think. imagine if ever river had water turbines ever 5 miles, ever house had a solar panel and every area capable had wind turbines. this should be where we are at now! its insane that we are still burning coal for power and relying on russia for gas.

And what happens when a high pressure system sits ontop of the UK for a couple of weeks without any noticible wind, this can easily happen in summer or winter.
The whole country goes without electricity in a matter of days. Unless you can store the electricity, such as at the Cruachan reservoir, then on windy days the power is wasted, on days without anywind you struggle to generate enough power. If you go without wind for long enough then you are screwed.

Imagine a winter high pressure system which bis both very cold, very dry and very cloudy, with no wind. No wind power, no solar power, river levels might be minal or frozen over and everyone will be having haters and kettles going full blast and the lights on for longer being in winter. It would be almost impossible to store the required engery for several weeks of that kind of weather. hence why at leats 70% of power must come from conventional sources to ensure supply.

But by all means, install a solar panel on your roof. it will take around 10 years to pay off, similar with a wind turbine.

 

[RaohNS]

Southern Electric. They seem to not rely on the Russians for wholesale power and use alternative sources from Iceland and Denmark and also own many wind turbines.

Hey we use Southern Electric, we find them for the most part to be very cheap we pay £25 a month D/D on gas and £20 on leccy and at the end of each quarter you're probably talking another £50/£60 to pay so its like £130 a quarter better than the £700 bills that i have my work colleagues tell me with British Gas and nPower

And i get 10% discount at Argoos

>| Raoh |<

 

[Jonny69]

Nuclear plants cost billions to build and the power they produce is not cheap so it is not a solution to high energy bills... nor is it a long-term solution due to finite supplies of uranium.

FWIW I'm with edf energy and I believe my daytime units are about 15p/kwh. which is over 100% more than it was two years ago...... sadly I haven't had a 100% pay rise in that time.

Funny you should say that because in the 10 years I've lived away from home my rent has gone from £50 per week to £100 per week, petrol from 50p/litre to 95p/litre, energy prices have more than doubled, a loaf of bread is 90p when it used to be 40p etc but yet I notice that wages are roughly the same. I used to be able to "get by" quite well on my £8K apprentice wage but I'm actually not doing much better now on over double that these days. I certainly can't afford to go out whenever I felt like it like I used to.

I think I'm going to put my rates up again

 

[Pookie Bear]

better than the £700 bills that i have my work colleagues tell me with British Gas and nPower

Never underestimate the comfort factor! People are content to just stay with whomever is responsible for the property because it's the easiest way. They hear nightmares of what happened when their mate's neighbour's cousin switched supplier and they think it'll be a nightmare.

People who are with British Gas for gas and the old leccy-board for electricity and not doing themselves any favours - but how many times can you tell them? Just for the record, I don't work for a supplier

And Visage, I don't see a flaw with your reasoning, but I would suggest that you look at improving your efficiency no matter what the prices or situation is. Simple things like taking your heating down 1c, changing all your lightbulbs and wrapping a coat around your old style water-boiler can make a noticeable difference to your usage.

Check here for more info on Energy Efficiency (and a home test):
http://www.est.org.uk/

 

[Lord_Kokain]

British Gas are insane! I happened to be told the other day that for some reason, they havent set up an account for us at the place we fairly recently moved into. Its a long,long mess but to cut it short, since we dont keep the meter reading that we told them at the time(who would have guessed we would need it about 3.5 months later...), they had to charge us an "estimate" for that time and this so called estimate for a 2 bed house is average of 57 pounds per month!?! And we are talking about 3 summer months when we dont use gas for heating.

 

[VaderDSL]

russia has europe by the balls.... they know that if we do not pay for their gas, the chinese and indians will... so pay up or freeze essentially....

our country is too obsessed with "the enviroment" and forgot about the fact that we all have a basic need for energy... by all means try and protect the enviroment, but the extent to which it has gone will mean all those damn tree huggers will be freezing and living by candlelight very soon....

time to wake up, build more nuclear plants, plant more wind turbines and we can worry about the "asthethics" of the enviroment when we're warm and the lights are on....

Too bloody right!!! All these people complaining that wind farms are unsightly, just who are they kidding? I bet when there are brown outs occuring regularly and energy prices are through the roof they won't complain about them looking ugly!

Some people are just bloody short sighted (as is this Government) Fusion is not coming, we need Nuclear/Wind/Tide Energy to allow us to become less dependant on other countries supplies of gas/coal and oil.

 

[singist]

It's good old Capitalism at its best ...... they worked hard to get where they are, what's the problem? (from another thread).

 

[locutus12]

Warning... long catch up post comming...

.
our country is too obsessed with "the enviroment" and forgot about the fact that we all have a basic need for energy... by all means try and protect the enviroment, but the extent to which it has gone will mean all those damn tree huggers will be freezing and living by candlelight very soon....

ask around, if people listened to the average tree hugger like myself then this country would have new nuclear/wind/solar/ and a massive tidal system by now.

According to the news this morning, the cost of gas has gone down over the year.. its just they take ages to pass the savings on

there quick enough to increase the bills when it goes up though.

yeah, but the costs of maintenance would be stupidly high, which is why local generation wont work.

nice idea...too expensive to be practical unfortunately

from this former engineering student to yourself... solar panels and wind turbines are simplistic designs. provided they dont actually break, they dont cost a lot to look after at all. off shore turbines cost a small fourtune though.

Here's a question - would these energy increases produce long termn benefits?

My reasoning is this - high energy prices make energy saving measures (loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, emergy efficient appliances/lightbulbs etc) more economically viable. *snip*

i think the increases have gone beyond being an environmental incentive to just being plane difficult to pay

And what happens when a high pressure system sits ontop of the UK for a couple of weeks without any noticible wind, this can easily happen in summer or winter.
The whole country goes without electricity in a matter of days.

or it fires up the gas stations it has in reserve for just such an event. when i said local power generation, i didnt say scrap the national grid, pay attention.

Unless you can store the electricity, such as at the Cruachan reservoir, then on windy days the power is wasted, on days without anywind you struggle to generate enough power. If you go without wind for long enough then you are screwed.

The ecess energy can be stored in a number of different ways whether its just stored in batterys for your home to use or sent back to the grid for it to pump water up a hill ready to be used in water turbines when its allowed to flow down. there are a number of ways so as you can see your not screwed.

Imagine a winter high pressure system which bis both very cold, very dry and very cloudy, with no wind. No wind power, no solar power, river levels might be minal or frozen over and everyone will be having haters and kettles going full blast and the lights on for longer being in winter. It would be almost impossible to store the required engery for several weeks of that kind of weather. hence why at leats 70% of power must come from conventional sources to ensure supply.

the only time there will be no wind no sun and every river frozen all at the same time is when the world ends. be sensible.

But by all means, install a solar panel on your roof. it will take around 10 years to pay off, similar with a wind turbine.

wind turbines take less time than solar to pay off and solar takes 8 years on average not ten. Solar needs extra scientific investment to make it a cheap viable alternative.

 

[Raumarik]

I signed up for a two year price freeze on my gas/electricity a few months ago, initially it raised the cost as it was a top up fee of £3/month but I think i'm already saving as they've already increased the prices I would have been paying.

UK really needs to sort out it's own sources of power and quickly. Get those nuke power stations up and running!

 

[singist]

I signed up for a two year price freeze on my gas/electricity a few months ago, initially it raised the cost as it was a top up fee of £3/month but I think i'm already saving as they've already increased the prices I would have been paying.

UK really needs to sort out it's own sources of power and quickly. Get those nuke power stations up and running!

IIRC it takes a minimum of TEN years to get a Nuclear power station on line, more likely to be FIFTEEN or TWENTY ....

 

[Radiation]

i still cant believe that in the 21st centuary we still dont have the capabillity to generate power at the local level, otherwise called "micro generation" i think. imagine if ever river had water turbines ever 5 miles, ever house had a solar panel and every area capable had wind turbines. this should be where we are at now! its insane that we are still burning coal for power and relying on russia for gas.

We should have these things regardless of the short time costs so we become more independent and secure, you have to be somewhat concerned with what could happen if these systems we all live on fail, the world would be a very different place if everyone was independent.