Energy Saving Scheme.

[Westward]

Well they fooled me so perhaps I'm dumber than I thought.

To my simple mind I thought that if we minimised our electricity usage during the stated period we would be rewarded with money. Not so; what they really do is compare your usage today against your previous usage and reward you if you use at least a Kw less.

We are retired and the kids are long gone so compared with when we worked, we get up an hour or so later, have lunch later and supper later. This means that our electricity usage was normally very low before 6 p.m., consequently we get nothing back from the scheme.

In a word Oops!

[ditchman]

38 minutes ago, Westward said:

Well they fooled me so perhaps I'm dumber than I thought.

To my simple mind I thought that if we minimised our electricity usage during the stated period we would be rewarded with money. Not so; what they really do is compare your usage today against your previous usage and reward you if you use at least a Kw less.

We are retired and the kids are long gone so compared with when we worked, we get up an hour or so later, have lunch later and supper later. This means that our electricity usage was normally very low before 6 p.m., consequently we get nothing back from the scheme.

In a word Oops!

Ooops...........................is that the best you can come out with.......i thought at least 8 sentances...3 papagraphs of unrimitting profanity would have been the bear minimum

[JohnfromUK]

1 hour ago, Westward said:

Not so; what they really do is compare your usage today against your previous usage and reward you if you use at least a Kw less.

 

Yes, that is the way I understood it worked.  I only use approximately 10 KWh (units) per 24 hours, and guess that typically 2 or 3 of those 'might' be in the critical period as I do tend to be cooking around then.  So - maybe I could save 2 KWh?  For what it seemed to pay me back for saving that, it wasn't worth the effort.

[Weihrauch17]

This scheme demonstrates the total and utter failure of the UK's energy policy and the absolute economy wrecking insanity of Nett Zero which is nothing more than a sound bite costing trillions to Taxpayers around the world in those countries stupid enough to attempt it..

[henry d]

If you are a couple of old **** sitting in front of the box after your evening meal rather than a young family of 4-5 having lots of different meal times and media as well as putting on the washing and drying...what did you expect?

[oowee]

20 minutes ago, henry d said:

If you are a couple of old **** sitting in front of the box after your evening meal rather than a young family of 4-5 having lots of different meal times and media as well as putting on the washing and drying...what did you expect?

🤣

If you want to cut energy bill don't get a smart meter yet. 

[Weihrauch17]

26 minutes ago, henry d said:

If you are a couple of old **** sitting in front of the box after your evening meal rather than a young family of 4-5 having lots of different meal times and media as well as putting on the washing and drying...what did you expect?

What a totally patronising stupid comment.  I expect the Govt to have an energy Policy that provides enough energy to support all the countries requirements at all times as cheaply as possible and that means using our own resources and anything else they need to do.  Politicians need jailing, they will bankrupt the country with their insane Nett Zero that the rest of the world ignores.  We need all the  Utilities back to be run by Govt at cost.

Edited January 24, 2023 by Weihrauch17

[henry d]

4 minutes ago, Weihrauch17 said:

What a totally patronising stupid comment. 

Not really, some people need to understand that if you use 2 candle power an hour and another uses 5kw then there is only one needs to cut back. If it comes over as patronising then sorry but you need to have a word with yourself. 

And BTW we're the 2 candle power demographic so don't get all cut up.

Edited January 24, 2023 by henry d

[Weihrauch17]

No have a word with yourself, the only reason we are in this position is because of total Govt ineptitude on a gigantic economy wrecking scale.

[Yellow Bear]

11 hours ago, Weihrauch17 said:

Utilities back to be run by Govt at cost.

Sadly that would mean a worse service and higher cost like it did before.

[Westward]

1 hour ago, Yellow Bear said:

Sadly that would mean a worse service and higher cost like it did before.

Sadly indeed but as an old **** I well remember just how awful the public utilities and transport systems were.

12 hours ago, henry d said:

If you are a couple of old **** sitting in front of the box after your evening meal rather than a young family of 4-5 having lots of different meal times and media as well as putting on the washing and drying...what did you expect?

That sort of misses my point which is that the message sent out and which is still being recycled by the media, is that all you had to do was avoid using high power consumption machines like dryers, dishwashers etc and Hey Presto they give you money.

Perhaps I'm just gullible but as a side issue these problems with the grid are there because we rely on imported energy to make up the difference when the wind doesn't blow and their much vaunted and beloved (cough) renewable energy isn't producing. This week they haven't been able to import as much as they wanted due to because... Guess what? Yep, higher demand in Europe therefore less available for us. What a fiasco!

 

[scutt]

  i have a white meter installed when the house was all electric and had storage heaters that charged  up after midnight until 6 am this electric is cheaper per unit than day time use.So we have used washer after midnight and to run the fridge / freezer costs less thru the night.Ahh but they now have cottoned on and have raised the price per unit even thru the night.

Will keep away from smart meters for as long as I can something fishy about them I.M.O.

[12gauge82]

15 hours ago, Weihrauch17 said:

What a totally patronising stupid comment.  I expect the Govt to have an energy Policy that provides enough energy to support all the countries requirements at all times as cheaply as possible and that means using our own resources and anything else they need to do.  Politicians need jailing, they will bankrupt the country with their insane Nett Zero that the rest of the world ignores.  We need all the  Utilities back to be run by Govt at cost.

Unfortunately that is usually the only type of post you'll get from Henry, if you point this out to him enough he'll ignore you and find an easier victim. 

[oowee]

1 hour ago, scutt said:

  i have a white meter installed when the house was all electric and had storage heaters that charged  up after midnight until 6 am this electric is cheaper per unit than day time use.So we have used washer after midnight and to run the fridge / freezer costs less thru the night.Ahh but they now have cottoned on and have raised the price per unit even thru the night.

Will keep away from smart meters for as long as I can something fishy about them I.M.O.

Nothing wrong with them long term but it's better currently to be in control of your meter readings. 

We will need them to reduce the number of power stations built as we move to smart grid. 

3 hours ago, Westward said:

 

Perhaps I'm just gullible but as a side issue these problems with the grid are there because we rely on imported energy to make up the difference when the wind doesn't blow and their much vaunted and beloved (cough) renewable energy isn't producing. This week they haven't been able to import as much as they wanted due to because... Guess what? Yep, higher demand in Europe therefore less available for us. What a fiasco!

 

The problems with the grid are because we have weak government without a policy for anything. Power transmission between coutries has to be a good thing, creating a more efficient system that benefits all. Making the most of export opportunities for the UK. 

[old man]

The only grid our politicos are interested in is the one that shuts off the bar?

[bigroomboy]

I think there needs to be a bit of a reality check here. We have one of most reliable electricity grids in the world. For all the complaining above I've not seen anybody having the lights turned off? What we may need to realise is the excess of the past with as much as you want on demand are gone and we need to react to when energy is plentiful and be restrained when it's not. What's so wrong with that? Also it's worth looking at the contribution renewables make to the grid on a daily basis. For the vast majority of the time it's contributing more than half of total demand, it's truly amazing, a mixture of renewables and nuclear are the only way we will achieve energy independence. For a group that are supposed the cherish the countryside there are plenty here advocating for polluting it!

[Weihrauch17]

Just read in the Telegraph that when people were being paid to turn things off Wind farms were being being paid to switch Turbines off.. Unbelievable incompetence or something worse?

Wind farms were paid to switch off on Tuesday evening at the same time households were asked to turn their lights off to save energy.

Between 4.30pm and 6pm on Tuesday, wind farms were paid about £65,000 to stop producing enough electricity to power 50,000 homes for a day, according to data from the UK Wind Curtailment Monitor. 

At the same time, households were being asked to switch off their devices to help save electricity, amid concerns from National Grid ESO, the legally separate part of the National Grid which balances supply and demand, that it would not have sufficient energy supply. 

In the end, these concerns were not realised. However, the grid operator said that payments to wind farms to switch off were likely to occur in the future, even as the country was forced to turn off devices to stop blackouts. 

Over the course of Monday and Tuesday, as the country faced strains in energy supply, wind farms were paid more than £1 million to stop producing enough electricity to power 360,000 homes for a day.

A lack of infrastructure to carry electricity from wind farms, which are mainly located offshore and in Scotland, means that National Grid ESO regularly asks them to stop producing to avoid overwhelming the local grid. 

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The cost is borne by billpayers and reached record highs of nearly £1 billion last year, reflecting the growth of wind power, as well as record energy prices. 

A spokesman for the National Grid said that bottlenecks in the system meant it could not always get the electricity where it was needed, even when supplies were low. 

While the Government has encouraged the development of wind farms to help cut carbon emissions in recent decades, it has failed to put adequate investment on the infrastructure needed to transport or store the electricity. 

The system was described as “unsustainable” by a top government energy adviser and raises doubts about the pace of wind power development in the UK. 

Sir Dieter Helm, a professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford, and an energy adviser to the Government, said it was “obviously not a sustainable position”.

He said: “It is a consequence of developing wind on a site-by-site basis with no economic incentives to build in the right places and the failure to develop the grid in an integrated and co-ordinated way.” 

In 2022, consumers paid £215 million to turn wind farms off, and £717 million to buy gas-powered electricity to make up the difference, according to UK Wind Curtailment Monitor data.   

The National Grid forecasts that levels of curtailment will increase fourfold by 2030, with costs forecast to reach £2.5 billion a year. 

The majority of curtailment is from wind farms in and off the coast of Scotland, which has seen a boom in turbine construction, but is geographically just a fraction of the UK’s electricity demand. 

The National Grid estimates that as much as £16 billion of investment in transmission infrastructure will be needed to keep pace with the development of onshore wind over the next 20 years, including hundreds of miles of new power lines and cables across the country. 

Adam Berman, the deputy policy director of Energy UK, a trade body, said that paying wind farms to switch off was “the price that we pay for running the most efficient electricity system that we can”.

“Because at the moment there is still a mismatch between network and transmission infrastructure, and generation infrastructure,” he said. 

Mr Berman said that the Government needed to prioritise infrastructure, including energy storage, power lines and the development of onshore wind in southern England. 

However, he said “slowing down the rate of increase [of wind power] is not the way to go”, despite the majority of planned new wind power expected to be north of the border. 

More wind turbines urged

The Government has set the target of decarbonising the power system by 2035 and becoming a net exporter of electricity by 2040. 

A consultation this year could see rules around onshore wind development in England relaxed, but industry figures have also warned that we need to double the rate of offshore wind turbines to meet our targets. 

Sam Hall, the director of the Conservative Environment Network, said: “This issue underlines the importance of reforming Ofgem’s remit to speed up new grid infrastructure and of deploying more energy storage, so we can use all of our offshore wind power and don’t have to pay generators to curtail. 

“Cheap wind power is lowering people’s bills overall, but we will not feel the full benefit until we start harnessing all our wind capacity.” 

Edited January 25, 2023 by Weihrauch17

[henry d]

Uk wind curtailment monitor 

Had to look it up, it's an app...who monitors it? Why is it needed? Who on earth needs something like that?

[bigroomboy]

Weihrauch, don't let the media wind you up. That's just making a story out of a perfectly normal situation. The grid must be balanced at all times across it and decisions are constantly made about where and how the power is generated. Part of the contract companies have for building any power generation is that when they could be generating, but are told not to, then they get paid a compensation. It seems mad from a household perspective, but if you didn't have systems like that then nobody would invest in building the infrastructure in the first place. The other points raised about the grids transmission capacity across areas are just a classic policy error that happens in every industry, all the time, but it will get sorted now the issue is being realised and you will probably never hear the positive news when it does, as positive news does not generate clicks and ad revenue for the media.

[JohnfromUK]

I am lucky enough to visit the Highlands every year (and have done so for over 30 years).  In the last 5 years there has been a really MASSIVE increase in wind generators visible from where I stay (and also seen on the journey there and back).  Massive.  In addition two estates I visit have new hydro generation within the last few years.  I am aware of at least 3 (and probably 6) large pumped storage hydro projects currently in various stages of planning/construction on Loch Ness.  These are 100's of Mega Watts. 

All this involved a huge flow of power from the Highlands (or to the Highlands when pumping 'up') and it is a long way from the big electricity users (mainly cities and towns) further south.  Putting in the increased transmission capacity (pylons, cabling etc.) is both time consuming and needs to be across wild and difficult to access country - but it is happening.

It is a bit chicken and egg - if you waited for the transmission to be in place before installing renewable generation, you miss out on the very many days they can be operated.  If you install the generating capacity (as has at least partially been done), there will be some days when generation capacity is bigger than the transmission can carry to a user .......... hence the need to pay 'not to generate'.  As stated above - it is called "Balancing the Grid" and having large pumped hydro storage capacity is going to enable surplus power to be used to store 'power' in hydro reservoirs above Loch Ness - and then be released when needed to make up shortfalls in supply.

A number of these pumped hydro schemes exist (and have for some time) such as Dinorwig in Wales (https://www.fhc.co.uk/en/power-stations/dinorwig-power-station/) and Cruachan (https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/) near Oban in Scotland.  Both were open to the public to visit (I think only Cruachan is now) and having visited both, it is interesting and impressive.

Edited January 26, 2023 by JohnfromUK

[oowee]

11 hours ago, bigroomboy said:

I think there needs to be a bit of a reality check here. We have one of most reliable electricity grids in the world. For all the complaining above I've not seen anybody having the lights turned off? What we may need to realise is the excess of the past with as much as you want on demand are gone and we need to react to when energy is plentiful and be restrained when it's not. What's so wrong with that? Also it's worth looking at the contribution renewables make to the grid on a daily basis. For the vast majority of the time it's contributing more than half of total demand, it's truly amazing, a mixture of renewables and nuclear are the only way we will achieve energy independence. For a group that are supposed the cherish the countryside there are plenty here advocating for polluting it!

Whilst the grid and generators have served us well the grid is old and not smart. It cannot respond to small scale input, it lacks flexibility and capacity. There is a a level of disconect between generation and distribution. Solar PV energy from house roofs cannot be used and is burnt off as heat. It cannot respond as it is to a large scale ev market. Ultimately we need significantly more generation and I guess a different regulatory framework. 

@JohnfromUK you make some good points about generation. With all of the natural energy sources here we could be at the forefront of all types of natural power capture. 

[JohnfromUK]

24 minutes ago, oowee said:

With all of the natural energy sources here we could be at the forefront of all types of natural power capture. 

This https://www.coireglas.com/project

is one of several currently in various stages of planning/approvals/early construction around Loch Ness.  I believe there are about 6 in total, 3 on the north side and 3 on the south side.  One of the south side ones (Foyers) is already present (https://www.sserenewables.com/hydro/foyers/), but is to be much enlarged.  Foyers was built (originally as a non pumped straight hydro station) many years ago to make aluminium and was one of the first aluminium manufacturing plants in the UK (1896).

[udderlyoffroad]

1 hour ago, oowee said:

The problems with the grid are because we have weak government without a policy for anything.

We have had a succession of appalling lack of energy strategies from governments of all colours.  To me, the worst offender is Ed Miliband implementing a disastrous energy policy, that no government since has had the balls to toss out.

Only the traitorous May did anything of note, and she made it worse by signing a resolutely un-costed and un-metric'd* policy into law, viz. Net Zero.

1 hour ago, oowee said:

Power transmission between coutries has to be a good thing, creating a more efficient system that benefits all

No it's not!  It's best used as a back up in dire shortages, should in no way form part of your core strategy as an island nation.  HV-DC links are ruinously expensive to build and operate.  Mainland Europe**, with its synchronised grid using direct AC links, is of course, a different matter.  There they can trade between themselves to their hearts' content. 

 

12 hours ago, bigroomboy said:

I think there needs to be a bit of a reality check here. We have one of most reliable electricity grids in the world. For all the complaining above I've not seen anybody having the lights turned off?

Respectfully, your comments might've been accurate 20 years ago, certainly not anymore. 

We came appallingly close to rolling black outs within the last week.  This is absolutely, totally unacceptable for a developed nation rich in energy resources.  We must be the only nation on earth to build offshore wind and then not put in sufficient infrastructure to connect it to the grid, save for corrupt dictatorships.  It's insane, and if you want to 'normalise' it, go ahead, but I'm not buying.

*Nobody seems to know how we measure when 'Net Zero' has been achieved.  Which is just pure insanity, whatever you think of net zero.

** Please note, not the bluddy EU!  

[henry d]

4 hours ago, udderlyoffroad said:

We must be the only nation on earth to build offshore wind and then not put in sufficient infrastructure to connect it to the grid,

Not far from me is Shepherd Offshore and it sits on the old Swan Hunter site, the main thing that they are doing since we moved here is load sub sea cables onto reels and onto ships. Not as busy as Swans used to be but it's constant. I'm sure that they would go faster but it's big heavy industry.

Screenshot from maps photos. 

[udderlyoffroad]

The problem is not the subsea tie-back to shore, it's what happens once it gets onshore.  I've been to a certain NE-based manufacturer of subsea cables, and they too were doing load-outs near constantly.  The machinery involved, together with the constant pressure to produce is truly something to behold, and I wish I could share the pictures I have.

I'm sorry but a large offshore wind (or even onshore) wind project which has an inadequate tie to the grid is an utter failure.