In article ,
Dave writes:
I'm off to uswitch NOW. btw Anyone know if there's any body worth writing a
complaint to - some Ombudsman maybe or DEFRA perhaps? Probably a waste of time
but maybe a good way to let off steam.

The Government. What's happening now has been accurately predicted
for the last 30 years, due to the energy policy followed over that
period. Oh, and it gets a lot worse than it is now, both in price
but more seriously in quality (continuity) of supply. The UK has
enjoyed a high quality electricity supply for the last ~50 years,
but that's just come to an end (for multiple reasons).

--
Andrew Gabriel

On 2006-07-29 17:28:09 +0100, (Andrew
Gabriel) said:

In article ,
Dave writes:
I'm off to uswitch NOW. btw Anyone know if there's any body worth writing a
complaint to - some Ombudsman maybe or DEFRA perhaps? Probably a waste of time
but maybe a good way to let off steam.

The Government. What's happening now has been accurately predicted
for the last 30 years, due to the energy policy followed over that
period. Oh, and it gets a lot worse than it is now, both in price
but more seriously in quality (continuity) of supply. The UK has
enjoyed a high quality electricity supply for the last ~50 years,
but that's just come to an end (for multiple reasons).

Do you mean in terms of continuity, availability, price stability,... ??

What's your prediction on where it goes from here?

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Dave writes:
I'm off to uswitch NOW. btw Anyone know if there's any body worth writing
a
complaint to - some Ombudsman maybe or DEFRA perhaps? Probably a waste of
time
but maybe a good way to let off steam.

The Government.

I don't think it's worth complaining to them. They don't listen to anything
we say.

What's happening now has been accurately predicted
for the last 30 years,

I'd have said longer than that. Our oldest is going on for 50 and she was
under ten when I first heard such forecasts.

due to the energy policy followed over that
period. Oh, and it gets a lot worse than it is now, both in price
but more seriously in quality (continuity) of supply. The UK has
enjoyed a high quality electricity supply for the last ~50 years,
but that's just come to an end (for multiple reasons).

Indeed. So we have to make our own arrangements.

I've just baked enough bread for four weeks in a stone bread oven Spouse
built last year, using one firing of waste timber. If I'd used the domestic
fan oven it would have taken several days. Spouse is currently having a
bath, having been made filthy by cutting up a neighbour's felled apple tree.
We'll use the wood for making things and firing the oven in a year or so. He
doesn't like baths, prefers a shower, but has accepted that no grid power
will be used for a bath, unlike a shower, because of our solar water heater
with pv pump.

Now I realise that such solutions (only two of what we do) aren't possible
for everyone but I'm sure that everyone can make changes to his/her life so
that power use is reduced. That would save money, which should be a spur!

Mary



--
Andrew Gabriel

Mary Fisher wrote:


The Government.

I don't think it's worth complaining to them. They don't listen to
anything we say.

How very true Mary. And then they wonder why the election turnouts are so
low.


--
Dave
The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

The message k
from "The Medway Handyman" contains
these words:

I don't think it's worth complaining to them. They don't listen to
anything we say.

How very true Mary. And then they wonder why the election turnouts are so
low.

Worse, they keep pretending to ask, then look all hurt when we still
fail to take them seriously. It's 'cos their attempts to listen are so
patently just glamour.

--
Skipweasel
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
.uk...
Mary Fisher wrote:


The Government.

I don't think it's worth complaining to them. They don't listen to
anything we say.

That's what I thought for a long time. But now, I believe that the seeming
lack of action is due as much (if not more) to the incompetent and uncaring
_Civil Service_.

Sylvain.

How very true Mary. And then they wonder why the election turnouts are so
low.


--
Dave
The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

In article ,
Andy Hall writes:
On 2006-07-29 17:28:09 +0100, (Andrew
Gabriel) said:
The Government. What's happening now has been accurately predicted
for the last 30 years, due to the energy policy followed over that
period. Oh, and it gets a lot worse than it is now, both in price
but more seriously in quality (continuity) of supply. The UK has
enjoyed a high quality electricity supply for the last ~50 years,
but that's just come to an end (for multiple reasons).

Do you mean in terms of continuity, availability, price stability,... ??

All.

At the beginning of the 1970's, our electricity came mainly from
our own coal, with well over 300 years of reserves known, so
we were completely self-sufficient in electricity supply. Ten
years later, we were no longer mining coal, but importing it.
Then came the sell off and split up of the CEGB. The CEGB's
remit had been to provide a highly reliable electricity supply,
and indeed we had one of the most reliable supplies in the
world under the control of the CEGB. Following the sale of the
generating plant, the remit became maximum profit. That's not
consistant with keeping generating plant in reserve for
emergency backup, and such plant was decomissioned. Also,
within 8 years of privitisation, the UK electricity generated
from gas went from nearly 0% to 40%. This was mostly done by
companies who purchased cheap low efficiency gas generators,
and signed up for cheap gas contracts which allowed the gas
companies to cut them off if there was a shortage. Combine
this with the privitisation of the gas industry, which similarly
resulted in scrapping nearly all the country's gas storage
capacity (down to just 3 day's worth at one point). This was
fine until we had a cold winter, and there wasn't enough gas
capacity to supply domestic heating and the gas generators,
and we came very close to rolling blackouts. This did alarm
the government, who up until then had ignored all warnings
about loss of generation contingency.

Gas storage capacity has been increased to about 11 days now
(contrast with 75 days in Germany, which they still consider
far too little and are expanding). We've had a few more
incidents of being right on the very edge of rolling backouts
due to insufficient electricity generation in the last few
years, where we've been withing minutes of initiating load
shedding (blacking out large areas to maintain stability of
supply to the remainder).

Another factor, which has shown up recently in Soho, is the
lack of maintenance to things like redundant electricity feeds,
resulting in extended power outages when failures occur and
backup facilities are no longer operational. One issue here
is that maintenance to infrastructure used to be done during
the summer when consumption was lower, but in many areas of
the country, consumption is now higher in the summer than the
winter due to air conditioning load, making finding usable
maintenance windows harder.

What's your prediction on where it goes from here?

It's just a matter of time before we cross over our peak
generation capacity on some cold winter's day and chunks of
the UK get cut off, as the baseline consumption is rising each
year. Alternatively, failure of just one large power station
could trigger this. We needed to start building replacement
nuclear or coal plants over 10 years ago. Also, expect to see
more smaller areas get hit by power cuts as the network
increasingly suffers from aging kit and lack of maintenance.

We are currently stuck with a system based on a leagacy of
dirt cheap gas. Look what's happened to prices now that we
are no longer self-sufficient in gas, and bear in mind that
we are still 90% self-sufficient, currently importing only 10%
of consumption. This will rise to 40% in the next 3-4 years,
so just imagine where gas and electricity prices are likely to
go.

--
Andrew Gabriel