Energy companies' stranglehold

jendurham Thanks for getting back to me and thank you for your information. There is a group of 7 houses where I live, which in my limited but idealistic knowledge would be perfect for solar power, I have asked around but sadly no one is interested, its a case of "we have always done it this way". it is a crying shame The 2 things we have in abundance is wind and water. There are a few turbines, some of them spend more time lying on the ground because of design faults, I cannot under stand why the Islands would not want to be self sufficient.

Fraid there will already be many people in poverty this winter unable to afford to heat their homes.

People want light and warmth !!!? Offering to freeze prices will scare the companies away..lead to blackouts and even factory shut downs.
I just hope we never see Ed Miliband in charge!!?I will be using all my quilts and candles!!

Hebrideanlady, Ecotricity is working with others to develop a sea turbine called searaser which uses tidal energy. It shows you all about it on their website. They are also working on a smaller wind turbine which is vertical instead of just a smaller version of other turbines.
One of the housing associations near us puts solar panels on the houses that they build and they use turbines where they can.
Either Good Energy or Green Energy show you villages where they have turbines, or district heating.
The assumption is always that it's either a big scheme or individual, but there is no reason why a group of householders cannot get together and try to find a way to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
There is a village near here which is called a solar village, as about three quarters of the houses had solar panels put on their rooftops as a job lot.

yes they are quite attractive I think. Just the teeny ones sometimes are net users rather than generators.
Friend of ours had a moderate sized one and he did complain that it interfered with his internet via satellite. But he did choose to live up a lane in rural devon.
Tidal is one of the few really reliable renewables hebridean but apparently needs to be huge turbines to be cost effective. I think they should build the Severn Barrage as that estuary has a huge tidal range. Surely they could reconstruct some mud flats for the birds for goodness sake.
But technology is progressing - just not enough investment going into it at the moment.

I would love a wind turbine, I have looked into it but its far to expensive. There are some houses around us with solar panels, they do not work well here. Our electricity comes through a cable under the sea from Skye. We have oil fired central heating which when you take the delivery into consideration is not cheap, a calor gas hob, electric oven and we use peat on our lovely open fire. We have Swedish severe weather windows, the best insulation we could get. The point I am making is we are surrounded by water, the causeways have bridges where the tide never stops. The UK is an island I believe tidal power should be the way forward

Friend who lives in Orkney (a retired engineer) has designed and built his own which functions very efficiently Jess. Granted it's not affixed to his house but free standing about 10' (best guesstimate..will measure when next I visit) in a corner of his garden. It's quiet, unobtrusive, and IMO quite pretty.

Small turbines not a great idea aka as it takes energy to convert direct current to alternating, so the very small ones (on houses for instance) could use more than they generate.
Successive governments have been very softly softly on energy efficiency of buildings. Gradually, gradually building regs for domestic have improved.
There is currently money being funnelled from energy companies into energy efficiency measures for existing housing (under ECO funding), but you wouldn't know it would you. And Green Deal ain't going to amount to a hill of beans.

I read the Ecotricity website and get excited about what they are researching. That's what my money goes into.
They are researching the Black Box for storage.
They are researching micro energy, developing a wind turbine for use in places where the large ones are not good enough.
And if you look on their website, they will actually tell you if you should switch off your appliances to conserve energy, which I am going to do now.
Oh, I pay £18 per month for my electricity.
Durham and Northumberland are saying that we have enough wind turbines. We also have lots of small scale hydro, so we have enough power without nuclear. Hydro is a way of storing electricity. Ecotricity does that as well.

Jess I agree we squander. Instead of moaning about the cost of fuel why not ditch the tumble dryer, put on a jumper, walk more, etc.?

I also agree the domestic solar panels and mini turbines are too expensive that's why I tried to type 'subsidise' . Never mind a price freeze let's bring these within reach. The mini turbine I've seen is neat, unobtrusive and doesn't vibrate....unlike fracking which can 'make the earth move' and not in a good way.

Geothermal is one way forward for the future and for corporate build especially.

Yes ideals are wonderful and not to be scoffed at. It's having the will to translate ideals into workable options that may get us out of a hole of our our digging. Sadly, it's more usually same old, same old....

ironic yes bags but I'm sure you will agree that a log gets squandered on things like keeping shops lit up with halogens all night? Or having heating on and windows open? Or supermarkets with huge open fronted fridges?

I find it amusing that people who tell us we squander electricity use electricity to do the telling.

Modern civilisation needs a lot of electricity. And half the world is not even fully 'modern' yet. That is the problem we need to tackle, in my view – getting clean water, light, schools and health care to the world's population. It is immoral to hold poorer people back.

PS Most people wouldn't have the space for domestic geothermal.

There is nothing like enough emphasis in the debate about using less. We still squander electricity as it it was free.

I agree in theory, aka, but the capital expense and the impracticality of those ideas (mini turbines and geothermal) are formidable barriers to that happening on a large enough and undamaging enough scale at present. We investigated both for where we currently live. The cost was astronomical and the practical problems were too. A turbine that would be any use for our needs would wreck the roof with its vibrations. There isn't another suitable site. Similarly, there were insurmountable practical problems with investing in geothermal energy. I suspect that most people would find the same.

Where such things can be done, that's great. But we also need bigger supplies, such as from nuclear power and fracking.

I also doubt the government could justify the kind of subsidies necessary to help people afford the capital outlay for such things when there are more pressing problems facing the country – the usual things: health care, schools, roads and other infrastructure.

Ideals are wonderful things.

It's not a case of closing down existing power stations. But we do have to build up renewable capacity year on year until we are not reliant on, fir example, Russian oil and gas and we should not automatically be turning to the dirtiest form of power (nuclear).

If governments were to help subside domestic capacity to generate electricity this would go a long way to reducing demands on the national grid. A neighbour had solar panels installed in 2010 and has cut his domestic electricity bill by 80%. A recently built Eco centre has solar panels, a mini turbine and taps in geothermal power and is completely self sufficient. This is the way to go .

And the country would be a mess visually as well as essentially having to shut down. It would be disastrous economically and aesthetically.

And, in my view, morally.

But jen you never address the issue of where you should receive your power from when your electricity supplier is unable to feed enough renewable power into the national grid at the time you are using it.

And why wind turbines should be so heavily subsidised, then there all the highly polluting diesel generators the government is also highly subsidising to provide power should the immense minute to minute variability of wind power cause a power surge that leads to a grid shutdown.

If every hydrocarbon using and nuclear power station in the country was closed down and replaced with wind turbines, photovoltaic and other renewable technologies to twice their generating capacity we would still probably be without power for part of most days and in cold periods for days at a time.

uk.search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A7x9QbsxUUtSDRMA8b1LBQx.;_ylu=X3oDMTE0a2NhYjJoBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMwRjb2xvA2lyZAR2dGlkA1VLQzAwMl83Mg--/SIG=125e5egll/EXP=1380696497/**http%3a//www.electricity-guide.org.uk/fuel-mix.html

Since 2005 all companies have had to tell you what their fuel mix is.
I could buy my electricity from the Woodland Trust. I buy trees quarter acres of woodland, etc. from them. They have two different tariffs, one with 15% renewable, and one with 100% renewable. They buy their electricity from Ovo. Ovo do not build wind turbines, so I do not.

The RSPB is another charity I have connections with. They use Ecotricity, so have obviously been conned by them like I have. They have a wind turbine at their head office in Sandy, Bedfordshire. They used to be SSE, but changed because Ecotricity suited them better.

Most people are not concerned about the fuel mix. I am.

Are you aware that the new nuclear power stations are to be built by French comanies, with help from Russia and the Chinese?

Okay, Flickety, you have your nuclear power station in your back yard. I'll have my wind turbines. Then we are both happy.

Have a look at the pictures of Drax, with windmills in front of it.
Which would you prefer?
I live on the edge of the Durham Dales and see windturbines in every direction. I love the sight of them and do not think they spoil the view at all. Concrete is poured into the land all the time to build houses, to build wind turbines, to build nuclear power stations.
There are plans at the moment to build carbon capture storage in the North Sea near Bridlington. The Yorkshire Wolds is going to have a pipeline going all the way from Drax to the North Sea, disturbing all the land.
Hope none of you who complain about green energy taxes have electric cars, because that is somewhere else where Ecotricity are ahead of the pack. But of course, you wouldn't, would you!

And what is not discussed is how profitable wind farms are - to the operators. The Renewable Energy Foundation estimates that the wind generation industry is subsidised to the tune of £14 billion a year and photo-voltaics are equally heavily subsidised.

We have reached our wind turbine targets for 2020 let us now stop subsidising their construction and operation. Some companies may then pull out of the market, though obviously not Ecotricity, their green credentials are so strong, and redirect the money to investment in technologies that can actually make substantial inroads into our carbon emissions.

I have no objection to green taxes and have never said anything about them. However how Ecotricity can have graphs showing when stocks of gas/coal/oil will run out I do not know, since there is no way of knowing what total world resources of these minerals are or how future technology will enable us to access currently inaccessible resources. Not to mention reduction in use when sufficient nuclear power stations are on stream.

Well said, flick. I'm happy with nuclear too. Wind factories are spoiling too much countryside. I don't understand how 'environmentalists' square pouring tonnages on concrete into wild land with caring for the environment.

jen Ecotricity may make renewable energy up to consumers annual consumption each year but day by day, minute by minute they cannot produce enough renewable energy to meet their customers demand or the amount of electricity they have committed to feed into the grid on a day by day/hour by hour basis. That is why they need to buy on the spot market electricity made from what fuel the cannot know. I just think that if their customers are so wedded to having entirely renewable energy, then they should accept that if renewable energy is not available to meet their consumption at the time they need it they should be prepared to accept brown outs or having power cut off.

I have no problems whatsoever with nuclear energy. I have lived near nuclear facilities most of my life without once having the slightest worry about it. Many environmentalists, including James Lovelock, of the Gaia theory and George Monbiot are now accepting that the only way to realistically meet our energy demands and reduce carbon dioxide emissions is to go nuclear. As George Monbiot points out fourth generation integral fast reactors can, in principle, keep recycling nuclear waste until only a tiny residue remains, whose components have half-lives of tens rather than millions of years.

I am concerned about making serious inroads into carbon emissions, to moving to transport fuels like hydrogen, that requires high levels of electricity to produce. In this country this cannot be done with windmills and photovoltaic panels.