SteamyTea Posted February 3, 2022 Share Posted February 3, 2022 2 hours ago, joe90 said: I can’t afford a lecky car so guess I need to make my own diesel Nor me, but not sure how much slower I can go in mine to improve on my usual MPG in the low 60s. Anyway, not many BEVs would let me do my weekend commute. Now that I stop at Bourton-on-the-Water for a coffee, I am buggered if I am going to stop on the M% on the way up. (journey back is different, I am enjoying my high carbon cheese burgers, only £3.kwh-1, bargain in food terms) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 10 hours ago, Mr Blobby said: Latest Power NI E7 rate is 11.91p My Tesla averages about 270 W/mile Rounding up that's 3 miles for 12p Or 300 miles for £12 Not sure an ICE can beat that yet. Doing 3 miles costs me about 75p here! ? Get 400 miles from £100 of E5 Shell Super V stuff. A petrol, 2.0S Mondeo probably isn't the best station car. I do 12 miles a day through country lanes and steep hills on the way back home. Tbh I am a tad heavy footed too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted February 6, 2022 Share Posted February 6, 2022 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 6, 2022 Share Posted February 6, 2022 (edited) @ProDave There is a similar joke about what going to prison for drugs offences does to you. The comparison is a 5p and a 50p piece. Just the shame as what is happening here, being shafted. Edited February 6, 2022 by SteamyTea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 4, 2022 Share Posted March 4, 2022 Wholesale gas price hit a record of an astonishing 508p per therm today, 13 times it's price a year ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted March 4, 2022 Share Posted March 4, 2022 1 UK Therm = 29.30710701583 kWh 1 US Therm = 29.3001111 kWh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adsibob Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 3 hours ago, SteamyTea said: 1 UK Therm = 29.30710701583 kWh 1 US Therm = 29.3001111 kWh Now why is that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 4 hours ago, Adsibob said: Now why is that? Rounding errors when converting from imperial to metric. A kWh is based on SI base units. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 I see a considerable number of people calling for a ban on Russian oil and gas. This is actually helping Russia as it is pushing prices up. They will be coining it in. A ban would only work if the entire world participated. As long as someone is willing to buy their ol and gas then it simply pushes up the price.This perversely helps Russia and hurts everyone else. The correct strategy to hurt Russia is to swamp the market, pushing the price down, as well as reducing usage as much as possible. Unfortunately Russia produces too much to do this easily or quickly. Russia supplies over 10% of global oil supply, using around half of this itself. This we could just about deal with, Russia produces 22% of global natural gas supply. There is no way we could offset the loss of this in any reasonable timeframe. Russia and Ukraine account for around 13% of global wheat production. I think this is a more relevant figure than the higher percentage of exports which is often quoted. Extraordinarily, Russia and Ukraine account for between 50 and 60% of all global sunflower oil production. My friend keeps arguing, and indeed many other people also, that the government needs to step in and fix the price of gas and electricity.The government do not have some magic wand to fix this. Even if all utilities were nationalised they would still have to buy their gas at the prevailing price. If the current price persisted gas would cost roughly 18-19p/kWh. A crippling price for most people. Almost 10x what it was 2 years ago. My fix that ended in December was just over 2p. There is some argument for a windfall tax on fixed price electricity producers who will make more money because the price of competing gas production has gone up. Of course these people might argue that no-one offered to help them out when the price of gas collapsed during COVID and they were giving away electricity. Still these are definitely exceptional circumstances. I have just switched to Intelligent Octopus which fixes my electricity price for the next year. Gas is the big worry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thedreamer Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 I'm on fixed deal with Octopus at 18.63p kWh which runs to August 2023. Are there any circumstances when this fixed deal could be cancelled? Energy that I purchased is fairly limited at 10-11 kWh a day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 If your supplier goes out of business then fixed deals are cancelled and you move onto the standard variable tariff with a new supplier. I am not aware of any issues at Octopus but I’m sure a lot of people had this happen last year. I believe that the way the system works is that the cap is based on prices over the 6 months prior to each setting of the cap. Thus the suppliers are always catching up with historic costs. With normal price volatility this is not a problem. But if the price increases considerably the energy suppliers have to supply at a massive loss until the cap rises to cover this. There has been talk of the government stepping in to guarantee the loans that are required to do this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thedreamer Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 I was with Bulb but thankfully switched last summer onto a two year fixed with Octopus. Hopefully they can continue in the business, they seem to be one of the larger suppliers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyT Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 Time to buy shares in the ripple wind turbine to help offset extra costs like FIT it’s a 25 year scheme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 1 hour ago, TonyT said: Time to buy shares in the ripple wind turbine to help offset extra costs like FIT it’s a 25 year scheme Care to explain what that is? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyT Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=20 1st turbine complete, commissioning due this /next week. shares it turbine 2 for sale at the moment.. I have no connection apart from being on the other forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldkettle Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 10 hours ago, AliG said: A ban would only work if the entire world participated. As long as someone is willing to buy their ol and gas then it simply pushes up the price.This perversely helps Russia and hurts everyone else. This is not quite correct. There is a limit on what Russia can export any other way but via Europe. A simple physical limit. No alternative pipelines, not enough capacity to export to China. And don't forget China will not be paying the high price - why do this when your seller has nobody else to sell to? There are also limits on deliveries by sea. So the less we buy the less money Putin has. Look at Urals oil price, nobody wants anything to do with it at the moment. I completely agree with your other two points. "Drill, baby, drill" and no fixed price. The only problem is that the current clown POTUS still hasn't lifted any drilling bans on federal land. Keystone XL is likely dead now and is not a short term solution anyway. One important note. Many people owe Trump an apology. He tried hard to convince Merkel that they should not rely on the Russian gas so much and to get NATO countries to finance their fair share of defence. The amount of abuse he got for "bullying" was immense. Well, so much better to be bullied by Putin, right? And of course Merkel was so bloody smart. Or was she? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 Indeed I was oversimplifying it a bit. As you say Russia would get a lower price but still perhaps a higher price than it did before for its gas and oil. However, having checked, they have only been exporting around 2% of gas production to China with plans to expand capacity to bring this to around 6% in 2025. So there simply is not capacity to sell much of their gas in China. They can basically only sell it in Europe at the moment. This would make gas sanctions more attractive, the problem being Europe would run out of gas. It does seem that longer term over the next 30-40 years Russia are planning to shift their main exports from Europe to China as we move to renewables. No less than Elon Musk is also out today saying that we need to increase production. Of course that is easier said than done. Oil companies will be producing as much as possible at current prices. There basically isn’t that much slack in the system. I have said numerous times that the easiest short term thing that can be done is for a Germany to announce they will not turn off the last of their nukes. Indeed they should be looking to turn back in the ones turned off at the end of last year if they are still able to do so. Probably too late. Gas is not as global a market as oil and the price of gas in Europe is multiple times now what it is in the US. There is not enough LNG capacity to get more US gas here and arbitrage the price. It has only been a few days since the war started and the price spiked. If this continues we are in for a 70s style energy crisis. I don’t mean to be alarmist and this could all change in hours if the war can be ended somehow. But if not there will be serious repercussions. Especially for Europe. Most energy intensive businesses will become untenable and consumers will be crushed by utility bills. You’d be talking 3-4K average utility bills. That is just not an affordable number for many people and it will cause a serious retrenchment of consumer spending. You’d expect to see measures put in place to reduce energy consumption, although people would be doing this anyway to save money. The U.K. and Germany have very high gas consumption per capita and would be much worse hit than many other countries. The pain would be felt quite unequally in the U.K. Most people use gas for heating and this will go up a lot more than electricity. ASHPs will start to look very attractive in the short term. People where utility bills already make up a lot of their spending will be disproportionately hammered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 15 minutes ago, AliG said: The pain would be felt quite unequally in the U.K. Most people use gas for heating and this will go up a lot more than electricity. But almost half of the fuel to provide electricity is gas!. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 So if the price of gas doubled the price of electricity would go up by 50%. It is worse than that as electricity has more fixed overheads. More like 100% on gas equals 40% on electricity. In the last two years the retail price of gas has gone up around 200% whilst electricity has increased around 80% (using the upcoming price cap). Numbers will vary depending on exactly what people were paying. The cap has “only” doubled as it was above the fixed prices many were paying originally. If the price of gas doubles again then it will have gone up around 500% and the price of electricity would rise about 40% and it would have gone up around 150% So not great for anyone but disproportionately hurting gas users. In many previous discussions re ASHPs people have quoted that electricity was around 5x the price of gas so with a 3-4 COP gas was still cheaper. When the next cap is set we could be in a position where electricity is not much more than twice the price of gas. Hopefully a temporary situation but massively changing the numbers in favour of an ASHP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 I ask again, do we have any coal fired stations capable of being re started, or have they all been decommissioned beyond that point? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 I don’t know but the price of coal has gone up from $70 to $440 a ton in the last 12 months! Where energy sources are fungible they tend to move together in price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 WARNING I will be starting a thread soon on DIY installation of PV!! 🤞 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliG Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 My £6k of PV will soon be generating almost £1k a year in electricity. That was paying someone to install it! Total no brainier at the moment. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pocster Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 4 minutes ago, AliG said: My £6k of PV will soon be generating almost £1k a year in electricity. That was paying someone to install it! Total no brainier at the moment. That sounds great . But how do you work out your 1k ? . Can’t be at 5p a kWh ?? . Just interested 😁 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldkettle Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 52 minutes ago, AliG said: Of course that is easier said than done. Oil companies will be producing as much as possible at current prices. There basically isn’t that much slack in the system Sorry, not quite right again. Fracking is very flexible and given permission US could increase production a lot. So as soon as green delusions give way to the reality this is definitely solvable. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-fracking-cushion-oil-price.html 52 minutes ago, AliG said: Gas is not as global a market as oil and the price of gas in Europe is multiple times now what it is in the US. There is not enough LNG capacity to get more US gas here and arbitrage the price. What was the name of this weirdo who tried to get Merkel to build LNG terminals? Anyone remembers? Yes, they have now realised this will have to be done. When the price here is 10x what they pay in the US there is enough reason to invest. But also old and gas are partial substitutes. As long as there is enough reasonably priced oil gas can be spared for the most important purposes. And of course in the short term we will have to pay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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