First published JoNova; Imagine needing government permission to turn up your winter heating when you catch Covid, or pleading with bureaucrats to allow you to heat more rooms in your house. But don’t call it energy rationing.
Turn on your heat pump when wind is blowing, Government pleads
…
By Nick Gutteridge,
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
4 September 2023 • 9:04pm…
The Government insisted it was “in no way asking people to ration electricity” and that consumers will benefit in the form of cheaper bills.
In official guidance, ministers have said the switch to smart appliances like heating systems, fridges and car chargers is key to delivering net zero.
“They enable consumers to shift their electricity usage to times when it is less costly for the energy system,” the document states.
…
The Energy Bill includes powers for ministers to “mandate that electric heating appliances and EV chargepoints must have smart functionality, prohibiting the sale of non-smart devices in Great Britain”.
…
Craig Mackinlay, the MP for South Thanet and head of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, has tabled an amendment to scrap the entire section on smart appliances from the legislation.
He said the Government was “admitting a shortage of electricity with its plans to limit supply to households and businesses through smart appliances, peak pricing penalties and reliance on irregular renewables”.
…
Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/04/brits-urged-turn-on-heat-pumps-wind-is-blowing-net-zero/
Can there be any remaining doubt that claims renewables are cheaper and better than the alternatives are total nonsense?
Even if reducing CO2 emissions is important to you, there are better zero emissions alternatives to useless renewables.
Places with access to nuclear energy don’t have to ration energy. If anything, such places serve as a nexus of industry, business which take advantage of cheap energy surpluses.
Take the Welsh island of Anglesey. They used to have a nuclear power plant, Wylfa nuclear power station, which supported local industry. As far as I know nobody supplied by that plant was asked to ration energy. Instead, the nuclear plant supported Anglesey Aluminium, which employed 540 people. The Aluminium smelter was mothballed in 2016, shortly after the last reactor was shut down in 2015. I’m not sure how many people the power plant employed, but that’s a lot of jobs for a small rural community to lose.
There is some talk of replacing the nuclear reactor, but so far it’s all talk.
I once visited Anglesey, spent a week in a vacation unit. When I visited the nuclear power plant was still operating, you could see the bustle of industry. Good memories, everyone I met was nice – one of the friendliest places in Britain.
There is no doubt all of Britain could radically reduce emissions and keep energy bills under control, by transitioning to nuclear power. Suggestions nuclear is too expensive or impractical are absurd. France managed a transition to over 70% nuclear energy in the 1970s. OK it might have taken a little longer than a decade, but not much.
I believe British engineering would be up for the job, but if there is a shortage of key skills, I’m sure France would do a deal, lend Britain some of their top nuclear engineers, so Britain could copy France’s 1970s energy transition.
Meanwhile the people of Anglesey, of everywhere in Britain, make the best of it, with an increasingly detached government telling them on top of all the eye watering heating bills, ULEZ charges and hardship they’ve endured, Net Zero now means the government wants you to surrender control of your home appliances to politicians, powers which politicians assure us will never, of course, be used.
Don’t call it energy rationing.
Correction (EW): h/t CampsieFellow – Anglesey, not Anglesea
Update (EW): Smart meters could communicate with smart appliances via your household electrical wiring, which bypasses any need for you to configure your smart devices to your WIFI. Before WIFI became ubiquitous in homes, a common alternative to physically wiring up your house with ethernet cables were powerline network adapters, special network adapters which turned your household electrical wiring into a data network. I suspect this is how smart meters will be instantly connected to any smart appliances you purchase, to allow your power company or Whitehall bureaucrats to impose limits on your use of your own appliances.
If your old appliance uses too much energy – replace it or face fines.
The new green deal – you have to spend heaps, just to be worse off or the government will make you much worse off…
I am being exhorted constantly by my energy supplier to install a smart meter. There were ridiculous claims that smart meters would cut energy bills and denials that smart meters could be used to cut off your electricity supply. I see no upside to installing a smart meter at all, only possible downsides. I can see the government forcing people to install smart meters in the future, but until that happens, I certainly won’t be installing one.
This is interesting stuff.
“the switch to smart appliances like heating systems, fridges”
This is a reference to the abject failure of the “internet of things”. The IoT has been left behind on the starting line by AI and that’s no surprise. Take my dishwasher – not literally, I do need it – it has an online capability – I can switch it on remotely, presumably from Timbuktu. It remains unenabled.
But why would you load up a dishwasher and then go somewhere distant before switching it on? It’s like everything else that has a clock in it….. you mostly don’t need it, but it’s there just the same.
They are pushing smart meters as hard as they can, even Albo isn’t allowed to rest in peace…
We have a lot of shale gas, and a lot of gas and oil in the North sea. But we must ‘blank’ that fact right out and imagine we depend on Russia, Middle east etc for gas.
For some reason I think I have more important things to do than continously checking if the wind blows and indirectly if the energy price is high.
People have this idea that ‘cheap’ renewable electricity means low cost, but it actually means low quality.
“Take the Welsh island of Anglesea..”
I’d rather take the Welsh island of Anglesey. Or even Ynys Môn.
The downward spiral of ever more state control and authority instruction continues. It does not seem to matter what flavour of political party is notionally in power they all dress on the left and let you know it.
When the political choices being offered are all found to be unacceptable what options do rational normal voters have? Who do we turn to?
“There is no doubt all of Britain could radically reduce emissions and keep energy bills under control, by transitioning to nuclear power.”
Hah! We are busily transitioning away from nuclear power in the UK, by sheer lack of forward thinking. We built nearly 17GW worth and closed all but 5.8GW. More even than Germany. We have a company in the UK that built and maintains nuclear subs; Rolls Royce. They are currently the only company going through type approval for a SMR commercial reactor, but our Govt doesn’t want to order any and wants to have a competition to decide which SMR might be best instead. Interesting to note that this ‘SMR’ produces more electricity than most of the old Magnox and AGR designs.
“I believe British engineering would be up for the job,” [see above…] “but if there is a shortage of key skills, I’m sure France would do a deal, lend Britain some of their top nuclear engineers, so Britain could copy France’s 1970s energy transition.”
That would be the EPR being built at Hinkley Point then. Massively over time and budget, plus problems with every example worldwide so far.
Meanwhile we have the worlds largest stock of plutonium and we are thinking of burying it as waste:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/What-to-do-with-the-UK-s-civil-plutonium-stockpile
The numbers are terrifying. With 30 million homes in the UK, installing 3kW heat pumps gives an extra load over today of 90 GW in the winter, virtually zero in the summer. The current grid delivers about 30 GW on average, 45 max. If we want to deliver most of this extra load by wind, then the current approx 25 GW of installed windturbines produces a little under 7 GW on average (Grid watch 2022 figures). So, an extra load of 90 GW needs over 300 GW of new turbines. During the winter when we need them, they will produce between zero and 200 GW (some huge batteries needed) and what do we do with it in the summer?
Article says:”…less costly for the energy system,…”.
Your needs or wants are less important than citizen’s.
The Energy Bill includes powers for ministers to “mandate that electric heating appliances and EV chargepoints must have smart functionality, prohibiting the sale of non-smart devices in Great Britain”.
Powers for oh-so-smart bureaucrats to shut off your stove, EV charger, heater, TV, computer and all at will, because oh-so-dumb voters have put said bureaucrats in office? Guess how long that’ll last.
I guess they were inspired by the British film Dr. Zhivago, complete with stealing wood to stay warm and the building heat turned off. I just hope the African and Middle East immigrants are prepared.
We experienced an electrical sub-station failure in February 2019 during a -30F cold snap
early one morning. The new local 20 acre solar panel was covered with a half a foot of snow.
Thankfully I had a generator and was able to keep the water from freezing up. The greens
have shut down the Coalstrip plants and replaced them with wind power which in that situation were
useless. Nothing is going to change till these radical totally fail IMO.
Aren’t the commissars so nice. They are saving us money by not letting us buy what we want and need.
In the end it is the poor voting decisions that made this absurdity possible.
Did you really think those smart meters were for your benefit?
Here in Missouri, time-based electric rates are going into effect (https://www.eenews.net/articles/missouri-overhauls-electric-rates-raising-rewards-and-risks-for-customers/).
In my mind, this was necessitated by the very real concern that the utility companies will soon no longer be able to meet demand. Instead of increasing the supply of reliable electricity, we’re going to try to decrease demand.
Will time-based pricing decrease overall demand? My wife and I plan to “super heat” or “super cool” our all-electric home before peak hours and overnight. What will people without programmable thermostats do? How are people who work supposed to do their laundry? Wait until the weekend? Get up in the middle of the night and do it? Maybe just forego using major appliances altogether?
Q. Why do you want to ‘deliver Net Zero?’
A. Because we want to make sure that the temperature in 2100 is cooler
Q. What effect on 2100 do you think the UK will have?
A. Erm, nothing.
Q Right. Have you told everyone?
A. We have to set a lead!
Q. Which countries are following us?
Quote – “The majority of Australia’s smart meters are installed in Victoria, where the rollout to upgrade residential and small business customers to a smart meter was mandated by the Victorian government in 2008.”
https://www.energycouncil.com.au/media/lqgnfpkp/smart-meters-fact-sheet.pdf
This is wrong. Probably knowingly wrong.
State governments did NOT mandate compulsory use of smart meters. They lacked powers to do that It was a bully bluff that worked and conned most users. (My old, simple meter ticks along today).
If there was an open, honest inquiry about smart meters here in Victoria, I would not be surprised to find evidence of more fraud and profiteering. Despite several deep searches, I have been unable to find who manufactured the meters, who in Australia bought them, what their cost to the installer/supplier was, what the reselling cost to the consumer was, that is, what profit level was achieved? Was there any conflict of interest, like decision-makers feathering their personal nests?
I am concerned about these matters because of the haste of the introduction of smart meters, the opague curtain that prevented easy access to inquiring minds, the almost complete absence of any public justification (apart from usual climate change propaganda), the difficulty in getting details and so on.
Were the people the victims of a neat big stitch-up that left a few people rich beyond their dreams, for doing bugger all of value?
Geoff S
It’s my understanding that the oldseadog is right, they have to send a human out to cut off your electricity in an analog meter world. Smart meter world, the utility company can sit in an office half a world away and cut you off. Obviously, if they hack in, the Chinese, Russians, North Korea, or any enemy can do the same.
In Texas, during the freeze crisis a few years ago, the utilities picked individual houses within neighborhoods to black out for hours at a time. They left the juice on for the EMS and Fire Stations. I would not be surprised if they had AI algorithms searching databases far and wide to tell them the number and age of occupants, elderly, children under 5, medical conditions, political affiliations, connections to the rival football team, in-laws, ex-spouses, etc. Yes, in Texas, you have to submit special medical requests to the utility company explaining why you need electricity for the medical device so grandma won’t die when they want to cut off the juice.
Before the freeze, the Obama EPA demanded that all oil and gas well lifts and pumps be converted to electric instead of running on the gas from the well. The juice to the wells were cut first when the freeze came. Most of the gas wells make water which needs to be lifted so the gas can flow to the surface.The pumps that lifted the water out of the bottom of the well had no juice and did not lift, the resulting column of water in the well kept the gas from coming to the surface, which kept the gas out of the pipeline, which kept the gas out of the electrical generating plants. If the gas was already being stored in a storage cavern, there was no electricity to pump it out of the cavern and along the pipelines to the electrical generating stations. So, we were cold for a few days and a few died, a small price to pay to save the planet (sarc).
There is a simple solution to this mess. Mandate (yes I know I hate mandates) that all smart meters have a lock on them. Each consumer must be provided with a key. The purpose of the lock isn’t to keep consumers from the energy they want and need, rather it is to lock the bureaucrats and administrators from screwing with your appliances. There problem solved. It is similar to voting with your feet only now it is voting with your key. These monsters will find out soon enough who supports their ignorant policies.