Energy bills

[Greenman]

Read Marx. Comrade.

Yes, Hitler and Putin learnt a lot from him.

This crisis in which energy companies are lending their super-profits to the state, for the state to pay the bills of the citizens, for the citizens to pay back the energy companies and add interest- you think that's how capitalism is supposed to work?

Let's also not forget Truss is an ex employee of Shell!

What's the chances!

[Mussels]

I'm still waiting for a sensible version of the energy discounts, first we had that pretty meaningless 'capped at 2.5k' statement and now we are told everyone is going to get a 17p and 4.2p discount per kWh on electricity and gas. That will be interesting as some people will be getting paid to use energy.

[Wscad]

Air friers is the future. It was in the news a guy has removed 36 aga stoves this year at £500 a time.

Some models in curry’s are out of stock

[Mussels]

Are people who can afford Aga really worried enough about energy prices to scrap the stoves?
I'd keep the Aga and stick on air fryer on top of it.

[Horse]

It was in the news a guy has removed 36 aga stoves this year

Article on BBC news site said IIRC that electric ones can eat through £10 day.

[MrLongbeard]

It was in the news a guy has removed 36 aga stoves this year

Article on BBC news site said IIRC that electric ones can eat through £10 day.

Not if you unplug 'em

[Horse]

It was in the news a guy has removed 36 aga stoves this year

Article on BBC news site said IIRC that electric ones can eat through £10 day.

Not if you unplug 'em

Ah, the new Aga 'larder'?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... eir-stoves

Any good news for Aga owners? A lot of people find a turned-off Aga keeps produce lovely and cool in the summer.

[Kneerly Down]

We've got an ESSE oil range cooker and an Aga 'companion' stove.
The ESSE is going to get fired up next month and will provide hot water, warm kitchen and happy wife for the winter!

[DefTrap]

I'm measuring power usage of various appliances.

I have a laptop which sits there 'on' 24/7 (albeit used only approx 10 hours a day during the week) and another desktop similarly used (although I probably turn it off more often).

Between them they consume more power than the fridge. I wouldn't have guessed that, although I strongly suspect it's the ageing desktop that is the majority culprit.

[Wscad]

Today I had a interesting conversation with a good mate, whose wife knows someone in energy research.

His opinion is gas to heat a home will be phased out.
Heat pumps are not really that good at heating a home. Two years from now no one will hear about them and you won’t be able To buy one.

Some serious trials are on going using a different source. You can use your existing boiler, just needs a fancy valve fitting.

The new source to replace gas?

Hydrogen

Anyone else know anything?

[Horse]

Some serious trials are on going using a different source. You can use your existing boiler, just needs a fancy valve fitting.
The new source to replace gas?
Hydrogen
Anyone else know anything?

No secret there.

And it's been done before, from 'town' to natural gas.

And hydrogen works as a road vehicle fuel too.

Of course, the challenge is creating (well, extracting) the hydrogen.

[irie]

There are two sources of hydrogen.

Blue hydrogen is extracted from gas, an interim fuel, before the introduction of ...

... Green hydrogen extracted from water, which currently looks like the long term fuel of the future.

[Asian Boss]

I'd say hydrogen is undoubtedly the fuel of the future. Except it's not really a fuel, more a way of moving and storing energy. Which I guess is a fuel in a way. And as Horse says, it needs work before it's viable on a large scale.

[Asian Boss]

There are two sources of hydrogen.

Blue hydrogen is extracted from gas. It is an interim fuel, before the introduction of ...

... Green hydrogen extracted from water which currently looks like the long term fuel of the future.

There's pink, yellow and grey hydrogen too. It's like an LGBT+ rainbow of hydrogen!

[irie]

There's pink, yellow and grey hydrogen too. It's like an LGBT+ rainbow of hydrogen!

There's always one.

[Horse]

And as Horse says, it needs work before it's viable on a large scale.

In theory, a simple sequence of steps to harvest it:

- set up solar/tidal/wave/wind power plants
- when working (sunny/in-out/windy/windier), use electric to extract gas
- store gas, then pipe / tanker to where needed
- convert homes and vehicles in pace with infrastructure expansion

Easy

[Yambo]

There are two sources of hydrogen.

Blue hydrogen is extracted from gas. It is an interim fuel, before the introduction of ...

... Green hydrogen extracted from water which currently looks like the long term fuel of the future.

There's pink, yellow and grey hydrogen too.

There are, and some methods of sourcing hydrogen are both expensive and far from green.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Except it's not really a fuel, more a way of moving and storing energy.

Exactly that. You don't dig up Hydrogen from the ground*, so it's really just something like a battery or a wire you keep in pipes. You need an energy source to create it in the first place.

So even if you think wind farms and solar panels are a load of green yoghurty bollox Hydrogen ain't gonna save ya.

Nuclear fusion FTW!

As I mentioned above though, my boss' wife works with SSE on Hydrogen dev. There's some minor issues (makes tarmac flammable when it leaks) to work out alongside some major questions like "what should it smell like?".


*Well actually, yeah you do at the moment cause most of it is a fossil fuel by product Not really a viable long term solution.

[Horse]

Hydrogen ... There's some minor issues
.

[Count Steer]

Except it's not really a fuel, more a way of moving and storing energy.

Exactly that. You don't dig up Hydrogen from the ground*, so it's really just something like a battery or a wire you keep in pipes. You need an energy source to create it in the first place.

So even if you think wind farms and solar panels are a load of green yoghurty bollox Hydrogen ain't gonna save ya.

Nuclear fusion FTW!

As I mentioned above though, my boss' wife works with SSE on Hydrogen dev. There's some minor issues (makes tarmac flammable when it leaks) to work out alongside some major questions like "what should it smell like?".

Smell? Why not use a tweaked mercaptan so it smells like gas does now but just recognisably different? I think they used it in the first place so natural gas whiffed a bit like town gas. I suppose you could make it smell of strawberries if you wanted to but why not use stuff that you know works?

Smell is probably the least of the problems though. They've probably replaced all the mains that had yarn stuffed in the joints that you had to keep moist by fogging glycol into the gas stream and replaced all the low pressure stuff with plastic pipe but there are still leakage issues. Some interesting technical issues probably arise out of pressurising it to 1000psi and shoving it around the transmission system but I suppose if you can do it with methane...

(I suspect they'll start by isolating smaller, discrete districts and feeding from local storage, but they still have to get it to the storage. That's if they want to go pure. Probably just add 10% to the current stuff to start with or however much they can get away with before replacing/rejetting all the boilers).