Cheaper electricity will encourage households to charge their cars overnight and use their washing machines outside peak periods under plans to keep bills down during the drive for net zero.
That’ll make good use of all that solar power.
Cheaper electricity will encourage households to charge their cars overnight and use their washing machines outside peak periods under plans to keep bills down during the drive for net zero.
That’ll make good use of all that solar power.
Sure, I’ll run my washing machine at 2AM. The neighbours will love that. I suppose they think everyone lives in a mansion.
And if large numbers of people charge their cars & use their washing machines at night, how long will it be cheap electricity?
The middle of the day (9:00-16:00) is also outside peak periods. I usually run my washing machine then. Same with the dishwasher. Even if you’re not at home during the day there are timers, often built in.
Wind tends to drop overnight too. But I’m sure the unicorns will dispense plenty of 240V AC with a little encouragement from the empowered transwomen 🙂
I run dishwasher and washing machine overnight. Cost is about 1/3 of daytime use.
I’m lucly being in a detached house. But when I was in a flat, I would time it so the noisy spins at the end were around 7am.
Although a great idea in theory, charging less during off-peak hours when supply exceeds demand, you need to have additional infrastructure in place in the form of a smart meter which can report continuous use throughout the day and charge accordingly.
Despite the profusion of smart meters these days, how many tariffs are there which do this and are consumers really gaining the benefit or is it little more than a marketing gimmick?
I recently looked at the options for switching electricity and gas to another supplier and there was little more than the usual suspects offering standard rates and the differences between the deals were marginal at best.
It might well be that high prices and the energy price cap has killed innovation in the gas and electric marketplace, just like it’s killed the most innovative suppliers.
When we’ve had a lot of sun, people’s mood will be better and they are able to face work. Luckily, they will be able to drive in the fully-charged car, wearing clean clothes. When it’s dull weather, people won’t want to go in to the office, so they will be sitting at home wearing dirty shirts and undies.
It all makes sense when you think it through.
One of the problems, John, is that thanks to Gordon Brown,if a supplier gets over a certain number of customers, then their tax status changes and it suddenly becomes uneconomic to offer their attractive tariffs.
@Ottokring – That doesn’t surprise me. The “Tartan Cyclops” was ever more a technocrat than a PM, probably why he made such a piss-poor job of it.
As Ronald Reagan famously said “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”.
Truly we get the government we deserve 🙁
John G, Octopus had such tariffs (smart meter read every 30 mins). They were all the rage with the EV mob since the tariffs actually went negative quite often. All dead now since the price rises. Shopping around currently is not greatly productive since everyone is offering the capped tariff.
Bloody nightmare this swapping, we had 5 suppliers in 2021 (2 went bust) and on 30th September Neo Energy, Symbio Energy and British Gas all claimed to be supplying us (and charging of course) for electricity. I bet it is not sorted before the end of 2022
re: Broon
– the small leccy suppliers don’t have to charge / collect the Green levies – there’s the difference.
A large scale revolt is required.
@tomo
re-Volt – boom boom!
I love the way people think off peak rates won’t change when the demand changes.
Coal/nuclear plant operators would be happy tbough. They can run 24/7 instead of having to ramp down at night.
“A new off-peak tariff known as the ‘Economy 7’ tariff was introduced in October [1978]. It featured a seven-hour night rate some 20 per cent cheaper than most night-time tariffs, made possible by economies in the night-time operation of the system”.
The people at The Times really have their fingers on the pulse of modern technology don’t they?
Although to be fair, they can’t turn the power on and off at their whim with white meters as they possibly can with the Smart ones…….https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-8706033/Smart-meters-used-switch-electricity-without-warning-compensation.html
@ltw
Load shifting will be cheaper until significant numbers of consumers load shift. Whereupon it ceases being load shifting.
Even at 20% cheaper, it’s still pretty piss-poor. Might make sense if you’re running electric storage heaters (UGGH!!!) or charging the Tesla, but still pretty marginal.
Did Economy 7 require a second meter or was it just a single more complex one to split the cable into economy-7 and normal circuits?
Smug EV drivers enjoying their publicly subsidised virtue chariots are going to realise that road charging, permanent location tracking and the end of cheap rate electricity will add up to more than thirty pieces of silver
The revolution will be electrified (outside power cuts)
At which point you start getting into hysteresis, with costs equalising as you reach demand/supply equilibrium, people stop bothering (because no cost saving) leading to demand/supply gradually swinging backwards and forwards as the dynamics change.
It would be an interesting experiment in economics if nothing else (at what point do people lose interest, etc.).
Not that you’d see anything like that in today’s stagnant and bureaucratically intervened electricity market. Phuqed it up good and proper so they have.
John G, don’t know about the first meters but a friend has one single meter that it as least thirty years old which displays two rates (imaginatively called R1 and R2). AFAICT it just measures the juice consumed during the normal / Economy 7 time periods. I believe the normal rate is higher than standard though…
BiS +1 (see diesel fuel pricing…..)
EDF have an electric car tariff at 4.5p/unit 12am-5am, 38p at all other times. That’s quite a good deal if you drive an EV, as per my calculations the other week. Might even be a good deal if you can schedule your washer/dryer to run at those times, or warm up an immersion heater tank.
There was something on the radio yesterday that added up all the costs and worked out that an EV car would need to be driven for 40 years to be cheaper than a dead dinosaur car.
I’d be interested to know if that was equivalent cost at purchase or over an entire 40-year life span including battery replacement every x years.
I saw one for a top of the range Tesla that was more like 78-years.
Depends upon what your comparison is based upon, obviously, but I’d feel like it was little more than virtue signalling / wasting money to buy an EV car based upon the current, relatively primitive, state of the technology.
Bit like balancing whether to buy a Model-T Ford or stick with the horse in 1922. My gut feel is the we’re not there yet and EV technology could easily be trumped by something else (like more efficient fuel cells) and leave you driving around in a very expensive, range limited white elephant.
For the time being (since about 2012), I am and shall remain without my own car. When I need one (as I did last summer), I will just rent one from the local car rental place.
The consumer has to be “educated” to accept the realities of a creaking, intermittent and inadequate power grid. This “education” will be provided by those who loath you and weirdly imagine that this will not impact their essentially parasitic lifestyles in any meaningful way.
As Spock would say: fascinating!
I think milk float jockeys will be the first to sample the reality.
“Cheaper electricity will encourage households to charge their cars overnight and use their washing machines outside peak periods under plans to keep bills down during the drive for net zero.”
William Stanley Jevons (died 1882) must be absolutely pissing himself.
Would that be similar to the education that Ted Heath received in the February 1974 election, when his government singularly failed to keep the lights on?
Because it’s feeling a lot like the 1970’s all over again, right this moment.
@John Galt
“Did Economy 7 require a second meter …”
Yes.
Our house has a second white meter, to power the peak time (not storage) electric heaters.
Bargain basement 1970s build.
My wife-to-be took one look at the thermometer, and refused point-blank to move in until I had gas CH installed. It was a mystery how the house had been habitable for the preceeding 10 years.
(though a pile of calor gas cylinders, and a highly illegal no-vent gas fire in the lounge suggested some desperation on the part of the original occupants).
it’s feeling a lot like the 1970’s all over again, right this moment.
Is it fuck.
70’s music was good.
@Steve – I find the key to living in this phuqued up rerun of the 1970’s is to ignore all the modern trash and stick to the music of your youth. Life is a lot simpler and the music is a lot better that way.
@Tim the Coder – Yes. Your wife was probably spot on in that decision. My father (a miser) refused to pay for a decent central heating system to be installed and instead we survived with ice on the inside of the windows and little more than a coal fire and back boiler whose use was limited to snowfalls and weekends.
After much bitching and griping my mother was allowed to purchase a paraffin heater for occasional use, which was as awful as it sounds. Whilst that sounds Dickensian, it was still how we lived back in the early ’80’s.
Needless to say I phuqued off at the earliest opportunity turned 18 and made damn sure that any house I lived in had decent gas central heating.
Quite how BoJo things us up Norf are meant to survive with no gas central heating and just a heat pump to keep the ice off the inside of the windows is hard to say. I’m hoping that sanity returns with the changing of the electoral cycle and this Net Zero bollox is sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.
After all, one does imagine that BoJo would like to win the next election for the “Tories” (in name only), rather than have to return to his previous occupation of jobbing journalist, writer, broadcaster and philanderer?
@John Galt
Hmm, yes and no.
Grocer Heath (spit) certainly had his agenda which he shameless lied about, but the power grid then – too much coal it could be argued – was not fundamentally inadequate.
And for all his faults (and they were many) Heath did at least have some grounding in basic realities, as he had been born and brought up in the real world. This cannot be said for the infantilized lunatics pushing “green”
70s feel in some ways. I was at school in 73/74 and I do remember power cuts, but I think what we are seeing – at least among those who are pushing these agendas – is a basically pre industrial level of hysterical victimizing of those they hate. I suspect a witness to a 17th century witch trial wouldn’t feel that out of place.
Don’t think the present day witch finders would like the society they seem determined to create though.
Perhaps “educated” wasn’t the correct choice in this context. After all, that does suggest some rationality behind the process. “lied to”; “browbeaten”; “intimidated”; “Deceived”……..
Ahh. Lied to and deceived seems to about the right tone.
The reasons for the lights going out may have changed between 1974 and 2022 (Unions then vs Warble Gloaming bollox now), but the electoral retribution will be as bad if not worse this time around. I mean it’s not like they haven’t been warned time-and-again of the consequences of their Net Zero foolishness.
Personally, I have no problem with transitioning to a power generation scheme which has lower emissions, as long as we balance the unreliability of wind turbines with an energy security policy based upon domestic supply rather than the whim of despots, both Russian and Islamic.
John Galt,
“Even at 20% cheaper, it’s still pretty piss-poor.”
The cost of using a washing machine is something like 20p. Let’s say double to keep it simple. 40p. So, to reorganise your life around cheaper cycles, rather than using it when you want, you save 8p.
How many mums out there want to leave little Johnny’s PE Kit stinking up the room for 6 hours, to then have to stay up at night to get it out and hang it on racks, and then iron it the next day? What mum actually does is get it in the wash at 3:30 when he get home from school, then dry it straight after, then iron it. And the day is done at about 7pm, when you chill out.
I mean, we could go back to women in aprons at home all day. I’m fine with that. But it does amuse me that the only way this eco shittery would work is also something that the right sort of people don’t want.
@Bloke on M4: Absolutely agree. We trade personal capital for convenience to purchase the washing machine / tumble driver and then we’re expected to trade a portion of that newly (and expensively) purchased convenience for a measly 20% discount on the cost of the electricity by running the damn machine at 3:00AM.
I’m not saying some won’t do this, they absolutely will, but for the vast majority the saving (of, as you say 8p a time), just isn’t worth the loss of convenience.
No doubt the Eco-lunatic fringe will say “Mother Gaia must be saved by forcing mum to wash little Johnny’s stinking PE Kit at 3:00AM and she must be hit in her purse until she does so”.
To which I say “Get phuqued and hang ’em all”, but on a more reasonable aspect, if HM Government wants us to start switching more demand to the middle-of-the-night then it needs to get energy suppliers to provide tariffs that incentivise this rather than penalising mum for doing what makes sense”.
I’m guessing that the benefit of switching demand from 3:00PM to 3:00AM is a lot more than a measly 8p, especially with current electricity prices.
In addition, the demand switching would mean lower peak requirement and therefore lower overall generating requirement. If done properly you could switch those gas powered electricity generators onto standby. I bet that would save a small fortune.
Then again, I suspect the usual rules of “Socialise the losses, privatise the profits” will apply.
“the electoral retribution will be as bad if not worse”
Made more so by the utter arrogance of the “greens” and the total contempt they have demonstrated for those who have to earn their living in the real world. I will be particularly interested to see reaction of those who imagine themselves to be part of this “green” vanguard – those who have bought ilk floats, or had heat pumps fitted etc – when they found out they have been conned and hung out to dry.
The anger that was built up during brexit has, I think so at least, been deflated considerably by the – admittedly very imperfect – leaving process. Whether it flares up again if rejoiniacs try to steer the country back towards the EU remains to be seen. However, in the case of “green”, given the scale of the lies and the unworkability of the whole fantasy, it’s difficult how it can be assuaged when the actuality starts to hit (as it has begun to)
“Personally, I have no problem with transitioning to a power generation scheme which has lower emissions”
Neither have I, but damn it, it has to work which “green” manifestly doesn’t!
Why does it always have to be like this?
> use their washing machines outside peak periods
In other news, complaints about domestic noise have increased 10 fold as washing machine spin cycles keep neighbours awake at night…
Maybe we should only provide discounted overnight rates to those living in detached houses? 😀
Personally, I tend to do laundry post-8AM to avoid exactly this problem because I live in a typical Scottish tenement block with walls thin enough that I can hear the neighbours shagging.
A little common courtesy goes a long way.
I’m not even sure if the “Plebs revolting over BRExit” has reduced tensions or not. I certainly don’t think the Tories are reading the room as far as public anger over tax rises, cost of living, energy costs is concerned. Certainly they wouldn’t be if the true costs of Net Zero are made clear in black-and-white.
For example, what exactly are people in upper flats like mine meant to do if Gas Central Heating is effectively banned come 2035 or whatever to meet the Net Zero goals? Am I expected to cough up thousands of pounds I don’t have for some communal heat sink which might take the chill off but certainly won’t warm the flat like my current gas central heating does (even at today’s high energy charges).
It’s not just about costs, it’s about practicality. There’s no way we’re going back to warming ourselves in front of a secretly installed gas heater just to save Gaia. Not without a great deal of whinging and moaning.
They’ll certainly see that at the ballot box if this bollox doesn’t get canned or at the very least kicked into the dim and distant future.
BoJo needs to decide whether his priority is to remain as PM or continuing to boff his Eco-Loon wife, because something has to give.
John G @12.34. Do you get a rate rebate for the free ‘entertainment’ or subsidised headphones?
BonM4 @11.50….. Oh the memory of that cardboard box full of ‘spare sports kit’ in the room next to the changing rooms at Comprehensive school for use by those who had said “sorry Sir, me kits in the wash”. Making kids put on that stuff would be classed as child abuse these days (Billy Casper and ‘Kes’ is the closest approximation of comprehensive school in the early ’70’s).
John G @12.52. If you live in a diverse multicultural utopia such as Londonistan, you’ll do what everyone else does. Steal the fire doors and sell them, then set light to anything you can find. I mean, it is what they do at home and we mustn’t be all colonial right?
“‘Economy 7’ tariff”: we’ve got one of those. We run the dishwasher and washing machines overnight and, when we use it, the immersion heater for hot water too. Our supplier swears that it’s the cheapest tariff they offer for our consumption pattern.
“I live in a typical Scottish tenement block with walls thin enough that I can hear the neighbours shagging.” Odd that: when we lived in Scottish tenement blocks the walls were built of huge chunks of stone: the neighbours could have shot each other and we might well have slept through it.
That’s certainly true of the massive stone exterior walls, but the internal walls are little more than a layer of bricks either side of an air gap and some Victorian era (1895) plasterwork.
“Can’t hear the words, but the tune is known to all” as you might say 😀
JG: “as long as we balance the unreliability of wind turbines with an energy security policy based upon domestic supply rather than the whim of despots, both Russian and Islamic.”
Our local rag told me yesterday that the UK plans for 5 new Nukes somewhere between 2030 and 2035.
So it seems not everyone is Stupid, and does plan for at least some form of base load.
Whether or not the screaming Ecoloons manage to railroad those plans remains to be seen, but at least there’s still some common sense to be found.
It’s good to hear, but announcements are one thing and actually deliveries are something else. We’ve got a bunch of existing nuclear power stations set to be decommissioned over the next decade, so that would only seem to replace that decommission capacity rather than actually increasing the nuclear power contribution to the base load where it is critical.
I’d much rather have the target to increase the UK nuclear power contribution from 16% of generating capacity to 25% over the next few years and defer decommissioning where possible. There are increased risks and costs in doing so, but providing a smoother transmission to the next generation of UK power is critical.
“Making kids put on that [stinky PE kit] would be classed as child abuse these days”
Surely, making kids strip nekkid in front of 30-odd other kids and adults must be classed as child abuse. It certainly felt like it when I was forced to do so 40 years ago.
Charging your car or doing your washing when it’s windy or sunny might not actually be that bad of a an idea. Anyone with some flexibility could take advantage of it and it might use up some excess supply.
“Oh the memory of that cardboard box full of ‘spare sports kit’ in the room next to the changing rooms at Comprehensive school for use by those who had said “sorry Sir, me kits in the wash”. Making kids put on that stuff would be classed as child abuse these days (Billy Casper and ‘Kes’ is the closest approximation of comprehensive school in the early ’70’s).”
At my school they made the boys put the girls kit on and vice versa. Very few people forgot their kit more than once.
Doing that these days, I actually can’t work out what would be made of it. Probably complaints that boys and girls had different kit.
I certainly don’t think the Tories are reading the room as far as public anger . . .
There was no fuel available in my East Midlands town today. This is due to eco-cunts blocking fuel dispatch, and eco-cunts are doing this because the government tolerate their earnest desire for net zero.
I’m OK for now because I filled to the brim the other day when there was only super-unleaded available (other people were running out). But I’m still ready to fucking kill them all.
The appropriate punishment would surely be to bring back the stocks. That way the locals who they piss off could inflict on the ecofreaks what they deem to be proper.
I don’t think some of the people commenting on here don’t understand the gravity of the situation. When the lights went out in the 70s, it was political. All that it required was the greasing of a few miner’s palms & the lights would go back on. This time it’s for real. The lights will go out because there’s no electricity & no means of generating it.
And you only have yourselves to blame. It’s been obvious for the past 10 years & you’ve done nothing about it. Like a bunch of lobsters in a pot on a gas ring (bottled gas, obviously). It’s now coming to the boil. You are well & truly fucked.
The appropriate punishment would surely be to bring back the stocks. That way the locals who they piss off could inflict on the ecofreaks what they deem to be proper.
I’ve said from the start, the best thing to do with these nutters who glue themselves to the roads is just to leave them there.
Remove enough if required to keep a lane of traffic open, then leave the rest.
See how many repeat it after the first few are stuck for days sat in their own shit and piss in the cold, wet rain while lorries thunder past in close proximity and many irate drivers make their feelings very clear.
Nukes by 2030-35?- they’re ‘avin a freakin’ laff.
I can see the HPC construction site across the bay from the coast where I live. Its also on the doorstep of the town where my business resides – back in 2015 when I used to go to the local SWMAS meetings they confidently predicted it would be finished and on-line by 2024. My mate, who works for EDF, had a side bet with me it would be nowhere near finished before he retires in April ’24.
And I now owe him several bacon butties as the “Drive for Twenty-Five” which was announced pre-pandemic has been quietly canned….. and this tells the story https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/hinkley-point-c-cost-and-timeframe-under-review-as-edf-notes-difficulties-in-civils-work-28-03-2022/
It’s not about a discount, it’s cover for making peak more expensive
How the hell does a £19bn project need a nigh on £3bn increase due to ‘challenging ground conditions’? Didn’t they test that in the feasibility study? Or in the project study? Or in the planning study? And that’s a HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY for a few changes in ground conditions. 10% of TOTAL costs?
More like they mucked up the estimate at the start.
Sure it was, but the current situation is political also, in the 1970’s it was transactional “Give the miners 43% pay rise to turn the lights back on”. In the end Harold Wilson was elected and they got (more or less) what they asked for.
The only difference nowadays is the situation is structural rather than transactional. The deliberate use of Trotskyist insurrectionists camouflaged in Greenwash to disguise the fact that they’re trying to do what they’ve always done, bring down the country so that they can install a Communist dictatorship.
The entire Warble Gloaming hysteria is just a way of hiding their Communist goals to allow them to infiltrate all the main parties than being trapped where they belong in their Trotskyist bubble on the extremes and out of power.
Net Zero plays right into their hands, exchanging genuine energy security by being able to burn the coal under the feet of half the country with windmills and a dependence on foreign sourced gas. Undermining the UK’s energy security by obstructing development of new nuclear power stations is a feature of the Watermelons, not a bug.
It’s all political and it’s working, which is why their is a widespread resistance from those who understand the value of UK Energy Security against Net Zero and FOR mechanisms such as UK nuclear power which reduce our dependence on Russian and Islamic despots.
“The only difference nowadays is the situation is structural”
It’s a big difference. It’s starting to look like the lights are going to go out, whatever is done about it. You could elect a new government & get an entire reversal of green policies tomorrow. But it won’t make the slightest difference. The electricity generation capability you need will not be available when you need it. The time for the decisions to be made were in the past. You are fucked. The why you have been fucked is incidental. Interesting for the history books. (Unless you burn them to keep warm.)
If you want to do anything about it I’d suggest taking a pickaxe handle down the next Insulate Britain stunt & smashing a few skulls. Won’t do any good in the short term but might convince the government it’s policies don’t have wholehearted support.
@JG
“Undermining the UK’s energy security by obstructing development of new nuclear power stations is a feature of the Watermelons, not a bug.”
I agree totally but I can at least understand the historical background of the environmentalist/green movement was often tied to nuclear oppositionism – I remember reading ecofreakery books and leaflets just after Chernobyl and fears of radioactive contamination trumped their fear of global warming. They have a Hierarchy of Bad Things and nuclear comes out worse than fossil fuels. What you’re gonna do for baseload if you scrap fossil fuels while opposing nuclear is a question to which their response is moral indignation rather than any kinda practical answer, which is why you shouldn’t put these people in charge of your energy policy, but nuclear opposition can at least be comprehended a historical part of the green brand identity.
What I find far far worse, is self-proclaimed “green” parties opposing at the local level the installation of almost any wind turbines, solar farms and even continental interconnectors. You can’t build an energy strategy solely around those things but they do at least reduce the quantity of fossil fuels you need to import. Okay the opposition to these things is just good old fashioned British nimbyism, but if you think we should be using more of this stuff and less gas, it has got to go somewhere. When these political parties (pretty much all stripes) broadcast all over the national media how green they are for supporting alternatives to fossil fuels (and sometimes, stupidly as you point out, nuclear too) but then at the local level boast to people how much they will protect their community by opposing solar, wind and interconnectors…. They are just deeply deeply unserious people.
Coal has killed more people per megawatt generated than nuclear power generation by a country mile.
Equally, the idiocy of blocking the new coal mine in Cumbria, essentially forcing us to import coal from Russia and other places (not for power generation).
Good. Ignore the phuquers then!
@JG
Yeah never said their Hierarchy of Bad Things was based on fact or reason. Cold War threat of nuclear armageddon didn’t do nuclear power any favours even though it’s a completely different and much more manageable risk. All got conflated in the eco hive mind.
Would love to ignore them but one flavour or another seems to rule over us at all levels of society.
Okay, I’ll run the washing machine overnight. For one washcloth.