Sorting Out My Energy
Every so often, I check up to see if I’ve got the best energy deal. As some companies are now offering smart meters, I wondered if I could get one of these thrown in.
So I checked one of the comparison sites and found, that I could save four hundred or so a year, by swapping to nPower.
As my current supplier is nPower, I found that strange, as I thought, I was supposed to be on the lowest tariff, according to new government legislation.
So I phoned them up and got changed onto the new tariff. The only downside is that there is now a £60 cancellation fee!
I can’t help thinking, that all of this has a touch of professional theft about it.
I think the moral of this story, is that you should check your energy bills against the rest of the industry probably twice a year.
You might be surprised, as I was, that one short phone call, saves you a few hundred pounds.
I still haven’t got my smart meter though! But then the big companies are reluctant to bring those in, as it will both cost them money for the meter and because savvy customers will cut their energy use.
My Dual Fuel Bill
I seem to pay £154 a month for this.
I wouldn’t know if that is high or low, except that it’s certainly a lot less than I used to pay in the two previous houses.
Smoking Bans Lead To Fall In Asthma
This report on the BBC, says there is a link between the smoking ban and a drop in the number of children admitted to hospital with asthma. Here’s a relevant paragraph.
We increasingly think it’s because people are adopting smoke-free homes when these smoke-free laws are introduced and this is because they see the benefits of smoke-free laws in public places such as restaurants and they increasingly want to adopt them in their home.
I also think, that children are also badgering their parents not to smoke.
When we were developing the metered dose inhaler for drugs, like those for asthma, I came across some research that showed any naked flame in the house increased the oxides of nitrogen in the air, that might be causing asthma. This page from the US EPA outlines the problem and gives advice.
So I would never have a gas cooker or fire in my house. There was one when I bought this house, but I sold it.
Fracking In The Times
The Times yesterday also had an article in favour of fracking from Alice Thomson.
As an engineer and a scientist, I tend to dismiss emotional arguments about anything, when the science and technology says otherwise. In this article, I outlined a few thoughts on the subject. I stated this in the article.
The technologies employed are still very much under development and have been used mainly in the very underpopulated parts of the United States and Canada. The extraction is now moving towards more populous states, like Pennsylvania, and only when it is totally accepted by the inhabitants there, will it be time to use it in Europe.
My views haven’t changed and as I said we should keep a watching brief.
We should also do more research, as I said here.
One point that we forget about onshore energy extraction, is that in Wytch Farm, we have one of the largest onshore oil fields in Europe. It’s also slap bang in beautiful countryside. Do we here a massive movement to close it? To me, it proves that in the UK, the oil and gas industry can be good neighbours.
If we can use fracking safely, I believe that the economics say that our energy bills will drop.
Another Clue In The Mystery Of The Rogue Central Heating
Yesterday, I had a guy from G4S call looking for a Mr. Smith, who supposedly lived in the flat above my house. It was about non-payment of an energy bill to British Gas.
Now, there is no flat above my house, I’ve never dealt with British Gas and the guy said he was looking for a prepayment meter, which doesn’t exist.
So after an amicable discussion, he made a few notes and left.
The whole episode got me thinking. When I moved into this house, some of the wiring was unusual to say the least. So did someone crudely split the house into two separate flats to maximise his income.
This would certainly explain the very dodgy and crude wiring in the heating manifold.
So perhaps, I’m wrong to blame Jerry in this instance, when it appears it was some amateur, who had a possible grudge against me.
Fracking May be Good for You
There is a great deal of opposition to the use of fracking to extract gas from shale in this country.
I went to a lecture at the Royal Geograhical Society yesterday called Unconventional Gas. It was very enlightening and I can draw various conclusions from the lecture. You can find out more about the lecture here.
The first is that there is a very large amount of gas available to be extracted using fracking and a lot of it is in countries, with pretty stable regimes, like Australia, Canada and the United States.
The second is that gas prices in North America are falling fast, because of the large amounts of gas now available. I believe, that Canada has far too much gas for its own use and will soon start to export.
So it is not inconceivable, that Europe will start to import gas from North America rather than from regimes like Russia and Qatar.
Am I wrong to therefore suggest that because of fracking, we may well find that our gas prices start to drop?
I have deliberately not discussed the use of fracking in the UK and Europe.
The technologies employed are still very much under development and have been used mainly in the very underpopulated parts of the United States and Canada. The extraction is now moving towards more populous states, like Pennsylvania, and only when it is totally accepted by the inhabitants there, will it be time to use it in Europe.
In the meantime we should keep a strong watching brief, investing in resarch in the best universities, as I outlined here.
But as with many things, there are many against the technology, when it starts to be used, but now it is totally accepted. Just look at the opposition Brunel, Stephenson and others had when they started building railways!
Could Fracking Be The Saviour of the North?
I can remember a documentary on the BBC in probably the 1960s about how a Scottish company extracted oil from shale rock. I don’t know whether they still do. I have just found this museum to the industry and it says it closed in 1962.
According to today’s Sunday Times, there is enough shale gas in the shale deposits mostly in the north of England to last 70 years.
Now I know extracting shale gas is controversial, especially, where the process of fracking is used. There was controversy in the Blackpool are, as fracking was blamed for a couple of small earthquakes. Read about it here.
But then there was controversy, when horseless carriages first arrived on British roads and they had to be preceded by a man with a red flag.
I’m not saying there is no risk from fracking, but I do think, that with proper research fracking will be safe to use in many places in the world.
And eventually, it will be used in many places in the UK, when the problems are sorted out. After all, we mined coal for years, despite the subsidence risk nearby.
And remember that for the same amount of energy coal produces forty-percent more CO2! This is because coal is pure carbon, whereas natural gas is a mixture of Hydrogen H2 and Methane, CH4, so it produces a large proportion of water when it burns.
Hopefully, I’ll know more later in the week, when I have gone to the Geological Society of London to hear a lecture.
The other thing about shale gas in the UK, is that it is located where we need jobs; in the north of England. So it becomes a vote winner for whoever wants to play the shale gas card.
Any extraction of shale gas, should be linked to two measures.
1. A local extraction tax, that goes directly to the local authorities over the extraction. This was proposed in the seventies, by someone I knew, as a means of pursuing oil extraction in places like Surrey, which in his knowledgeable view was one of the most likely places to find oil in the UK. Imagine the fuss it would create if large quantities of oil were found under say Epsom. But if Surrey got enough money to build everything they needed, the reaction of some might be different.
2. Full insurance for any buildings damaged by extraction process.
Politicians and the press will see it as a simple black and white issue. Most will be against! I see it as a multi-coloured jigsaw, that must be based on sound technology.
I would start by setting up an well–funded Institute of Fracking, at a university that has the reputation to recruit some of the best researchers in the world. It may prove that fracking is a dead end but if it showed that it was economically viable in the UK, we would reap the benefit in spades.
I have just found this article from the American Consumer Institute. It makes a lot of interesting points. Note that the United States has a local extraction tax in some or all states and this seems to push opinion in various directions.
I think the worst thing we could do is ban fracking, with the second worst being to ignore it.
Whatever we do, because we have so much of this gas, we should set up some form of research institute.
There is also a page of expert opinion to the Qradilla report on the links between fracking and earthquakes at Blackpool.
The Balaena Lives
Not quite, but there is a lot of Balaena thinking behind Shell’s new FLNG.
So what was the design I worked upon in Cambridge for Balaena Structures all those years ago like?
The problem with offshore oil platforms is that they are very expensive and once they’ve extracted all the oil from the oilfield on which they sit, they are very difficult to take down.
In the mid-1970s, some very clever structural engineers from Cambridge University came up with a design for a reuseable platform, that could be built in a ship yard, that would normally build supertankers.
The design was simply a steel cylinder, perhaps about a hundred metres long and thirty or so in diameter. I can’t be sure of the size as it is nearly forty years ago and I have kept no records. The idea was that it would be built horizontally and then towed into position, where it would be turned through ninety degrees to sit on the ocean floor above the oilfield.
So the eventual bottom end was closed off and would have had a skirt that sat in the ocean floor and held the platform in position by a sort of gum boot principle. The other end was also closed and supported a square working deck about twenty metres high on a stem about the same length.
My part was to do the calculations on the upending, which would have been accomplished by letting sea water into the enormous tank under control.
The calculations were not that simple, but because of my dynamic simulation experience, they were well within my compass and I was able to do them on a simple time-shared computer.
I did prove that because of the vast weight of steel and the not inconsiderable weight of sea water, that the Balaena would install itself as designed. Sadly it was one of those projects that after a considerable amount of effort never came to fruition.
Some other points about the design should be noted.
- The tank could be used to store the oil extracted and this could then be pumped to a waiting tanker.
- When it needed to be moved, the tank would be emptied and at the appropriate point, the Balaena would float vertically. It could then be towed still upright to a new position.
All of this might seem rather fanciful, but I suspect that some of the ideas in the Balaena have been used successfully in the other designs.
I started talking about the Balaena, when the Deepwater Horizon blew up in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time I was lying on a bed after a serious stroke in Hong Kong. I imagined an empty Balaena ready and waiting floating horizontally in the sea within a few hundred miles of the clusters of oil platforms. It would differ from the 1970s platform design, in that the working deck would be much simpler and probably only there to control the pumping. It would also not have a complete bottom to allow the oil to enter the tank.
Could it have been towed to the site and upended over the leaking well, as a crude but effective cap? The oil would still float to the surface, but inside the tank of the Balaena, from where it could be pumped out.
The idea may still be fanciful, but I can guarantee that the structure would upend as required, just by adding sea water to the tank. I did the calculations to prove it in the early 1970s.
Is Surrey Going to be the New Texas?
BBC London News is reporting that oil drilling will be starting in Surrey soon. It’s also on the web site here.
Many years ago, I was told by a man, who’d at one time had been Managing Director or a large resources company, that Surrey was one of the most promising places to drill for oil and gas. He also lived in the county.
He believed that there should be a Local Extraction Tax. At present all taxes go to central government, who often waste it on their own vanity projects that have dubious value.
I agree with him, as just imagine what would happen to a County that got an extra fifty million pounds in its budget.
Wen we think of onshore drilling for oil and gas, we always think of towering structures and large amounts of flames reaching skywards. But the truth is rather different, if you look at an oil field like Wytch Farm. This is the largest onshore oil-field in Western Europe. Wikipedia says this about its location.
Most of the field is protected by various conservation laws, including the Jurassic Coast world heritage site, Purbeck Heritage Coast and a number of sites of special scientific interest, areas of outstanding natural beauty and nature reserves (including Studland and Brownsea Island), so the gathering centre and most of the well sites are small and well screened by trees. Directional drilling has also contributed to reducing the impact on the local environment, with extended reach drilling from the Goathorn Peninsula attaining distances in excess of 10 km.
In my view, Wytch Farm shows how we can exploit natural resources without destroying the planet or even the local area.
I also feel very strongly, that onshore fields are much safer, as all the staff generally live close and are thus so much more careful with that they do. They also generally have an interrupted family life, which probably contributes to making the right decisions.
I suppose one benefit of extracting oil in Surrey, would be that it would make changing light-bulbs in Manchester easier, if this joke is actually true.
Question: How many Manchester United fans does it take to change a light-bulb?
Answer: Two; one to actually change the bulb and another to drive him up from Surrey!
A Final Good Bye TO EDF Energy – Hopefully!
When I Bought This house the electricity and gas supplier was EDF Energy. At the time I thought it would be a good idea to stick with them, as it might be less hassle to get them to continue to do the supply than change.
But after trying to get sense from EDF Energy, I signed up with nPower, as I detailed here. I set up Direct Debits too, soon after they changed the meter on the day they said they would, and at the time precisely.
In my original post, I did imply that Thames Water, tried to get aggressive in trying to sell me things I didn’t need. But I’ll forgive them that, as when I needed to read the water meter, the lady in the call centre told me in detail how to do it. They also gave me a free tour of Abbey Mills and the sewers with very good food afterwards.
Over the six months or so, I’ve got a lot of writs for the previous owners tenants. The biggest of which was for several hundred pounds from a company collecting on behalf of EDF Energy. It was from an agency in Glasgow, so I suspected someone from Alex Ferguson’s charm school to give me some form of hair-drying, when I phoned them. But I got a nice guy, who told me to forget the bill and shred it, after asking a few questions in a polite manner.
Nothing much happened until about two months ago, except for a series of mysterious calls on my mobile phone, which might be linked to EDF Energy.
I then got a bill from EDF Energy of £180.83, which on querying with them, they said was for the time whilst they were swapping everything over to nPower. I immediately queried it on the phone and I then got a reduced bill of £70.46, but I thought this was still too high as it ran from the 1st December 2010, when I didn’t move in until the 12th.
I was now dealing with them by e-mail and the e-mail said this.
If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact me via my email.
So I did. Several times, in an attempt to get the bill adjusted to the 12th of December or full explanation of their calculations. Let’s face it there comes a point, where you don’t fight a bill of seventy quid any longer, as it just isn’t worth the effort. I also put it in a letter to them.
That point came on Thursday, when I sent them the money by bank transfer. But even that wasn’t as simple as paying other companies, as their bank, doesn’t accept the faster payments system, that virtually all others do. This excellent system means you get a certified receipt for a payment within a few minutes. Read about them here in the Guardian. If ever there was a reason for Internet banking, it’s this payment system.
It’s been debited from my bank account, so it’s somewhere in the system. It’s probably being processed in some overseas department of France, if they use a French bank.
I should say that their automated system phoned my mobile phone number, despite the fact that I told them I always deal with people over my landline. This automated system had no way getting a realperson and expected me to type in the twelve digits of my debit card number without making a mistake. I can do that easily on my large button landline phone, but not on my Nokia 6310i. Their automated system is about as customer friendly to someone with a small disability like me, as a unicycle. So in the end I hung up on them. They didn’t ring again. Surely that is wrong, as some other companies, will ring you back with a real person if the person accepting the call doesn’t seem to be responding properly.
Let’s hope that’s the end of it. I shall certainly not be recommending EDF Energy to any of my friends. As they say on Eurovision, they have earned nil points for Customer Service.
Any more calls from them and I’ll use the famous Sun headline from the 1970s or so.
The Anonymous Widower 