Electric Smart Meters

[Rod AshtonParticipant @rodashton53132]

The wage bill of admin staff in all the current energy companies, plus the profits made by those companies must provide a sound financial footing for at least one unitary company to be initiated. Competition has not delivered.

A standard charge programme and standardised meters that actually work for the consumer and not just for the supplier, surely would be feasible. Add to that some possibility of actual conversation with the sole supplier and you must have a winner? (for the consumer)

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Second generation smart meters don't need to be changed when you change supplier, and seem to be all together better

Smart Meter Roll-Out – Which?

note the recommendation to make sure your supplier isn't using up old stock meters.

My supplier fitted smart electricity meter, but then gave up on the gas meter, some trifling problem with the mounting bracket, the electricity retailer says it is a network issue, the network says it is the retailers problem, be sure of one thing, I'm not paying to have it fixed, I have no problem reading the meter once a month, and in reality they don't need variable tariffs on gas throughout the day as there is massive storage in the gas pipeline network.

Of course the bureaucracy says you can't have smart electricity and dumb gas, so they wasted their time, and this isn't even civil service. No doubt someone with a degree in latin would sort it out

[Stuart Munro 1Participant @stuartmunro1]

Posted by derek hall 1 on 02/04/2021 08:05:48:

Easiest and quickest way for the UK to save energy is to turn off alternate floors of office lights.

London city for example with its towering office blocks lit up like a xmas tree for most of the night probably most of them empty as the occupants have either gone home after their days work or are now working from home….

Those that work nights simply "hot desk" to a floor that is lit.

Derek,

I've confessed to being a non engineer trying to do something useful in retirement.

But I did at one stage work in Canary Wharf and was amused by a BBC report on lights left on overnight seen as a video report timed at 2am. The building in question was one I worked in and the lights then (1999) were motion activated – the lights were not left on – people were working. Not uncommon in a global bank covering various time zones!

[Stuart Munro 1Participant @stuartmunro1]

I've got a serious thought – quite rare.

How about reviewing the need 'advancements' that add little to life but consume more power. I'll start with a couple:

1. Cordless charging of smart phones – it uses more power than plugging it in so why do it?

2. Electric cars – Don't get me wrong here they have great potential to reduce our carbon footprint IF the power source is green, but the loss of energy in converting fossil fuel to electricity then using that to charge a battery and finally getting the battery to power a motor is evidently not efficient. In the UK I THINK we are moving in the right direction here, but not every country is.

As some serious thoughts in this thread indicate, the power of technology to reduce power consumption is potentially incredible so why do we persist in moving in some directions that are wasteful?

Stuart

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Anthony Kendall on 02/04/2021 09:57:08:

Posted by Rod Ashton on 02/04/2021 07:24:28:

The government should take back the whole industry. At least we would all be ripped off equally. The existing profits would surely make it a cost effective exercise.

…

Any government has to implement anything via civil service – a bunch of book-passing desk jockeys. …

Nope, another misunderstanding. Ignoring the slur on desk jockeys, heroes one and all, the Civil Service has been reduced by over half since Mrs Thatcher's time, and has only increased again recently due to getting Brexit done. There's a certain irony in that!

Nowadays at least half of government spending is conducted via agencies, contractors, privatised services, and NGOs who don't automatically adopt Civil Service core values 'integrity, honesty, objectivity, and impartiality' or have to be politically independent. Like the TUC, the Civil Service isn't as influential as it once was. Anthony needs to look wider for an explanation!

Critics have radically changed the Civil Service over the last 40 years through a series of efficiency schemes and other reforms. Despite the old Civil Service being largely demolished, Anthony is still complaining and the amount of money spent on public services has continued to rise. That many public services are now outside Civil Service control strongly suggests Civil Servants weren't the problem. Could be a case of 'For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong!'

Unfortunately, it's much easier for folk to blame someone else for difficulties than it is to understand complexities, like balance of trade, market trends, budget shortfalls, borrowing, legal requirements, international power relationships, realpolitik and a bunch of other factors. Usually a mistake to blame a group, whether it be bl**dy students or the Illuminati because it leads to solutions that don't solve the problem, which is stupid. Engineers know better than to waste time and money fixing the wrong problem, but politicians often get clean away with it!

The civil service has always been under the direct control of the government of the day; if the Civil Service was failing, for whatever reason, the government had the power to fix it …

Dave

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

As Dave has pointed out the transfer of agencies from the Civil Service to Private Enterprise means that the whole culture has now changed with Profit now being paramount, is that good, does that bode well for the future? Dave W

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

The Civil Service has probably earned its poor reputation in the past. It provided benefits that the private sector could only dream of, a number of my mothers neighbours were employed in admin. roles at Harwell, a bus took them to work which I am fairly sure was free and on top of holidays they could claim sick days with no actual requirement to be sick, this was topped off with a very good pension. Salaries may not have been competitive with the best of the private sector but probably not too much pressure from above either. I suspect it is rather different these days. The government has a poor reputation for running anything, I struggle to think of anything that runs well or projects that complete on time and on budget that the government has a hand in. Local government are equally useless.

Mike

[Andrew TinsleyParticipant @andrewtinsley63637]

Hi Rod, you seem to have a lot of faith in our privatised utility companies. I don't think many here share that view.

Andrew.

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