Taxation - New powerstations, or Free appliances ?

zeupater

Hi All

A little fun to get the brain working .... On another discussion Mart recently posted "but just replacing one lightbulb per household with a low energy bulb at the same time could reduce total demand by ~2GW." & I posted that recent changes in modern TVs had probably"knocked somewhere around 3 to 5GW out of the evening demand ..." ( https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/65136739#Comment_65136739 ) ... which made me think ....

Considering that vast sums of taxpayers' money (ours!) is going to be handed over to big businesses in order to subsidise generating plant, including nuclear, it would be fun to gauge the views of reasonable people when asked whether the provision of new efficient appliances 'for free' would be a more palatable option for the 'Great British Public' ...

The way I see it is that taking Hinkley Point C as an example, 3.2GW of capacity will cost ~£16billion to build and cost the Taxpayer & customer base around £80billion over it's 30year operating life (& subsequent decommissioning) that works out at somewhere around £106/household/year for 30years, but importantly, couldn't come online for about 12 years ...

Now, taking light-bulbs as an example, if every household was offered a reasonable selection of LED light-bulbs which meant that the average property reduced their average lighting from say 100W to 15W then the gross effect would be ~2.12GW. We recently bought some twin-packs of 6.5W standard bayonet cap and some triple packs of GU10s branded LEDs for £5/pack, and I doubt that the store was losing a lot of money on the deal, so lets say that £20/ household could supply a mixture of between 8 & 12 LEDs depending on mix ... send a voucher to each address and distribute the product through supermarkets and you could probably say that the entire project could be delivered for £25/household .... that's a total of around £625million.

There you go, 2/3 of Hinckley Point C's capacity removed for ever for less than 3 months of taxpayer/consumer contribution, thus effectively saving 2/3 of almost £80billion ... of course, the bulbs won't last for ever, but you'd have to agree that there's plenty in the coffers to deal with that eventuality, after all, instead of waiting 12years for one powerstation to come on line we could be reaping the benefits this year and therefore mitigating a potential 'energy gap' crisis ...

Now, that's just light-bulbs ... what about trade in schemes for baseload appliances such as fridges & freezers etc .... A++ rated fridges for free this year, A++ freezers a couple of years later ... now we're really talking, that's got to be worth a handful of coal or gas powered sites ...

So there's the question, where would you like your money spent - New powerstations, or Free appliances ?

Have fun !
Z

tunnel

Now that's a toughie Mr Zeup. I'd have to say appliances.....but.....can I hold off on mine for a few years, I changed most of mine when the panels went on and have plenty of warranty left on them all and they're all A rated or better, done the LED's too.


Feel free to put me at the back of the queue.(just don't forget me:) )

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

LEDs, as long as they're dimmable. And some of those Y-shaped light fittings that were available when I were a lad. The ones that were banned because some idiots plugged their irons in to the lighting circuit.

zeupater

Fruit_and_Nut_Case wrote: »

... those Y-shaped light fittings that were available when I were a lad. The ones that were banned because some idiots plugged their irons in to the lighting circuit.

Hi

I'd forgotten about them until reading the above post. I remember the family having one on the light pendant at the bottom of the stairs (easy to reach and plug-in off a stair) which was used for a hairdryer which had a bayonet cap plug ... :eek: ... those were the days, we had four types of plug & socket in the house ... large round 3pin, small round 3pin, shaver type 2pin and the bayonet cap, with all sorts of adapters .... considering the growth in electrical gadgets since then, if we still had them I just wonder how many accidents & fires there would be ...

Z

ed110220

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

I'd forgotten about them until reading the above post. I remember the family having one on the light pendant at the bottom of the stairs (easy to reach and plug-in off a stair) which was used for a hairdryer which had a bayonet cap plug ... :eek: ... those were the days, we had four types of plug & socket in the house ... large round 3pin, small round 3pin, shaver type 2pin and the bayonet cap, with all sorts of adapters .... considering the growth in electrical gadgets since then, if we still had them I just wonder how many accidents & fires there would be ...

Z

Haha my grandmother used to talk about plugging an iron into a lamp socket and it always used to puzzle me!

I like the logic of free or subsidised energy efficient appliances rather than new power stations, but I see two problems.

First, there is people's illogic. For example my parents complain of their high electricity bills so I offered to swap their incandescent lamps for energy efficient ones, which they were keen on. When I go back I find the energy efficient lamps are gradually disappearing and being replaced by incandescent ones....

Second, the people who complain about 'green subsidies', windfarms, solar panels etc don't notice the proposed bill for Hinkley because it doesn't appear on their radar, but start distributing free energy saving appliances and they'll be up in arms.

Ed

zeupater

ed110220 wrote: »

Haha my grandmother used to talk about plugging an iron into a lamp socket and it always used to puzzle me!

I like the logic of free or subsidised energy efficient appliances rather than new power stations, but I see two problems.

First, there is people's illogic. For example my parents complain of their high electricity bills so I offered to swap their incandescent lamps for energy efficient ones, which they were keen on. When I go back I find the energy efficient lamps are gradually disappearing and being replaced by incandescent ones....

Second, the people who complain about 'green subsidies', windfarms, solar panels etc don't notice the proposed bill for Hinkley because it doesn't appear on their radar, but start distributing free energy saving appliances and they'll be up in arms.

Ed

Hi

Regarding the energy efficient lights, I know what you mean. We've tried to get some elderly relatives to swap over to CFLs for years but they don't 'like the light' so still use incandescent bulbs. My guess is that they had some early CFLs which took ages to 'warm up' and still think that the latest crop are the same .... Considering that they've always got the lights on, I might try and swap in a couple of instant start CFLs or LEDs and see if they notice ...

Regarding the 'green subsidies', it's simply basic mathematics which even those who complain most would understand .... £80Billion - £625Million = One hell of a saving to be getting along with .... .... and once the savings are banked and the scheme is validated, there would likely be far less making complaints when more power hungry appliances are included ... on top of that, they'll be able to personally see solid evidence of where the expenditure is going every time they turn the light on, open the fridge door etc ....

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

Fascinating question.

I think the government hoped for 10 reactors originally giving a 'new nuke' capacity of 16GW. Not sure if this number has been revised.

Slight problem is that when those first two reactors come on line (planned for 2023 & 2025 if no delays!!!) we will probably be at the end of the existing fleet, which itself is already reducing. So the savings envisaged may not be enough to prevent the first reactors, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't prevent the last ones by knocking off future demand.

Regardless, less demand means less generation, so something has to give, and better to reduce demand than to build extra.

However, still pondering, in 10 years time we should be seeing increased consumption as electric car numbers grow, and perhaps also with increased insulation a growth in heat pump numbers, so we may need all the reactors anyway.

Best bet perhaps, is that by buying time, it'll allow for increased renewables with a leap in storage technology/capacity. I see the need to combat CO2 emissions as important enough to go down the nuclear route, despite my not liking nuclear (fission) generation, but with on-shore wind and large scale PV both looking like they'll need lower subsidies than nuclear by 2023, buying time might be just what we need.

Could (and already have) pondered this for hours. I'm sure I'll be back - apologies in advance.

Mart.

silverwhistle

zeupater wrote: »

We recently bought some twin-packs of 6.5W standard bayonet cap.. and some triple packs of GU10s branded LEDs for £5/pack,

Z

You wouldn't mind saying where, would you; bayonet caps seem difficult to find.

Considering that they've always got the lights on, I might try and swap in a couple of instant start CFLs or LEDs and see if they notice ...

Seems like an excellent idea - you've probably got some CFLs lying around...

I may have mentioned here before, but on the same basis a local distribution engineer colleague once made the same suggestion about a new housing estate: defer building a new substation by issueing everybody on the existing one with low energy bulbs..

silverwhistle

Incidentally, there is a subsidy in Italy for new A (not sure how many +s) appliances: certainly refrigeration and washing machines.

zeupater

silverwhistle wrote: »

You wouldn't mind saying where, would you; bayonet caps seem difficult to find ....

Hi

The latest LEDs we picked up were 'special offer' at 4SDA a couple of months ago ... We picked up some blister packs of 4W GU10s (triple-pack) and emptied the shelves of the remaining 6W BCs (twin-pack) as there weren't many left, but there was a pretty decent selection of other bulb types on display - all Duracell branded for a fiver a pack. From memory they're all non-dimmable, but as we replaced all of the dimmers years ago when shifting everything over to CFLs it doesn't matter (without dimming they should be more efficient anyway!).

I'd like to think that ~£2.50/BC bulb is probably around right in retail multi-packs and it won't be too long before that becomes the standard pricing level ... after-all, I doubt that 4SDA lost too much money on the deal .... I'd guess that they're just being considered by most retailers as being a product which can stand inflated margins at the moment, but LED BCs are pretty widely available ...

HTH
Z

silverwhistle

Ta! Perhaps I should have rephrased my statement "BCs seem difficult to find at a reasonable (non-inflated) cost"! I don't normally go to that supermarket, but I'll keep an eye open there..