Energy news in general

tghe-retford

Gerry1 said:

Ildhund said:

As one of the BBC's victims suggested, there are customers out there who would just pay any bill sent by their supplier without investigating further. This is a problem in itself, whether back-billing is involved or not. Working out what your energy should cost involves nothing more than primary-school arithmetic. Have we raised generations of citizens who can't even manage this? 

Sadly we have, probably because Spin is often more highly regarded and rewarded than Substance.

For far too long, Engineers and Engineering have played second fiddle compared to less rigorous subjects such as sales and marketing, which are regarded as more glamorous.  'The phone box door is stuck?  I'll send out an Engineer to fix it.'

This bias permeates almost everywhere.  Pure make some excellent and reliable radios, but this amazing nonsense on their GB website has to be seen to be believed.  The author thinks that DAB isn't a Broadcasting service, that DAB radios don't use radio waves, that DAB offers an 'infinite number of radio programmes to choose from' and that you can listen to 'BBC 6' in the UK, but also to 'Radio Energy' out of Germany.  Needless to say, the culprit is a Marketing Manager !

However, the wooden spoon goes to Halfords: "Digital transmissions contain more information than conventional FM / AM, thanks to the super-fast wavelength of around 220MHz in the UK, compared to the 75KHz or so wavelength of analogue FM / AM radio broadcasts. The choice of channels is much wider too, as you'll be able to listen to channels from all over the UK (and sometimes even abroad), rather than local broadcasts on FM / AM." 

What Halfords wrote was painful to read. Not a flex, but as the person who wrote the majority of the Digital Radio in the United Kingdom article on Wikipedia, so I hope I know something about this, how did they manage to mix up frequency and bandwidth? DAB's bandwidth is 1.536MHz. And as for PURE, the only way you're hearing "Radio Energy" on DAB+ in the UK is during tropospheric conditions where radio signals travel much further during high pressure - I've managed to get radio from Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, France and Germany that way. It's also what causes Freeview channels to drop out and FM stations to get replaced or interference.

Back to energy, DAB is more energy efficient than FM for broadcasting. It's one of the reasons why Switzerland and Norway turned off FM broadcasts.

username

Badboi said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Many people do lack basic numeracy, estimates are around 40%, 18% of people are functionality illiterate in England, 26.8% in Scotland, combine those two issues and for a huge number of people an energy bill or bank statement might as well be written in Ancient Egyptian. Even above that ability level many people still struggle with anything more complicated that the absolute basics, more than half of people are not able to fully manage their lives, understand bills, bank statements, budgets, even something as basic as a percentage which is why so much media reporting is now fractions "1 in 5" because a huge proportion of people were confused by "20%".

Now these kind of people are the ones who keep screaming at Ofgem about standing charges and worst of all, Ofgem has decided to listen to them, not because they are intelligent, not because they have a valid position, not because they are rational, but because there are loud and numerous. 

And yet, they’ll be the ones shouting loudest when they see the unit rate has gone up to cancel out the SC. (Though they might not notice it in reality)

We have seen this in the broadband sector, all of those screaming the house down to make it "pounds and pence" have got their wish, but the providers have also taken to having a fixed approach for price increases, and also the opportunity to hike it up more.

It means that those that do have the lower priced broadband are hit hardest, as the fixed pounds and pence amount is higher. Case in point, my broadband with Plusnet. Last year's increase under the CPI+X% - about £1.90/month. I resign the contract and sure enough, there's the fixed £3 increase - so about 50and a bit percentish extra!
Always beware of the law of unintended consequences combined with ineffectual regulation.

Gerry1

tghe-retford said:

Gerry1 said:

Ildhund said:

As one of the BBC's victims suggested, there are customers out there who would just pay any bill sent by their supplier without investigating further. This is a problem in itself, whether back-billing is involved or not. Working out what your energy should cost involves nothing more than primary-school arithmetic. Have we raised generations of citizens who can't even manage this? 

Sadly we have, probably because Spin is often more highly regarded and rewarded than Substance.

For far too long, Engineers and Engineering have played second fiddle compared to less rigorous subjects such as sales and marketing, which are regarded as more glamorous.  'The phone box door is stuck?  I'll send out an Engineer to fix it.'

This bias permeates almost everywhere.  Pure make some excellent and reliable radios, but this amazing nonsense on their GB website has to be seen to be believed.  The author thinks that DAB isn't a Broadcasting service, that DAB radios don't use radio waves, that DAB offers an 'infinite number of radio programmes to choose from' and that you can listen to 'BBC 6' in the UK, but also to 'Radio Energy' out of Germany.  Needless to say, the culprit is a Marketing Manager !

However, the wooden spoon goes to Halfords: "Digital transmissions contain more information than conventional FM / AM, thanks to the super-fast wavelength of around 220MHz in the UK, compared to the 75KHz or so wavelength of analogue FM / AM radio broadcasts. The choice of channels is much wider too, as you'll be able to listen to channels from all over the UK (and sometimes even abroad), rather than local broadcasts on FM / AM." 

What Halfords wrote was painful to read. Not a flex, but as the person who wrote the majority of the Digital Radio in the United Kingdom article on Wikipedia, so I hope I know something about this, how did they manage to mix up frequency and bandwidth?

The same way they mixed up frequency, wavelength and speed?

tghe-retford said:

Gerry1 said:

Ildhund said:

As one of the BBC's victims suggested, there are customers out there who would just pay any bill sent by their supplier without investigating further. This is a problem in itself, whether back-billing is involved or not. Working out what your energy should cost involves nothing more than primary-school arithmetic. Have we raised generations of citizens who can't even manage this? 

Sadly we have, probably because Spin is often more highly regarded and rewarded than Substance.

For far too long, Engineers and Engineering have played second fiddle compared to less rigorous subjects such as sales and marketing, which are regarded as more glamorous.  'The phone box door is stuck?  I'll send out an Engineer to fix it.'

This bias permeates almost everywhere.  Pure make some excellent and reliable radios, but this amazing nonsense on their GB website has to be seen to be believed.  The author thinks that DAB isn't a Broadcasting service, that DAB radios don't use radio waves, that DAB offers an 'infinite number of radio programmes to choose from' and that you can listen to 'BBC 6' in the UK, but also to 'Radio Energy' out of Germany.  Needless to say, the culprit is a Marketing Manager !

However, the wooden spoon goes to Halfords: "Digital transmissions contain more information than conventional FM / AM, thanks to the super-fast wavelength of around 220MHz in the UK, compared to the 75KHz or so wavelength of analogue FM / AM radio broadcasts. The choice of channels is much wider too, as you'll be able to listen to channels from all over the UK (and sometimes even abroad), rather than local broadcasts on FM / AM." 

Back to energy, DAB is more energy efficient than FM for broadcasting. It's one of the reasons why Switzerland and Norway turned off FM broadcasts.

A bit debatable.  Probably on the transmission side, based on the total number of stations.  Less certain per listener hour, bearing in mind the much greater number of transmitters and that many stations have few listeners.  And almost certainly not overall because there are millions of listeners; my analogue Grundig G5 will last weeks on four AA rechargeables but I'll be lucky to get ten hours from my Majority Eddington.  Then there are all those wall warts left permanently switched on...

QrizB

Energy in the news, sort of:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c337rngk46ko

Fake workmen dug up roads to power cannabis farms

Chrysalis

Yeah seen that article.  Never seen that reported before, usually they just bypass meters.

70sbudgie

They are lucky they weren't more seriously injured.

victor2

Chrysalis said:

Yeah seen that article.  Never seen that reported before, usually they just bypass meters.

Presumably, that's how the "amateurs" do it. 

molerat

Bill reductions for those within 500m of new pylons to ease planning objections

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyd49dxyxxo

Households within 500m of new or upgraded pylons will get discounts of up to £2,500 over 10 years, equivalent to £250 a year.

TroubledTarts

molerat said:

Bill reductions for those within 500m of new pylons to ease planning objections

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyd49dxyxxo

Households within 500m of new or upgraded pylons will get discounts of up to £2,500 over 10 years, equivalent to £250 a year.

Looks like a horribly low figure to put up with a pylon that close.

Especially the mega ones they are putting in across the country.

molerat

TroubledTarts said:

molerat said:

Bill reductions for those within 500m of new pylons to ease planning objections

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyd49dxyxxo

Households within 500m of new or upgraded pylons will get discounts of up to £2,500 over 10 years, equivalent to £250 a year.

Looks like a horribly low figure to put up with a pylon that close.

Especially the mega ones they are putting in across the country.

My SIL is going to be right in the middle of two 180ft pylons, 300m from a pylon and 200m from the cable track.