Tuesday 7 August 2012

Are You Being Ripped Off

Guest post From the Hockerton Housing Project

The Sustainable Hockerton community wind turbine continues to turn a profit! The directors have just paid members of the Society owning it 8% interest and have had enough money left in the bank to donate £10,000 to the village to pursue sustainability and energy saving projects. Not bad for the second year of full operation! The most frequent quote from investors was “I only wish I had invested more!”

However a concern sometimes raised by critics is that this is mostly funded via the Feed in Tariff (FiT) and thus is subsidised money. The FiT is funded from electricity bills. The question is how much impact does this have?

And the answer….The figures (1) show that onshore wind added just £4.68 to house-hold energy bills last year. By comparison, the rising cost of imported gas added around £120 to energy bills in the same period (2). So the cost of gas added more than 10% to energy bills while onshore wind added less than 0.05%! Or thinking about it another way if we had more wind turbines displacing a bit of gas the long term impact would be to reduce your energy bill. (Assuming gas prices rise in the long run)

Hockerton Housing Project is pleased to support Sustainable Hockerton in its ambitions to make the parish of Hockerton more sustainable.

Tours of Hockerton available here: http://www.hockertonhousingproject.org.uk/SEFS/ID.1005/SEFE/ViewItem.asp

References:
(1) Renewable Energy Focus March/April 2012 volume 13 issue 2 page 34 and OFGEM Renewable Obligation annual report 2010/11.
(2) OFGEM December 2011 Electricity and Gas Supply market report.

15 comments:

howard thomas said...

Its always interesting to see how figures can make whatever case that you want them to make. Wind energy has to be backed up by power stations simply bacause the wind is so variable. Feed in tariffs have to be paid for by somebody.
For a sustainable and reliable power source we should be looking at tidal power...........what chance of that?

Adrian Windisch said...

So I find a source of reliable information and you say its wothless with no justifiation. No one has ever suggested that 100% wind is viable, a mix is needed for security of supply. Though parts of Germany has as much as 50% wind power.

Then you change the subject, nothing wrong with tidal. Its renewable energy. Problem is fossil fuel and nuclear which are not sustainable.

howard thomas said...

Your source of information is 'reliable' ? Does that mean that other sources are therefore unreliable because they don't fit your case?

How do you view hydrogen as the fuel of the future? Sustainable/unsustainable, viable/unviable?

Adrian Windisch said...

Show me some information and if i can i will tell you if its reliable.

Hydrogen is not so much a fuel as a way of storing energy. If the energy is renewable thats fine. Promises were made that it would be available soon but it seems still prohibitavly expensive. Last i heard a million pounds required.

howard thomas said...

Adrian....hydrogen is most certainly a fuel. Petrol could be described as an 'energy store' if you wanted to phrase it like that in the same way that coal or gas could be.
I'm not sure what your 'million pounds required' refers to.
The very interesting thing about hydrogen is that the emissions are simply water and that hydrogen is produced by 'splitting' water.

Adrian Windisch said...

As stated already, hydrogen is made from electricity. If its from a fossil fuel then is has large ekmissions before it gets into a car

Last i heard a hydrogen car would cost millions, this may have changed

Perhaps its finally time for you to answer a question. What were your gen electioni expenses. You said you would answer, please honour your promise

howard thomas said...

Who mentioned a car?
It certainly wasn't me!

As for 'gen electioni' expenses, I assume you refer to general election expenses!. I would suggest that your best route is to look to the electoral commission for the answer. They don't have a problem,I don't have a problem. What is your problem???????

More about hydrogen tomorrow!!

howard thomas said...

If by 'gen electioni' you mean my general election expenses, then I suggest you look to the electoral commission who don't have a problem as you seem to have!

I'm surprised that you seem to have little enthusiam for hydrogen. Such clean burning fuels are surely the way forward and I've no doubt that science can provide the answers if they are given the backing to do so. The problem is most likely in the oil companies and the like that don't want change!
I'll provide you with some very interesting information when it comes to me shortly.

Adrian Windisch said...

Ive given my reasons a few times now no point repeating.

You said yOu would give me the info on your Election expenses and now you will not do it. You expect other politicians to be open about such things, you should live up to your expectations of others. Or simply do what you have already promised to do

howard thomas said...

You ARE repeating...........your pointless questions.......so pointless that you seem to like to bring it up each time you run out of answers, except that you seem to forgotten what the question was.

Why are you wasting your time on pointless things when surely you Greens ought to be interested in, or more likely pushing for alternative fuels. You surprise me that you show little or no interest!

I have a gadget on my vehicle that breaks down water into its component gases, hydrogen and oxygen, and uses the hydrogen as a fuel. My vehicle used to give 40mpg. The results now range from 48 to 54mpg . Are you interested yet or too busy pumping pedals to care!

Adrian Windisch said...

I have answered every questipn you ask but you still have not answered one. I want to know your election expenses, the election comission say you submitted them too late so its not on their website. You complain about other politicians beinh open about this but despite saying you would answer you now refuse.

Your vehicle does sound intetesting, i would like to know m

Adrian Windisch said...

More. But if you look up hydrogen on the web it says what i told you.

howard thomas said...

It seems to just you that has a problem with my election expenses and there is no point in my going back to dig out something , which to me is now irrelevant history, just to keep you happy (and, no doubt, it probably wouldn't!)
A clue to you (and I'm sure that I've said this before) is that the expense is not the value of a vehicle, but the amount it might cost to hire that vehicle for the period in question. If I attached a banner to a Rolls Royce and drove it around town for 2 days the expense is not in the hundreds of thousands, but the cost of the hire for 2 days.

More about my vehicle.......Something that you would do well to know about, bearing in mind the party that you are from.
The gadget in question is a 'cell' which breaks down water into ite component gases by electrolysis and then funnels this gas (known as HHO or Browns gas) into the air intake of the engine. The hydrogen assists the burning of the regular fuel and by so doing the emissions are greatly reduced. I'll say that again so you don't have to read it twice! the emissions are greatly reduced. I'm waiting for the manufacturer to send me a link to a clip that shows a vehicle hooked up to a machine that shows this. I'll send it to you when I get it.
You and I can argue from now till next week about whether global warming is fact or fiction, but from the aspect of air quality and finding alternative fuels to avoid future shortages we should surely be able to agree.
The way forward is for science to find the answers and I have no doubt that the answers are there to be found. It is more a question of whether the 'powers that be' want them found.
With solar panels for example there seems to be quite a lot of big money backing the research and panels that are double the efficiency of the current ones would appear to be possible.
I would not be at all surprised if cars could be run on water. Some people claim to have done it, but I've never seen it. The trick is to split the water and burn the result ......producing just water in the exhaust. The seems silly at first sight, but I suspect that it is possible , but the oil giants and governments prefer to leave things as they are!
No change there then!

Adrian Windisch said...

If you say you cant get the number then i will give up asking. Even an approximation would have satisfied me

If you get the information you are welcime to a guest blog in alternative fuels. You are correct about oil companies nit wanting this. Thrre is a film who killed the electic car, guess who did that.

howard thomas said...

As far as I remember its between 5000 and 7000, but like I said its history now. We should all be looking forwards.
Clean and green fuels are the way forward and it is science that will provide them. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I know a company that is looking at ways of using rubbish to geenerate power (as well as disposing of that rubbish). The plan is as follows. Take the general waste to a plant near the coast. Then sort out the obvious metals and recyclable bits. Chop and form the rest into pellets and then load onto a ship to transport out to an incinerator ship which would be moored close to a disused gas platform/rig in the North Sea. There is apparantly a process, the name of which I forget that can incinerate this waste without using oxygen and which produces a low calorific gas as a product. This gas would be good enough to run a power station and would be fed into the existing pipework that links the gas platform to the shore. After this process there is still obviously something left, which is a powder type of substance that when I last heard was being investigated to see what it could be used for, perhaps somethig in the building material type line. I've no idea if this will come to fruition, but it sounds like it ticks all the boxes..........no landfill, runs a power station and no waste. Good luck to them I say!