ENERGY MATTERS

[Stanley]

Hee hee!Pluggy got you there Tiz..... Cobalt is very useful in very small quantities in my high speed tool steel.....

[Pluggy]

Not so much controlling as tolerating the vast holes in the ground and slag heaps that mining rare stuff generates - in my book. '"Rare Earth" magnets could be mined in many places, but even at its best their ore is stratified and you need to process a lot of ore to get a little finished magnet. Vast holes and vast slag heaps, not easy in a democracy.........

[Stanley]

Spoil heaps Pluggy please. Slag heaps are only found at furnaces.

[Big Kev]

British Gas are putting up their electricity prices BBC I doubt it'll be long before the rest follow.

[Stanley]

It looks as though I might get some benefit from the fixed price tariff but I am not daft enough to think that I shall be making money! There's no such thing as a free lunch and as far as I am concerned all I want is the leccy and gas to stay on! The charges, though high, are supportable.....

[Pluggy]

Spoil heaps Pluggy please. Slag heaps are only found at furnaces.

Taken on board. Thank you Stanley. Old habits.....

[Whyperion]

Apparently BG say they are the last major to increase std tariff and for those getting fuel credit due to low income there is an additional rebate .

[Whyperion]

Just imagine all those wires stretching across the pavement on the terraced rows or perhaps by then they won't be able to afford cars.

Trolleybuses?

[Stanley]

It's a bugger dealing with an old pedant Pluggy.....

[Tripps]

It's a bugger dealing with an old pedant Pluggy.....

It is indeed there 's no escape from this site. I sat in my newly decorated 'study' tonight - which for my mental well being, I've declared to be a cyber free zone - listening to some old tapes. First up was Peter Paul and Mary - The ' Springhill mining disaster' - when I heard

Listen for the shouts of the black face miners,
Listen through the rubble for the rescue teams,
Three hundred tonnes of coal and slag,
Hope imprisoned in a three foot seam,
Hope imprisoned in a three foot seam.

The moment ruined - it's not slag, it's spoil, I cried . . . .

PS - forgot to mention the old joke - What has six legs and wears a bra?

You'll soon work it out.

[Stanley]

[Tizer]

The Collins Dictionary has, for a long time now, listed the 1st meaning for slag as being from smelting, but the 2nd meaning given is for consolidated volcanic lava, and the 3rd given is for waste clay, minerals etc from the mining of coal and other materials.

[Stanley]

So they fell into the trap as well!

[Tripps]

So they fell into the trap as well!

Collins Dictionary - what do they know?

[Wendyf]

They were always called slag heaps in Yorkshire when I was a lass.

[Stanley]

See THIS for news on the cost of wind power. An expansion is expected in off-shore turbines with some of them twice as big as the present generation. All right, it's not totally reliable base load power but the CEGB say they have no problems managing the spikes in production as long as they have sufficient 'on-demand' capacity such as gas fired and pumped storage to fill the gaps.

[Stanley]

I see BG have put the price of leccy up 12%. I can't be arsed to spend time working out if my fixed tariff until March is a good thing but I suspect it might be a small saving overall.

[Big Kev]

Just confirmed the installation of smart meters with Npower.

[Stanley]

I like mine Kev. Does away with the hassle of sending meter readings in but I can't say it has helped their billing much. I can never understand why they allow me to run at a debit when they have updated information and could charge me exactly for what I was using..... I suspect it's because the billing systems they use aren't totally compatible with the new technology.

[PanBiker]

I have them and don't miss taking the meter readings. If I have one complaint it would be that they need to upgrade the link between the meter and the display unit, mine is less than 10 feet away from it's mobile phone interface and often drops out or loses connection.

[Tizer]

We've been here about 5 weeks now and we're still having to jump all the hurdles to get the PV panel FIT tariff changed to our name and to switch it from Npower to EDF. I thought we would be through by now when Npower wrote to say they recognised us as the owner - but then find they still haven't given us the MCS certificate number for the system, which we need in order to switch to EDF.

[Stanley]

Big organisations and piddling changes Tiz. Exactly the point I made in another topic. Their systems are so vast and unwieldy, often cobbled together from disparate systems adopted after takeovers and not properly integrated. Janet told me once that virtually all large systems are like that and the only cure is completely new hardware and programmes. That's what she did for the West Australian police but it's massive change and very expensive if done properly.

[Wendyf]

We stick with Npower for FIT payments but change our supplier on a regular basis, is there an advantage in getting your payments from EDF Tiz?

[Pluggy]

We get out FIT payments from EDF. It took a long time (about 4 months I seem to remember) before the first payment came through but they#ve been regular as clock work since. I get an email asking for the reading on the 1st of March, June, September and December. I usually return it the same day. I generally have the money 4 or 5 days later.

[Wendyf]

No problems with Npower either the system works very well, which is why I'm wondering why Tiz is making a change.