Free electricity last week - I just got my results!
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And I got £0.94 for my efforts ... not a lot, but:
Quote:
Thanks for switching on for our first Free Electricity session on Thursday 15th August. Together, you stopped 180 wind turbine's worth of clean, green power from going to waste. Pretty cool ey? And here's how you did: You used 94p worth of Free Electricity ⚡️ Not a fortune, but not too bad for an hour's free extra power! Collectively, you guys saved £126,000 by making the most of 531 megawatt hours' surplus green power.
And there have been two more since then. Kinda makes it worth the small amount of added effort involved on my part, I guess.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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And I got £0.94 for my efforts ... not a lot, but:
Quote:
Thanks for switching on for our first Free Electricity session on Thursday 15th August. Together, you stopped 180 wind turbine's worth of clean, green power from going to waste. Pretty cool ey? And here's how you did: You used 94p worth of Free Electricity ⚡️ Not a fortune, but not too bad for an hour's free extra power! Collectively, you guys saved £126,000 by making the most of 531 megawatt hours' surplus green power.
And there have been two more since then. Kinda makes it worth the small amount of added effort involved on my part, I guess.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Over here in the province of Zeeland inhabitants with solar panels were asked to disconnect their panels for a while to avoid congestion of the electricity grid, and they get paid for that :rolleyes: Zeeuwse huishoudens krijgen betaald als ze zonnepanelen uitzetten[^]
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Over here in the province of Zeeland inhabitants with solar panels were asked to disconnect their panels for a while to avoid congestion of the electricity grid, and they get paid for that :rolleyes: Zeeuwse huishoudens krijgen betaald als ze zonnepanelen uitzetten[^]
If I use a VPN to change my location and promise never to feed any power into the Netherlands power grid (which promise I will keep) will you send me money as well? :-D
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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And I got £0.94 for my efforts ... not a lot, but:
Quote:
Thanks for switching on for our first Free Electricity session on Thursday 15th August. Together, you stopped 180 wind turbine's worth of clean, green power from going to waste. Pretty cool ey? And here's how you did: You used 94p worth of Free Electricity ⚡️ Not a fortune, but not too bad for an hour's free extra power! Collectively, you guys saved £126,000 by making the most of 531 megawatt hours' surplus green power.
And there have been two more since then. Kinda makes it worth the small amount of added effort involved on my part, I guess.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
So what are they going to do on a day when the wind DOESN'T blow and then there is a 531 megawatt hours' shortage of power?
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated. I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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Over here in the province of Zeeland inhabitants with solar panels were asked to disconnect their panels for a while to avoid congestion of the electricity grid, and they get paid for that :rolleyes: Zeeuwse huishoudens krijgen betaald als ze zonnepanelen uitzetten[^]
Not only there... here is becoming a topic too. Many people have solar but not batteries at home and they send everything to the net. Infrastructure is getting close to limits in sunny days.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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And I got £0.94 for my efforts ... not a lot, but:
Quote:
Thanks for switching on for our first Free Electricity session on Thursday 15th August. Together, you stopped 180 wind turbine's worth of clean, green power from going to waste. Pretty cool ey? And here's how you did: You used 94p worth of Free Electricity ⚡️ Not a fortune, but not too bad for an hour's free extra power! Collectively, you guys saved £126,000 by making the most of 531 megawatt hours' surplus green power.
And there have been two more since then. Kinda makes it worth the small amount of added effort involved on my part, I guess.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
This strange idea of paying for electric energy ... Tomorrow, for 22 out of 24 hours, we are being paid for using electric energy. The remaining two hours, it is free. Hopefully, this link is valid abroad as well: NordPool prices[^]. From 13:00 to 14:00, we are paid €2.99 per MWh consumed. There is a snag to it, though. We are paid for consuming the energy. The power line company is not paying us for power line use; there is both a fixed (volume independent) fee, and a per kWh fee. So in total, there still is an expense. And there is a second snag: The "volume independent" part is not 100% so: It is affected by you peak hours - the average of your three highest peaks each month puts you is one of several brackets. If my hourly consumption for the peak hours exceed 5 kWh per wall clock hour, my fixed fee for this month jumps up by NOK 160 (roughly €15). So I should not, in joy over negative energy prices, crank up the heat, hot water tank, etc. etc. so that the 5 kWh/h line is crossed. In the old days, "the power company" delivered both the energy and power lines. Politicians sold us the idea that forcing a split up by law would be a good divide and conquer strategy for the benefit of the consumers. In reality, it is a mechanism to make it simpler for the providers to manipulate energy and line prices independently, and in the name of "free competition" limit the consumers' freedom. E.g. in the old days, the student homes here in Trondheim were built as four small individual bedrooms sharing a kitchen, bath and electricity bill. Today, in the name of free competition, each bedroom must pay its own fixed fee, plus the consumed energy (mostly that is a LED table light and charging the smartphone). The fifth electricity bill, fixed fee for the kitchen/bathroom and the energy consumed for cooking and hot water, is split among the four students. The "logical" argument for this is that to be prepared for each student wishing to buy his energy from a different provider, they must have individual meters. The fixed fee is tied to the meter. If I were a student today, I guess I would have started a major revolt against the power line company.
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So what are they going to do on a day when the wind DOESN'T blow and then there is a 531 megawatt hours' shortage of power?
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated. I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
"Charge twice as much for it" seems to be the normal approach :sigh:
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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This strange idea of paying for electric energy ... Tomorrow, for 22 out of 24 hours, we are being paid for using electric energy. The remaining two hours, it is free. Hopefully, this link is valid abroad as well: NordPool prices[^]. From 13:00 to 14:00, we are paid €2.99 per MWh consumed. There is a snag to it, though. We are paid for consuming the energy. The power line company is not paying us for power line use; there is both a fixed (volume independent) fee, and a per kWh fee. So in total, there still is an expense. And there is a second snag: The "volume independent" part is not 100% so: It is affected by you peak hours - the average of your three highest peaks each month puts you is one of several brackets. If my hourly consumption for the peak hours exceed 5 kWh per wall clock hour, my fixed fee for this month jumps up by NOK 160 (roughly €15). So I should not, in joy over negative energy prices, crank up the heat, hot water tank, etc. etc. so that the 5 kWh/h line is crossed. In the old days, "the power company" delivered both the energy and power lines. Politicians sold us the idea that forcing a split up by law would be a good divide and conquer strategy for the benefit of the consumers. In reality, it is a mechanism to make it simpler for the providers to manipulate energy and line prices independently, and in the name of "free competition" limit the consumers' freedom. E.g. in the old days, the student homes here in Trondheim were built as four small individual bedrooms sharing a kitchen, bath and electricity bill. Today, in the name of free competition, each bedroom must pay its own fixed fee, plus the consumed energy (mostly that is a LED table light and charging the smartphone). The fifth electricity bill, fixed fee for the kitchen/bathroom and the energy consumed for cooking and hot water, is split among the four students. The "logical" argument for this is that to be prepared for each student wishing to buy his energy from a different provider, they must have individual meters. The fixed fee is tied to the meter. If I were a student today, I guess I would have started a major revolt against the power line company.
trønderen wrote:
Politicians sold us the idea that forcing a split up by law would be a good divide and conquer strategy for the benefit of the consumers.
Same here in the UK (electricity, gas, water, railways), but most of these decisions were forced on us by the EU. And in reality they were a costly waste of time and money.
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And I got £0.94 for my efforts ... not a lot, but:
Quote:
Thanks for switching on for our first Free Electricity session on Thursday 15th August. Together, you stopped 180 wind turbine's worth of clean, green power from going to waste. Pretty cool ey? And here's how you did: You used 94p worth of Free Electricity ⚡️ Not a fortune, but not too bad for an hour's free extra power! Collectively, you guys saved £126,000 by making the most of 531 megawatt hours' surplus green power.
And there have been two more since then. Kinda makes it worth the small amount of added effort involved on my part, I guess.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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So what are they going to do on a day when the wind DOESN'T blow and then there is a 531 megawatt hours' shortage of power?
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated. I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
I can't imagine that there has been a single hour since the electric generator was invented where no wind was blowing at all, not anywhere on the continent. That's what the grid is for. I believe that Norway was very early establishing a nationwide grid, from the mid 1950s, completed in the early 1960. We were certainly not alone in moving electric energy from one region to another, but our net was perfectly phase synchronized from north to south, across a distance slightly larger than from Canada to Mexico. That is trivial today, with atomic clocks and all sorts of power semiconductors, but in the mid-1950s it was quite remarkable. You simply have to prepare for a common grid that every electric power seller hooks up to, pouring their power into it, and the electricity peddlers tap out whatever they manage to sell, without caring about where the power is produced. The grid will take care of the transport task. The North European grid today covers the Scandinavian countries, the Baltic countries, Finland, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Poland. Should the wind calm down all over Northern Europe, the Norwegian hydropower stations would run at top speed. So would the Swedish nuclear plants (they always do!). When there is lots of wind, the hydropower is significantly reduced. Hydropower, as well as gas turbine generators, can easily and quickly be adjusted up and down, opposite of the availability of wind and solar power. Also note that although both wind and solar power depends on a nature we cannot control, statistics clearly show that when wind is at its plentiest, solar power is not. And vice versa. I am not familiar with the power grid in the US, but I am sure there must be some way to transport significant amounts of power from one region to the other, depending on production and needs. Maybe free competition ideas causes more isolation, less cooperation, than in North Europe, so it may not work as smoothly as here, but I am sure that your lights won't go dark.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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"Charge twice as much for it" seems to be the normal approach :sigh:
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Isn't that quite standard practice with just about every product category? When supply is low, prices go up. When the is plenty of it on the market, then prices go down. If you want prices to go down when there is plenty, then by simple logic, prices must go up when there is less. Otherwise there would be no going down.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Considering the cost of manufacturing and then installing everything needed to get that "green power", who's the winner here?
There just was a huge protest rally in Germany against Tesla, who chopped down half a million CO2 absorbing trees, to make room for their new factory for building cars with less CO2 emissions.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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And I got £0.94 for my efforts ... not a lot, but:
Quote:
Thanks for switching on for our first Free Electricity session on Thursday 15th August. Together, you stopped 180 wind turbine's worth of clean, green power from going to waste. Pretty cool ey? And here's how you did: You used 94p worth of Free Electricity ⚡️ Not a fortune, but not too bad for an hour's free extra power! Collectively, you guys saved £126,000 by making the most of 531 megawatt hours' surplus green power.
And there have been two more since then. Kinda makes it worth the small amount of added effort involved on my part, I guess.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
I don't understand half of this whole conversation. What's this Free Electricity magic you all speak of?
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
- Thomas SowellA day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes) -
I don't understand half of this whole conversation. What's this Free Electricity magic you all speak of?
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
- Thomas SowellA day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes) -
I don't understand half of this whole conversation. What's this Free Electricity magic you all speak of?
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
- Thomas SowellA day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)The way I understand it is that energy suppliers pre book blocks of electricity months in advance. If they use it all, then they pay £X per unit. But if they don't use it, the price goes up because the actual energy generator has planned their usage and is pissed that it doesn't get used. So it's cheaper for the supplier to offer free electricity in the hope that we will use the whole block (and maybe exceed their booking) to keep the price to them down. Stupid system all round, which only exists so the middle men (suppliers) can make a (sometimes massive) profit.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Isn't that quite standard practice with just about every product category? When supply is low, prices go up. When the is plenty of it on the market, then prices go down. If you want prices to go down when there is plenty, then by simple logic, prices must go up when there is less. Otherwise there would be no going down.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
I remember being taught that price is a balancing factor - it moves to balance supply with demand. You can think of it as the pivot of a see-saw, with supply at one end of the see-saw and demand at the other; as supply or demand change price will always move one way or the other to ensure the see-saw stays horizontal. I'm no economist but the idea seems to capture market behaviour quite nicely.
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The way I understand it is that energy suppliers pre book blocks of electricity months in advance. If they use it all, then they pay £X per unit. But if they don't use it, the price goes up because the actual energy generator has planned their usage and is pissed that it doesn't get used. So it's cheaper for the supplier to offer free electricity in the hope that we will use the whole block (and maybe exceed their booking) to keep the price to them down. Stupid system all round, which only exists so the middle men (suppliers) can make a (sometimes massive) profit.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
That's crazy. But it must be profitable all 'round (except for consumers) if no one is crying for change (except consumers). Now I'm going to have to research how electricity is distributed here from the TVA to the local carriers, most of which are cooperatives or owned by municipalities. I assumed it was billed by actual usage, but after learning of your European schemes ... sheesh. All I know is they've never offered me free juice.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
- Thomas SowellA day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes) -
That's crazy. But it must be profitable all 'round (except for consumers) if no one is crying for change (except consumers). Now I'm going to have to research how electricity is distributed here from the TVA to the local carriers, most of which are cooperatives or owned by municipalities. I assumed it was billed by actual usage, but after learning of your European schemes ... sheesh. All I know is they've never offered me free juice.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
- Thomas SowellA day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)This company is the first that's offer me any either. What really gets me annoyed is that they swear all my power is from renewable resources - but the price follows the oil and gas prices up (and occasionally down ...) :mad:
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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This company is the first that's offer me any either. What really gets me annoyed is that they swear all my power is from renewable resources - but the price follows the oil and gas prices up (and occasionally down ...) :mad:
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
