Re: Math error
No - Maths is an abbreviation of Mathematics, a multidisciplinary science.
Math is something the USians invented.
(USians - because canadians, mexicans, peruvians... are all american as well)
How politicians could end droughts forever But they don't want to
Last month in old London town and across England, formal water rationing came into force again for the second time in just six years - and the creeping rationing of water meters continued to spread. Despite the rainiest April since records began, government minsters are openly speculating that total mains cutoffs and standpipes …
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 14:38 GMT AndyS
Re: Math error
Eddie may be wrong, but Lewis' maths is pretty bad too.
It's bad practice to round numbers during working, and then use those rounded numbers.
7 kWh per 1000 litres, 6p/kWh, 167 litres per person per day, and 8M people equates to £204M, not £176M. It's perfectly acceptable to round to one significant figure during your presentation, but not during your working.
It's a minor point, but repeatedly rounding numbers in your favour does not look good when you're trying to make a serious point.
Sum:
7[kWh] * 0.06[£/kWh] * 1000[liters] / 167[litres/person/day] * 365[days/year] * 8e6[people] = £204,808,800/year.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 20:33 GMT dannypoo
Failfest
Hmm lots of fail in this comment as well - you should RTFA properly...
Your figures are based upon reverse osmosis providing ALL the water supplied to TW's customers - I don't think at any point the reporter suggested that Thames Water stop drawing water from aquifers and other reservoirs - conversely he suggested that doing so would cause flooding of tube tunnels due to raising of the water table.
Never mind that you have magically turned £40 into £50 for your 'killer bit'. Also did you happen to notice how much TW have spent stopping leaks, digging up roads etc. Scaling that back should comfortably cover the capex for this - and before you moan that leaks are wasteful, the infrastructure is over 100 years old and has been neglected - that's just how it is - and the cost of all that digging is being added to your bill, anyway...
The point of the article was to highlight that it would be possible to use desalinisation plants to make up for low rainfall. Don't you think that regions would benefit from not having to endure drought conditions, standpipes etc?
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Sunday 6th May 2012 00:07 GMT kiwimuso
Re: Failfest
The other point to noted here is that leakage in water pipes does not mean the water is wasted. It merely means that TW can not charge for it as nobody is actually using it.
Water leaking from pipes will simply be filtered through the ground and either back into the aquifers or rivers from whence they came.
Admittedly it is still a cost on the consumer as it would be built into their price structure but without doing any math(s) whatsoever I would suggest that the cost of the leakage is probably fairly small when compared to the cost of digging up and replacing all the mains - although I still think that doing that work as part or ongoing normal maintenance wouldn't hurt either. I am looking at this from a purely monetary position.
I am sure that someone who has a better maths brain and can be more bothered than I, can do the sums to confirm or deny my suspicions.
And no, I am NOT going to ask for the IT angle!
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Thursday 3rd May 2012 08:16 GMT A.A.Hamilton
Re: Math error
I opened the url you quoted. The very first thing I see is a large image carrying the words "...serving 14 million customers...."
This changes the argument a little, doesn't it?
Further, the volume you quote seems to be the total supplied by Thames; the original article is suggesting desalination as an adjunct to the existing sources of supply - not a total replacement.
I would also question the unit cost that Thames Water might have to pay - 6p. This doesn't allow for off-peak units being cheaper, and Thames bargaining power being far greater than ours. We are the domestic 'prey' of the electricity supply companies, whose greed is un-constrained, even by their main supporters club - the appointed Government regulator.
The additional cost might be no more than £1 per week per household - which is not an unreasonable price to pay for the additional benefit that would be enjoyed.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 14:26 GMT Filippo
That's irrelevant. Even assuming that there's some plausible scenario where we run out of seawater (and there isn't), when you have a problem you don't look for the perfect solution. You look for the *best possible* solution. And desalination is it.
You most definitely do NOT pick one of the worst possible solutions out of sheer idiocy, and then justify it by saying "well, the best possible solution also has some flaws!"
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 14:13 GMT Vladimir Plouzhnikov
Why there is no investment in desalination
I can't be bothered to look into that industry in more detail but I am confident there are no economic incentives for such investments.
I bet, the current water utilities live on subsidies, water in London is practically free for non-commercial use. To make it worthwhile the water utilities must be allowed to meter and charge the customers and the risk must be offloaded from the Government to the company.
I don't think it will happen soon but neither do I really want to as a user - very selfish of me, I know, but...
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 16:11 GMT Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
Re: Why there is no investment in desalination
Always follow the money trail, if desalination is such a good option why not use it?
All members of the WTO are signatories of the general agreement on trade in services treaty (GATS), but the WTO main concern is the commercial interests of profit-making companies, particularly international companies.
GATS, IMHO, is a particularly insidious treaty since it targets public services, usually provided for the public good by state and local governments, such as health, education, water and waste etc. and views them as mere commodities to be commercialised and used for profit generation of multi-national corporations.
GATS rules under WTO ‘most favoured nation’ rules, that means that foreign service providers must receive equal or better treatment than domestic service providers, in other words local government cannot give tax breaks, subsidies, etc. to local/national businesses because that would be “unfair” to the multinational corporations. However giving tax breaks, subsidies, etc. to multinational corporations and not giving them ot local/national businesses is perfectly OK.
One of the big drivers of GATS is the U.S. Coalition of Service Industries who lists among its members such distinguished companies such as citigroup, Deloitte & Touche, halliburton, JP morgan chase, newscorp, time warner, visa international and walmart.
So this why it is much better for the Sir Humphries to bullshit about scarce recourses, and the need to install water meters and charge people for usage, from there, once taxpayers have paid for the installation of meters, feed the public a diet of propaganda about Increasing efficiency and improving service quality, and then it becomes a very simple task to privatise water supplies
So you see Vladimir, there are lots of economic incentives for investment, there’re just not the one you can think of.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 17:25 GMT Vladimir Plouzhnikov
Re: Why there is no investment in desalination
Dear Herr Generalfeldmarschall, I'm a bit confused - you've spent most of your post explaining how there exist no economic incentives to invest under current status only to contradict yourself in the last sentence... Also, water utilities in England and Wales have already been privatised long ago.
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Thursday 3rd May 2012 00:04 GMT P. Lee
Re: Why there is no investment in desalination
> Because there is no drought?
and if there was, rationing allows higher prices while reducing capital investment.
It is a utility, demand is inelastic.
There are few votes in, "with us, you'll still have water!"
And there is also the option of putting storage tanks in your garden and collecting all the water off your roof. Rather common in Oz, though they tend to have large metal roofs.
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Thursday 3rd May 2012 16:08 GMT Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
Re: Why there is no investment in desalination
Sorry for the confusion, the point I was tying to get across is that the government invested in desalination technology at what seems like a reasonable cost then there would be no need to privatise publicly owned services and the service could continue to be run for the public good at cost.
Of course the lobbyists with the deep pockets think otherwise.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 14:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Pushing water uphill
"The other problem with desalination is that all of the water starts off at sea-level, not surprisingly. London is only about 5m above sea level on average, but it will still take a large amount of energy to pump the water, rather than rely on gravity."
Its already pumped! How do you think tap water reaches people at the top of tower blocks??
Aside from the reservoirs are usually fairly low down in valleys to capture as much water as they can so water generally needs to be pumped out of them rather than just flowing out all the way to the treatment plant.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 15:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Pushing water uphill
@Boltar - In case you haven't noticed - not everyone lives at the top of a tower block, whereas pretty much everyone doesn't live at sea level. The reservoirs are low in valleys, but the water companies choose valleys which are higher that the cities they supply - they're pretty smart like that.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 17:16 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Pushing water uphill
>>>>Its already pumped! How do you think tap water reaches people at the top of tower blocks??
@boltar, Thames don't tend to give people at the top of tower blocks water. I do. Otherwise I'd be out of a job...
I sell pumps for a living (amongst other water-y things). The Water Undertakers are supposed to provide water at 1 bar, at the meter. In practise you usually get much more than that, although not in Central London.
Tall buildings tend to have a cistern and pump hidden away in the basement, which pushes the water up to high level. Otherwise, when you turned on the taps at the ground floor, you'd get wet trousers, from the huge amount of pressure needed to deal with tall buildings.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 14:16 GMT An0n C0w4rd
Geography
or we can not all live crammed into a small geographical area. There is plenty of country. Why do we all have to live crammed into the London area?
Answer: we don't
But for some reason, despite all the technological innovations available today, people seem convinced that they need to hire people in London and people need to move from elsewhere to London to take the job, which makes the water availability problem WORSE.
I wish this country would wake up and realise that "business as normal" needs to STOP and concentrating some insane percentage of the population of the UK in a small percentage of the land is a BAD IDEA. Wikipedia says the population of London accounts for 12.5% of the population of the country, and I suspect that estimate is low and if you take into account all the people that live near London to commute in daily it will go up a lot higher than that.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 14:27 GMT Charles 9
Re: Geography
People naturally gravitate towards water. It takes either a whole lot of convincing alternatives (like groundwater) or the fact you just can't travel far (what happened in the old days) to keep you away from sources of water. We need water to live, so it's only natural that we (like any other animal) gravitate toward it.
There's also the need to gravitate toward each other because, even in this day and age, THINGS still need to be passed from person to person. Unless someone can fast-track the Star Trek concept of the matter transporter, this need won't be going away anytime soon (indeed, this is becoming a stumbling block of continuing standards of living--if fuel costs stay up, so do transportation costs, which means the costs of non-local goods also rises, and so on and so forth; this is creating pressure to keep things close).
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Thursday 3rd May 2012 12:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Geography
Whatever An0n C0w4rd says... please will all the people in London stay in London - and not come and destroy what little is left of Britain's countryside building more houses, shops, roads. There might not be much to do - but it's just fine the way it is.
Alternatively let's just keep on cramming more and more people into a finite space (i.e. Britain) - struggling to feed, house and water them. Quality of life - who needs it!? Let the insanity continue!
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Thursday 3rd May 2012 12:28 GMT Audrey S. Thackeray
That London
"please will all the people in London stay in London - and not come and destroy what little is left of Britain's countryside building more houses, shops, roads. "
Those are all things that people in the sticks want - if anyone comes from London to the country they want it to be the country, not an extension of the dreadful suburbs.
Londoners do not care if country folk have no homes for their kids, no affordable shopping options, and slow, twisty commutes.
Frankly I doubt Londoners think that schools are necessary in order for people to grow ample bosoms and sell scones which seems to be their preferred rural option.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 14:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Absurd
Another ridiculous Register article advocating the wanton wastage of money and energy. Unfashionable though it might be in your techno-utopia, but perhaps we could - gasp! - use LESS? 167 litres per person is far too high - most people could easily get by on a quarter of that. Force the water companies to waste less by fixing the leaks and you've got a solution without having to waste a single extra watt doing something daft like desalinating water.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 15:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Absurd
"Only prissy townies take showers every day."
Not all of them if some of the people I've stood next to in the tube are anything to go by. Anyway, if you don't wash every day could I kindly suggest you stay down on your pig farm and don't come anywhere near people with functioning noses.
Thanks.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 15:24 GMT NogginTheNog
Re: Absurd
"Anyway, if you don't wash every day could I kindly suggest you stay down on your pig farm and don't come anywhere near people with functioning noses."
I've recently discovered (at weekends mostly) that I can sometimes go 24 hours plus without a shower and not turn into a filthy muck covered reeking troglodite whom no-one will come within 6 feet of! It was quite a revelation :-o
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 15:32 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: Fixing the leaks has to be done anyway
Er, no it doesn't. In fact, if the amount being leaked costs less than fixing it, only a twat would fix the leak. If you bother to re-read the article, you'll find that Lewis addressed exactly this point and concluded that (historically) it *has* cost more to fix the leaks than it would have done to provide additional capacity.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 17:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Fixing the leaks has to be done anyway
Surely this all depends on the size of the leak .
small pipes , well yeah leave them to leak, it isn't as if what is leaking into the ground is toxic to water based lifeforms.
There are some leaks that are worth fixing . I remember working for LUL on their electrical dept at Euston Station in the late 80s when a 42 inch water main burst and flooded Euston Tube station and underground car park. There was water everywhere, plus a flooded car park (with some very expensive cars in it) and flooded tube station.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 18:23 GMT auburnman
Re: Fixing the leaks has to be done anyway
Er, yes it does. Unfixed leaks will get worse over time, turning into burst pipes and streets with no water supply and emergency roadworks. Every uncontrolled leak contributes to the risk of flood damage in the city. I agree with most of Lewis' points but I dislike the dismissive tone towards repairing the infrastructure.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 18:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @Roobarb
None of the leakage makes its way back into the aquifer. This is because of the clay that gives London its artesian wells. The water can't get through the clay from the bottom but neither can it soak through from the top, so it drains away into the Thames and the sea.
Picture here:
http://www.groundwateruk.org/rising_groundwater_in_central_london.aspx
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 15:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Absurd (@Filippo)
There are other means to fix pipes (like stripping them of any biological ingress, i.e. roots, then relining them with a flexible PE/epoxy combination). What you will find though is that the water companies are upgrading the pipes with larger diameters.
The original 'Absurd' poster is correct though... if every household was metered, people would use less water, which would reduce the requirement to lay larger pipes (to continue sustaining the growth in water usage).
People from more arid countries understand this very well, and as one of those, I find it ridiculous that a single person household on a 'standing charge' for water pays the same as what a family of six in the house next door does! This is what drives people to wanton waste. Being charged per cubic metre of water will quickly stop people from running half-empty wash cycles, running baths for all six members in the family, leaving taps open whilst brushing their teeth and washing their dishes, using a hosepipe to wash their car, and the list goes on.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 16:10 GMT Mike Street
Re: Absurd (@Filippo)
Read the article - it doesn't matter how much we use. This is a wet country, an island surrounded by sea - not the bloody Sahara.
And it water, not oil. It isn't going to run out, as a visit to the seaside will confirm.
There does seem to be a shortage of people who can think though - wonder if we can make some to be Mayors, MPs and so on, instead of the stupids we have now.
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Friday 4th May 2012 10:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
@AndrueC
I've seen both sides of the coin (Bristol + Oxford = metered, Warwick + Stevenage = standing charge), and the metered charge for a single person household is a LOT less (up to 2/3 less).
In 2003, Severn Trent charged 160 quid per semester as a standing charge, based on your charge above, 20 quid a quarter/40 quid a semester is 1/4 of a standing charge over a year. For a single person, that's a massive saving.
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Wednesday 2nd May 2012 16:59 GMT Alfred
Re: Absurd
Why? Why should I, given the choice between using 167 litres per day and using a quarter of that, choose to go with the smaller option? I _like_ power showers. I _like_ being clean. I _like_ washing my clothes regularly. I _like_ all the other things I do with water. Why on earth would I choose _not_ to do these things?
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Thursday 3rd May 2012 12:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Absurd/@Alfred
@Alfred - Fine. As long as you also advocate policies which move us toward a smaller population - rather than the somewhat large increases which appear to be in the cards.
Otherwise your - litany of "why can't I"s will doom us all to far fewer showers and dirtier clothes. It's not magic - it all has to come from somewhere - and the current financial impact doesn't mean things won't get far nastier somewhere down the road.
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Thursday 3rd May 2012 12:54 GMT Alfred
Re: Absurd/@Alfred
I disagree. I think that humanity is smart enough to be able to have the population the size it is AND do all these things. Yes, our current system of government and our current economy is bloody awful at managing it, but it's possible. Yes, we'll have to improve the collection and distribution networks, but water just goes round and round endlessly.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
