Re: REminds me of a report...@Sammy Smalls & PlacidCasual

"'something we won't do in the UK' - Is there a reason for this? Has this been debated and rejected? A genuine question, as it sounds like a good idea."

It has been debated a bit, but has no enthusiastic supporters and very low profile. The electricity industry is deeply conservative, but more importantly there's no support and ecounragement, with DECC continuing their mad policies of pushing "renewables" at any cost. The economics of retrofit district heating are marginal on raw commercial terms, but compared to the economics of renewables they are excellent, and a far better and cheaper way of reducing CO2 emissions. As a rough guide, a 2GWe coal fired station wastes 2-3GW thermal through its cooling towers, and that's about the heat demand of a city of a million people. Obviously you'd need to fluff some up the cooling towers if running in summer, but summer demand is less anyway, so you could downrate the coal plant over the summer (coal plant is problematic to completely mothball, although it can be done).

PlacidCasual's comment about housing stock not being suitable seems logical, but isn't entirely correct. In southern Sweden I know that the district heating system is being built out as a retrofit to urban areas already supplied by gas, so it can be done and is done, in similar climate zones to the UK. Admittedly you're displacing relatively clean gas, but that's still unnecessary gas. Part of the lack of enthusiasm is for power stations really in the middle of nowhere (although the Danes have got some 20km+ district heating transmission lines, proving it can be done), and because of the sh!theaded EU plans to close so much UK thermal plant down. You'd be a nutter to develop district heating for something you're going to be forced to shut in a couple of years.

Notwithstanding that, there's no reason that the plants continuing to operate post 2015 shouldn't be encouraged to develop CHP, although DECC's idiot policy of a carbon floor price is intended to put these stations out of business by the early 2020s. And DECC are also busy developing yet another subsidy for us all to pay through our 'leccy bills, the Renewable Heat Incentive; You can be sure that will exclude CHP from large coal plant. It's part of their "any idea as long as it isn't sensible, low cost, and practical" scheme.

The pity is that modernised coal plant with CHP could potentially run at 75% thermal efficiency, even for 1970's plant, and that's a lot better than even state of the art combined cycle gas turbines.

Re: A fart in a hurricane@Dave 15

"Stupidly not all the decent hydro sites are in use. Mildenhall used to have a mill generating leccy for the town and nearby village."

Mildenhall? In flat as a pancake Suffolk? The problem you have there is that low head hydro generates utterly pathetic amounts of power. Hydro power is flow times head in metres, and in most scenarios like Mildehall you'll have both low flows and low head. That's why hydro dams are tall, or use aqueducts to have turbines at much lower levels. You certainly could generate some power from a mill race, but in the grand scheme such little power that it really won't make any difference. As usual the EU have already tried to throw money at this one, I forget the name of it, but it was an attempt to subsidise power generation from low head hydro and within drinking water distribution back in the mid 1990s. It didn't result in any useful outcome.

For a couple of houses or as a green hobby project it could be quite nice, but unfortunately it simply won't make much difference even if you stuck a hydro unit in every former mill race, and made as many again.

Re: Stop using postcodes

Entirely forseeable (indeed I posited as much round these parts some while back - where's my icon for "I told you so"?).

Remarkably Francis Maude is reported to have asked Shiney Faced Dave not to privatise the PAF, and that complete @rsehole Cameron has decided that it should in fact be sold.

This appears to be a done deal, sadly, so I move onto the simple question: Is it nature or nurture? Has Dave the Feckless worked ceaselessly to refine his unique gift for ALWAYS making the wrong choice, or is it simply one of nature's unfortunate legacies that he hasn't had to do anything to hold?

Either way we have a village idiot for a prime minister.

Re: False Prophet @ Wilco1

"No, it's a fact. Wind power costs are coming down, nuclear costs seem to only go up"

Well, if you build enough of anything you get the unit costs down, and that applies to nuclear as much as wind. But as noted, wind is NOT competitive on the grid without subsidy, and even with vast subsidies it still doesn't make it onto the grid unless forced. Unlike nice dependable nuclear, wind of course requires thermal assets in hot reserve to cover its unpredictability, a cost which (like so many others) it doesn't have to pay.

As for your ignorant, ill informed comments on the merit curve, of course it bloody works, with any power source, to give the optimal outcome for the bill payers. Just because the eco-twerps have knobbled it to try and justify their useless toys doesn't make it "no longer apply". Your reasoning is akin to claiming that if a car is driven up hill, the laws of gravity no longer apply.

But, don't worry. Notwithstanding the fact that you clearly speak from the commanding heights of ignorance, and that I merely work for one of the world's largest power companies, that my company operate a vast renewables fleet (farming the subsidies), that we are a major nuclear operator, that we have a large CCGT fleet, a significant coal fleet, interests in CHP, hydro and the rest, no, we''ll come and listen to you when the lights start going out.

Or maybe not.

Re: False Prophet

"Actually nuclear is more expensive than wind power"

Only in the wild imaginings of the wind power weenies. Not only is wind cash-subsidised through multiple mechanisms, it also has a bizarre "must run" status. The merit curve that normally ensures our most efficient plant runs first to meet demand is thus turned on its head, and we run our most expensive plant at the random convenience of the wind (and if there's no demand, we still pay the operators anyway).

Nobody has put a figure on this absurdity, but as we'd rarely run wind turbines at all if the merit curve were properly applied, you can infer that the value of the subsidy is about £140/MWh multiplied by total output, divided by the output wind would generate if run on merit. At a guess we're talking about wind's effective subsidy being one or two orders of magnitude greater than the nominal £140 MWh.

Re: This is not rocket science...!

"How can any anti-virus company release an update without comprehensive testing on a range of machines with various generally expected software configurations to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen?"

If it's free, are you getting what you paid for? Quite seriously, if they aren't charging, is it reasonable to expect much in the way of testing (or development, or anything, really)? I'm a happy freetard, using a range of free software, but I accept that there's no redress.

Re: REminds me of a report...@Graham Dawson

"it's safe to assume that there have been improvements in the meantime."

I think you assume the improvement will be greater than they are. Take our own Drax, which is a 1970's build, and is about 40% thermally efficient. Now take Datteln Unit 4, in Germany, which is an absolute state of the art hard coal plant (not yet commissioned even) and will be about 45% thermally efficient. That's hardly a breathtaking improvement for forty years, you'd agree?

Moreover, I doubt that India has the money or inclination to build coal plant to the latest EU & German standards, in which case there probably has been next to no improvement in the efficiency of Indian coal fired power plant.

If you want to improve the thermal efficiency of coal plant, then things like fluidised bed grates and higher pressure steam circuits only help so far, the real easy, easy win is to recover the heat for district heating (something we won't do in the UK, but could nearly double the thermal efficiency of any coal power station near an urban area). In India obviously there's little or no demand for heating, so they will always be stuck with at absolute best 45% efficiency.

Logically coal burning should be discouraged in tropical and sub tropical climates (encourage them to use gas), and at higher latitudes we should use coal with heat recovery for winter power, and gas for summer, and forget about window dressing like solar PV and wind.

Re: A fart in a hurricane

"It seems rather pointless us spending years agonizing over a single windmill "

But we're not. The UK has spent or committed something of the order of £20bn on crappy windmills, for stuff all output. There may be isolated examples of windpower being held up (usually onshore developments which should anyway be banned for their low load factor), but broadly speaking the programme is the one your former greeny mates have advocated, of building wind turbines pell mell, regardless of cost of consequence, and the ridiculous subsidy supported roll out of solar PV largely to middle class tossers.

As for hydro, what hydro? All the good sites in the Uk are already in use, pumped storage is a waste of money (expensive and inefficient, still no good locations).

I don't follow why any greens are downhearted. They've got exactly the energy policy they want - huge build out of renewables, all paid for by vast subsidies unwilling taken from electricity bill payers. They've got Kyoto, they've got the EU ETS, they've got a UK carbon floor price, and soon they'll have a post industrial Europe with a completely ruined economy.

Cheer up, this is what you wanted.

@Rampant Spaniel

"How much of this 'trend' is due to China building coal stations?"

A big part, But Europe is doing its bit. Germany's phasing out nuclear (along with Belgium, Italy & Switzerland), and as their green lobby will block fracking, and the alternative is Russian gas, the Germans propose to build new lignite (brown coal) plants. Lignite is a rubbish fuel source, amounting to coal dust mixed with earth, so the thermal efficiency is rotten. Whilst I don't buy the CO2 bogeyman, the Germans do, so its a pity that lignite is just about the worst fuel in the world for carbon intensity. Hugely expensive, not good for the Germany economy or environment, and supporting the German mining industry, itself state subsidy supported in exactly the way that the EU tell us we can't subsidies things.

Meanwhile the UK's plans to shut down 12 GW of coal plant under LCPD mean that the operators are caning the existing plant to get the maximum permitted run time before closure, so our coal use is much higher than in previous years. UK coal use wil go down in future years, and the ccretins at DECC will undoubtedly claim this as proof their nonsense renewables policy is working, when in fact it will simply make us dependant upon imported power from France.

Icon because collectively and singly, energy "policy" across Europe is a joke.

Re: Good to see all the "heuristic malware scanners" are doing their job

"And how did it get there in the first place?"

Who says it's there at all? One AV vendor, who've offered no proof or detection method, although they obviously claim they can detect (and presumably) prevent it. A hardened cynic might wonder whether this AV outfit was previously involved in offering novel imperial clothing, and was now applying the same skills in the tech sector.

Re: Actually...@Christian Berger

"Sludge coming out of sewage treatment plants is already used either agriculturally or burnt to generate heat and electricity."

Actually, due to daft EU limits on nitrates (no proper underpinning science) it is increasngly difficult to get rid of treated sewage sludge to agricultural land (and that assumes you've not got heavy metals contamination from industry or hospitals). The methane from sludge digestion is used for power generation at larger works, but the sludge itself will only burn autothermically at best, meaning there's no net heat output, and that's because although the sludge contains lignin and related fibres that will burn well, it also contains a lot of clay that absorbs heat but doesn't itself burn, and inhibits effcient burning of the fibres.

The norm is to incinerate sludges using mains gas (possibly with some heat recovery if you use enough gas, although not really renewable), but the incineration is purely in order to reduce the waste to landfill to dry ash, which takes less space, is easier to transport, but crucially incurs lower landfill taxes. The most environmentally friendly disposal route for ttreated sludge is firstly direct to agricultutal land (and sod the EU nitrate limits), followed by dumping at sea (illegal under EU law, of course).

I have seen tech proposals to separate the lignin from sewage sludges, the concept is proven at pilot plant level, and that gives a product very similar to processed wood pellets. It is a very compelling offer because it gives you a saleable biofuel and it reduces the load on the sewage treatment works, but the technical conservatism of the industries involved, DECC's magical ability to over-complicate everything, and a lack of drive amongst those involved other than the current IP holders seem to be leaving it beached.

Re: Alternatively @Kevin Johnston

"it could mean the death of those restrictions which some smartphones currently suffer from such as delayed software updates or restricted functionality."

You, sir are an incorrigible optimist. For you, clouds have silver linings, and your glass is half full.

But why exactly would the separate hire purchase (or whatever) of the phone have any bearing on the network operator wanting to corral you to use their threadbare internet portal? Why would the fact that you have a more complicated bill (online only, that you never look at) stop them preloading trial crApps that the operator gets paid to pre-load? Why would this scheme stop them, in a fit of hopeless optimism, trying to lure you to their tumbleweed infested content stores?

Personally I'd expect that to stay, and maybe even get worse. As per an earlier post I made, under these arrangements it is probable that the customer won't own their phone anymore. Lockdown could get worse, not better, and the lockdown may not even be controlled by the network operator, but by a separate finance company who are selling you the phone on HP. And for anybody like that, unlocking the phone will most certainly be a chargeable extra.

Welcome to my grey cloud infested, glass half empty world.

Re: I don't see it

"How does the division described tell us anything. It just shuffles the subsidy into which ever part they want to look good."

El Reg seem to have swallowed O2's line about tranparency, personally I think there a lot more than tranparency, and it's not about shuffling the subsidy round quite like you think.

The clue is in the idea of a financing agreement for the phone. If there's a financing agreement then you're into Consumer Credit Act and financial regulation, you've got crappy VAT issues that increase your corporate costs by a small amount. There's an element of CCA regulation anyway with contract sales, but why make things more complicated? But now, consider that if there's a financing agrement, you've got a nice revenue stream attached to an asset which is not being "given" to the customer anymore, but now presumably "owned" for the duration of the finance agreement by somebody other than the customer.

O2 have something of the order of ten million retail customers in the UK, so making a guess that the implied average asset value of the phones at any time is around £100 per customer, then there's an asset base of £1bn. How about you now securitise and sell the receivables stream on the phone to a bank or asset finance company? They'd be happy to put the bulk phones on their balance sheet - if a user doesn't pay then the phone has to be returned. At the moment I'd guess O2 expense the handsets, so they move through the P&L but never reach the balance sheet.

The idea of the "free" handset disappears, but I wonder if they can make it appear "interest free". OFT requirements are pretty tough, and I'd be surprised if O2 could claim that the phone is sold at the price they paid for it, so there's a markup and costs of capital (customers already pay this, they just don't see it), but this could make the financing agreement carry a hefty APR.

But what the hell? If O2 can shift a worthwhile chunk of the £1bn plus of consumer handset net asset value out of their P&L, and if some asset finance house can buy a big chunk of reasonably secure handset receivables, then everybody is happy. And the great thing for O2 is that they are selling an asset that doesn't currently appear on their balance sheet (unless they capitalise future contract receivables, which I doubt, but stand to be corrected). What does the consumer stand to lose? Not much really. Legal title to their phone for the duraction of the contract, but that's notional anyway: there's usually a clause requiring you to send it back or pay the outstanding commitment if you want early termination.

Cynical, me?

Re: traffic shaping for leccy companies?

"I already do run my washing machine & dishwasher at night, half the price leccy for me..."

But bizarrely the day time rate for Economy 7 tariffs is higher than normal tariffs. That increases the incentive to time shift your loads, but in some cases people sign up for E7 and don't move enough load to justify the higher day time costs. If you've got storage heaters, an electric immersion heater, and timers on washer, dishwasher and tumble dryer then you're laughing, but I'm not sure that applies to all E7 customers.

Also, something that the proponents of more demand shifting fail to realise is that the cost advantage only exists because of the excess supply overnight. If you shift enough demand off peak then the half hourly rate spreads shrink. In the unlikely event that electric cars took off, potentially you'd flatten the demand curve to the point that there's be stuff all price difference overnight. And in that case who's going to stick things on a timer? Overnight car charging would stay overnight for practical reasons, but the users might find that the cheap overnight electricity vanishes, and then with DfT's wet dream schemes for road pricing they're paying as much as they used for a generally shittier experience.

Re: It comes with a price @4d3fect

"Wage erosion and the dehumanization of "human resources""

At some point the goods have to be handled by meatsacks, but absolutely essential to Amazon's price and service advantages is systems and automation. So (for the size of the company) nothing in the way of call centres or "customer services", and for the most part that gets me a better buying experience.

Now, tell me why Amazon should pay more than minimum wage for unskilled jobs? Most of us on this forum are better paid than average because we're lucky enough to be smart, we've put the effort in to earn academic qualifications, learned relevant technical skills,and we're willing to work hard in complex situations. Amazon's picking and packing staff are free to take other better paid jobs if they want, or to reskill if they want more money.

If you want to support higher wages, then you find yourself a supplier who pays their staff more, rather than expecting me to subsidise your lefty "social conscience".

Re: Bloody public sector wasting my f***ing money. As usual.

Go check your facts. The build of the system wasn't "commissioned in 2005", that's the date the project was dreamt up. It was 2009 before they commissioned Memex to build the system, and as far as I can see from wider press reporting it was never operational.

So no, not good value, nor deserving of sympathy.

Moreover, Surrey plods are also reported to have wasted tens of thousands on consultancy fees for a botched attempt to outsource the back office support (and we all know where that goes). Now, maybe they've learned their lesson, but I think there's a big clue that they haven't, in that they have commissioned Grant Thornton to investigate the SIREN debacle. As a repeat offender, it seems unlikely lessons will be learned, and therefore paying GT to come in and tell them they've fucked up is merely throwing good monet after bad.

"Nowadays, people are mainly upgrading because ...."

...at the end of their contract their operator offers them another "free" phone. If you're not in pain from the charges, then why not keep paying and have an upgrade?

OK, at the end of contract you could go to a SIM-only contract, but on a like for like contract bundle the difference is what, £12-15 a month in the UK, I'd guess not that different in the States? So for the price a handful of Starbucks each month, you get the latest and greatest handset. How many buyers stop to think that the "free" phone is actually costing them £300-£400 or more?

There's some people who will say "I don't need a new phone", but they are in a minority. And not only a minority that are oblivious to obsolescence, but a subset that have taken good care not to mangle their handset.

Re: Automotive equivalent of Water Meters?

Water meters are an excellent analogy. And that's because they haven't materially altered consumption, but they've put everybody's cost up.

So consumption has remained broadly static on a per capita basis for twenty years or so. But what meters have done is increased costs, because mechanical water meters are surprisingly expensive for what they are (say £50 a piece), particularly with the installation costs included (eg boundary boxes, sub-pavement meters, etc, which average around £250 a property), and they have a painfully short average service life of around seven years. Then you've got the costs or reading and metered billing (say fifteen quid a year). The newer electronic ones are battery powered and usually easier to install. But with very long life batteries (not mains powered) that will probably make the meter obsolete when the battery fails.

So, on clean water services the typical UK bill would be around £140 a year, the incremental cost of installing and reading a meter is around 25% of the costs, for no benefit. Water meter users will note that the measured water is also used to charge for sewerage services, but the costs of sewage treatment are largely dependant upon the biological oxygen demand, so using a water meter simply isn't justified in that way.

Water metering was a great conn, in which OFWAT (pressured by DEFRA, the Environment Agency and assorted half-wit NGOs) pushed for widespread water metering, at a gross cost to the UK of around £3 billion, for no useful benefit whatsoever. As ever, those responsible for this waste have never been held to account, nor have they learned from the complete lack of beneficial outcomes, so government can be expected to continue to force people to waste their money on daft ideas like road metering. In fact, they're doing it again, with the EU mandating "smart" meters for energy consumption for every household in the land. As these meters aren't at all smart, the precipitate roll out will offer few benefits, yet cost around £14bn.

And another way that road metering would be like water metering would be the change of incidence. Under the old rateable value system, if you had a bigger house you paid more. On a water meter you pay for what you use. So the rich typically saw a huge reduction in water bills, but the poor saw them rise, both because their metered bill (ignoring transitional arrangements) would be higher for even relatively modest families, but also because the "lost" revenue from the rich needed to be made up for, as the operational cost base of the industry remained the same, with extra costs from metering plus EU mandated improvements in water quality.

Re: Not such a bad idea - aren't you lucky

"Provide public transport. ....Adding more tax and more complex tax systems is NOT the best way to make progress. "

So yes to more public transport, but no to more tax? I don't think that's going to work.

You'll find that the railways were removed because the costs outweighed the revenues, in large part because demand patterns were changing, and cars were becoming a cheaper and better alternative. In peak demand locations (big city commuting from large suburbs, on long-depreciated infrastructure) rail can just about pay its way, elsewhere it is usually subsidy dependent. Looking at rail franchises whose operations might be comparable to a reinstated rail network in your area (say East Midlands Trains) then we're talking about a subsidy of around 11p per passenger mile, although Northern Rail hoover up about 35p per passenger mile. Even on 11p per mile, the subsidy element alone would mean that on a ten mile rail commute you'd require a £440 a year subsidy from taxes over what you'd likely be paying in rail fares. And in the meanwhile, with governments incapable of reducing their spending, any foregone revenues from taxation on your car need to be made up by taxing something or someone else. By coincidence, the UK taxes on fuel equate to about £3.70 a gallon, and at 35 mpg on a similar distance, the exchequer will be a further £440 short. So all in, reinstating the railways to give you an easier drive to work would require somebody somewhere to pony up an extra £880 in respect of each person using this railway.

If you want more public transport then more tax is what you need to vote for. Personally I think that the simple solution is to build more roads, which can be constructed far quicker and at lower cost than railways.

Re: Surprised no-one's using KSD ...

" I'm surprised no-one's pull a Dilbert and started talking about 5G, 6G, or 7G)."

Well a Google of "5G network" may quell your surprise. But I can spill the beans as far out as 7G without the aid of Google:

- EE will launch early, although all the "investment" will be in the celebrity advertising

- coverage will remain as sh!te as decent 3G

- headline speeds will be astronomical but rarely achieved in practice

- costs will melt your wallet

- backhaul won't be able to keep up with the wireless technology.

And OFCOM will be trying to sweep all the mobile networks into a small band of frequency, messing everything up to free the rest of the spectrum for person to person wireless communication, which they are sure will be what everybody needs in five years time.

Re: Not such a bad idea

"The major difference for me is that my fuel is not spent in traffic jams or only doing 3 mile journeys where the fuel combustion is extremely inefficient"

And that's the beauty of fuel taxes. Proportional to consumption. So that shorter journeys that use more fuel pay more. Driving in congested conditions costs more than the open road. Agressive driving uses more fuel and pays more. Bigger vehicles pay more. And the meter's already there, and somebody else has paid for it - its on the fuel pump, with the revenue collection all done by the suppliers.

In urban conditions you'd be lucky to get a third of your open road consumption, so the limiting factor is that you've only got a three times multiplier built in. If that's not sufficient, then car mounted meters can go for much higher multiples, but then the purpose will become just like the London congestion charge, to free the roads of the poor, so that the rich can drive more easily (brought in of course by a certain weasel faced socialist, of course).

Why stick with something simple, robust and fairly egalitarian, when you could have costly, complicated, socially divisive and intrusive?