Electricity North West says plans to lower its volta ge could cut emissions by 10% and save customers £60 a year

[alan_m]

They surveyed customers to see if the had noticed any difference in their electricity supply during the trials. Nothing to do with individual customers bills.

The quoted potential savings, equivalent to £X per customer over a 20 year period, are those associated with the cost of not building (or defer building) extra capacity in both generating and distribution to cope with peak load. They balance loading by constantly monitoring and automatically switching in/out transformer taps at sub-stations. It seems, in part, to be about reducing/balancing instantaneous changes in demand at peak times and relied on new more accurate instrumentation and minute to minute adjustments/control at sub-station level.

[newshound]

No further comments, but I think Ofgem should be giving them a good kicking for this.

[Andy Burns]

JOOI, why?

More info here

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Steve Walker formulated the question :

I have a few left, but they are the ones which are used irregularly for very short periods of just a few minutes at most.

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Scott submitted this idea :

Problem is, the three phases intermix at the substation, so they could not guarantee you would only receive your choice of supply.

It can only be done with filters at each home, at the meter.

[newshound]

Because it is an absurd and deliberately misleading claim?

(I mean Ofgen, of course)

[Roger Hayter]

Are you basing your assessment on the silly newspaper story that implied they were helping their customers to use less electricity and thereby save money? That story is nonsense. They aim to save money by making their distribution network more efficient and thus saving money on augmenting and repairing it. Reduction in demand due to voltage reduction was a second order effect that they did not emphasise. They calculated the money per customer, but they did not explain exactly how the customers get it. Presumably by the distribution costs to the retailer not going up so fast. So it is not obvious they have distorted anything themselves.

[newshound]

Yes, I was. I'd actually originally seen one of the other media stories that was even worse.

I am still *extremely* dubious about the claim, as it was presented. I can see arguments for voltage adjustment for demand management. But in general, if you are "buying" a fixed amount of energy, say for a kettle or a washing machine heater, the longer it takes to deliver the more stray heat loss there is.

[Andy Burns]

The annual figure of £70 saving per customer seems to comprise £7 loss to the DNO, £7 loss to the TNO, £39 loss to the ESO and £15 loss of tax to the government ... no mention of any loss to the generators, unless that's nested within those figures

[I wasn't particularly aware of NG having been split into TNO and ESO, though I do recall seeing the phrase ESO crop up in the recent power cut report]

[Andy Burns]

They seem to be talking about voltage adjustment on the HV side of substations and power factor capacitors on the LV side ...

[mechanic]

´Nobody noticed the changes until they were given their bill and suddenly found out theyÿd been using less electricity,¡ said Steve Cox, the companyÿs engineering director.

[mechanic]

The story isn't nonsense, its a real proposal apparently backed by results from trials. Not sure why people are rubbishing the idea based on some hand waving arguments.

[polygonum_on_google]

Quite.

I was very much NOT saying that a higher temperature couldn't produce more photons. But as you go up in temperature, the non-visible photons also increase at the ultraviolet end. As infrared photons do if you reduce temperature.

And the energy of blue photons is higher than red photons. So, for a given energy input, the number of photons reduces as temperature increases.

[alan_m]

[Roger Hayter]

The proposal is real. The newspaper article did not represent it very well.

[tabbypurr]

only a complete nonscientist would think such trial of any value

because it's a pile of silly bs

[tabbypurr]

240v filament lamps were never optimal. I used to run them at higher voltage to improve efficacy & get lower TCO.

no.

NT

[Andy Burns]

Do you think the 'smart street' trial

A) reduced voltage to homes B) left voltage untouched C) increased voltage to homes

?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Largely because it's utter bollocks?

But in these woke days,. totally in line with all the other non working solutions to imaginary problems that bureaucrats amuse themselves with and justify their existence by.

[alan_m]