Check this out: A cloudless UK.

I guess on the 18th Pisa was a litle bit cooler than that!

Regards.

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It's from the Telegraph: Millions Hit by Record Gas Price Rise

The differences between price rises between suppliers is almost meaningless, the cheaper ones just haven't announced their more recent hike yet.

Interesting to see how the important things in life like water, energy, shelter and transport are increasing in price far quicker than the official rate of inflation. I guess it's okay though since DVD players can be bought for £20 these days compared to over £100 3 years ago.

Figures issued by the economists Ernst & Young show that people have 10 per cent less money for so-called discretionary spending than five years ago.

Ruth Lea, the director of the Centre for Policy Studies, said the rise in fuel bills hit the poorest people hardest.

"People will have to borrow more if they want to maintain their current way of life, or they will have to cut their spending. Inevitably some will get into more debt, but it is like a hangover: they will need to sober up the next day. Some people keep drinking, of course, but they will end up with a worse hangover."

In the UK we need some form of house heating about 1/2 the time - agreed?

We have 2 usual choices: electric or piped gas.

Back in the 50s, coal gave way to seperate gas fires in rooms.

Then the fashion for gas central heating arrived in the 60s/70s based on 2 things:

1] cheaper North Sea gas than electric

2 central timing control for the whole house. This coincided with 2 adults working lifestyles, where the old coal fire would have been impractical [too slow to start]

The downside of GCH is the impracticality of gas pipes, CORGI, water pipes, motors, boilers, pilot lights [or worse - new systems require electric supply], control panels, header tanks [ball valves], seized taps, bleeding gas out of radiators, sludge, cutting floorjoists, weeping connections..etc. We put up with all this rubbish because of 1] and 2] above.

Well, 2] doesn't require gas. There are people who make centrally managed electric [though it's rare stuff] and it makes more sense than an internet connected fridge.

My point is that at some transition, gas heating will inevitably fall out of favour as the price rises versus electricity.

When this begins, we WILL see an unfixable runaway electricity supply crisis unless the population decreases.

If most homes in the uk were heated electrically then we need not suffer capacity problems.

Heat is one of the few things that we can (almost) store.  To put it another way, a well insulated home is better served by keeping the temp constant rather that cyclic heating and cooling. If I recall this is more efficient.
In a home such as this, you can choose when you apply power to heaters etc.

Imagine a system that links heating systems to the internet and the national grid.  During periods of low demand the grid can stabilise itself by stimulating heating demand automatically.   Further heating demand can be rotated so that the whole population does not run its heaters simultaneously.  

My house is all electric as we have no gas.  (Its one of the aforementioned Barrett/Wimpy boxes)  All of our heating/hot water/cooking is done with electricity.  We have a crude form of demand management in the form of off peak low priced electricity.  We have 3 off peak time periods every 24 hours.  These are 00:00 - 00:05 then 13:00 - 16:00 then 20:00 - 22:00.

This allows us to heat our water and heat our home on the cheap, while stimulating grid demand when the utilities need it (to allow them to run their plants at economical levels)

In a more sophisticated system proposed above the heaters and hot water tank could be linked to the power output of a wind farm.  So when there is power we can consume it and when there is none its not a disaster.  So long as the average power delivered is adequate.

I will admit that CONSUMPTION of electricity would increase if we all used electricity to heat our home but don't get this confused with grid CAPACITY which is a different thing entirely.  Properly managed we need not have capacity problems if we're careful.

Having said that with the incumbent government in charge we are, of course, screwed.

In summary the article states that there are delays to two of the four major UK gas import projects under construction.

On the Langeled pipeline project, the four compression trains that need to compress the gas before it can be fed into the pipeline from Norway are suffering delays in construction. A source is quoted as saying the project is running six months behind schedule and will not be delivered in time for the winter peak. It is hoped that one train will be on line in late December/early January, but this is "a hope not a guarantee".

There is also meant to be a delay on the Bacton Balgazand Line.

These two delayed projects between them would be able to supply 84M cu m of gas per day (if it is available!), some 20% of peak demand.

It will be interesting to see how this gets reflected in the updated National Grid Winter 2006/2007 Consultation document due by the end of September. Fingers crossed for a mild winter!