WhyWaitForever - London - Energy

Paying utility bills

Paypoint services are located in thousands of shops throughout the UK. Paypoint allows pre-payment keys and smartcards to be energised. Paypoint allows utility bills to be paid in these shops.

Single utility bill

It is worth checking (as always) what exactly is meant by an online account. Common sense would dictate you could put in your meter reading, press the submit button, your account would be instantly updated, you are told how much time you have left before you need to pay and if you have run out of time you confirm you are happy to pay....maybe.....if it worked like this you could tackle all those tricky homework questions. "How much electricity does it take to boil an egg?".....if it worked like this you could maybe better budget and maybe use less energy inefficient appliances. We will see if we are dealing with smoke and mirrors or if we get something that is real progress.

Initial impressions are that if you access the Internet through a dial-up modem (as most residential energy buyers do) these sites can be very slow since the sites both contain many images and seem to need to continually access databases. Unfortunately the sites do not appear to have been designed with accessibility in mind. Use Bobby to check for yourselves. The old trick of turning off images and switching to text-only mode to speed things up fails since lots of vital header text is hidden in images.

On-line security appears perhaps to be an issue to be considered with more depth than has been previously. As reported in the computer press there have been concerns raised with PowerGen, Barclays, Bloomberg, Woolworths and Safeway. At WhyWaitForever we have credit and debit cards that we ONLY use for remote transactions. These are linked to closely controlled accounts with small limits for spending. We would avoid using our main credit and debit cards online.

Electricity and gas

It seems best to both shop around and change supplier frequently. A customer should sign up for a service with a notice of termination period as short as possible and with no penalty on termination.

The following UK organisations develop and operate generating capacity.

The following two organisations are responsible for the bulk distribution of electricity and gas in the UK.

History repeats. The inevitable tide of mutualisation which is just beginning in the water industry will sweep over the energy industry. Together with mutualisation there will be a myriad of small energy companies each with their own little CHP generator. Areas will suffer from uneven performance. Inefficiencies will be rife. An opposition will clamour for nationalisation to tackle the old and cold in low population density areas. The financial services industry will rake in yet another £20 billion in consultants fees reversing what they advised previously when they recommended mutualisation and reversing what they advised previous to that when they advised privatisation and ......

Outside London within the countries of Europe and elsewhere liberalisation (privatisation) continues at various speeds. The EU countries in electricity for example attempt to follow EU Directive .

Oil

For heating the fuel of choice is gas. The next most popular is electricity. Oil follows a distant third. WhyWaitForever - London - Cars contains links relevent to cars and petrol for cars.

Combined Heat and Power, Landfill and Biomass Gas

There are increasing numbers of district heating schemes that are being planned and implemented using CHP. Local Authorities and Housing Authorities are looking more favourably on these schemes.

Solar Energy

Very very rarely on roofs of homes and offices a few elusive solar panels can be seen. London has the sunshine. Perhaps planning permission and building regulation consents inhibit.

Wind Power and Wave Power

Probably the closest this energy source will get to London is on the dangerous sand and mud flats in the River Thames Estuary.

Water

Public water companies enjoy monopolies in their fiefdoms. When I was growing up near the river we were made aware of the dangers of flooding including which hills we would run to. Legging it to Primrose Hill always struck me as a tad tricky. The River Thames Barrier was to protect us and see us dry into the next Millenium. Well the new Millenium is here. Let us see if the storm drains and the river defences can protect us from the more variable weather to come. In some ways I look forward to the frost fayres and massive storms that have periodically crashed into these islands around every ninety years or so since Roman times. It used to be said 90 years good 90 years bad. I must go through old newspapers some time to see what evidence there is for this.

Advice and Education

London and electricity