UKC

https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/uks-emergency-plans-winter-gas-shortage...

A quite detailed and rather sobering look at the UK's planning for possible gas shortages, and even rationing, over the coming winter.

Cheerful reading.

Some wishful thinking in the article:

Like gas, electricity can be imported. The UK has been a net importer of electricity since 2010. But suddenly buying vast amounts of it from Europe would be hugely expensive.

The article talks about the UK stopping gas exports by a certain crisis level. One imagines those we interconnect with for electricity will do exactly the same, regardless of how much we’re willing and able to pay.

Buying “vast amounts” is also not possible given the fixed and limited capacity of the interconnectors.  

I'd rather see some form of gas/elec rationing (or some way of managing consumption) than have prices spiral to the point at witch the wealthy can afford gas and the poor cannot. surely reduced demand would bring costs down?

Better to be cold and still have some cash in the bank come spring time than be cold and broke. I feel like that's the choice we are heading towards.

Yeah, one thing that I'd been wondering about (from a position of very little knowledge) is whether, having accepted that this is going to be difficult and expensive whatever happens, it'd be better to throw some of the difficulty and expense at reducing demand rather than chucking more money at getting our slice of a fundamentally limited gas supply. Should we be, I dunno, sending round adapted fire engines to coat entire streets in spray-foam insulation? Or preparing to move old folks out of big draughty houses and putting them up in Travelodges for the winter?

A number of councils (Gateshead was the first I heard about) are preparing a network of warm places - venues that would be heated anyways like libraries. I can well image community groceries chipping in with discounted meals etc., voluntary art groups laying on some activities.  I can well imagine this being ‘marketed’ as plucky old Brits knuckling down with some good old British spirit. TBH, if needs must then why not. It could actually reinvigorate some of these venues - often underused. 

I must admit going from an office to sitting at home all day has certainly increased how much I need to heat the house. I hear the same complaints from lots of people now working remotely, although some of the cost is obviously offset by reduced travel expenses.

Clearly people being forced out of their homes due to the cold unacceptable, but offering warm spaces that also act as social hubs is not a bad idea. I do also think that for younger people we need a greater acceptance that in winter a jumper should be default clothing, it amazes me how many people sit there in short sleeves moaning they want the heating turned up when it's sub zero outside.

Couldn't agree more. Maybe it's just me but I find most houses I visit uncomfortably warm when the heating is on. I have one friend in particular who can usually be found at home in shorts and a tee shirt in January with the heating set to tropical levels.

What we really need this winter to be is very mild and rainy. If its a cold and dry one we could be in for some serious problems next year. 

Was involved in the running of a temporary campsite a month or so ago, and it was quite surprising how many people on the EHU pitches seemed to think a heater for their tent was one of those must-haves to take camping. While sitting there in a t-shirt and shorts .... do they not own a jumper?

I've been dealing with some of this in our local communities this week, and think I'm coming down firmly on the side of paul_the_northerner's view that rationing is the better option. Rationing would need to be orchestrated by Gov, though, and as it looks like that isn't going to happen, LAs will try to mitigate the harm done by that inaction. But there are so many problems that I suspect it's all going to be deeply unsatisfactory in the event, with LAs acting as a useful scapegoat for failure.

Firstly we're going to have to accept that 'warm spaces' can't serve those who can't get to them. So that's a whole tranche of the extremely vulnerable - the housebound, the immobile elderly, the isolated, the disabled who rely on home equipment, those in rural areas without transport options - who will effectively be left without support. Secondly, the spaces themselves - libraries, museums, community venues etc - also have bills to pay, and theirs aren't subject to a cap. To make these places accessible to those who need them, they'd ideally be spread all over the place - but in many places local libraries, museums etc have been closed owing to austerity, leaving a few larger city- or town-centre amenities. These will easily fill up, and in any case funding heating for many small buildings rather than a few large ones isn't going to be financially viable for a lot of LAs.

What about those community venues like foodbanks and soup kitchens and, as you mentioned, art groups? Well, they all have fuel bills to pay too. If small businesses like cafes and pubs are going to go to the wall, these certainly will. Most of them are funded by LAs anyway; a few larger ones get access to national pots like the lottery; they have no access to discretionary funding to help them deal with emergencies. A lot of them use venues that are rented from the LA at peppercorn rent in the first place. So, many of the community orgs that have slowly managed to crawl back into life after the last two years will have great trouble just continuing to exist, never mind expanding their remit.

Then there's the problem of the (often underused, as you point out) venues themselves. Many are old, in poor repair, and energy-inefficient. We have lots and lots of Victorian-era buildings that leak like crazy and cost the earth to heat already; in the community we have foodbanks running in places like church halls that - here's the real kicker - have zero mechanical ventilation. Putting all the poorest & most vulnerable huddled together in these spaces in a winter when we're looking at what's probably the first serious flu wave for two years, plus the possibility of another wave of covid, is basically creating superspreader venues, and the consequence of that will be yet more pressure on hospitals (who of course have their own energy bills to pay).

I realize this all comes across as rather doomy - it's not meant to! Rather, what I'm trying to say is that, if rationing doesn't happen - in my view, that would be the worst case scenario - then there are people in LAs working on how to deal with it. I do however agree with your point that we're likely to see a lot of heart-warming media stories about the indomitable spirit of local communities. The sad thing is, it's not our hearts that need warming.

Cant disagree with that, gloomy picture for sure.

I actually run a smallish charity, lottery funded etc with a peppercorn rent building. There is a paper thin suspended ceiling below a corrugated metal roof. Never gets warm for at least six months of the year. Luckily I’m famed for being a total stingy get with a selection of duvet jackets, and will be giving staff an budget for warm clothing. TBH, need to sort out the insulation, need to look at how to fund. 

Many of these people being on the extremal low side of the bell curve in terms of their ability to metabolically generate heat.  Wearing a jumper can only help people stay warm in proportion to the heat they generate.

Smart meters give the ability to disconnect at the granularity of individual households.  Not sure if it’s paranoia but our supplier seem to be using every recent event to ask households to inform them if they have vulnerable members.

Other than through smart meters I can’t see how viable rationing could work, although I agree with you that it’s preferable to the alternatives.

Good for you, for running whatever you're running! I hope you find the funding and if you don't, I reckon an appeal here on UKC for unwanted & old down shells might net you a few donations. Let's hope for a mild, wet, warmish winter...

I think the difference between age groups is that the older are on contracts and the younger with families are on prepaid meters. The latter lose their energy supply if they can't top up, and I think that's been a sort of trial balloon for cutting supply: those on contracts think they can't be cut off even if they can't pay, but smart meters enable instant cut off.

I don't see rationing working either, to be honest. I just see it as the lesser of two evils. I could be wrong on that: people might be ok without heating or a stairlift or scheduled home dialysis, if rationing were overnight; on the other hand I fear for those who will self-ration. These aren't choices that people can make for themselves without well-informed guidance.

I think the idea for rationing is about companies not individuals. 

There will be no rationing says T.h.r.u.s.h.  At the same time she advocates removing motorway speed limits!

She really is something of good judgement, an ideal leader.

Exactly this. The UK isn't Elephant Island. We're not all sailing on the James Caird.

I'm intrigued to know where you are living, because heating has been totally unnecessary in England for at least six months.

Clearly not genuinely all that intrigued, Mr Stainforth, given that Jenny (who also didn’t state a time period for “heating on”) has made her location public. It looks like you are more interested in appearing to be “making a point”. 

I think it is reasonable to assume that a timeframe of at least two and a half years is being talked about.

I suppose they take it for granted. My early 20s daughter is a real PITA about cranking up the upstairs thermostat yet walks around in tiny shorts and vest top. 

In all seriousness, we will come to blows this year. I wont be turning the auto heating on until well into Autumn and the thermostats (we're zoned down an upstairs) will be kept at 21. If I see them move from this without sensible clothing be used I think there will be some tough words. It sounds harsh but were had so many discussions about it that you get to the end of the tether.

I heard that statement about no rationing from Liz Truss during a discussion in a news programme.

The person being interviewed, who was an analyst of the electrical industry, more of less said Liz Truss has no idea what she is talking about and that it is fairly simple to understand.

If demand exceeds supply we will have blackouts, or if it appears demand is likely to exceed supply there will be rationing to manage the demand.

On a different angle. I wonder how much power is used to transmit TV programmes in the UK. If we need to lower overall demand, do we really need 24hour TV? How about no TV from midnight to 6am?

Dave

Radiated power on the order of 50 kW; more will be consumed by the electronics.

Streetlights could also be turned off from say midnight to 6 am; no idea if that kind of control is available; I assume it’s not being added now.

Is that not already widely done? My town has been turning most* street lights off between those hours for about the last ten years as a council cost cutting measure. I assumed it was a result of other towns already doing it or others would have quickly followed suit as I don't think it's caused an real problems. 

*That's estate street lighting, the main arterial roads are light throughout the night.  

Sounds great in principle, but my concern is that it doesn't address the issue if people are then going back to a cold home for the night.

Yes thankyou for clarification of what I thought was an obvious point. 

Also I don't mind admitting that the heating certainly has been used in the last six months - March was decidedly chilly.

I know they're not a precise science, but for me 21 is the shorts and T-shirt temperature, 22 is uncomfortably warm.  I've knocked mine down to 19 to save a few quid.

Killing consumption from midnight til 6 won't help as that's when demand is low regardless 

It reduces net total demand for gas to generate electricity.  The worry is exhaustion of gas supply.  There is some storage in the gas network.  Enough that late night savings make a difference in bad periods.  

Restricting TV hours would be a very good idea but perhaps less beneficial than in the 1970s as people could stay up to stream.  Lack of TV in the 70s was partly intended to put people to bed a bit earlier to save on domestic electricity usage.

Bring back the 9 O'clock news!

Bring back Not the 9 0'clock News

In reply to bruxist 

Great post. We should be seeing similar all over the news to get the population prepared.

Long ago I considered a business manufacturing insulated pods for various purposes, indoors and out.   I never did, but a few years back built a very small room to test the concept, with a desk and internet, and keep warm without heating the house.  It has not had much use.  I'll try to inhabit it more when the cold comes and assess the downsides.

The starting point is to find out ( and its pretty basic stuff) which of those organisations have in place  fixed price contracts  and when they run out.

Clearly some will have been caught out by having deals with bust energy companys.But they might have signed new 2 year deals before the summer.

Then you can focus on those that are a priority.

It will be a mixed bag.But you will possibly be surprised at what is in place becuase somebody signed a deal a few months or year ago.

That may or may not help with the extra energy charges but what about the bigger problems: the likely massive increases in demand for use, the likely lack of supply (support workers, donations etc) and likely health risks when covid is still here and flu is on the way?

trying not to turn this into the three Yorkshire men sketch but we keep ours at 18 and that seems decedent to me but my partner runs very cold so that was a compromise. surely most people would be able to get by with the thermostat at 16 this might require putting a coat on indoors if you run very cold but should be warm enough to stave off ill health. My concern is those who can't afford to do that.  

In the summer time, I use the evening breeze to try and get the inside of the house down to 18°C on an evening...  

Also concerning for those who aren't able to undertake much heat producing activity through age or illness.   Edit: probably a lot of overlap between the two groups.

Yes, that's a fair point.  I think we need to be careful about "three Yorkshiremanning" our thermostats as while they do these days let you set a quite precise temperature (Tado will do to 0.1 degrees C steps) in reality they aren't that accurate and it's more relative.  In particular the positioning of the thermostat can make a huge difference.

If you compare a house with it above a radiator (yes, you see that, stupidly) they may have to set 22 to get the same temperature as a house that sticks it in the hallway might get with it set to 16, particularly if the hallway doesn't contain a radiator.  Mine is in the lounge so probably gives you the same somewhere in the middle (e.g. my 19).

I think the future is really to have radiator bypasses on all radiators and a TRV on each, with heat demand controlled by the radiator, but the people who will find the most issues with this won't have £300+ for that sort of kit and are probably renting so wouldn't be allowed it anyway.  That gives you the controllability equivalent of individual electric convectors at a far lower cost.  Using my house as an example I could probably heat only the office room (which is about 2.5m x 4m, so very small) to 22 for far less cost than the whole house to 19, and in the evening it'd swap to heating only the lounge and not the office.

Indeed.

Yes, that's a fair point.  I think we need to be careful about "three Yorkshiremanning" our thermostats as while they do these days let you set a quite precise temperature (Tado will do to 0.1 degrees C steps) in reality they aren't that accurate and it's more relative. 

My thermostat reads 2deg higher than another digital thermometer next to it. The room 'feels' like the cooler of the two.

There's only 3 radiators in my rented flat, and whilst 2 of them have TRV on, the controlling part for one doesn't work, and on the other the last plumber who came removed the top and I've not seen it since! Both physical valves weep too!

You'd hope so. Yet - and this is perhaps cynicism on my part - I haven't seen any evidence of this government prioritizing the wellbeing, financial or otherwise, of households over companies previously. And also influencing the way I'm thinking about this is watching what's happening in Germany, where they do at least have a detailed three-stage plan for rationing, so are a little ahead of us. That plan does give some priority to households, but companies are pushing back on what should and shouldn't get priority. If we in the UK reached the same stage of public debate, would Gov listen to business, or the public?

Yep. It's certainly one of the variables that matter; it'll probably come into play when final decisions are being made rather than at planning stage though.

I see the HSJ are reporting today that NHS NE/North Cumbria are already seeing hospital admissions of clinically vulnerable people purely because their energy has been disconnected. So not only do we have food banks, and are planning 'warm banks', but hospitals may have to become energy banks...

I did notice a lot of unnecessary lighting in the atrium wing of a hospital yesterday.

Price capped for first X m^3 then punitively priced above?

Works for smart meters, but for manual ones one cold always under report for winter and over report for spring to spread the heavy usage out.  I haven’t seen a meter reader here (electric only) in 18 months…

Also assumes people are going to be able to afford their bills; once that stops being possible, the size of an eventual debt is perhaps easier to ignore when cold.

Thinking about “warm banks”; Australia have had a bad flu season this winter after - like us - having had mild ones during Covid.  Foreshadowing our winter flu season and indeed the wider respiratory illness of winter?  As this disproportionately affects the vulnerable - who will be more heavy users of warm public spaces, it all feels very worrying.  Manageable with appropriate masks and HEPA air handling, but worrying.

I hadn't had a look at Australia; thanks - I will now. There's no sign at all of flu or anything else yet in the usual UK survellance reports but if flu is back in the southern hemisphere then it seems we should expect some sign of it by mid-October at the latest. I agree with you - the issues with warm spaces are manageable, but only with mitigations that people have been encouraged to disdain.

I'm glad I spent the summer banging away at the ventilation problem in local public buildings as many of them are now adequate (with the odd exception such as the one I visited this week that now has a cracking system that they'd turned off. Grrr.) It'll be difficult to get people to understand that good ventilation doesn't mean being cold, and with a lot of wfh workers deciding to work in offices to save on home energy costs, I'm expecting a fecund general environment for transmissibility this winter.

That's as bad as the Sun.

Or my Youtube home screen which is filled with dire warnings of global financial catastrophe's in the next 20 days or whatever.

You can safely ignore that article. It's alarmist nonsense. You'd be just as justified in spending your days panicking about where the nearest fallout shelter is and whether your hazmat suit has any holes in it because you discovered that the UK government has plans squirrelled away somewhere for just that scenario too.

exactly - you can't get any effect by killing TV transmission. You would get an effect by "turning off the internet" but I can see a thousand reasons why that isn't going to happen.

We have a "smart-ish" thermostat (Worcester Wave) that came with the new boiler - that allows a program that changes house temp during the day, so you can ramp up warm at 6PM or whatever home time/meal time is and then slowly drop it off over the evening - if done slowly you don't really notice. Also the boiler is a modulating one so that it doesn't run at max output all of the time, so the thermostat gets the boiler to run on very low output to maintain temperature - so radiators are constantly just about warm to the touch. That maintains a constant temperature rather than the up and down swings of a traditional thermostat that clicks on, goes full blast for 20 minutes, clicks off - where the swings in temperature are much greater and lead to a higher thermostat setting than is otherwise needed with a constant temp.

So if a smart controller can be paired with a  modulating boiler then a lot of energy/money can be saved whilst maintaining comfort levels, before you even start to "three yorkshiremen" the setting

For the truly devious, you can also calibrate the temp setting up or down a few degrees, so that 21 on the digital stat is really 19 in the real world . In my world this helps to keep the women happy, as long as they don't know about it...

Love the devious idea of having a deliberately miss calibrated thermostat, but I take serious offence at that the suggestion that is always women are the ones who are nesh - in our house it's always my husband who wants to crank up the thermostat. 

I adequately covered my ass on that with "in my world"

Other worlds are also available

Actually we need very mild and dry and windy. Cold is number 1 inducer of increased energy usage, wet is number 2 - may not actually be colder but people "feel" colder. Windy to maximise generation from wind thereby reducing need for gas.

The frustrating thing is that this whole situation could have been almost a "non-problem" if for the last 20 years the UK had been:

1. following a proper energy policy - not just market forces and dash for gas
2. investing in better insulation - retrospectively for older homes and better standards for new-builds

Potentially all sorts of problems...and it was early.

https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/flu-hits-australian-kids-%E2%80%92-is-...

On the plus side current flu vaccines seem to be OK according  to the jungle drums.

If it's mild then we'll get an increase in bugs and other flying nasties next spring/summer.

If it's dry then we'll have a water shortage.

We really need to think more about dressing better (i.e. warmer), and stop going around in flimsy clothes 12 months of the year - both outside and in. For that matter, just keeping doors closed keeps places warmer and switching off energy-using items when not in use reduces bills.

Been looking at Oz in more detail - it helps that their flu surveillance reports are so similar to ours in methodology, format, sources etc [1} - and I'm feeling slightly more positive, at least about flu if not covid this winter. Their flu season was low-impact with the exception of its effect on immunonaive children; if we vaccinate from the new school term onwards we could avoid even that.

[1] https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/9B1AA56F506...

Can someone explain how gas can be rationed? As I understand it, when gas supply to an area is switched off each metered user has to be visited to have air bled out of the pipes before the supply can be switched back on. Or have I got this wrong?

• Turn off the CCGT power plants after knocking some chunks of the power grid's consumers offline?  The resulting loss of power for gas boilers will drop demand further.
• Tell many individual smart meters to close their valves (I'm assuming gas smart meters have valves to enable a pre-pay mode, like the contractors in electric smart meters, but I've not read in to it).
• Sending orders out to large consumers - e.g. local authorities - to curb usage in their facilities

No idea on bleeding air out.

That positive feeling I was having didn't last long... Looks like covid vaccination is being withdrawn for all under-12s from the end of this month. I know I don't need to spell out the consequences of that here, nor spell out which particular strategy it indicates is now being followed.

Flu vaccination for children 2 and over will continue as previously, which makes this policy seem even more insane.