From the Daily Skeptic
Author: Nick Rendell
‘The surprising thing is not how well or poorly the dog plays the piano, but that it plays it at all!’ Dr Johnson may well have applied this adage to Rachel Reeves’ cancellation of pensioner’s winter fuel On allowances. However, in this case, it is shocking that the allowance was withdrawn and So much so that it was handled so poorly.
Generally speaking, I have no problem with anything that removes the state from people's lives. However, the “visual impact” of the announcement was shocking. Why doesn't it end with a series of moves, such as confirmation that the triple lock will be retained, or alongside details of an imminent increase in pensions?
In any case, there's a bigger mystery here: why do people shivering in poorly insulated, underheated social housing pay about twice as much per kWh for off-peak electricity as electric car owners, and Hanging out in your own pound.
You must remember the parable of the widow’s mite in the Bible. One day in the temple, the widow could only afford a small charity donation. She gave her two cents and slipped away. Meanwhile, the rich man showed off his huge donation, even though it was a donation he could easily afford.
Well, something similar is happening in every parish in the country today. The widows in this case were mainly poor little old ladies living in post-war houses and apartments with night heaters. It is worth noting that approximately 1.4 million households still use night storage heaters. The rich in my parallel fable are the 1.2 million electric car drivers, a group known for underestimating their contribution to the altruistic pursuit of net zero emissions, especially when that contribution is subsidized by general taxation and additional costs on others’ energy bills When funding.
Why am I comparing these two groups—1.4 million residents of poor housing and 1.2 million drivers of expensive electric vehicles? Because, in many ways, they are similar, at least in terms of the desire for cheap, non-peak power. Of course, you may be thinking, isn’t this where “smart meters” come in? Can't they differentiate between user groups and provide more tailored tariffs? Alas, the £20 billion or so spent on “smart meters” doesn't seem to be delivering anything that smart.
When I was a kid, I remember my dad had a “polished gold” Ford Sierra. These days, like so many other things, car paint choices have reversed course. Gone are the days when Henry Ford could say “You can choose any color you like, as long as it's black.” Elon Musk’s customers now seem to be saying, “Paint it any color you like, but for us, we’ll always see it as ‘polished virtue’”.
If our widow with three night storages could buy off-peak electricity at the same price as an electric car driver, she would save around £500 a year – far more than she would lose if she no longer receives the winter fuel subsidy. .
You may have never considered this, so you may be surprised to learn that a single nighttime storage unit uses about the same amount of energy as an electric car driving about 11,000 miles per year. A study cited this is money Research shows that the average electric vehicle range is 8,292 miles, slightly lower than the average range of an internal combustion engine vehicle. So for most EV drivers, they use less electricity than a single overnight storage heater. Of course, while us EV-driving eco-warriors tend to own just one EV, our widow owns three or four night heaters. While our EV champion spends less than £200 a year to propel his car 11,000 miles using 2,750kWh of off-peak electricity at 7p per kWh, our widowers are spending around £350 a night , 75% more – heat storage.
But it doesn't have to work this way. The EV drive market is highly competitive, with prices ranging from 6.9p to 10p per kWh, as shown on the right-hand side of the table, taken from Martin Lewis money saving expert site and replicated in Figure 1.
In contrast, as shown in Figure 1, traditional economy7 or “off-peak (night) electricity prices” kilowatt-hour prices for electricity range from 10.95p to 14.85p, in some cases twice as expensive.
Is there anything special about “EV-destined” off-peak electricity compared to the economical 7 electricity dedicated to our widow's night heater? Of course not. There is absolutely no reason why power companies should not offer Economy-7 users the same prices as electric vehicle users. In fact, Dale Vince's Ecotricity seems to do just that, well done, Dale. So why don't British Gas or EON do the same?
Overall, I am not in favor of regulators. We only have regulators when markets are not functioning properly. It goes without saying that the electricity market is not functioning properly. But if we're going to have a regulator, why doesn't it step in and ask energy companies to follow Dale Vince's lead and stop discriminating against widows and their night heaters in favor of the rich in electric vehicles?
More relevantly, why didn't Ed Milliband point out the potential cost savings if all night storage users switched to Ecotricity?
Why doesn't Milliband go a step further and encourage our widows to install night storage? A large-scale national scheme could easily reduce the installation price of state-of-the-art equipment to around £300, about the same as the cost of the lamentable winter fuel subsidy. We have no shortage of available nighttime electricity, which is likely to be cheaper than natural gas and can directly replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.
Of course, Miliband could argue that he doesn't want to mess with night storage heaters but instead wants to install millions of heat pumps. But look at it from the widow’s perspective. If she had only expected to live another five or ten years, she would have frantically squandered the money she had saved for her children, buying a £25,000 heat pump unit that she would never be able to repay in her lifetime (if they ever did ) will be paid off during your lifetime).
Why not pursue the low-hanging fruit of installing night heat storage in thousands of homes? Oh, and while we're at it, we can tell the widow that her contribution to “climate change” (assuming she cares) is worth more than the donation from the rich guy who just drove his Class Y Tesla.
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