Turn on your heat pump when wind is blowing, Government pleads
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Families will be urged to turn on heat pumps when the wind is blowing and charge their electric cars at night under net zero plans to save energy.
Ministers are pressing ahead with new legislation that could see families made to adopt “smart” appliances to ease pressure on the grid.
Tory MPs are opposing the proposals, contained in the contentious Energy Bill which will come back before the Commons on Tuesday.
The Government insisted it was “in no way asking people to ration electricity” and that consumers will benefit in the form of cheaper bills.
In official guidance, ministers have said the switch to smart appliances like heating systems, fridges and car chargers is key to delivering net zero.
“They enable consumers to shift their electricity usage to times when it is less costly for the energy system,” the document states.
“For example, running a heat pump when renewable generation is most abundant, or charging an electric vehicle (EV) overnight when there is lower demand on the electricity system.
“Individual consumers are rewarded for this flexible energy use by saving money on their energy bills, while all electricity consumers benefit from the overall reduction in system costs.”
The Energy Bill includes powers for ministers to “mandate that electric heating appliances and EV chargepoints must have smart functionality, prohibiting the sale of non-smart devices in Great Britain”.
It is being opposed by Tory MPs who have likened the plans to “rationing” of electricity and have said they show renewables are not up to scratch.
Bill ‘needs to be buried’
Craig Mackinlay, the MP for South Thanet and head of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, has tabled an amendment to scrap the entire section on smart appliances from the legislation.
He said the Government was “admitting a shortage of electricity with its plans to limit supply to households and businesses through smart appliances, peak pricing penalties and reliance on irregular renewables”.
“This is a dreadful Bill which needs to be buried and forgotten. It might yet see a slow euthanasia once it returns to the Lords.”
Greg Smith, the Tory MP for Buckinghamshire, added: “The key to de-fossilisation and decarbonisation must be that nobody is stopped from doing anything they do today, be that heating their homes, flying on vacation or using private transport.
“What needs to change is the technology that allows us to do all those things. Anything that seeks to throttle demand or tell people what they can and can’t do is simply unacceptable.”
Sir John Redwood, a former Cabinet minister, said the Bill talks about “more time switching to ration available electricity”.
“People will not be able to come home from work, put an electric car on charge and turn on a series of home appliances all at the same time, but will need persuading or requiring to run some machines and rechargers overnight when there is less electricity demand,” he added.
Turning your heat pump on when it’s windy is hardly the issue here. It’s what you do when it’s not windy; are they telling you to switch off your heating, or charge you so much that you are forced to anyway?
The frightening thing is that none of these suggestions are anything more than sticking plaster anyway. When the wind does not blow, we will be up the proverbial without a paddle, smart meters or not.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Simpletons!! We are being ruled by Simpletons! How the hell will a user know when it’s windy at the site of a remote turbine at the other end of the country which just happens to be connected to the grid?
Pretty soon, if these fools get their way, everyone will own appliances that only function during low demand periods. Ahh. But there won’t be any low demand periods because all these smart appliances will be switching on in off-peak – which will now become the exact opposite.
…and “consumers will benefit in the form of lower bills”
Wanna bet?
Sadly Jacob RM did not challenge some ecofascist dolly on GB News last night when she claimed unreliable uneconomic subsidised energy was cheaper than reliable fossil fuels. Droning on about oil and gas company profits – following the collapse during covid – without being told that is the nature of supply and demand.
Simpletons is being very kind.
It’s Bidenomics, Ian.
They will double the price, but you can get 5% back.
Every time this comes up (especially with his resistance to the new bill) JRM starts our OK but then loses the plot by diving off into fhis hobby-horse – shale gas and fracking. Misses every chance to win the argument and lets these eco-nutty girls get the better of him. Remember Phoebe? What a plonker.
But it is not just stupidity . Yes , a lot of politicians are clueless , but some of them know that the whole Net Zero idea is impossible , and the plan is to destroy the economy , [ it doesnt matter how many people die from the cold etc ,] so that the Marxist / Socialists can take over .
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
“so that the Marxist / Socialists can take over”
I see them trying to destroy freedom, not so much trying to install a specific type of government.
” Simpletons!! We are being ruled by Simpletons! ”
It’s a madhouse.
Malevolent morons who pocket backhanders to destroy us.
FTFY.
We are governed by intellectual midgets.
However, I hope this bill passes. The more pain the brainwashed public have to endure the sooner they will wake up.
I have been looking at long range weather forecasts for the coming winter. It seems we are at best in for a ‘normal’ winter, which may be a good deal colder than last year. At worst it could be a good deal colder, I believe thanks to El Nino which is liable to shift the jet stream unfavourably.
I don’t want a cold winter however, if that’s what it will take to bring people to their senses, bring it one.
This poll demonstrates the problem. Sceptics of NetZero are still in the minority but there are a huge number of fence sitters. Until the balance tips in our favour our government will do nothing about NetZero other than continue on with it because in a ‘democratic’ system they have no choice. It’s what the majority public want. The fact they government has it’s thumb on the scales is academic, Polls like these are their life’s blood.
https://britain.unherd.com/net-zero/
I have been hoping for a really severe winter, 2010/2011 was the last one , the last two have been fairly mild. All it will take is a few weeks of rolling power cuts, then take another poll of attitudes to going green.
I have two small generators 1kW and 2kW, but they do not have much reactive power to start motors. I have gas heating and a gas hob so I can run the boiler, fridge and freezer, lights, router, TV, computer and cook on the hob. (Theoretically I could just run the microwave with the 2kW generator, but it struggles and trips out)
There is no way I can run a 5kW heat pump and that lack of gas in the future will surely be a disaster. (Hydrogen is another crazy fantasy).
Please please lets be snowed in this winter.
” a really severe winter, 2010/2011 was the last one ,” Just an observation but count back 15/16 years you get to 1994/5.
From NetWeather website – “I remember 1995 very well, it was a good year for snow, the coldest temperature since records began recorded in Braemar, Scotland)….”
So count back another 15/16 years to 1978/9 – again from NetWeather – “The last really severe, snowy winter, for now anyway, and one my parents go on about! Late December falls of 6-7n inches in Southern Scotland and the North East started it off. It was very cold in parts. Mid February saw drifts of 6-7 feet on the East coast of England. Mid March had severe blizzards and drifting, in North Eastern England drifts reached a staggering 15 feet! Very snowy.”
So count back another 15/16 years and hey presto we get the legendary 1962/3 winter.
https://stroudtimes.com/pictures-looking-back-at-the-bitter-winter-of-1962-63/#:~:text=The%20winter%20was%20the%20coldest,63%20is%20of%20course%201947.
Now notice that 1962/3 was actually “outsnowed” by the almost equally legendary winter of 1946/7 – make that 15/16 years before!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_1946–47_in_the_United_Kingdom
Fancy checking out 1930/1? https://www.netweather.tv/weather-forecasts/uk/winter/winter-history
So it may all be coincidence but I going to put money on winter 2025/6 being a tough one.
I bought a 9Kw petrol generator a couple of years ago.
Unless we start going mad with the microwave and an induction hob it should be able to run the whole house reliably.
“Sceptics of NetZero are still in the minority”… because of the many decades of state propaganda. In behavioural psychology terms the idea of AGW has been internalised.
DEFRA 26 April 2002 Margaret Beckett
IT NEVER RAINS, BUT IT WILL POUR… BECKETT SENDS EARLY WARNING ON CLIMATE CHANGE
“Increased risk in the UK of droughts, heavy rainfall and floods, could have major consequences for land use, planning, water resources, infrastructure, insurance, tourism and many other sectors across society.
Top temperatures in summers in the UK may rise to highs of 40 degrees C by the 2080s with many more “very hot” days contrasted by wetter, but warmer, snow-free winters and drier spring and autumn seasons – most probably all triggered, say scientists today, by global warming. It is clear from today’s report that the British climate as we know it will change significantly. Almost a century of past global greenhouse gas emissions will take their toll in the UK.
2006 Speech by the Rt Hon David Miliband MP – “The great stink: towards an environmental contract ” at the Audit Commission annual lecture, Wednesday, 19 July 2006 https://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/DavidMiliband.pdf
“So the science is increasingly stark. The potential to solve climate change increasingly in our hands. Public awareness and concern has never been higher. The challenge is to translate awareness into action.”
This was also published in August 2006. https://www.ippr.org/publications/warm-wordshow-are-we-telling-the-climate-story-and-can-we-tell-it-better
“To help address the chaotic nature of the climate change discourse in the UK today, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won, at least for popular communications. This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.”
IPPR is one of Labour’s favourite think tanks and David Miliband was an intern there in the 1990’s.
Margaret Beckett 2002
“Today’s report illustrates that the rise in the UK average sea level may further threaten some low lying unprotected coastal areas, but that it is the extremes of sea-level storm surges and large waves – that could cause most damage.”
Michael Gove 2018
“Sea levels, for example – which we are becoming more accurate at measuring, thanks to advances in instruments and monitoring systems. In the 20th century the oceans rose around 15cm and the rate of increase has since quickened.”
Margaret Beckett 2002
“Some of the impacts of today’s report we will not be able to avert. The changes are already locked into the climate system and cannot be reversed.”
Michael Gove 2018
“Even as we take action to slow carbon dioxide pollution now, physics dictates that the climate will keep heating up for decades to come.”
These quotes are not even a snowflake on the tip of the propaganda iceberg.
“Global Warming: The Social Construction of a Quasi-Reality?”
https://web.archive.org/web/20170508224510/http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/science-papers/reprint/social-construction
To reinforce your point, Global Warming/Climate Change is well accepted as being actually caused by the “Conceptual Penis”. It must be true because I have read the published peer reviewed science that proves it!
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/
I once posted the above link on the Guardian comments section on a climate change article. Not only was it instantly deleted but posting from my account was immediately disabled.
Beckett: “Top temperatures in summers in the UK may rise to highs of 40 degrees C by the 2080s ”
I forgot, they already got this with their 1 minute 40C record:
https://news.sky.com/story/uks-2022-weather-which-saw-40c-temperature-record-to-become-typical-12927481
IIRC it was proposed that EV batteries would be used as backups for the grid. If so, then how will one know whether the car is charged up ready to go in morning or not?
This notion of car batteries backing up the “Grid” is complete nonsence on a stick. A domestic EV charger connects on single phase at 230V+10/-6%. Compare that to the transmission network operating at 400,oooV! All you could possibly supply are other homes connected on the same phase and to the same last step down transformer – that could be as few as half a dozen customers in rural areas.
So you take incoming mains AC, transform it to battery voltage and rectify to DC at anything up to 15% waste to then later invert back to AC and match grid voltage and frequency losing even more to inject to the local low voltage system… and of course hope someone wants really poor quality power. And just when you get the 1:00 am emergency call your car won’t work. Complete bollocks.
That’s what I thought!
Of course it is nonsense. If people are stupid enough to buy an electric car, spend hours charging the battery and then find it still doesn’t have any range, what hope is there?
>>car batteries backing up the “Grid” is complete nonsence
Off topic but really pathetic attempts to hyperbolise and catastrophise current warm spell in UK. Telegraph hyperventilating about back to back “tropical nights” as being “extremely significant” according to “an expert” (Chris Packham perhaps – he appeared on the same page !?). The desperation of these people to push the narrative continuously with claims of obscure “records” suggests panic at the realisation that ordinary people are becoming increasingly suspicious.
My wife was talking to her brother this week. He is trades (highly skilled lead roof worker). He said that every trades person he knows says climate change is bollocks.
I will second that point TS. After graduating my son thought sod this office work and wanted to be in active physical employment so took up electrical certifications. He says exactly the same – tradesmen/women simply have not fallen for it. Which begs the question how many, in reality, do believe it?
The Westminster Wokerati, nobody else. Unfortunately these idiots are also in charge of the asylum.
Well there’s little wind today – AGAIN. and its NOT for the heatpump, it’s for COOLING the warm grain and charging the TRACTOR(s) Batteries and the COMBINE HARVESTER & the Trucks to take away the grain …. to the electric Ferry Boat. Dum fools, they are, that lot. Full of RAAC, as we’re all finding out. See.. there’s the reinforcement giving way.
In the 1980s there was a drive for electric storage heaters on the E7 tariff, that ‘took advantage of low priced night periods’. In the SW it was a successful campaign because of low gas penetration. The result was that the local networks had to be reinforced because the peak demand not only switched to 1am from 6pm but it doubled or trebled in size. The campaign had to be stopped because the extra costs of system reinforcement were multiple times greater than the cheaper generation costs.
Does nobody learn anything anymore?
Happy days! I was training the sales teams of Eastern Electricity, London Electricity, South Eastern Electricity and Southern Electricity to sell the great big blocks of bricks to consumers.
Not unlike the government scheme to help people convert petrol vehicles to LPG. Started in 1996 and removed in 2005. Clean burning and generates only 1/20 the NOx emissions of diesel vehicles and 1/2 the NOx emissions of petrol cars.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/sep/30/lpg-conversion-green-cheaper
From ULEZ questions:
https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/vehicles-converted-lpg-and-ulez-charge-1
“It is important to note that while LPG does offer some potential carbon dioxide savings over petrol, the air quality benefits are more limited; NOx in particular is unchanged and can sometimes increase.”
Note also CO2 appears in the reply – but its always claimed its about air quality. Conflation anyone? Follow the money. Is this Khan and Labour’s poll tax? Maybe the Conservatives are leaving this all as a nasty “easter egg” for a possible incoming Labour government?
TS: one of my long-time neighbours is a car dealer – inasmuch that he attends car auctions on behalf of dealers and buys loads of cars in one day which he gets loaded onto transporters and they pay him for his trouble. His best was to buy 20 BMWs at one auction.
Anyway, he was so good at it he would often come home with some very interesting cars, valet them and sell them off his drive – very quickly and very successfully. Often he would go to auction in a car, sell it and come home in one he’d bought.
But one day, he got caught out, having sold his own car, the only car left to buy at the end of the auction was an ex- British Gas company Marina – that had been converted to run on natural gas! It was a true hybrid: it could run on petrol or, at the flick of a valve, gas!
I figured he would be ‘challenged’ in selling it. But after valeting it he actually sold it a couple of weeks later – at a profit!!
😂
I have a dual fuelled standby generator at home (atrociously unreliable mains supply). On Propane you can barely hear it, runs much smoother and the air around it is much cleaner. It’s also a lot less faffing around refuelling.
Don’t forget that the Economy 7 tariff was based on all those coal plants idling over night because they can’t be turned on and off at will. What happens now to low overnight prices when there is no wind and no dispatchable generators?
I’ve been of the impression that Economy 7 was to soak up the output from the nuclear plants which were to run flat out.
Peter,
without dispatchable generation there will be no power, it is essential.
It is not switched off and on (No thermal plant can be) but the output is modulated, just as car’s throttle controls it’s power.
A good website is :- https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ because all inputs are from a base zero rather than being cumulative as on most other grid monitoring sites. Gas (CCGT) is doing the balancing and you can see the see saw effect of high and low wind output and the distortion from solar.
It needs to run because renewables cannot provide inertia or reactive power, both essential for a stable grid but more importantly because of the generally low output from renewables.
The talk of them replacing conventional generation is pure nonsense, even with the government’s lunatic idea of vastly increasing capacity of offshore wind. Despite that extra capacity (at what cost?) there will often be times that it generates very little at all.
Is it incompetence of government and advisors or following the WEF and U.N. idea of reducing our economic strength? That side seems to have worked?
‘They enable consumers’
This plan is for YOUR benefit, you ingrates.
Paul you are the only breath of fresh air and sense trying to make goverment and quangos understand the real world…thank you and please carry on !
Following GC’s comment above, it’s incredible how they have the gall to present this as a ‘customer service’!
What’s actually happening is they’re failing in their ONE energy-related obligation. It’s what the entire National Grid is there for, to provide abundant, reliable supplies of affordable electricity.
If blackouts start prison sentences should follow very soon after. I promise that would focus Minister’s minds.
Aren’t the lunatics in charge aware that heat pumps don’t work like a conventional boiler, and really need to run continuously to establish a comfortable temperature?
No, because lunacy and awareness don’t go together too well.
DSR (Demand Side Reduction) is a major part of the net zero plans. It is about time that smart meters increased electricity/gas costs at times of high demand.
The existing system of paying consumers to reduce demand is just not sensible.
I do believe the powers that be are just hesitant to introduce Easyjet capacity algorithms to energy pricing, as it would reveal the true reason for smart meters, to reduce demand by making gas/electricity unaffordable. Can you imagine people dying of hypothermia to satisfy the eco loons.
In the Texas winter failure a few years ago, the algorithm increased the price of a kWh to infinity (but the metering could only cope to $1000).
In the real world desperate freezing people, will just steal electricity by bypassing the meter. This will overload the sub station and distribution system leading to blackouts.
On the other hand the well lit street of houses all charging a Tesla on the drive, surrounded by a dark dark area of no lights is likely to result in a few more Tesla fires than expected, what a Dystopic world is planned for us just because some idiots believe fossil fuels are bad and should be banned.
The government is giving their endorsement to the age of senility, when there are myriad options to choose from and none of them make sense
It seems that the den of thieves at Westminster have been quick to pick up the curtailment of off shore wind investment and their resultant income stream opportunities.
Tory MPs are now pressing for onshore wind in a great diversity of locations and it will be interesting to see how the plethora of new installations relate to currently held Conservative seats.
We already know that they favour the disbursement of a percentage of the money raised to local people and how more local can you be than the local MP?
My MP (Rosie Duffield – Canterburyand Whitstable Constituency) now lives a mere 250 miles away in Wrexham so really local!
I’m always bemused by statements such as “charging an electric vehicle (EV) overnight when there is lower demand on the electricity system.” Don’t the simpletons in charge realise that if everyone starts using electricity overnight, then the demand won’t stay low!
Oh, I’m sure they do, Rob.
They hope the simpletons they’re in charge of don’t.
Britain’s energy crisis needs a national war effort not this sticking plaster solution
Neither political masters nor the regulator know how to fix our broken energy system
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/09/02/paying-people-use-less-electricity-plaster-energy-crisis/
But this was obvious from the day the idea popped into Milliband’s head.
“and No 10 continues to rely on a price cap that is acting as much as a floor on household bills as it is a ceiling.”
Despite identifying a lot of problems the solution is the usual nonsense about wind and solar being the solution
Are you sure the idea popped into Milliband’s head? Judging by its crass stupidity the source is likely to be at the lower extremity of his alimentary canal. Just like the good Marxist he is.
Hey DBB, I’ve just seen an article about a weird statute in Exeter.
Is that You!?
“Britain’s energy crisis needs a national war effort” and it really needs to start it now. Most big generator turbines are built to order and not usually (in the past) imported like these brutes going into Somerset are being now.
https://www.ge.com/steam-power/products/steam-turbines/nuclear-arabelle
The biggest the UK ever built were 660MW, they take a long time to build and nobody has them sitting on the shelves waiting for orders.
Probably the only way we could get reliable generation quickly would be converting aero turbines to run multiple smaller gensets and burn kerosene.
Not efficient, very noisy but they do work, offer full balancing ability and can be sited by disused former units requiring no grid expansion. Nuclear and coal can follow up later as both take a long time.
But it simply ain’t gonna happen absent some massive political upheaval.
And I am crashed out in bed suffering from a Goddamn second bout of COVID!!! 4 jabs, immunity from previous and still my wife and I succumbed.
I’m afraid the “safe and effective vaccines” are as much pie in the sky as climate change models.
” The biggest the UK ever built were 660MW, ”
The UK used to lead the world in steam turbine technology, particularly where Parsons was involved (1884), although the gifted Trevithick was reputed to have been considering similar several decades earlier.
“Neither political masters nor the regulator know how to fix our broken energy system”
The Fix is to get them out of it.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair
The Fix is really that simple. Get government out of it. Have the government announce, “Y’all do whatever you want; we’re out of the energy regulation business.” The market place will get you going again shockingly fast.
The UKs energy system has been allowed to degrade for decades
Privatisation turned what should be national security enabling utilities into cash cows for overseas owners, with increased profits for shareholders, but less investment in infrastructure upgrades and maintenance, so by the 2000’s, it was already in decline
Then came the new millennium and climate alarmism (actually a new stream of green con stealth taxes & money scams for the elites with a modicum of control of the masses thrown in) – MPs, billionaires etc couldn’t get enough of this new found gravy train
Covid actions showed the globalist elites you could scare people witless and control their behaviours as a result, whilst making vast sums of money in related ops, because money is no object in a crisis – yummy, where else can we apply this dystopian future – why, of course, in the great climate change Armageddon hysteria
Cue Nut Zero, the climate crisis cash printing project whereby via smart meters, wind & solar farms, battery cars, heat pumps, agriculture, bug burgers and lab grown meat, you can generate extremely wealthy income streams from the masses to the elites, whilst fooling them they are saving a boiling planet
The whole incompetent, corrupt, malfeasant transfer of wealth and application of control is the worst inhumane act ever carried out by a few humans on the masses, who will suffer increasing poverty, hunger, cold and ill health, as a sacrificial solution to a problem that doesn’t exist
I hope history reviles them
” Privatisation …”
… probably stopped the Sizewell C twin PWR nuclear power station construction project in the mid-1990s, to be potentially followed by Sizewell D twin PWR.
The estimated construction cost for Sizewell C twin PWR was approx £3.5billion (1992 prices)
Surely the way heat pumps work is that they are meant to be left on all the time when the weather is cold.
Everybodys comments here make this site the best reading on ‘tinternet.
I have nothing to add.
notify comments
ministers have said the switch to smart appliances like heating systems, fridges and car chargers is key to delivering net zero.
“They enable consumers to shift their electricity usage to times when it is less costly for the energy system,”
Who’s going to want their fridge switching off at random, or at all, to suit energy suppliers?