Few days old now.

No more windfarms unless local people say yes, says new Energy Secretary..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/11611050/Amber-Rudd-No-more-windfarms-unless-local-people-say-yes.html

Ed Davies 7 days ago

1) Full-rate VAT on domestic energy.
fully agree

however how about

On all consumption over a basic allowance of say (1-2 000 KWh) for each occupant of that property .

Posted By: bxmanOn all consumption over a basic allowance of say (1-2 000 KWh) for each occupant of that property .

Just gets way too complicated.
How do you cope with lodgers, kids at university, elderly parents staying too long, carers.
Just simpler and more sensible to charge a flat rate on all energy used. It does not have to be the full 20%, could be 10 or 15%.
The idea is to get people to use less, rather than pay more.

Just as an aside, fuel duty and VED raised £38bn in 2011/12 in the UK, that is 7% of total taxation. And it still only costs about 12p/kWh.
We currently use about 18,000 kWh of energy for a typical house, so raising the VAT by 5% (assuming 40% electricity at 15p/kWh and 60% gas at 5p/kWh) would add £54 to the electric bill and £27 to the gas bill.
I don't think that is enough to change behaviour.
There was an interesting article on the radio about luxury goods (think it may have been Woman's Hour as it seemed to be about handbags). Apparently if something costs £300 then it is priced high enough to make it special, but not so high as to make it unaffordable (it is still 3 years clothings spend for me). So any increase would have to be over £300 to make people think.
So Ed's idea of charging the full 20% has legs, though it may need to be higher, as charging an extra 15% VAT would still only be £243/year.

Bella
Would you have been any less happy if the place had had two bedrooms at the same price?
Not taking the micky here, I find it interesting the the British put up with small homes.

Try a flat in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, New York if you really want to know what "putting up with small homes" is all about. Where have you been all your life? Maybe you underestimate the modest aspiration that emerges being poor relative to the cost of property (think the lower half of income range, now so wide that one end vanishes into the clouds).

Posted By: bellaJust don't know the economics of 2 or 3/site, and then the next lot 50 miles away.

That is the beauty of electricity, it is easily transportable and find the shortest path to earth, so ends up being used with the lowest losses.

The biggest problem with new housing is local opposition. People just can't get to grips with the scale.
If I said that every day that 1300 move into a new 'home', some people would be horrified. They would complain about lack of local resources/facilities, roads being blocked, not enough infrastructure to cope. And probably no library as well.
Except that is what happens at the local secondary school near me. Everything seems to cope quite well.
Down here we are used to the population increasing rapidly, it has ten times the local population coming and going, no problem (except when a caravan overturns on the A30). We really don't have a lack of land to develop housing and RE, along with industry, commerce, retail, leisure etc. We just have to educate people that we can design out overcrowding.

Actually, while I did have proper '1 beds' there, my favourites were actually the studio flats. There it's common for one, relatively large and airy, room to function as bedroom, dining room and living room (and kitchen really). In the morning, the futon disappears into the wardrobe and you pull out the little dining table for brekkie. When not eating, that fits in the corner, giving you room for your cushions while you watch telly.

Wouldn't work as well in the UK, would need a lifestyle/culture change, but I loved it. Much preferred one really big room to several diddy ones.

I'm all for a -lot- more housing, until there are more housing units than households and no need for overcrowding. Just think that single bed units can be part of that.

Willing to take bets that Rudd ends up chairwomen of a wind turbine/energy company. Or if she is shuffled over to defense, chairwomen for an arms manufacturer.

I'd like to see the government encourage small scale solar but I'm puzzled by some peoples reaction to them.

Two years back I was trying to sell a house with solar PV on the roof. Not a single potential buyer showed any interest in them. The estate agent wasn't surprised and said that PV doesn't seem to interest buyers at all.

The house was rented out for a year and the tenants (who got the free electricity) were also uninterested. So uninterested that once they didn't notice the RCD had tripped out. A big thunderstorm just after a meter read tripped out the RCD and it wasn't noticed until I questioned the next meter read some three months later. This despite them having a remote display on the kitchen window sill right above the sink. When I pointed out that they were going to end up with a bill for three months electricity they didn't seem bothered. They weren't rich either.

Posted By: CWattersSo uninterested that once they didn't notice the RCD had tripped out. A big thunderstorm just after a meter read tripped out the RCD and it wasn't noticed

The electrician who is wiring my new house says that solar systems do not care whether they're behind an RCD or not, so he thinks they are best connected to an RCD protected bus. The one who wired the solar has actually put it in front of the RCD and appears to have used a regular MCB. I have no idea as to the merits of the viewpoints?

The circuit from the point of connection at your consumer unit to the invertor sees both the output from the PV and the mains potential of the house system and essentially the grid - if it connects on the "wrong" side of the RCD, then it's not offered RCD protection

Unless the cable is a very specific type that offers inherent protection from you doing something silly like knocking a nail through it, or it's installed surface everywhere so you can see it, then it's a breach of BS 7671 and thus Part P - and any MCS installer is certifyingto that effect (as a minimum)

So, the spark is correct, the PV installer (worryingly) doesn't seem to know his amp from his elbow

Either way it will "work" - one method is far safer and compliant with wiring code than the other

Regards

Barney

Three things as a start to draft something:

What would you say was the minimum comfortable space for 1 person living alone to allow living room with cooking space/bedroom included in same open space (= studio New York style) allowing later partitioning but with 1 dedicated bathroom, 1 lobby? 40msq? 50sqm?

What are views on "best" building shell-type for lowest cost passive house, but robust for 100years. In that time it must allow for hammers/drills taken to walls, replacement of kitchens/bathrooms/windows/doors/electrics, rainscreen &/or EWI, airtightness detailing etc. Or do you go for 50years and and assume start again using the land as the real asset.

Amanda Rudd worth reading about - does seem the right minister to get to grips with solar combined with buildings and wind where possible, maybe not yet there with energy prices and passive house.

Posted By: bella
What would you say was the minimum comfortable space for 1 person living alone to allow living room with cooking space/bedroom included in same open space (= studio New York style) allowing later partitioning but with 1 dedicated bathroom, 1 lobby? 40msq? 50sqm?

I wouldn't be 'comfortable' with less than 80m2. I'm living in an 80m2 bungalow with my partner and it's too a small. My mother lived alone in it before us and she found it comfortable.
I guess it would be a lonely existence if we were to be crammed into tiny boxes and there wasn't space for friends or family to stay overnight.

Posted By: bellaWhat price would that fetch? Remember there is dire need out there and Scrooge in charge of the money.

To a certain extend the size of place is irrelevant to the price. Entry level homes are set by the amount people can save/borrow.
Imagine a world where the smallest house had 4 bedroom, 2 reception room, a large kitchen and a garage, but everything else was the same. That smallest house would be selling for the same price as the smallest houses are now.
My houses is about 50 m^2, it is small and badly laid out, because it is small, there is little that can be done to improve the layout.
My neighbours have split one of the bedrooms into two (because there are 4 of them in the house, 3 adults and 1 child). They now have one bedroom that is 2 m by 2.5 m and another than is 3 metres by 1.5 m. What used to be the small bedroom is 2.5 m by 3.5 m.

We really must stop building small houses, they encourage over crowding and poor value.

Anyone see the two articles in the ST today, one about the National Grid selling of the metering side of their business, and the other bit about the two large Chinese PV manufacturers that are in financial trouble (though they claim nothing is wrong).

I think that Amber Rudd is going to be under immense pressure to close our energy gap with coal plants closing or being taken out of service, onshore wind being kicked into the long grass, new nuclear at least 20 years away (and that is only replacement), off shore wind not going to be competitive on price for 8 to 10 years, the national electrical grid needing £110bn spent on it in the next 15 years.
She really can't be wasting time and energy on small scale stuff like building a few low energy homes, though she could get a framework set (along with a timescale) that can lead to this.
The quick way to improve things, and probably the only option open to her to to put a tax on energy. If she started with a 0.25p/kWh tax (about 5% increase overall) on primary energy, but made it absolutely clear that this money will be spent on developing sites for RE production (a government should really be identifying places that things can and will happen), then I think there would be little complaints.

Posted By: SteamyTeaTo a certain extend the size of place is irrelevant to the price. Entry level homes are set by the amount people can save/borrow.

Not totally. The price is also set by the supply (good old supply and demand). All housing is expensive because there is not enough of it both rented and purchase. Builders have no incentive to build more as if they do, they will increase the supply and depress the price. The only way to solve this is for the public sector to build like crazy and rebalance the equation.