It’s time!
Time to make electricity affordable.
Time to save the planet.
Time to keep the lights on.
If I told you that you could make a
significant contribution to doing this without even reducing how much you use,
and without any expensive equipment, would you believe me?
Most people probably wouldn’t.
They might say there’s no such thing as a
free lunch, there must be a catch.
But there isn’t!
In the UK, every winter weekday, from 3 to
8pm, peaking at around 5.30, we use seven large power stations ( 7 Gigawatts) worth
of electricity more than we do at any other time. Why? Because some people are
coming home from school and from work, and it’s getting dark. Most offices,
factories and shops are still working.
But here’s the good news – that peak, which
is about 14% above the normal daytime level, can be easily avoided.
If we all
shifted our consumption out of the peak by an average of just 350W (3½ bright old
fashioned light bulbs) the problem would be solved.
If you ask
people in the electricity industry, most of them will tell you that the problem
will be solved by smart meters – unfortunately it won’t!
Smart meters in
themselves will not switch anything off, much less work out when to delay
consumption for specific appliances. They will allow for more complicated
time-of-use tariffs in future, which will penalize us for using electricity at
peak times, but even these will rely on us to respond by switching things off
or delaying them coming on.
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