Smart Meters Good Or Bad?...

I hate floodlights, being an Amateur Astronomer, most of my neighbours have them but have them focused down and in a tight area but even so they do add to the light pollution that we're cursed with.

 

There is a national policy to change from Sodium Vapour street lighting to LED. LED is cheaper to use, has a longer working life and with the proper lamp unit focuses the light down in a more controlled area without the upward flow of light that the present ill designed Sodium lamps do, Scudo. They're starting to change over in my town, with all new housing estates having to have LED street lighting. I wrote to my Council two years ago about the Sodium street lighting in the lane at the bottom of my garden. I then got a visit from the Road Department who listened to my problem of the Sodium lamp casting light into my garden at night. They nodded and promised to have a solution. Within a week the offending Sodium lamp was replaced with a LED lamp and a shroud to restrict the light ever

 

That national policy applies only if you don't live in Surrey; they renewed all of their streetlights not so long ago, on an all inclusive contract with Skanska - - apparently someone within Skanska persuaded Surrey CC that LED wasn't the way to go, but rather stick with sodium vapour for main roads and a version of an ordinary mercury tube for residential streets, and then dim them in the small hours by 25% & 50% respectively.

Surrey have since realised that this hasn't saved anything like as much power as they thought, so now they are going to switch off the vast majority of residential street lights between midnight and 5am - - oh, and at the same time we are going to have to vote on whether we let them increase our council tax by 15%!

 

I shan't tell you how much our annual power bill is but even with solar panels it's more than any of you have stated.

We made the conscious decision that when we retired there were two things that we would not stint on, and they were comfort at home and holidays. We spend almost nothing on other things - mortgage paid off, don't drink or smoke, no smart phones, no ipads or tablets, no paid for TV (no time to watch it), Mrs Shiney has had her car for 17 years and I've had mine for 9 years.

Being in a detached bungalow there is a bigger heat loss than most places, although the walls are insulated. during Autumn/Winter the lounge is at a constant 74/75F. All rooms are kept heated 24 hours a day (I don't go to bed ) but all have individual radiator thermostats (gas boiler - on our second one in 45 years). The kitchen has thermostatically controlled underfloor heating (300w) and never drops below 61F. The bathroom also has underfloor heating (80w) and thermostatically heated towel rail linked to the central heating and is always a minimum of 70F.

Underfloor heating in the summerhouse set at 60F (we use it even in the winter) with additional wall mounted fan heating when needed. A heated propagator in the greenhouse (not working very well now - and we've only had it since 1976 ). We also have separately controlled airconditioning units in all rooms

The solar panels are saving us about £1,100 per year.

The heating in the house is set at 60F when we go on holiday. If we turned it off (used to do that) when away in the winter (used to go away for a month around Christmas/New Year as it was the only time of year we weren't busy at work) the walls got so cold from the winds blowing across the fields that it took at least a week to get the place to warm up.

 

I'll argue to get my £350 spread over 350 years.

 

Well, N Power is raising it's prices by 15% for electricity and 4.8% [why not call it 5%?], and their Dual Fuel tariff by at least 9.8% [again, why not call it 10%?]. The other Energy Companies will no doubt try to follow suit after waiting to see what the reaction is.