To think energy saver sessions are a form of rationing?

[notusuallyaconspiracytheorist]

I’m not usually one for conspiracy theories, but I’ve got absolutely zero faith in the current government! AIBU to think the energy saver sessions currently on offer (eg with Octopus) are a form of rationing disguised as an incentive? The drop in use seems substantial enough and perhaps if the government formally announced rationing, there’d be panic and chaos. And as were heading in to the coldest months and have little to no reserve of gas, with very little forthcoming from Russia, this is all the government can do to try to stretch current supplies?

AIBU? (AIB A Conspiracy Theorist)?
YANBU: this is probably rationing disguised as a candlelit, money-saving challenge

Is it the entire pla? I hope there are some other measures too.

Most of our electricity is made from
gas.

op if you look at threads from October there are hundreds about the planned blackout schedule. It’s not a secret. Most people know it’s probably coming and have been checking their zones and the timetabled blackouts for their area.

it's not sinister, but it's not rationing. it's still using price as the lever to control demand, meaning that those with plenty of money are free to ignore it. with rationing, prices are kept affordable but there are limits on usage which are the same for rich and poor alike, which is much fairer. i would far rather have rationing.

given that there's a perception that rationing would be bad, this is a fairly good hybrid model. a better one would be to have prices that are fixed and low for a basic "ration" of energy costs which is assessed per property/family and enough for heating, eating and hygiene, with eyewateringly prohibitive energy costs for each unit used in excess of that, so that rich or poor you can have the basics fairly cheap but you have to be careful not to exceed the ration. but the admin costs to make that happen would be disproportionate.

I didn't think it was a secret that it was to get people to use less.
I'm quite disappointed to not have been invited to participate as getting a bit of an extra reward for cutting down when I'm trying to cut down anyway would have been most welcome!

This goes way back to the turn of the century, governments since have buried their heads in the sand. Here is an article from 2003 warning of power cuts within 20 years if we didn't sort out our sources of power:

UK power cuts 'in 20 years'
Britain could face power cuts within the next 20 years as the country imports the bulk of its energy needs, a report says.

The Energy Minister, Stephen Timms, told the BBC he did not accept the bleak picture painted by the report - he had a different view of how the countries supplying our gas would develop.

"I think we've taken good account in the White Paper of the changing energy requirements and the patterns of supply over the next 20 years," he said.

"There are some major issues for us to address but I think we're on track for doing so."

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3034088.stm

this is an interesting experiment to 'peak shave' so reduce the need to bring in expensive additional generation just for a short time in the early evening. It can save a lot of money for suppliers and reduce gas demand helping reserve it for heating.

Its also a taste of the future. We won't be sitting in candlelight - thats people taking the period a bit far and having fun with it. But demand management will become more common.

• your car will charge overnight, but at slightly differen times - the 'fleet' will likely communicate with the grid and groups will charge slightly offset (this is already starting at a basic level) based on low carbon generation or spare capacity
• in the home, I could see smart devices talking to each other and the grid. You put the washing machine on - does it matter if it starts 10 minutes early if that means it'll avoid heating the water at a time of high demand? You probably wouldn't even notice. Or you have the washing machine and tumble dryer on at the same time - they could talk to each other and the dryer could pause heating for a few minutes while the washing machine heats the water, then continue once its done. This would let you run two energy-hungry appliances but with the peak demand of only one.

Multiply these kinds of things across millions of homes and you can really start to manage grid deman and flexiblity without negatively impacting our way of life, but also helping to keep prices down

You'd only think that if you'd taken absolutely no notice of world events, or news for quite some time.

We've been close to the wire with energy capacity for years. Then they closed all the coal fired power stations, closed the country's gas storage facilities, then Russia invaded Ukraine. We could well be tipped over an edge that we've been teetering on for years.

But why is the energy saving session a bad thing? It encourages people to save energy - win. I get paid - win. Better for the environment - win. We should all be doing it anyway, it's a bonus we get paid. It's not enforced like rationing is, you can choose to do it, and it's not a full on power cut. You can literally just not watch TV for an hour.

Exactly @Applepie18 . What I find strange about the current situation is the number of people who don't seem concerned about energy saving, until the price has gone up significantly.

After all, tumble drying when you could line dry, heating your house to t-shirt levels in winter, leaving computers, lights etc on when you don't need to is wasteful, whether you can afford the cost or not.

Most of us absolutely aren't taking part in the energy savings sessions for the financial incentive, they're so small that it's barely noticeable, more that it's the right thing to do and if enough of us make small changes, we're more likely to not see serious consequences like planned or unexpected power cuts.

By a range of sources, which include intermittent renewables. That's what they're worried about. If it was about running low on gas they'd look for savings across the board, not targeting specific times. No, this is about avoiding blackouts when electricity generation falls short during peak times.

Yes it’s about smoothing the peaks but that’s because we have no gas storage. So because the vast proportion of our energy is generated from gas and solar doesn’t generate at night we have to buy in from elsewhere. It all really comes back to gas supply and lack of storage

Anyone doing the session this evening?

Check in the cost of living section - there’s an ongoing thread.