Energy price increases: 10 tips to save you money

Things that can be done immediately:

1. Turn off electrical appliances when not using them.
Leaving your appliances on stand-by costs the average home £33 a year.

2. Switch off the lights when you leave the room.
If the rating is 60 watts, and the bulb is on for one hour, it will consume 0.06 kWh. If electricity prices are 12p per kWh. The value of the energy savings would then be 12p for every hour turned off.

3. Only boil as much water in the kettle as you need.
This could save around £6 a year on energy bills. If everyone in the UK did this every time they used the kettle, it could save enough electricity in a year to power the UK’s street lights for 2 months.

4. Switch energy supplier to a cheaper tariff, and switch to Direct Debit payment and an online account.
Claims of savings of £200 a year from utility switching websites, although some claim £450 saving.
Total savings of £249 if you do the above. You can save around £249 just by changing your habits today.
Things that can be done medium term:

5. Turn your thermostat(s) down.
By turning it down by just one degree it saves around £55 a year.

6. Replace all your old lightbulbs with energy efficient ones.
Energy-efficient bulbs last up to 10 times longer than a normal bulb and can save £3-6 a year each in energy bills (for a 100W bulb) – saving up to £60 over the lifetime of the bulb in reduced energy bills and replacement costs.

7. Buy more energy efficient appliances.
Replacing an old Fridge freezer with a new A+ or A++ EU energy rated appliances can save around £38 per year.
Total savings of £153.
Things that can be done longer term:

8. Properly insulate your home.
Cavity wall insulation can save £110, internal wall insulation £365, external wall insulation £385. 270mm loft insulation can save £140 a year, floor insulation can save £50.

9. Upgrade your boiler to a A rated condensing boiler.
Upgrading from an old G rated to a new efficient A rated model can save £225 a year.

10. Install double glazing.
Double glazing cuts heat loss through windows by 50% and could cut your heating bill by around £140 a year.

Total savings of £475, and if you do all of the above you could save £249 + £153 + £475 = £877.

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that many organisations put most effort into the maintenance of electrical systems and equipment when it comes to preventing electrical accidents. The fact is that people are the cause of most accidents through inadequate working practices and procedures.

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A Freaky Fluid inside Jupiter

NASA's Juno spacecraft blasted off on a 5-year voyage to a freakish world: planet Jupiter. Jupiter has a long list of oddities. For one thing, it's enormous, containing 70% of our solar system's planetary material, yet it is not like the rocky world beneath our feet. Jupiter is so gassy, it seems more like a star.
Jupiter's atmosphere brews hurricanes twice as wide as Earth itself, monsters that generate 400 mph winds and lightning 100 times brighter than terrestrial bolts. The giant planet also emits a brand of radiation lethal to unprotected humans.

Jupiter's strangest feature, however, may be a 25,000 mile deep soup of exotic fluid sloshing around its interior. It's called liquid metallic hydrogen.

"Here on Earth, hydrogen is a colorless, transparent gas," says Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton. "But in the core of Jupiter, hydrogen transforms into something bizarre."

Jupiter is 90% hydrogen1, with 10% helium and a sprinkle of all the other elements. In the gas giant's outer layers, hydrogen is a gas just like on Earth.

As you go deeper, intense atmospheric pressure gradually turns the gas into a dense fluid.2 Eventually the pressure becomes so great that it squeezes the electrons out of the hydrogen atoms and the fluid starts to conduct like a metal.

What's this fluid like?
"Liquid metallic hydrogen has low viscosity, like water, and it's a good electrical and thermal conductor," says Caltech's David Stevenson, an expert in planet formation, evolution, and structure.
"Like a mirror, it reflects light, so if you were immersed in it [here's hoping you never are], you wouldn't be able to see anything."

Here on Earth, liquid metallic hydrogen has been made in shock wave experiments, but since it doesn't stay in that form it has only been made in tiny quantities for very short periods of time. If researchers are right, Jupiter's core may be filled with oceans of the stuff.

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Real-time energy monitor could cut UK household bills

UK households could significantly cut their energy bills by using a real-time energy monitor, a new study suggests.

A team from Edinburgh Napier University assessed the performance of 65 housing association homes, which were pre-fitted with a Ewgeco real-time energy monitor.

According to a statement, the results of the six-month trial showed that those that used the device consumed up to 20 per cent less gas than other households in the study.

The Ewgeco monitor’s traffic-light display of green, amber and red reportedly highlights real-time low, medium or high energy usage.

It is said to work with ordinary utility meters to provide households with instantaneous information on their gas, energy and water consumption.

Forty-three of the homes in the trial, which was funded by the UK’s Technology Strategy Board, had the Ewgeco monitor clearly on display, while it was hidden in the remainder of the properties.

Is Jeremy Clarkeson out to Kill the Electric Car?

BBC-owned Top Gear, a show for automotive diehards that's become something of a phenomenon.
Seen by over 350 million viewers across 170 countries, the hit series follows the adventures of its hosts—

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May—and their various driving exploits, track testing everything from blue collar workhorses like the Volkswagen Golf to engineering pinnacles like the pavement incinerating Bugatti Veyron.

the show is an enjoyable cross of gamesmanship and schoolboy jockeying. The hosts' natural chemistry translates handily into something magnetic for its audience, and only gets reinforced as they get behind the wheels of roaring V12 engines.

During the show, hosts Jeremy Clarkson and James May set course on a 60-mile journey in an electric vehicle, the Nissan LEAF. Before they could conclude their journey, however, the vehicle apparently runs out of juice, prompting its drivers to declare that "electric cars are not the future."

But here's where the controversy comes in. The Guardian reports:

But it wasn't unexpected: Nissan has a monitoring device in the car which transmits information on the state of the battery. This shows that, while the company delivered the car to Top Gear fully charged, the programme-makers ran the battery down before Clarkson and May set off, until only 40% of the charge was left. Moreover, they must have known this, as the electronic display tells the driver how many miles' worth of electricity they have, and the sat-nav tells them if they don't have enough charge to reach their destination. In this case it told them – before they set out on their 60-mile journey – that they had 30 miles' worth of electricity. But, as Ben Webster of the Times reported earlier this week, "at no point were viewers told that the battery had been more than half empty at the start of the trip."

The report continues:
It gets worse. As Webster points out, in order to stage a breakdown in Lincoln, "it appeared that the Leaf was driven in loops for more than 10 miles in Lincoln until the battery was flat."

Top Gear has since responded to the allegations, claiming, "We never, at any point in the film, said that we were testing the range claims of the vehicles, nor did we say that the vehicles wouldn't achieve their claimed range." However, this wouldn't be the first time the show's been criticized for undermining the potency of electric vehicles, as a recent suit from Tesla (who claim their battery life was misrepresented) would seem to demonstrate.

come on Jezza, be fair....