National Grid Share Discussion Threads

[darias] 23/12/2013 13:14

rech

It has been tried.

I go to many high density estates with communal heating and the tenants have the heating going full blast. In Sweden and Scandinavian countries where they have colder winters they need the heating operating at full blast even during the day when the property is empty but do we need the heating on a day like today when the outside temperature is around 50 degrees Fahrenheit in London.

If the occupier pays for the heating then they put on jumpers before turning on the heating.

What would be better is if we fixed our cold damp 19th century housing or better still demolished and rebuilt.

[2hoggy] 23/12/2013 09:56

comman sense goes out the window when you become a politician.

[rech] 23/12/2013 09:44

tonio,

HS2 and Trident come first because we're a world power, and have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, innit?

A property developer was showing his new build flats to me. I enquired about heating - electric storage. No central heating? I received a blank response. Visit Sweden, or Czech Republic, where entire villages have a single central heating source. The radiators war up in September and are turned off in May. If you're too warm, then just turn off individual radiators. That's innovation, but why not in UK?

Vote for me, and I'll pass a law forbidding government from runnng a deficit. On pain of life incarceration in the Tower.

[tonio] 20/12/2013 13:03

Yes why we don't have such systems I don't know. Maybe we aren't quite the advanced country we think or maybe it's just that coal was so cheap we thought we needn't bother. I really have no idea. In Switzerland even nuclear power stations have combined heat and power (CHP), but I've not heard any mention of it for our ridiculously expensive nuclear power station order. It's just life in the UK I guess. We're great at innovation but sadly incredibly slow and short-termist when it comes to decisions at national level. Even then we go for seemingly useless show ornaments like windmills, HS2 and replacing Trident - surely we'd be better spending this sort of cash on CHP infrastructure, a national water grid, ... There are so many basic things things we need, it's a little sad to see what the national priorities appear to be.

[bigbertie] 20/12/2013 09:49

Why is Helsinki so cheap for electricity? Is it hydro or something?
edit - or perhaps they all have wood-burners and burn pine trees?

[septimus quaid] 20/12/2013 02:29

A fair and informative article which gives the lie to much of the disproportionate bleating about UK energy costs.

...but why is it tucked away in an obscure part of the BBC's website and not reported on their main news outlet?


ANS, it does not suit the BBC's pro-Labour, anti-Conservative bias.

[m100] 19/12/2013 23:17

@Septimus Quaid
"I saw some information the other day that showed UK household energy costs were a lower % of household income than either France or Germany.
No way is the left-wing BBC propaganda machine going to make a big deal out of that little snippet of information."

Maybe not as a % of income but this is a recent comparison of gas and electricity prices across the EU on the BBC website



The source of the info used in the BBC article

www.vaasaett.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/HEPI-CEE-article.pdf



www.fuelpoverty.eu

[deanforester] 19/12/2013 18:00

Even if undersea gasification is successful, the product will need treatment before it can be used in lieu of natural gas. You have to inject oxygen and steam to maintain the reaction, which should produce a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Very useful as a starting point for synthesis of hydrocarbons, but the Calorific value is about 1/3rd that of natural gas as it is. That part of the process is well known, as in the Fischer Tropsch process used by Sasol.

Back in the 1950s, the NCB ran experiments at Newman Spinney on underground gasification, using air and steam. It worked, but the CV of the gas was about 15% of that of towns gas, or 8% of that of natural gas. It needed help to burn. Don't hold your hopes too high for Algy Cluff's ideas.

[septimus quaid] 19/12/2013 16:53

I saw some information the other day that showed UK household energy costs were a lower % of household income than either France or Germany.

No way is the left-wing BBC propaganda machine going to make a big deal out of that little snippet of information.

[tonio] 19/12/2013 10:19

Well,here's a couple of general points - there was an article on the BBC website 'Energy bills: Who pays the most in Europe?' on Dec 10th that showed prices in the UK were relatively very low. That seems to have had very little discussion at all. Of course most of our present electricity is from coal,gas and nuclear.
There was also the prospect of undersea coal gasification raised by Algy Cluff - surely as good an option for the UK as fracking - and seemingly a better option than nuclear given the cost of providing it, not to mention wind and solar.
As to NG share price behaviour, we see today so very clearly that share prices (and much else) in the UK are heavily influenced by whatever is happening in the US (what's new?). Whether long term a share is a growth share, an income share, both or neither is about as predictable as climate change. Although whatever electricity sources we end up with NG will have to connect it up - so that's good.

[newbank] 15/12/2013 12:25

EssentialInvestor,

Does anyone discuss the share price on this thread?, or does this tedious discussion
just grind on, which is of no interest to 99.99% of investors.

M100 and Pierre are ex-CEGB (by the sounds of it) and like all professionals they are passionate about their subject area. However, though I sympathise with your thirst for share price data, to say that what they discuss is of no interest is a bit silly as most investors want to know about the business they invest in (the discussion they were having relates to the Energy policy which will eventually effect revenue and SP)and the changing prospects for the future.

Currently, media hype and the Government trying to appease Voters (don't forget its only 17 Months to the next election) the coalition are already breaking rank with what policy they wish to persue. Labour is promising this and that and whilst the cold weather continues energy bills is news that fill up the BBC propaganda slots, sell papers and give politicians a way of buying votes. How the 'Energy Policy' as a whole changes in the future will determine how successful Companies like NG will be.

City wide boys want quick gains so with that remit I cannot see the share price rising much above £8 / share until next May (final results), when I expect a final div announcement, paid in Aug, in the region of 28p / share, should start to raise the share price

Long term; with the revenue and subsequent profit being closely correlated to Connection charges and asset base and with the £25 Billion build programme over the next five years, should see a regulated asset base value in the region of £45billion and with approx 3.5billion shares in circ should see a gradual rise in the share price to £12 - £13 / share by 2020, excluding inflation but accounting for depreciation of current assets, ie, IMHO a conservative value. NG is an income investment rather than a fast gamble.

[mazarin] 12/12/2013 20:55

May be more a case of 'Playing the fiddle while Rome burns' perhaps?

[essentialinvestor] 11/12/2013 20:47

Does anyone discuss the share price on this thread?, or does this tedious discussion
just grind on, which is of no interest to 99.99% of investors.

[pierre oreilly] 11/12/2013 20:34

M100, just to be clear, I'm talking about the time of the original nationalisation of the esi in the 50s, and not the privatisation of the 90s, when I would have expected any restrictions on waste heat to be lifted. I had a mini-campaign against dumping waste heat as a research student at CERL, and I've just relayed what I was told then.

I'm not sure I understand your point about cooling towers - if district heating was used to dump the heat, then cooling towers, at least on the current scale, wouldn't be necessary. From a waste perspective, it doesn't matter whether the heat is dumped in rivers, the sea or cooling towers. Given there are - or rather were under the cegb - no district heating systems, then the need for cooling towers arose to recycle the water in most cases, and, as you say, to satisfy other regulations.

[tonio] 11/12/2013 09:43

I recall staying in Brugg a few years ago where I believe waste heat from a nuclear power station was used for heating homes. However, following Fukushima, the Swiss are phasing out their nuclear power stations because of perceived earthquake risk.
Meanwhile NG continues in the doldrums. Any ideas why?

[m100] 10/12/2013 22:35

I am not aware of any UK legislation preventing use of power station heat pre or post privatisation. There were a number of problems with district heating at Battersea if I recall, and these problems remain in installations in the former soviet union with regards to regulation (if it is too hot then windows are simply opened.

There were a few examples of the CEGB selling waste heat in the 1980's. Drax for greenhouse heating, and Eggborough for raising eels are two that I recall. I think both schemes disappeared before or shortly after privatisation.

Cooling towers came about not because of any ban as such but because the rejected heat from 500MW sets located on rivers was unacceptable, even by late 1950's/1960's standards when the 1000 - 200MW sites were being planned. By reusing water it also signifiantly reduced the amount of chlorine required to prevent algal films in the condenser shells as you only need to treat the water once as it comes into the system as makeup water from the river. What you see escaping from the top of the cooling towers is the amount of fresh water you then need to take out of the river and treat, the rest is reused in a semi closed system many times. Some water is also dumped back to the river but its amount is quite low and river temperature rise is quite strictly controlled by the Environment Agency.

There are a number of post privatisation gas powered sites that supply process heat, usually steam, to adjacent industrial plants.

Off the top of my head

Teesside for ICI (long since closed except for 45MW of OCGT)
Saltend near Hull for BP
Immingham for Conoco

[harvester] 10/12/2013 21:45

Regulatory prevention of power plant waste heat for re-use is news to me . It does not make sense. That's certainly something we can agree on .
Anyone know how that came about (I mean the reason given ?)? It does not appear to surface in the energy debates .

[gj2] 10/12/2013 18:48

A slight digression if I may - well actually an example of what Pierre refers to. The drive from the airport at Alan Bator (Mongolian capital) to the city goes past some fairly ancient coal fired power stations. After that, there are some pretty meaty, insulated pipes. They provide much of the city's heat needs at a cheap price. If a country like that was able to re-use industrial waste heat years ago, how advanced really are we in the U.K. ?

[pierre oreilly] 10/12/2013 18:13

No, I didn't. I have recently got Youview installed, so I can easily watch it, which I'll do tonight if I get chance.

The waste heat thing (common to all steam plant) is to my mind, an obscenity. It comes about from the licence regulations put in place when the industry was nationalised and when the cegb was formed. Someone somewhere decided the cegb should only generate electricity, and was prevented from selling heat (which previously, stations like Battersea had done). So up popped cooling towers with each new station - the sole aim of which is to dump heat on a massive scale. I've never understood why no green organisation has ever campaigned against this waste on a colossal scale.