Selfsufficientish.com

Morning.

I was very pleased to hear two separate articles about alternative / de-centralised energy on the "Today Programme" this morning on BBC Radio 4. You can get access to them over the web:

1) An article about off-grid living:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/repor ... 0214.shtml

2) Interview with London's Mayor, Ken Livingstone arguing that local generation is much more effective than nuclear [fission]:

Today (Thursday), you can listen to this interview by going here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/liste ... ndex.shtml

You can listen to the interview up to a week after broadcast by going to the link above and clicking on the link to Thursday's programme.

And scrolling down to 8:30am.

Some figures for traditional, coal/gas powered power stations:

40% of the energy produced by burning the fuel is lost as heat.
70% of the electricity generated is lost in distribution.

Missed that, of course - too late in the day for me...
But the figures are frightening. Plus all the electricity lost because folk are too lazy to turn off lights or electric goods, and because they HAVE to have their windows open and heating on at the same time... My current target is to get colleagues to only boil as much water as they need for their coffee. Small, simple things like that are incredibly difficult to get across! I've made some progress with the lights-off initiative - my boss does now sometimes remember to switch off!

Well we were watching the Aussies beat the crap out of the rest of the commonwealth at the CW games on our TV run of the 12 volt system! ( the Scots are doing OK Ina!

Nev

Thanks for letting me know, Nev. I DO know the games are on - but that's all I know about it...