Russell,

I just knew you'd get to rebuff James' scepticism before I had a chance to!  :-)

Whispergen...

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 01:01:50 +1200, Russell McMahon wrote:

>...<
> They have a contract to 
> supply a goodish number (10,000? 30,000? to a UK energy supply company 
> to act as load distribution units by installing them as CHP units in 
> homes. Selling gas and electricity makes this attractive to a 
> supplier. Whether this order comes to fruition remainds to be seen.

They have had a trial going for some time of a few hundred home installations - they asked for volunteers to 
try them, and I leaped at it and applied.  Unfortunately I wasn't within the profile they were looking for, so 
that was that.  It's been running a couple of years, I think.

One of the annoying things is that they say that surplus electricity will be bought-back by the supplier 
(PowerGen), but what they don't mention is that it will be paid for at the "generated" wholesale rate, which 
is about 0.5p / kWh, rather than the retail price of about 10p.  I think that's wrong, because the electricity 
I'd pump into the grid would be used by my neighbours, so there's no distribution cost involved - they'd pay 
me 0.5p and my neigbour would pay them 10p for it - 1900% profit for doing nothing!  If they allowed net 
metering (I pay for what I've used less what I've supplied, kWh for kWh), it would be a lot fairer and a lot 
more financially viable.  Especially as I'd be paying them for the gas to generate it!

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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