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At the recent customary gathering of the three ghosts of Christmas to which I had been invited, I was strongly reminded of that haunting chorus of the three witches from the dreaded Scottish play, which goes, if memory serves, something like this: Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble. There are nasties like swelter’d venom, fillet of a fenny snake and the ubiquitous eye of newt and toe of frog aplenty swirling around in the foully bubbling brew… (more)
The electricity price – quake before the eruption.
I’m told by people in the know that there are many signs that a volcanic eruption is about to happen. There are earth tremors well in advance and there become increasingly more violent tremblers, leading up to an earthquake or two. Even animals become restless and some flee the area. Only some time later does the volcano start to rumble, spew out dust and gas and eventually the whole thing blows its top, making a right mess is things for miles around… (more)
Wading through the mass of IPP Procurement Process documents the other day made me think of the first poker game I was dragged off to by my partner Scrooge. The game had been introduced to London society by the celebrated Mr Crowell, an artist who had just returned from Louisiana and it was hosted at the aptly named Orleans Hotel, a posh antecedent to the less stylish Cavendish of today… (more)
Of course everyone is rightly horrified by the latest steep increase in electricity tariffs and the continuing turmoil in the industry. All kinds of dire consequences are apparently to be visited upon those who consume more than their fair share. So much for price signals – the price/demand curve seems to be totally inelastic, a lesson that one cannot but hope will sink in to the powers-that-be behind the carbon tax… (more)
“I believe,” said the ghost of Christmas past the other day, “that there is nothing as tempting for the powers-that-be than to meddle with something that works well. History is littered with examples: the nationalisation of industries since time immemorial, the creation of behemoth state institutions that get bogged down into their own incompetence and have to be put down at massive public expense, and the cosy monopolies so beloved of bureaucrats (but not in the private sector, of course).”… (more)
I do not presume to know much about the maintenance of electrical substations for, as you know, I shuffled off this mortal coil well before this new skill came into being. Also, this newfangled thing called the internet is a bit beyond my ken, but my attention was drawn the other day to a picture purporting to proclaim the procedure in case of a power failure posted on the wall of a substation building, which I thought was worth a comment or two… (more)
Your excellent publication is to be congratulated for putting sustainable energy so firmly on the agenda, although I fear it will be a tough task to keep the flag flying high. Business, it seems, is more interested, like my old partner Scrooge, in turning a fast penny (and so do politicians, I fear). But there is hope yet – remember that even grumpy Scrooge ended up having Christmas turkey with the Cratchits. So I will persist in rattling my chains and making your erudite readers think not about what might have been, but what can be if men (and women, I dare say) of sound mind thought about the future they really wanted and did what really needed to be done… (more)
No doubt your erudite readers are tired of hearing that hoary old chestnut about how many men/women/whatnots it takes to change a light bulb (nil, of course, because why would one want to change a perfectly good light bulb? Nobody said there was anything wrong with it, did they?). I beg their indulgence, however, for regaling them with recent discussions I had with my familiars, the Ghost of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future… (more)
Sir,
It is not polite to say “I told you so”, but your erudite readers will recall that I remarked last month that it would be very difficult to pick the right answer from about 4-million different ones. And that’s exactly what happened with IRP2010… (more)
Your enlightened readers may have felt a certain degree of satisfaction upon reading last month that Eskom completed its program of exchanging no fewer than eight million old-fashioned, inefficient electricity-guzzling incandescent light bulbs for the new super-efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) type… (more)
Sir- I was interested to learn recently that the eagerly awaited Second Integrated Resource Plan (IRP 2010) of the Department of Energy is due by October of this year. Even more encouragingly, it seems to have drawn a lot of reaction from the public. Over eighty submissions were received, and the department had fed over 830 specific inputs into the database which is to be used to build various scenarios. This will be done using 29 parameters, . Quite a list, one has to admit… (more)
In Roman times the emperors laid on games for the hoi-poloi to keep them off the streets and preserve the Pax Romana. They gave them bread, too, not just cake. In the splendid stadia, sumptuous feasts were held in congenial surroundings and enough blood and gore was provided to control the crowds if not to manipulate them. It would present a certain complication, though, if halfway through the devouring of the Christians by the lions, the torches were all to go out because someone had short-changed the pitch for a nice little backhander… (more)
Sir- A fellow denizen of the netherworld, the gloomy Ghost of the Waves, paid me an unexpected visit the other night. It’s always a bit eerie, he said without ado, this calm before the storm. Upon asking what he meant, he added cryptically: “Well, think of a tsunami. The sea suddenly goes glassy-flat and then starts to pull back – slowly, easily, lazily and with a strange lack of realism… (more)
It is often said that old codgers are not as smart at doing sums compared to the wiz-kids of today. Of course we didn’t use computers, but neither were we stumped when the power supply failed. We used pencil and paper or slate and brain and produced reliable results all the same. We were taught that it pays to keep things simple… ( more)
As I roam the streets at night, unable to sleep because of my heavy chain and shackles, I often wonder how I can prevent others from ending up with the same intolerable burden. I note with concern a sudden richness in pundits on the topic of electricity pricing, which is of course, as one would call it today, a hot topic and wonder what drives people to think about these things. In my days economic erudition came from Mr. Adam Smith and his ilk, and he was more concerned with the wealth of whole nations rather than in bits and pieces. These days it is all to do with funding and pricing, long run averages, marginal and time-of-use and of course, cost-reflectiveness… (more)
As you know, my principal aim since shuffling off this mortal coil all those years ago is to prevent my friends, and even executives, from amassing chains of guilt and regrets, of keys, padlocks, cash-boxes and heavy purses by showing them the error of their ways. So I recently felt obliged to visit, in the dead of night, a well-known senior executive in the industry and take him to see the three customary ghosts. Not the ghosts of christmas, of course, but it was cold and dark nevertheless… (more)
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