The capacity tariff's sword of Damocles
Fish and chips - then, and now
Timing is everything
Then:
When I was a lad growing up in Yorkshire, fish and chips was a favourite supper time meal.
On would go the chip pan, and freshly battered haddock went into beef dripping, crinkle cut chips and a healthy serving of garden peas, all washed down with steaming hot tea. Lovely.
Nowadays, we try to keep our fat intake down, so I buy ready-battered fish and oven-cook it. The chips are done in a deep-fat frier.
Let’s say it’s 5 p.m. and supper is always at 6 p.m. The kids are in the garden. When do I have to call them in to wash their hands and faces for supper? They need 5 minutes to come in.
Here’s what the timing says:
Fish (oven) 23 minutes 10 minutes’ warm-up
Chips (frier) 4 minutes 10 minutes’ warm-up
Peas (hob) 3 minutes 4 minutes’ warm-up
Tea (kettle) 7 minutes 3 minutes to brew
I need one minute to serve up, so the timing looks as follows:
5:26 Switch oven on
5:36 Put fish in oven
5:45 Turn on frier
5:49 Put kettle on
5:52 Warm water for peas
5:55 Put chips in frier
Call the kids in.
5:56 Put peas in water
Make tea to brew.
5:59 Serve up:
Fish is ready
Chips are ready
Peas are ready
Tea is ready
6:00 Supper’s ready
The whole procedure takes 34 minutes. We therefore need to start in 26 minutes. Time to read a magazine.
Now:
But that was back then. Now we have the electricity capacity tariff. That means that, if we switch on several appliances at the same time, we end up paying more for our electricity than if we put them on one after the other.
I would tell you how much more it costs to put them on together, but I don’t know. Nobody knows. We will all find out how much is the cost of electricity that we use today, in June, only when we get our annual reckoning. Mine’s due next April.
But I do know about the capacity tariff, so, let’s suppose I take heed of that fact and plan my fish and chips accordingly.
Let’s work back from supper time:
6:00 Supper’s ready
5:59 Serve up
5:55 Call the kids in
The tea takes 3 minutes to brew, so, whenever it’s ready, it needs a further 3 minutes to be to our taste. And whatever is cooked first, needs a warm-up time. Appliances use as much energy when warming up as they do when cooking. No two appliances may be on at the same moment.
5:50 Make the tea
5:43 Do the peas
5:29 Make the chips
4:58 Cook the fish.
The fish must stand for 29 minutes getting cold, waiting for the chips, which stand for 17 minutes getting cold, and the peas, they get cold for 10 minutes. The tea itself is lovely and hot.
But it’s all academic anyway. Because, at 5 p.m., it is too late to start making the supper. We could have supper late, but then I don’t get to read my magazine.
I spend 62 minutes cooking in the kitchen instead of 33 minutes. Nearly twice as long. And I need to do a wash, so I can’t put the washing machine on till supper starts, so my supper starts a minute or two after the kids’, and we want to say ‘grace’. So we abandon our belief system for an electricity tariff. The washing machine takes 150 minutes and the tumble drier takes 40 minutes (I cannot hang the laundry out on the balcony, because of restrictions contained in the letting agreement). I do the ironing at 9.15. It takes an hour to do it.
People say I should buy synthetics, but I already have cottons. I could buy new clothes, but I cannot afford them because I need to save for my electricity bill next April, and I don’t know how much it’ll be. If I don’t pay it, they will cut me off.
At 10.10, I switch the iron off and do the remaining garments with the heat left in the device. I am now able to switch on my television for an hour’s entertainment, for which I switch all my lights off. At 11.10 p.m., at last, I flop into bed, sweaty and exhausted, but I cannot have a shower. My hot water can only go on when the TV goes out. I could get up early tomorrow and put the water heater on at 5.30 a.m., so that I can shower at 6.30 and leave for work at 7 a.m.
Quite honestly, I’d sooner stink.
The capacity tariff was introduced, according to OpenMotics, because “Our power grids are under tremendous pressure.” Right.
My supplier is the company Engie and, in 2022, it had earnings before income tax and depreciation (EBITDA) of 13,700,000,000 euros, which is nearly 30% up year on year.
The tremendous pressure that our power grids are under is clearly a “capacity” issue. Now, Engie could invest some of its EBITDA in more capacity, but it doesn’t want to. It prefers to get me to just use electricity over a longer period and stop bringing the network to a grinding halt. How inconsiderate of me, I muse, as I eat my cold fish, cold chips, cold peas and boiling hot tea. I, clearly, am the problem, because it’s me who gets penalised if I don’t cooperate in solving the problem. I can have a hot supper, but it costs me my capacity tariff.
So I accommodate them. And as a little incentive, they “reward” me by not upping my bill. Not by reducing my bill, but by “not upping it”. How much they don’t up it by is unknown. I am not sure whether it will ever be known.
Engie and the others, and their networks, may be under tremendous pressure, but I’m also a bit under tremendous pressure. Because I stink, and I’m tired and I don’t believe in progress any more.
I do really, but that’s not the point. This is not progress.
From: https://www.engie.com/en/finance/results/2022.
The dividend for the year-ending 31.12.22 was proposed to the AGM at EUR 1.40 per share (it was likely approved). The current share price is EUR 14.23. The ROI is just under 10% per annum. That doesn’t sound like tremendous pressure, not for the stockholders, at least.
Parental advisory: the above chart should not be shown to minors, on the ground that it is an obscenity.