Energy cost crisis in… Shirebrook

January 9, 2023

4 minutes read

The company that supplies energy to my home can’t be happy with me as a customer. From time to time, they send me a report comparing my energy consumption. This year they added graphs comparing how much I use and how much their customers living in comparable conditions used:

As you can easily deduce from the picture above- I can save energy. Not only do I use less than the “average” customer. I use only half of what EDF considers an “efficient” customer. I see reducing my energy use as a personal challenge. Firstly to do one small bit towards building a greener future. Secondly, to reduce my bills.

1 DECEMBER 2022
I was, therefore, very disappointed when I visited the Leisure Centre on 1 December 2022 and saw all the floodlights on the Leisure Centre and car park operating in the middle of the day.

I won’t mention heating in this article – this time, I want to show readers how electricity is treated at STC Leisure Centre. I don’t know what kind of bulbs are used in these lamps, but they look powerful. So let’s play with the most disliked science by socialists- maths and statistics.

Let’s assume that each of these bulbs is 100 watts. I have counted 8 of them. That is 800 watts. By lighting one hour, they will consume 0.8 kWh. These lights should not run in winter from 9 AM to 3 PM. So 6 hours out of 24 should be less energy consumption for lighting. 6 x 0.8 = 4.8kWh per day wasted. At 30p per kWh, the daily amount is not scary. We only wasted £1.44 ( I don’t know the STC price per kWh- I was denied access to this data). Except that these lights were not on for one day. They are ON non-stop. How do I know?

BACK TO THE FUTURE
After noticing this waste of public money, I started going back there. Regularly. Below is a photo taken on a SUNNY day I took on 2 January. You can see my shadow on the Leisure Centre wall with my phone raised, taking the picture. The Leisure Centre lit up the… day, every time I was there.

So 1.44GB x 30 = £43.20 wasted in a month. You’ll think- pennies. I say- every little helps.

In winter, the LC illuminates the ‘day’ for 6 hours. However, the LC “lights” the ‘bright day’ in the summer for 12 hours. The price of 1.44 rises to 2.88. In other words, in winter, we lose £259. In summer, we lose around £500 in energy we don’t need to use.

In the process, we waste hundreds or even thousands of kWh of energy. So I wanted to raise this topic on the Leisure Committee. The working floodlight in the daytime is probably a problem with a faulty light intensity sensor- it is much cheaper to fix than burning through hundreds of kWh a year.

IT’S SO SIMPLE…
This seemingly trivial problem can be solved simply by introducing an easy procedure into the LC crew’s day cycle of manually switching off the lighting at 9 AM and switching it back at 3 PM during the winter.

Of course, I politely drew the LC employee’s attention to the fact that the LC was “lighting” the day. She assured me that she would inform STC about the problem I noticed. However, I still want to raise the matter at the Leisure Committee meeting. The problem is that I will be waiting for this committee meeting until… 1 March 2023.

TURN THAT OFF!
Yes – I’m a stickler regarding money and energy saving. I pay attention to details. In this case, the saving of taxpayer money is small. It’s hard to judge accurately because the Town Clerk ignored my request for details of the LC power supply contract. I don’t know how much we pay for kWh, how much we get for energy production in a solar panel plant, I don’t know if there are contractual penalties for “too low consumption” as in the case of pellets (in one of the billing periods this “penalty” reached 5000 pounds in one year- madness). I know nothing. Is that how it should look like?

The facts are this. We overpay for both heating and energy, and STC seems to ignore my signals for one reason – I’m not their friend. I am an outsider, an alien, unwanted element of a socialist utopia in which Chris Kane and Steve Fritchley are enlightened and know-it-all leaders. I’m the first Conservative elected in 118 years of STC history, and I see much more than they want me to see. They don’t like it.

LOOK AT IT FROM MY POINT OF VIEW
If I spend less on bills, I will have more money for entertainment or incidentals. It makes sense. In the micro-scale of my house: the investment in a new door will pay for itself with reduced gas consumption—the same with a small expense on new seals in the windows. Looking at gas consumption now and in previous years, I thank myself for being meticulous. Thanks to fascist Putin, my bills have gone up anyway, but I’m using much less gas than in previous years.

It’s the same with electricity. Since I moved into my house, I have replaced light bulbs with energy-saving ones, and for some time now, I have replaced every burnt-out bulb with LED bulbs. They are much more durable, and tests I read and watched on the internet show that LED light is much healthier for the human eye. As a result, my energy consumption decreases yearly, yet I maintain the same standard of living.

Without an energy crisis, I would have more money for my hobbies. In the case of STC, the savings would allow the money to be spent on crime prevention, health programs, etc. Yet- STC has ignored my signals that something is wrong with Lesire Centre energy usage for months. Am I a dreamer when I think Labour should be eventually kicked out of the STC by the locals one day?