Better Life In Fife - Glenrothes - Kirkcaldy - Dunfermline - Leven - Cupar - St Andrews

Our World is hundreds of millions years old and if the moving hands of a twenty-four hour clock could somehow represent this huge expanse of time, then the whole term of human existence would equate to little more than a tiny fraction of the last second of the last minute. The age of dinosaurs, lasting sixty-five million years, would occupy a far greater expanse on this clockface. Your life; the time between your birth and your death, would be virtually immeasurable on such a scale and invisible. Having said that: more has changed in the last few centuries than in the previous ten thousand years and represents an unsustainable aberration of human progression. Today, we've become highly reliant upon limited resources that cannot be replicated and usage is starting to be reflected in the bills we are asked to pay. Can we do something about it? Yes, but it needs a little homework and understanding to yield results!

Energy Matters

It may seem hard to believe now but as the last ice age receded, the global population of mankind could have been fewer than ten thousand and mankind was close to extinction. We know this because the number of DNA combinations is far less than it ought to be. Our ancestors lived in caves and knowledge about how to make and maintain fire may have played a vital part in their survival. Fire provided light, heat and a means to cook food. It deterred animals from entering the cave and helped make the cave dryer and warmer. Our ancestors learned how adequate supplies of wood, dried peat or coal were needed to keep the home fires burning. Thousands of years later, fire was still being used to heat homes, cook food and even provide some degree of light.

The typical Scottish Highland cottage of several centuries ago was built with thick walls made from boulders and stones and fitted together as best they would. Gaps in the stones were filled with a crude form of mud and cement while the wooden roofing frame was covered with turf or thatch. To reduce heat loss, windows and doors were kept small, a feature still seen in many older buildings in Fife. In larger cottages, the normally rectangular floor plan was divided into a living room on one side and a bedroom on the other. If the hearth was installed on one side of this thick dividing wall and facing the living room, heat was absorbed into the stone and radiated into the bedroom long after the fire had been extinguished for the night. Perhaps without realising it, they had invented the first storage heater and a basic form of central heating.

The Domesday Book commissioned by William of Normandy in 1068, tells us the population of England at that time was about 1.1 million people. By the year 1800, it had risen to 8.3 million people but this doubled before 1850 and again by 1900. A similar population explosion took place in Scotland. In 1800, there were 1.6 million Scots but this had risen to 4.5 million by 1900. The reason for this was the industrial revolution and where millions of people abandoned their former lives in the country in exchange for better pay and living conditions in the new cities.

Mill owners and industrialists had realised the need for good housing in order to attract sizeable labour forces and invested in long rows of houses with proper water supplies and sanitation. The houses were made as cheaply as possible using bricks and simple glazing yet these house represented luxury for many of the people who occupied them. Of course, mill owners and industrialists recouped this investment by deducting rent from pay packets and as towns grew larger, and utilities became the responsibility of public bodies, rates were applied to maintain water supply and sewerage services with householders becoming responsible for these payments. Heating was by means of a fireplace in the living room although some of the luckier people might have had a fireplace in the bedroom too.

The first separate cookers began to appear and powered with a small hearth of their own within a caste iron frame. Cooking on these was hardly a rapid process yet ideal for traditional dishes like broths and stew. It was also possible to boil small amounts of water on these devices and which could be poured into bedpans to make slumber that little bit more comfortable.

The huge forest that had survived for centuries and covering most of Fife had been getting smaller year on year as wood was taken for housing projects, ships and firewood. It's ironic because it was this forest which had produced the coal seams over millions of years and deep beneath the feet of generations. Coal was the driving force of the industrial revolution and essential fuel for steam engines. For a time, coal gas was stored and distributed to wealthier homes for cooking, heating and lighting but it was far from ideal. Gasometers were installed in many towns and were basically inverted metal tanks floating on pools of water. Gas pressures varied according to the volume in the tank and accidents were apt to provide poor publicity. At that time, gas failed to achieve universal endorsement or popularity.

Electricity, by contrast, made great strides right from the start. It was a British physicist named Michael Faraday who established the link between magnetism with electricity and demonstrated how it could be generated at will. Even better, it could be distributed using wires and without risk of explosion. The birth of the National Grid began soon afterwards and many hailed it as a 'wonder fuel' that could power many different kinds of devices. In the USA, Thomas Edison, had perfected the incandescent electric light bulb using electricity. His company produced about 5000 of these bulbs in the first year but soon realised how demand outstripped supply. In a very short time, millions were needed to meet that demand. Edison held over a thousand patents by the time of his death and many modern electronic devices have their origin at 'Menlo Park' where he worked. Italian inventor Marconi used electricity to illustrate how communication could be achieved without wires and his Marconi Company found great favour with ship owners early in the twentieth century. Indeed, it was Marconi employees who tapped out 'CQD' in Morse Code and first told the World that the RMS Titanic had struck an iceberg and was sinking!

The availability of a reliable supply of electricity changed the World!

The British National Grid feeding every home in the country was a mammoth undertaking lasting many years and involved major conversions of older properties. Even as the first parts of the grid were built, it was learned how impurities in the conductor wires offered what is now called resistance and losses. To combat these losses, the network switched to using alternating current or AC as opposed to Direct Current or DC and despite the fact that most electronic devices required the latter to operate. Later still, it was realised how higher voltages meant less losses and a complex system using transformers was developed and is still in use today. Despite this, there are considerable losses within the electricity generation processes and within the distribution network. On average, this might be around one quarter or 25%. Putting it another way, one pence in four of your electricity bill may be paying for electrical energy you never received!

In fairness though, it's never a straightforward equation because 'power stations' do not generate energy. In whatever form electricity is generated; it requires another force to make the generators rotate at high speed.

In coal, gas, oil and nuclear powered stations, water is boiled to create high pressure steam to drive turbines connected to the generators. In hydro and tidal systems, fast flowing water is used to rotate the turbines. In wind farms, huge propellers rotate slowly but the gearing mechanism attached to the generator achieves the necessary speed. There are pros and cons to each of these electricity generation systems and no free lunch!

lt will involve initial investment and maintenance costs but the largest part also demands fuel whose price may fluctuate. The wind may blow today and turn thousands of wind farm blades but what about tomorrow? Will the high tide meet our convenient needs? Chances are they won't and which is why nuclear power, along with coal, gas and oil power stations will need to be a significant part of future energy policies and why the cost of energy usage is set to escalate at high levels. In short, the 'free ride' is over! It's a game in which the consumer cannot win and merely accept compromise and effort to use less fuel! In this domestic war, the on/off switch is a champion against waste and high costs. It's the battleground where a firm understanding of kilowatts and even that useless display on the stereo system become challenged.

If you want to save money on your domestic fuel bills then you've come to the right place!

Burst Mode

The widespread of use of electricity has provided homes with many new forms of domestic entertainment. The radio receiver came first and was popular even before mains electricity was fully established. In the 1920s, radio receivers were powered by rechargeable accumulators, a type of battery similar to that used in motor cars. The local radio shop charged it up for a few pence and it might power the radio for a few hours. The family might gather in the living room where it was warmest and listen to the few radio stations then available. The extension of radio, called television, was first pioneered by John Logie Baird and his research also laid the foundation for video recording and even flight recorders in modern aircraft.

Shortly before World War Two, Baird's televisor system was rejected in favour of a competitor named EMI. In 1936, public television transmissions began at Alexandra Palace and were undertaken by the British Broadcasting Corporation or BBC for short. At that time, the HMV1401 television had seventeen thermionic valves and cost one hundred and one guineas, the equivilent of seventeen weeks wages. It was a console model with a fourteen inch screen displaying images in monochrome.

The war years inturupted the progression of television but when it resumed, the 405 line standard had been firmly established and there was a desire to expand the number of stations available. In the 1950s, it was possible to buy an adaptor permitting reception of additional channels. Later, turret tuners were standard parts of a television receiver. In Fife, channel ten was ITV with channel 3 being BBC. In 1959, the USA adopted a 525 line standard using NTSC recommendations to transmit colour images and they've been saddled with the drawbacks ever since. Dr Walter Bruch invented a better system called PAL and a further refinement called PAL-D was eventually accepted for use in Britain and despite the additional complexities that each receiver would need to have. The new standard would operate with 625 lines for better picture quality.

The first colour televisions were bulky, unreliable and expensive. They were designed around a mix of both thermionic valves and solid state electronics and typically consumed 350 watts or more. A similar sized hybrid black and white television used about 200 watts for a 24" display and about 150 watts for a 20" model. It was the television rental industry who provided the impetus to convince the public to switch to this new standard and the largest manufacturing group in Britain was needed to meet the surging demand. In the early seventies, people went on waiting lists before receiving their new television.

The issue of power consumption had always been an important part of the television designer's remit and it took several years before the first fully transistorised chassis appeared in the UK. It was called the Thorn 2000 series and was designed around high power transistors originally designed for radar use. A newer and better design appeared soon after called the Thorn 3000 and was further improved with the 3500 series. It appeared under many brand names and in different cabinets; and sometimes causing mirth when a person declared that one brand was better than another. Power consumption on these models had fallen close to what larger screen monochrone televisions had consumed in the recent past but there was greater progress to be made in this field. The Thorn 8000 and 8500 series eclipsed former consumption of monochrome televisions when employed with smaller screen sizes but there was a real surprise when the Thorn 9000 chassis arrived and employing revolutionary Precision In Line (PIL) and Cyclops technology. In the 20" screen models, power consumption was just 105 watts! Scandanavian manufacturers launched a similar technology called IPSALO but some oddly fitted a light bulb at the back the tv to illuminated the wall behind the television and added 25 watts to the consumption! Allegedly, it was supposed to ease the contrast difference or some weird thing like that but it can be seen that this idea died a quick death in the public arena.

The 9000 chassis was one of the first to be fitted with remote control and at first, this made sense. The remote option meant fitting an additional piece of circuitry adding about five watts to the power consumption. The simple two button assembly allowed the user to step through the six channels in sequence or else mute the sound. The following series called TX9 introduced a third button and it was now possible to raise or lower the volume, change the channels in sequence or else hold down a button that would release the on/off switch by holding down the button for a few seconds. The on/off switch still made great sense but in future models, there was a new mode called stand-by and where the appliance could be switched off and later reactivated by means of remote control. There was also a switch from ultrasonic remote control to infrared remote control so that more features could be added.

In fairness, this latter switch provided more commands and was deemed necessary for control of teletext but the inclusion of a stand-by function meant the remote control command receiver part of the television had to remain active at all times. In early designs, that meant having a separate power supply system and which consumed power even when the television was not in use. More modern designs have done away with this separate power supply and employ techniques like 'burst mode' power supplies but even so, there is power consumption taking place and sometimes as much as twenty watts. It's the equivilent of lighting up your front porch using modern lighting technology for free!

Similar comments can be applied to stereo units, microwave cookers, satellite, cable and freeview receivers and on the basis that they require software updates or some other pretext. If we're being honest about it, the reason why Sky, Virgin and others want telephone connections to your box has more to do with viewing habits and advertising than anything actually beneficial to you! That innocent little piece of electronics in your living room is delivering all manner of personal information about you and your family's preferences and viewing habits and all because you agreed to subscribe to such services in the first place! In short, you invited them to share that information! You even agreed to have such devices powered at all times so they could retreive such data and paid for the electricity needed to povide it! Surfing the Internet isn't quite the private and innocent thing you think it is and prospective employers often examine this data to determine suitable employees. In short, there is no reason why ALL appliances cannot be switched off when not in use and perhaps we would all benefit from it.

If taken together, some households with appliances in stand-by might be wasting the same amount as that capable of lighting all rooms in a house free of charge! As such, the way to significantly reducing energy consumption costs starts with the humble on/off switch and where energy consumption is reduced to zero. The power on/off switch is one of the most powerful weapons in reducing energy consumption and costs!

In closing this column, we've learned how gas performs great service when used for cooking or space heating but it is useless in the lighting aspect of running a modern home. By contrast, we've learned how electricity is capable of driving many electronic systems and is capable of good lighting but is pretty poor when used to heat open spaces and highly expensive when applied in this way. We'll be looking at these differences in greater detail in future editions of this section. In the texts associated with this series, there will be many hints and tips about saving energy and reducing your household energy costs. We shall not dwell on obvious measures concerning insulation and double glazing but rather on simple stuff anyone can apply to making savings in both energy use and cost whatever the current circumstances and state. Obviously, some ideas may not apply to you personally but we hope to find and examine many that will.