One of the things was to go to Pontaumur for an Eco-building fair. But that was pretty much a waste of time. There were about 30 stands, of which about 25 were trying to get people to sign up for this "Become a Solar Energy Producer and Sell to the Electricity Board" scam.
If you've ever experienced this scam - with the cold canvassing phone calls and the harassment in every shopping centre, then you'll know what I mean. It's what double glazing was in the 1970s, cavity wall insulation was in the 1980s, financial planning was in the 1990s. Nothing more than a means of the disreputable sharks looking out for poor helpless minnows to swallow.
Think about it for a minute - on a good day (and I mean a good day) I can create 4KwH of electricity. Selling all of that to the EDF will get me 4x0.55cents - ie just over €2. Say that I can do that on 50 days per year, that's €100 per year. The cost of my set-up here was about €6000 - so it will take me 60 years to get my money back. But I'm using for the most part cheap analogue equipment. Going over to new digital equipment you can add another €3000 easily to that.
And I installed my system myself. How much would the labour charges be for someone else to do it? And then what will be the return on the investment? And when the resale price falls from 0.55 to 0.45 later this year, then what?
Solar (or wind) energy is never ever going to be cost-effective at today's rates and today's prices. No-one is ever going to get rich from selling it back to the central supplier here in Europe. There are going to be thousands of disappointed customers in five years time, just like there were with Endowment mortgages, because greedy people who have seen nothing but the Pound signs will have been suckered in by a bunch of sharks.
Renewable energy is a lifestyle choice and not much else - that is, until the retail price of energy is adjusted to reflect its true cost. And then, of course, it will be totally different.
However I did meet Christiane there - I met her 2 weeks ago at the Plant Fair too - and I also found someone to talk to about a system of lagoons for dealing with my waste water. So that's back on the agenda.
Before that however I went to the Authors' Fair at Pionsat to chat to Marianne. Bill was there too.
Later round at Terry's we took the broyer off the tractor and with a winch and ramps we went to put it in the back of his van. But either the van has shrunk or the broyer has grown since we last measured it and now it won't fit.
We're having no luck at all with this blasted tractor-moving.
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