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Net Work Alan Winstanley Some grim realities behind Britain’s troubled energy market are revealed. Also, eBay is trying to re-invent itself – will it succeed? I will also suggest some handy test meters and low-cost gadgets from China. R egular readers might recall my mini-series entitled “From Pipelines to Pylons” (Everyday Practical Electronics, August & September 1999), which told the story of Britain’s electricity generation and distribution network. National Power generously allowed me to wander around a nearly new power station during its annual shutdown, when the plant’s inner workings were laid bare. The site, located near Killingholme on Britain’s east coast, was built as an ‘off-the-shelf’ generator during the 1990s, in a period known as the “dash for gas”. Combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plants were popping up almost everywhere, fuelled by plentiful supplies of cheap natural gas piped in from the North Sea. It was fascinating stuff for someone more used to working with milliamperes rather than megavolts. The generation process started with a gas pipeline that fuelled the 650MW power plant. The heat Ed Miliband (a one-man band?) sings the praises of wind farms and renewable energy. Source: Instagram, 2023. 52 recovered from three gas turbines then drove a fourth steam turbine to improve the plant’s efficiency and cost effectiveness, helping it to compete in an open energy market. I then saw how power plants like Killingholme (https://w.wiki/FDhm) would bid a price in pounds per megawatt-hour for the day’s output, so the National Grid could choose what mix of generators (coal, gas, nuclear and hydro) and interconnectors (importing electricity from abroad) would be utilised that day. More than anything, gas was plentiful and cheap at this time. But Killingholme’s ownership would pass through several hands until the plant was ultimately deemed no longer financially viable. Britain’s current energy plight is perhaps perfectly captured in the YouTube video of Killingholme A being demolished (https://youtu. be/3k8SjEqVf0Q). It’s a policy that saddens me to this day and is a topic that I discuss in more depth next. Blowing in the wind? Britain’s energy policies are now diversifying away from fossil fuels, towards renewable ‘green’ energy instead. Becoming self-sufficient in energy is something that the UK has never achieved in 50 years, after the country lost both the will and the expertise to build more nuclear power stations. Doubtless, the Windscale (UK), Three Mile Island (USA), Chernobyl (Soviet Union) and Fukushima (Japan) nuclear calamities tarnished the reputation of the nuclear power industry. In the 1970s, newly discovered North Sea ‘natural gas’ helped Britain to wean itself off manufactured ‘town gas’ (coal gas). Current energy policies and economics are seeing to it that oil and gas operations are gradually winding down in pursuit of a fossil-free renewable future. Even so, the UK faces all sorts of uncertainties, including conflicts, geopolitics and infrastructure bottlenecks, that are brushed aside by the political classes. Debates are raging about the wisdom of shutting off our natural gas resources when they could feasibly be called on to plug the country’s energy deficit. A publicly owned company based in Aberdeen, Great British Energy (www.gbe.gov.uk), was established to deliver these new sources of renewable energy. A change of government has seen Mr Ed Miliband installed as Secretary of State for “Energy Security and Net Zero”. Consequently, the British government is dogmatically pursuing a supposedly ‘low-carbon’ Net Zero policy of building wind and solar farms at all cost (literally). More about that in a moment. In recent years, I’ve described the developments in small modular reactors (SMRs), which are downsized nuclear power stations intended to boost our base-load capacity. SMRs that can be built onsite have been on the cards for some years, but it would take about a decade before any of them finally came online. A two-year long ‘competition’ was held to find a preferred bidder for Britain’s SMR program. As I described in earlier columns, several contenders, including NuScale and GE-Hitachi, dropped out along the way. In June this year, perhaps unsurprisingly, Rolls-Royce was crowned as the competition winner to design and build SMRs for the British market, which is welcome news. Nuclear power will possibly be the only viable long-term solution for decades to come. Still, the first SMRs won’t go live until about 2030, when Sizewell C is also scheduled to start production. While Killingholme’s CCGT plant lasted just 20 years, Rolls-Royce promises a 60-year lifespan for its SMRs. Practical Electronics | November | 2025 Rolls-Royce has won the UK competition to design and build the next generation of small modular reactors, housed in futuristic buildings. huge investment now needed and the lack of government support. Time will tell whether the lights will stay on, or whether we will have a white-knuckle ride instead as Britain heads into winter, when demand will undoubtedly soar. A vision of fusion In the very distant future, nuclear fusion may provide the ultimate answer to our energy woes. The Joint European Torus (JET) was built in Britain as a pilot plant to explore the viability of building a commercial fusion power plant. The highest temperatures ever seen in the universe have since been artificially created and recorded, and in late 2024, JET gained the world record for the highest energy output ever seen, just before the 40-year-old device was retired for good. There’s more information on the JET at https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/ programmes/joint-european-torus/ Extreme challenges in harnessing plasma must be overcome before any tokamaks (a nuclear fusion toroid – see Net Work, December 2022) will ever see regular service. The International Atomic Energy Authority says that more than 130 experimental public and private tokamaks are either operating or planned around the world. Work at the multinational International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) tokamak, a large-scale nuclear fusion pilot plant based in France, has been dogged by lengthy delays. I explained more about ITER in the November 2022 issue, and there’s more background at www.iter.org Energy security has improved little since the invasion of Ukraine disrupted the wholesale gas market, which in turn drove electricity Practical Electronics | November | 2025 costs upwards, where they have stayed ever since. Britain’s gas storage resources, such as the giant undersea Rough gas cavern operated by Centrica, are intended to hold a few days’ buffer supply of gas, but these too have been imperilled due to the Sunny side up Many of us, especially in the provinces or rural areas, are decrying the impact of new ‘solar farms’, with agricultural land being carpeted with Chinese-made solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays. On some planning applications that I viewed, what I thought looked like hundreds of acres of lavender or borage (starflower) crops were in fact solar panels. The agricultural A cutaway illustration of the Joint European Torus (JET) nuclear fusion research project. Source: Eurofusion. 53 land would be decommissioned forever, being of no use for anything else – not even for livestock. Much has been written about the viability of wind farms. Ed Miliband is devoted to the idea, and ever-larger wind turbines, rated 15MW or more, are being developed. How to recycle gargantuan fibreglass turbine blades at the end of life is a concern. These things are populating vast tracts of countryside, as well as inhospitable areas including the North Sea. The world’s largest offshore wind farm, Dogger Bank, between England and Denmark, has announced a fourth phase (Dogger Bank ‘D’) that will add another 113 wind turbines to generate a further 1.5GW of electricity. GE Haliade-X wind turbines (see Net Work, January 2020) are used, which are made in Britain, France and Japan. The current United States administration has taken the opposite view about the viability of wind farms. In August, it stunned the market by cancelling $679 million worth of funding for a dozen offshore wind farm projects. One catastrophic knock-on effect of this loss is the heavy damage inflicted on Denmark’s Ørsted, which is the world’s largest developer of wind farms, leaving Ørsted reeling to re-finance itself. Ørsted has terminated work on the Hornsea 4 offshore wind farm, blaming spiralling supply chain costs and interest rates. A fundamental problem with wind and solar renewables is that neither can generate power all the time. Sprawling battery storage units are springing up, manufactured by Tesla and others, that aim to iron out some of the wrinkles in electricity supplies caused when wind and solar renewables are dormant. Trials of vehicle-to-house (V2H) charging are continuing. The idea is that an EV battery can be plugged into a special charger that either draws power from or feeds power into the national grid, effectively selling its own electricity back to it. There are more details on V2H at www.indra.co.uk/v2h Incidentally, Tesla has applied to the UK energy regulator Ofgem for a licence to enter the British market as an electricity supplier in its own right, competing against all the well-known names. The unspoken truth about our energy policies Politicians, activists and other 54 A prototype of GE Renewable Energy’s Haliade-X wind turbine, now being used in the world’s largest offshore wind farm at Dogger Bank in the North Sea. vested interests have long fed pliant British consumers a green diet that praises the merits of renewable energy and the need to reduce or capture ‘carbon’ (meaning the gas carbon dioxide, not the solid). Consequently, consumers continue to pay through the nose for energy. There’s a wholly different side to the story, though. One industry expert whose work I respect deeply is Kathryn Porter, an independent consultant working in the energy markets. Ms Porter has published several very insightful reports that shine a light on the true state of Britain’s broken energy market. I know that some Net Work readers have worked in the energy sector themselves and follow keenly the current trends in electricity generation, so I can strongly recommend Kathryn Porter’s report entitled The true affordability of net zero. The report explicitly outlines everything that is wrong with Britain’s current energy policies. One key point is that wind farm operators are often paid not to produce electricity. As Ms. Porter states: Energy Secretary Ed Miliband claims that renewables are cheap and will lead to lower bills. This sounds great, but unfortunately is not true. The only renewables that are viable at scale in the UK are wind and solar, which are intermittent – that is, they do not work all the time. Wind turbines do not generate when it’s not windy, and solar generates nothing at night. This includes the peak demand periods, which occur at dinnertime in the winter, which is after sunset. On average, only 35% of the possible amount of electricity that could be generated actually is. Although the national grid was devised to be resilient and transport electricity anywhere in the country, Ms. Porter explains: … the construction of this grid infrastructure has failed to keep pace with need, resulting in grid congestion and constraints. Constraints mean generation on one side of a grid bottleneck has to be turned down, and other generation downstream of the bottleneck turned up, in order to serve consumers. Because renewables subsidies are only paid when a generator [supplier] is running, being constrained or curtailed off would mean the loss of subsidy payments, so the generator [supplier] receives a compensating payment known as a ‘constraint or curtailment payment’. In this case, the consumer pays the downstream generator – typically a gas power station – for producing the electricity [that the consumer] actually uses, plus a constraint payment to the windfarm whose electricity was not used. These constraint fees amount to £ billions per year and are added directly to consumer bills. … when supplies are deliberately ‘constrained’, consumers must pay [for both] a gas power station to generate the electricity they actually use, and also pay windfarms not to generate the same amount of electricity. Consumers pay twice because investments in the power grid have failed to keep pace with the construction of subsidized windfarms. The idea that rising bills are due to “international gas prices going up” is rubbished by Ms Porter; she points out that wholesale prices are stable if not falling, but retail prices are loaded with all sorts of hidden costs. Foreign countries also have Practical Electronics | November | 2025 The Energy Dashboard Live website is one of several that display the power consumption and distribution of Britain’s electricity network. to buy gas on the same international markets but have fewer energy levies, so they see no such increases in domestic bills. Due to the imminent Ofgem price cap increase (see https://pemag.au/ link/ac8c), consumer bills are set to rise by a further 2% this year. Ms Porter summed it up in a recent Telegraph article: “Gas is explicitly not the reason for the latest increase in the price cap – government policy is.” The risks faced by our energy networks this coming winter could get worse still. The UK imports and exports electricity through a network of undersea ‘interconnects’. As I write this piece, Kathryn Porter has reported in the Telegraph that Norway, a country heavily reliant on hydroelectricity, is suffering extreme problems with reservoir water shortages. This could directly affect the country’s ability to generate hydroelectricity during winter, which may result in rationing and impact Norway’s electricity exports through the interconnects to Scandinavia, mainland Europe and the UK. You can download The true affordability of net zero from https:// pemag.au/link/ac8d and read more about the brilliant work of Kathryn Porter at the Watt-Logic website, https://watt-logic.com Meanwhile, the website at www. energydashboard.co.uk/live lets us Practical Electronics | November | 2025 keep an eye on things by displaying the UK’s energy consumption and demand data in real time (an icon in the upper-right corner toggles dark or light web page views). Going postal In September’s Net Work I reported that eBay was eliminating private seller fees; buyers would pay a so-called “Buyer Protection Fee” instead. Clearly, this move was lifted straight out of Vinted’s playbook. Until recently, eBay would also try to seize control of the seller’s dispatch and delivery options. Such unwarranted interference could, however, be overridden when items were listed for sale, leaving private sellers free to choose their own courier and timescale instead. I spoke too soon: eBay is now forcing private sellers to accept eBay’s choice of courier, either Royal Mail or Evri (formerly My Hermes). That wouldn’t be so bad except that eBay then also guesstimates the weight and size of your parcel, even if it’s not yet known, and it levies postage accordingly. This had thrown up all sorts of problems for private sellers. eBay has given this compulsory regimen the beguiling name of “Simple Delivery”, but in many cases it’s proving anything but simple and is causing lots of head scratching (and despair!) instead. Numerous private sellers complain in forums about how eBay’s new Simple Delivery rates make their sales non-viable (eg, small, cheap items being charged small parcel rates etc). Sellers also find that items that are automatically relisted for sale have been changed abruptly by eBay, to impose Simple Delivery on them, which sometimes makes an item’s sales price unprofitable. Having grabbed the steering wheel for themselves, eBay has taken to giving fee-paying buyers a running commentary about their delivery, in an effort to cuddle up to them. Good news! Your item’s been dispatched! It’s on the way! It’s arriving soon! Get ready to receive it! It’s out for delivery! It’s been delivered! Tell us what you think! And so on. (I must admit, Temu is just as bad.) eBay’s policy on Simple Delivery can be viewed at https://pemag.au/ link/ac8e A popular e-commerce news website has plenty to say about it at https://pemag.au/link/ac8f Clearly, eBay is striving to remain relevant as an online marketplace. It faces stiff competition from Facebook Marketplace, Amazon, Etsy, Vinted and live-streaming auction sites like WhatNot.com As a sign of how eBay seems to be thrashing around, it then suddenly dropped Buyer Protection Fees from 75p to only 10p per item, plus a percentage. Disgruntled private sellers are struggling to find workarounds for Simple Delivery. Furthermore, eBay’s “Task list” prods sellers into dispatching their item within two days. Private sellers have no choice but to comply with eBay’s Simple Delivery and “Tasks”, but some forum users say they resent being treated like order pickers and packers. Others are doggedly re-editing scores of listings to make them viable again, while some sellers are taking items off sale, and others have given up on eBay altogether. For some folks, the complexity and bossing around by eBay’s Simple Delivery is the final straw. Bulk-buying sites such as Vintage Cash Cow and DontSitOnIt are gaining popularity and have none of the hassle. Incidentally, for UK readers only, at least the Nectar loyalty card scheme is still operating, for now anyway. Over time, Nectar points 55 The Aneng M109 compact DMM actually speaks when measuring or selecting functions! It includes a noncontact voltage test function. can accumulate into handy pocket money to spend on eBay, Argos, Esso, Sainsbury’s and others (see https://www.nectar.com/card/ spend). When buying, you must click through to eBay from the Nectar website via https://www.nectar. com/brands/588765 If you forget, simply keep items (unpaid) in your eBay shopping cart, click away to Nectar and then return to eBay again through the affiliate link to earn your points. You can set up a Nectar account and link it to eBay at www.nectar.com The best days of eBay and the heady buzz of last-minute ‘sniping’ in online auctions are now distant memories. It seems to me the online bazaar is trying to re-invent itself as a corporate and consistent-looking (if bland) marketplace, devoid of the personal interaction and fun that many private eBayers used to enjoy. It will be interesting to see what ideas eBay comes up with next. interesting finds that I’d uncovered on China’s Temu website. Like it or loathe the idea, Temu’s online operation came out of nowhere in Britain just two years ago, and its functionality is nothing short of sublime. [Editor’s note – of course, it wasn’t such a revelation for those already using Alibaba, AliExpress or Taobao.] In the past 18 months, I’ve received some 50 deliveries of items for the home, garden, workshop and office, with only a very small proportion of items failing to satisfy (refunds are made instantly). There can be no doubt that Temu’s savage ‘buy direct from China’ strategy is eating into both eBay’s and Amazon’s businesses. Neither of them can complain since they’ve had things their own way for nearly 30 years, though. Temu includes VAT in sale prices, which therefore contributes funds to the UK Exchequer. Items listed as shipped from a “local warehouse” imply that sellers are located in the UK and selling through the Temu platform, a trend that is on the increase. Extra postage rates and/or minimum order values may apply. Both Temu and other foreign sites such as AliExpress and Banggood rely on the fact that private UK buyers can import orders valued below £135 without attracting import duties. Over that value, duties of 2.5% start to be levied, for which shippers will likely charge an administration fee (known as “brokerage”) to cover customs clearance. America’s erratic decision to eliminate the ‘de minimis’ trade exception and impose tariffs on all imports has resulted in the UK’s Royal Mail charging an extra 50p to cover the work when posting to the USA. eBay too has inflicted some problems on sellers who ship to the States, as explained at https://pemag.au/link/ac8g Measured speech I felt some items listed on Temu might interest the electronics hobbyist. I’ve now tried an Aneng M109 digital multimeter, a compact DMM that actually talks. The clear-enough speech tells you what meter range has been selected, a feature that I find genuinely useful. It offers the usual ranges plus capacitance (up to 4µF), 4MHz frequency and non-contact voltage (NCV) mains wiring detection, with a built-in LED illuminating the area. It’s listed on eBay at £18.52, but mine arrived from Temu for a mere £4 or so. What’s not to like? I then found a neat little battery and coin cell tester, also made by Aneng. The BT138 comprises two test pads separated by a 100mm ribbon. Each pad contains a magnet, so it’s fiddle-free: you simply click it onto the cell or battery under test and read the voltage directly. It uses the test battery as its power source, and it’s good for 1.2-4.8V cells, 18650 batteries and more. A pair of contacts for 9V (LR22/ MN1604) batteries on it completes the picture. It was about £2.50 – around ⅓ of eBay’s prices. Back in the July 2024 issue, I highlighted Kowsi-brand USB dongle-style testers with OLED displays that measure current, voltage and other parameters. They’re useful when recharging gadgets or smartphones etc. On Temu, I recently found the Kowsi KWS-DC28, which measures 4-30V DC, 0-12A, power consumption in Wh (watt-hours) and more data besides. Trading blows In September’s column, I outlined multiple Kowsi’s KWS-DC28 is an inline power meter using 5.5 × 2.1/2.5mm DC jacks. It displays voltage, current, time and more on a compact colour OLED screen. 56 Practical Electronics | November | 2025 This portable pressure washer with two 21V Li-ion batteries was just £12 from Temu. It’s very handy for power-washing and spotcleaning. It uses 5.5 × 2.1/2.5mm DC jacks at both ends, which will fit most ordinary mains adaptors. I found some characters on the colour display tiny and hard to read, though. The device cost less than £5. Last up this month, with autumn and winter cleanups in mind, the subject of pressure washers came up. Useful for cleaning muddy cars, trucks, driveways, paths, drains or outdoor furniture, they’re the sort of machine you keep finding uses for once you’ve owned one. So I hope the following ‘heads-up’ might interest readers who already have one. While they can’t match a mainspowered machine for cleaning power, portable low-voltage pressure washers are catching on. TV advertising might exaggerate their performance a bit, since they prove best mainly for power rinsing and washing. I found they won’t remove baked-on brake dust from alloy wheels, for example. Still, they are more convenient to use than a mainspowered one. My Ryobi One+ 18V pressure washer, costing £120, failed dismally after less than two years. I then found that some traders selling through Temu were listing some tempting money-saving alternatives. An unbranded, battery-powered machine, as seen widely on TV shopping channels for £55, came in at just £12 (!), complete (happily) with two 21V lithium-ion batteries, a bucket hose, foam sprayer and mains charger. If it only lasts two years, I’ll be satisfied. These machines employ socalled ¼-inch (6.35mm) ‘quick connect’ fittings, which are starting to appear on the UK market. Extension lances, a wheeled pathway/ car chassis cleaner and colour-­ coded spray nozzles duly followed, all at very affordable prices. Spares, extension hoses and quickconnect adaptors for Kärcher machines are also sold on Temu, so I also upgraded my machine to use Kärcher’s latest bayonet fittings, all for just a few pounds. Finally, I could clean my 25-foot-high house eaves! I then spotted identical 21V batteries used on other Chinesemade DIY gear, including power drills, loppers, grinders and mini chain saws. It’s definitely something worth bearing in mind when equipping your workshop. Meanwhile, fearing some possible winter chaos and power cuts, I’ve sourced a very efficient little gas heater from Temu for just £17! [It would be worth investing in a CO alarm at the same time – Editor] That’s all for this month. Don’t forget the above links are readymade for you on the Net Work blog at electronpublishing.com. Join me next time for more Net Work. As always, I can be reached at alan<at> PE epemag.net This battery tester uses magnets to clamp onto batteries or button cells, reading the voltage directly. ¼-inch ‘quick connect’ nozzle fittings are now arriving in the UK. Practical Electronics | November | 2025 57