Energy Matters Global and Domestic

[myglaren]

Yep - if you had the curtains closed then you'd be scuppered

Never close the curtains.

There's no truth in the rumour that you still have gas lighting up there then Steve?

The house we moved into in Whitby when I was 3 still had gas lights fitted but disabled at the meter.
The house was wired for electric, not too surprising as it belonged to the owner of one of the towns electrical suppliers and contractors.

[Dormouse]

As I sit just now, it is -2'c outside and dropping according to the weather station at the bottom of the garden. It has never been above 3'c all week except directly in the sun and the Smart Meter has a message saying I have exceeded my weekly budget. No s*** Sherlock!

The whole of Central Fife was the same apparently.

[bobins]

Well done Bobins. Did you read many of the comments? Definitely interesting to the likes of me. It shows to me that we have deconstructed more infrastructure than we should have just mothballed and waited. This is a plate spinning scenario of epic proportions. NESO's own predictions were obviously under by a long chalk. Does no one do full risk analysis anymore?

Thank you Mr Mouse
I read the comments and they were quite informative as well
I do find the fact that we sail so damned close to the wind with electricity supply and security alarming, but I find the push towards electrification 'come what may' utterly depressing. It's pointless going into the reasons why blindly marching towards 'electrify everything' is a bad move - those that understand will already know, those that can't or don't want to see it, won't.... and those that don't care

I can already see the response if we ever end up with power cuts: "A full investigation will be held". "Lessons will be learned" etc, etc. It's all been said before

[Dormouse]

I can't remember when we last had a power cut. Not in all the time that we have lived on Wearside.

One a year isn't out of the ordinary here, due to line or equipment failure rather than a national / regional issue though !

We regularly had power fluctuations and occasional blackouts for years until they dug up the road and laid two new lines instead of the old single one.

[Dormouse]

I am hacked off listening to the learned lessons apology. Especially when they know in the first place.

[mickthemaverick]

This may be of interest to participants in this discussion, I already have one!!

https://www.i-bidder.com/en-gb/auction- ... 610099db5f

[mickthemaverick]

I did say my last post about my energy consumption was back in December 2023. However I was curious to see what difference there was this year compared to previous years with SWMBO in New Zealand for the last six weeks. That lead me to compare the five years on a month by month basis which revealed a pleasing trend for January. So I produced 12 graphs for each month over the last 5 years and collected them into one picture. You may find the labels too small to read but that doesn't really matter, it's the shape of the curves that tells the story! The X axis goes from 2019 to 2025 and the Y axis is total energy in KWh

The last 5 years

[Gibbo2286]

On Octopus intelligent go I can get this sort of information daily.

[Gibbo2286]

This is the other side of the chart this morning:

[Dormouse]

The app for our old WiFi thermostat stopped working before Christmas so we had to order a new thermostat that works on a "better" app, according to our son in law - Smart Life.

It came with all the remote controls of our old thermostat with the addition that it can link to our cctv cameras and remote control window blinds. It also features a Statistics section for the heating.

The pink output graphs equate to the gas consumption


The difference was that yesterday had temperatures of 10'c overnight whereas the other day had sub zero temperatures. What a swing in the weather!
It is currently 15'c outside - nearly 20'c warmer than a week ago!

[mickthemaverick]

This is a bit of an eye opener !!

[Gibbo2286]

The man seems to have more money than sense Mick.

[mickthemaverick]

There's certainly no shortage of funds for Harry but I think he does deal with most things in a sensible way but maybe with a touch of gambling on the future from time to time! You only have to watch one of his Harry's Garage videos to see that!!

[Gibbo2286]

He seems to be a wealthy man who has fallen into the clutches of an unscrupulous salesman Mick.
The solar should be mounted higher and grassed underneath instead of gravel, to avoid the ground frost and shade covering them as in the picture, he could use that area to run a few sheep or goats to manage the grass. See Agrivoltaic farming.
The ground source heat pump would have served better with bore holes instead of all that field layout, some enthusiastic ploughman might one day plough them up.
His swimming pool could be used as storage for the surplus energy produced by his panels and wind turbine and he of course could use battery storage.

[mickthemaverick]

Could well be Eric but bear in mind that he did do that installation in 2007 and we have learned a lot more about it since then. Using the pool as storage is a great idea but it would need an insulating cover to prevent loss by heat dissipation back into the atmosphere. Given that he has two EV charging points it would also make sense to use his EV's as storage with an adaptation of a VTG system. I believe that bore holes are by far the best method to feed a ground heat pump but they do add difficulties in ongoing maintenance in the event of a leak for example. Personally in his situation I'd possibly go for a gravity storage system, pumping water uphill in the summer with excess power and then using a water wheel generator as it falls back down the hill when the winter arrives!!