SteamyTea

Think most local authorities have these. Can usually tell as they are the places with the winos in them. So you should find a fellow buildhubber there.

Do you have a switch between main fuse/meter and the consumer unit. Flick it.

I suspect, in reality, low users are already subsidised. If, with your 5 kWh example, this was implemented at say 10p/kWh, then I would increase my usage to use it all up as I currently only use 60% of that. I am not sure if "banking it for winter” would work either. I think we just need to reduce overall usage, wherever it is easiest/cheapest to do so, while increasing RE capacity, which is now the quickest and cheapest to deploy. Not really difficult, just needs the population to get behind the idea and realise that we would not be covering all the countryside in solar farms and wind turbines. All my life I have heard about 'concreting over the countryside", so why is there still so much left. Most of it still green, except the sandy bits if the Bristol Channel, which looks as large as London.

Depends how big the allowance is. I had a fiver a term in 1972. Still got most of it.

Probably is. I think the only thing I have on standby is my radio. The little voltage regulator seems cold when not in use, though it does probably consume a tiny, tiny amount. Other things on are the radio alarm, RPi data logger, 4 cheap digital timers to control water and space heating, and fridge, oven and hob. The last 3 could be all turned off at the mains, but I like the convenience, especially cold milk. I might have a go at calculating all those base loads, but my data shows they are very low, probably less than 10Wh a day. Saving 0.4p a day hardly seems worth the effort.

Me too, warm autumn so far has helped.

And wired in so the the house disconnected from the local grid. I think there is quite a bit of post purchase justification when it comes to batteries. They do not make sense at any level at the moment.

Twice my current usage, and I want to reduce it more.

is it? Don't think there has been a lot a data collected on the reliability. https://www.power-technology.com/analysis/la-rance-learning-from-the-worlds-oldest-tidal-project/

That is only at the local level (your house). At the national level that 0.8 kWh could have helped, in part, to run a heat pump, which would have been more efficient.

You could have made more in the oven though. But a man needs his daily sandwich. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001df6c

UK consumption figures here 2021_Consumption_tables_July_2022_update.xlsx

I doubt recharging batteries is a major concern. Maybe the 7 million homes with E7 could make a difference. Load shifting even 5 kWh/day (about half the E7 daily usage) would make a very big difference. 35 GWh. Would take all the shit in Cornwall 3 1/5 days to generate that.

Server farms use between 3% and 13% of world energy, but real figures are hard to come by.

Not big enough. The smaller they are, the less efficient they are. You could stick it on the top of your boats mast, then run a small dehumidifier, via battery storage, to keep the cabin a bit less (or is it fewer) damp.

Yes, English is a dreadful language, so many variables.

Who would you chat to if everyone else's batteries had failed.

My phone charger is 5 W, but probably only delivers a mean of 2W over a couple of hours, phone charging is not a problem, even multiplied by 40 million units. 200 MW if they were all started at the same time. About half what the waste incinerator plant in St. Awful kicks out. So just the rubbish in Cornwall, one small county by population, could charge all the UKs phones in about an hour.

Lack of wind or sun is not a problem, building thousands of windfarms and millions of PV modules is. But not as big a problem as many people think. We are not reinventing the wheel, it is purely a planning, connection and manufacturing problem.

kW is power, so think of that as how many horse power your car engine has. kWh is energy, so think of that as how much fuel the tank holds. Now the watt, and the watt.hour, are derived units under the SI system. The SI system does not have many base units, and as far as we are concerned, distance [m], mass [kg], time [s] and temperature [K] cover just about all we need. A watt is a joule per second, a joule is a unit of energy. As these are all very small units we generally multiply them, the the k [1000], M [1,000,000] and G [1000,000,000]. This makes no difference apart from less zeros to type. Some base units are often combined and named after a person, and this is where it gets really silly. A persons name has the first letter capitalised, but if written as a unit, it does not, except at the beginning of a sentence. Joule is a man, joule is a unit of energy, J. Joule is a unit of energy, J, named after Joule. An hour has 3,600 seconds in it.

It is a 6 kWp arrary, the p means peak and a 15 kWh battery system. [6kW / an hour = 1.667 J and 15 kW / an hour = 4.167 J]

Seems it is not just Octopussy offering money. (Octopus has just got control of Bulb, I wonder if they ever pay back the £2bn+ that we bailed them out with) https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/10/octopus-ovo-energy-pay-to-cut-electricity-use/

I think the same. Just marketing.

Too right. What not levelise all domestic energy to the same price. Then tax the suppliers though VAT and environmental taxation.