SteamyTea

I use WriteNow on my phone to take notes. It is only a note taking application, but the fact that I have written something down reinforces the memory that I have to do something.

If space is not a problem, I still think a large, say 1000 litre, water tank that is heated by any excess energy is the way to go. That preheated water then feeds the usual DHW system. Water is a cheap form of storage.

Best to zip and encrypt all photos and videos I find.

Go on, upload the images, you know you want to.

See it has AOL 9 on it, how old is this thing, some of the people in the images may have lost their youthful charm by now.

Last quarter I had my second wrong meter reading in 15 years. Was the water meter this time. Funny how both times they have overread it. I was chatting to the Morrisons (meter readers, not Safeway) man about smart meters a while back. He said that the data transmission via the radio signal was secure, then it all goes to pot at the data centre. Mind you, our fantastic leaders have decided that all our data must be shared with all the utility companies to encourage competition. So the cat is out the bag now.

I think the problem with that is the high admin overheads. The smallest units measurable is 1 Wh. Now imaging that your smart meter has to transmit that data every half hour (or whatever) to your billing company, who then have to bill the nominated recipient if they are capable of using power at the same time. If not, then it has to go somewhere else (via billing, not physically). This, even in an automated system, would be costly, if only in computing power. Now it could be changed that only multiples of 1 kWh, or about 5p worth of electricity, is the minimum trading unit, but how much would you be willing to pay to get the admin sorted out?

Labour just announced that will fit 2,000,000 houses with solar panels, and nationalise the industry. Is it worth a punt voting for Jeremy though.

Better than I pay now, 22.65p/kWh day, 11.29kWh/night and 27.19p/day meter rental, all before VAT. Think it is time I changed, shame as EDF has always come out cheapest for me. Just worked out the overall unit price, and it comes out at 13.54p/kWh, 14.21p/kWh when VAT paid.

Combine it with battery and thermal storage, plus some PV, probably get 30 kWh/day from it.

What are people paying for a kWh of juice now? 12p seems cheap, even assuming that is before taxes. Or maybe EDFs E7 tariff is not the best anymore from the big players.

Whats this, I would have hoped someone quoting would have got this right.

This is part of the problem of renewables in general. They tend to be oversized to cope with times of minimum generation. It is just about impossible to find a genuine sweet spot for them.

Ideally yes, but a lot of people, millions in fact, just do not understand how that works in practice. It is not unknown for people to misunderstand Economy 7, and that is as simple as it gets. There was talk that smart meters could automatically connect and disconnect some appliances, but that is just not happening. Now we are talking of Vehicle to Grid stuff going on.

Part of it will be for the back office infrastructure, data transmission costs and general redundancy for the systems. I also suspect that there has been a large cost associated with PR, advertising and general admin. It is often too easy to think that something should be a lot cheaper than it is 'because I can do it cheaper'. That is often not the case. Cost me £15,000 to go to university to learn some things, and I want my money back one day.

A quick read of the BBC article seems to show the misunderstanding of smart meters. Some people seem to think that it is the display in the house that is the smart bit. I think a bit more education is needed by the suppliers about genuine energy saving. I also heard on The Today Programme that BAFTA wants climate change mentioned in more programs. Not more documentaries about them, just general information about things that can be done. I can imagine the meetings about this with an, as Ed Readon would say, overenthusiastic 12 year old spouting nonsense. Couple of charts, second ones shows nicely when I am in and out during the day.

Probably more about forgetting to seal something like a cooker hood off. I can tell everyone what happens, could even video it.

Shall bring my roll ups. You can get ecigs from Poundland, So 3 quid.

Could it be different for a warm/airtight roof?

I would like to know that too.

Can I come and watch?

There has been talk that stainless steel ties can cause cold spots, which may cause localised condensation. Though I suspect that this is an over rated problem.

You also made plenty of models too. Models are good.

You can convert RAL and NCS to RGB, so should be able to find a conversion from RGB to NCS.

PV on the roof can save you cash on tiling, so my still be worthwhile. I am intrigued by the concept of eco bling. Seems to mean anything connected to the internet. A heap pump is hardly a new idea. I don't think they are blingy.