Nick Thomas

At the volumes of data implied by a single house, any given approach is likely to work; including dumping it to firebase and doing your own querying from there. What matters most is how comfortable with managing it you are, what the hardware you can get supports, and what software you're most familiar with. At larger scales - or if you want an excuse to play 😉 - you'd want the data to end up in a "proper" time series database. The new shiny for that is victoriametrics; one could push via MQTT, using something like mqtt2prometheus, or use something like https://github.com/hawkw/tinymetrics to go direct from ESP32->vicky. Then you can use grafana to create shiny dashboards from the time series data. Another option would be to push the data from your ESP32 via MQTT, and have something like home assistant take care of storing it and displaying it attractively for you.

Definitely comes under "nice problem to have" 😅. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/business-income-manual/bim40520 says > The term ‘significantly exceed’ in (b) above is not defined in Section 782A and should be considered by reference to the particular circumstances. However, in general, a householder who does not intend to generate an amount of electricity more than 20% in excess of their own domestic needs is unlikely to be regarded as intending to significantly exceed the amount of electricity consumed in their own premises. So HMRC gets to decide unless/until it went to court. Of course, you can also just install a heat pump.

I guess exporting at 35p/kWh isn't *that* different to importing at 33p 😅 Yesterday was a nice sunny day. As a result, I exported lots and managed to break even (I think for the first time since I got the solar panels installed last autumn): Summer is going to be great.

Grant Aerona 3 heat pumps *used* to recommend an annual application of something to the fins, but the most recent models say: > Aerona³ heat pumps are now suitable for installation in coastal areas without any special treatment. https://www.grantuk.com/media/5143/grant-aerona-r32-installer-uk-doc-0136-rev-2-2-november-2022.pdf I also got a Panasonic A2A heat pump installed up in Shetland - where you're always close to the sea - and the installer was emphatic that, not only was nothing required, but also that no ongoing maintenance was required. Even though... ...my freesat dish rusted away and was torn off the wall by a gale (the dish itself seemed fine, it was the arm and mountings that got rusty). Time will tell if it's actually fine or not. Might be worth finding a manufacturer that states their unit is good in coastal areas *and* that you can keep the warranty valid on, just in case.

Interesting, this is a lot simpler than my approach. I feel some reluctance though; I quite like having my own house consume my own solar, but I suppose it doesn't matter too much.

The export was still showing as Outgoing Fixed yesterday; I've just checked now and it's changed over I'm expecting both import and export rates will apply from the start of the day I accepted the switchover. Don't care enough to chase it if something else happens though 😅

Well, that was fast. All switched over :D. So, battery set to charge 2-4:59am and 3-3:59pm; and to force-discharge 6-6:59pm. Heat pump set for DHW 2-3am, and to let the house cool down a bit (not much) 4-7pm. I *think* it also makes sense to bring the house to 20°C between 3-4:59am, in the hopes of coasting until the solar shows up, certainly for March-April and Oct-Nov, but less sure about that. I'm really not keen on being very warm overnight. Might give it a try though. The only other thing to do is add more batteries :3.

No email here either. I've just put in the application myself, let's see how it goes.

Fortunately, this is done now 😅 A bit of a before/after: There was a lot of ivy hiding in that grass.

Meanwhile, oop north: https://www.shetlink.com/index.php?/forums/topic/7700-bricks/ . Quite interesting to see a house literally melt away from rain. Ireland had its own thing too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mica_scandal RE: pallets, my solar panels came on a ridiculously strong pallet made from plywood. It is now a shed roof .

Another -1 on Bosch from me, cheap is really the only good thing I can say about them. Moving here, I got an LG washing machine that I thought was a washer-dryer, then added a Hoover heat pump dryer (H-Dry something?) when I realised my mistake. Sending it back would have been a hassle. Had them both a year, they're fine. Stuff gets clean, they haven't stopped working or leaked everywhere. Ethical Consumer did a run-through of different washers and dryers about the time I was buying, if that's in your wheelhouse. They had good things to say about LG, Hoover, and Miele, but very bad things to say about Bosch, Samsung, pretty much all the others. Their advice for dryers was, uh, not to use one ^^. I do have a Miele dishwasher. It works fine and had a better energy rating than the other contenders, but it was, I dunno, 3x more expensive? Kind of ridiculous.It also tries quite hard to get you to buy their own "powerdisc" dishwasher powder, which I found cheeky. Hopefully they're not trying that with washing machines...

Hmm. Poking that PDF some more, appendix C lists "vacant property" as a possible exception, but seems to AND it with "without a named account holder" throughout. So many edge cases with these things.

Got this for the house in Shetland, which doesn't have mains gas and does have a wood stove in it. So I guess it's eligible, even though I'm not living there? I don't *need* it, mind.

Well, it was Henry Ford who said you could have any colour you liked as long as it was black. It's not specified in BS5615 or something silly like that, is it? Couldn't find a free copy offhand.

@saveasteadinginteresting, thanks. That's because the house pulls heat out of the ground faster than it can be naturally replenished, I guess?

Or ~37p at peak times with flux. Each kWh exported then pays for ~1.85kWh electricity imported off-peak, which you can launder through your heat pump with CoP=3 for ~5.5x more heat than the PV diverter would have given. Or you can buy gas to burn for a similar-ish number. As for the rest of the factoid, my 3.6kWp array with battery for load-shifting has still exported ~55kWh since the start of the year, which at the 15p rate is £8.25. But even at the 5p rate that's £2.75. Roughly comparable, but the real fun will come in summer where the export will permit me to shift power interseasonally. Battery can't really do that.

They do, aye. Turns out humans aren't the only animals with lungs. Not directly related, but https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/tyre-compound-driving-mystery-salmon-deaths-identified-after-years-of-chemical-detective-work/4012851.article was a bit of a shocker for me when it came out too.

Ah, supply and fit - it's in the title ^^ LVT is really, honestly, dead-simple enough to do yourself, assuming a nice flat floor to start with. If someone had been handing me a £10 or £20 note every time i got four of the planks down, it would have been a fun time.

On the "value engineering" side, I found the recommended 10% allowance for cuts/wastage to be far too much on the first house. Ended up selling the excess on a online marketplace to someone who did a corridor with it. Dropped it to 5% for this one and didn't feel short of materials at any point.

Supply and fit, or materials only? I laid LVT throughout the last house at £25/M², and just did the downstairs here for the same, materials only. These were both the floating floor type with integrated underlay, dead easy to get down so DIY was a realistic option. I wouldn't trust myself with tiles. I vaguely recall a supply+fit quote for LVT in 2021 at around £50/sqm but they were precious about the finish work involved with a retrofit - they wanted us to handle all the skirting, cut the doors to match the new floor level, etc. They were only interested in the easy bit!

That's OK, you can now (well, soon) export for 23-37p/kWh during the day, and import at 20-46p when dark with Octopus Flux ^^

I have a https://pcengines.ch/apu2e4.htm which claims "6-12W depending on load". It runs my whole online presence, not just the home automation. It'll even do docker if that's your thing ^^.

Well that's very interesting. I've got a battery, but the overall strategy also includes exporting lots in summer to cover the costs of (some of) the electricity I have to import in winter. Being able to export in summer at a higher rate than I import in winter would be pretty awesome. I might need a *bit* more battery to make it work really well, though. As is, a good chunk of my export would go at the ~20p rate instead. Still better than fixed outgoing's 15p, mind. Avoiding import in the 4-7 period is easy enough, but having enough capacity to do that *and* export at the same time is a bit trickier.

TBH Taylor has been very deeply mythologised. Labour and Monopoly Capital has a good account of the process, and the various inaccuracies that crept into that particular story over time.

Turns out three tonnes of slate is really heavy. Who knew ^^. We got some way toward done, but the slate is very unevenly distributed. It wasn't until bag three that we hit on the method of filling buckets from the bulk bag, and emptying them on the far side. Conceptually, this was a battle against friction, and pushing the chips along the ground was not a great way to minimise that. Back again at the weekend to sort out the edges and try to level it out some more; then give the hedge another severe cutback. Half hoping it dies, honestly.