Beelbeebub

But batteries at the substation won't help with the last mile of transmission. Pretty much by definition they are at thr junction between the low (relative to grid voltages! 😁) 240v system and the higher transmission voltages. If DNO's wanted to reduce the peak loading on their local network and avoid having to upgrade - then that might be an incentive for them to put batteries in customer's houses. But I'm not sure shirt term peak loads are that much of an issue for DNOs because of diversity. Their problem might be the sustained medium loads that never used to exist eg heat pumps and car chargers. That said, if you have an electrically heated street or estate, it would have been the case it would be sized for a sustained storage heater load overnight from everyone. So 4 or 5kw per house overnight. If you swap that out for heatpumps your load drops to maybe half or even 1/3 continuous. Which leaves the rest availible for charging cars overnight.

That may be a technically and economically better solution, but it may be difficult to create the incentives for that to happen. The hardware needs to go into the substation area, which is owned and operated by thr DNO, who has no interest in the consumer or the wholesale market. The energy Co doesn't have access to that facility. Putting the batteries at the consumer's end is, whilst less economic, much easier - especially if it's just shipping a box to the consumer who plugs it in and connects it to WiFi.

I think the plug in battery systems might end up being the better solution. A 1 or 2kwh plug in unit - especially if linked to time of use tariffs - could make a big difference to bills and the current 4-pm demand peak. I keep thinking that octopus or similar could offer a tariff where you get a plug in battery and got a guarenteed low price for Xkwh a day. Say you pay £1 a day all in for 5kwh with the rest charged at normal rates - maybe a roll over/forward facility up to 10kwh in a single day. The energy supplier would make their profit by charging the battery at cheap periods and thus reducing their volume a at high price periods. If such device were just a suitcase sized box delivered to your door, connected to WiFi and plugged in somewhere it could get really good uptake.

https://www.aer.gov.au/news/articles/news-releases/aer-releases-final-default-market-offer-2026-27 If renewables are going to make the grid more expensive how come they are making it cheaper on Australia? The combined range of price changes (flat rate and time of use) are: New South Wales: Residential -3.4% to -7.7%, Small business -9.0% to -20.9% South East Queensland: Residential -7.2% to -10.7%, Small business -10.4% to -14.0% South Australia: Residential -1.1% to +1.4%, Small business -6.8% to -12.1% AER Chair Clare Savage said.. “The reductions compared to last year reflect easing costs across most components of the DMO, particularly in wholesale energy, where we’ve seen lower electricity contract prices, reduced spot price volatility, and increased output from wind and battery generation during evening peaks.” “Despite uncertainty created by conflict in the Middle East, wholesale energy costs have not increased.” Of course australia did see diesel almost double before falling back to (currently) about 25% more than pre war levels which is painful - but underscores the advantage of switching transport away from fossil fuels.

I see this point come up alot, but wouldn't it only apply if the person overloaded the circuit to begin with? If you have a standard ring on a 32a breaker they can run several appliances together, say 3, up to the 32a limit, but the typical 2.5mm cables are only rated for 20a and the whole concept relies on both ends of the ring taking the load so no one part ever sees more than 20a. A person could run more than 32a of load if the additional current was provided by the solar but as long as the wiring run from the solar to the load wasn't exceeding 20a it would be fine. So a tumble dryer plugged into the same double socket as the solar would be fine. The problem might occur if the loads and sources were too far apart or unbalanced but that is a statistical risk the ring main system accepts anyway.

there are premade rubber cable entry "patches" for cable and pipe entry.

Yes, this is (I think) more of a modern problem. In the past our politicians were somewhat more serious. You may disagree with various historical politicans and they may have made disastrous decisions and mistakes but it seems (at least in hindsight) that they took the job of being a politician seriously. They would sit for hour long serious TV debates where they would delve into complex matters. The interviewers and opposition acted in good faith and followed up. Look at the TV debates of the 70's and even 80's. The vast majority of government work carried out by the professional civil service and their advice was taken seriously. This was why someone with no particular ecperice ofnhealth/defence etc could fulfil the role. Now, as mentioned, politicans don't act in good faith. It's all soundbites, misquotes and blaming the "deepstate" for stopping you doing what you want to do (mainly because it's a massively stupid thing to do). One of the Trump appointees - possibly homeland security, recently floated the idea of cutting the number of federal customs and border staff at airports im cities that weren't cooperating with ICE. At the time everyone thought it was just some off thr cuff remark because to cut staff at NY, Washington etc airports - some of the biggest in the US, would cause absolute carnage with most of the economic fallout being borne by the cities that the travelers were eventually heading for rather than the ones they first landed in. Anyone with an ounce of understanding of international travel, tourism etc would contemplate such a scheme. Anyway, it looks like they might be serious.... Because Trump's primary criteria for appointments is personal loyalty rather competence.

There's an intersitn flip side to this which is the tendency of people who are really skilled in a given area to not think of their skill/knowledge etc as exceptional and think everyone else is of a similar ability. This is what sometimes males excellent skiers, artists, scientists etc bad teachers. "you just bend the knees and turn the skis!" they shout at their poor student. It's can also lead to disastrous political consequences when politicans, who may be immersed in a complex and counterintuitive policy area, put questions to the public assuming the answer is obvious to everyone.

I remember when diesels were slow, noisy and heavy.

That graph is by the oil industry. It's including absolutely everything they suspect might be out there. It includes unknown discoveries ie fields we don't even know exist yet and even unknown improvements to extraction technology to get more oil than we think we can at the moment. And even then, after all that optimism, production still falls 50%. The question of whether or not the costs of extracting that last little bit of oil are worth it or not is seperate from the question of what good that little extra bit will do.

This is the point ☝️ Some politicans are selling the idea that the UK could be Saudi Arabia or texas if only thr "woke" politicans would get out of the way and allow the oil companies to drill, lower our bills and increace our energy security (out of the goodness of their hearts). It's bollocks. Our high energy prices and energy insecurity would not be made better by all the drilling in the world and the very things that will help are opposed by the same politicans.

Could you dm some details?

They are included in the Westfield report which has a wildly optimistic "no constraints case" case. And even that case has production falling by 50% from today's figure by 2035. For reference their low case (2.5bn) is less than the NSTA central estimate which is about 3.5bn. So their high case is maybe 1bn (4.5bn) more than the current official estimates.

I know, people still think the answer to our problems is simply to grant more oil licences. It doesn't matter how often they are shown, by figures from the oil industry itself, that it would make no difference they just keep on about drilling for oil. 😁

It's not £5bn tho. That's the revenue from current operations. The revenue we forego from not drilling the new sites isikely to be less than 10% of that... So less than £500m. In the context of government spending that's a rounding error. But again, and I don't know how many times this needs saying, drilling for more oil will not improve our energy security - the amount of oil availible is just too small to matter.