Beelbeebub

You could wait for (hopefully) the position on grants for air to air systems to change for the better and then just install one of those. Our UK obsession with A2W systems is based on retro fitting to existing heating systems. As far as I can see the only 2 advantages A2W systems have is 1) *once installed* the emitter side of the system can be worked on by a regular plumber 2) it will retro fit into an existing wwt system *as long as the pipes and emitter are suitible* There is a possible 3rd which is some people prefer the heat given off by a wet system to a blow air system. This is particularly true of UFH. But if you are using fan coils that 3rd point is moot and even the 2nd point is fairly weak. Which leaves you with point 1. If you are comfortable with calling in a specialist to do work then that's sort of irrelevant. Right now not you need to find a specialist plumber to work on A2W anyway, so not much difference to call an air con guy instead.

I'm intrigued! Painting, I assume, is just normal airbrush painting like for cars etc. What is aqua blasting?

Also, I'm curious what you using the air for? I'm trying to think of a hobby that uses 7kw of compressed air! Is it for a pumpkin cannon?! 😁

Can I ask, how long for? Like 7kw of air all day or 7kw for an hour or so? I wonder if an 8kw 3ph inverter/battery would do you? Solax do one (x3 ies) With 20kwh of battery storage you could run for over 2h at full pelt without drawing anything from the grid. IIRC they feature a 2x overload for upto 10 seconds ie 16kw which should sort out startup currents

I was referring to the curtailment. The issue with gas setting the price most of the time may well be as you say. I've noticed that there is always 2gw or so of gas in our generation mix even when it seems it isn't needed. It just sits there in the mix even as interconnect, renewables, demand etc rise and fall. If that falls away we may well start to get cheaper elec, but that will have a knock on effect on renewables build out Still the point is, renewables are growing fast and promise cheaper electricity when we turn off the majority of gas. I do still believe we will need a fairly big gas capacity (maybe even more than now) to cover us for some of the winter etc, but running the UK 90% of the time on lure renewables and burning a bit of gas every now and then is a perfectly acceptable target for the medium term.

There are various plans, but they often run into local opposition I saw one local pressure group against some pylon lines using the "it will take valuable farmland and damage our food security" argument - which is clearly bollocks given the relatively miniscule footprint of pylons. There are arguments against putting pylons in certain places but they almost always boil down to aesthetics, ie people don't want to see them. That's fair enough, but at least put that argument forward (why should my view be altered for the national good) rather than BS ones.

I assume your flexi panels, charge controller and some small leisure batteries are on the van? You arrive at "home", park up. Go through your disconnect routine to unplug/isolate your flexi panels from your charge controller. You now have a van with no solar panels (as far as it's aware) running as though it is night time. i.e. off batteries. Unlock your little waterproof box, unspool the cables from your fixed panels - however many your controller will handle and spsce/money allows and go through your reconnection routine. Now your charge controller is hooked up to some panels, it doesn't care they are different from the van mounted ones, it just goes about it's business. Basically all the work you were going to do, except you just need to disconnect your flexi panels rather than have them in parallel.

This is true, but is a consequence of our grid not habug the right interconnections - it was.set up to supply power from a few concentrations of coal plants in the Midlands and North. Shifting power from thr coast is harder. Sometimes there isn't enough capacity to shift the power Solutions would be to beef up the grid, including some new lines. Grid scale battery storage to store the energy locally and then supply it when the generation is low Local storage (down to house level) will help sooth out peaks on demand but won't help shift the power out of high generation areas.

A battery system would allow higher instantaneous demand for periods of time without overloading the grid. 60a (14kw) could be upped to 90a (+30a, 8kw) with an 8kw battery system.

Ah I get it. Might in suggest, rather than trying to parallel them up, with the attendant issues, you arrange it such that when you are at "home" you totally disconnect from you van mounted panels and just use as many standard panels as you want, then switch over to the flexible for mobile use. You can make up for the loss of the flexible panels by adding a single extra standard panel to your ground array. Much less chance of issues. As mentioned the disconnection and reconnection needs to be handled with some care.

What's the max output of your controller? It looks like you have 3x 100w panels. That's less than the output of a single modern standard panel. panel, just buy one extra and bingiveaway/reuse the old ones. https://www.cityplumbing.co.uk/p/dmegc-450w-all-black-solar-panel-2mm/p/120106 £61 each for 450w. Under £200 to quadruple your capacity

On the pessimist view of climate change actions. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2025/aug/20/voices-arguing-climate-crisis-action-is-a-waste-of-time-are-wrong TLDR: yes there's a ton of stuff to do and we need to move faster, but real progress has been made.

Which i addressed. If we had zero renewables and were fracking all day every day (which is the position of some in the political discourse) our electricity would be no cheaper and possibly more expensive. On the other hand, installing renewables offers the UK yhr chance of much greater energy independence. Sure we'll always need oil and gas for feedstocks and for situations we can't electrify (aviation comes to mind) but if we decouple our heating and transport (two big energy users) from gas and oil we'll be better off. And the most practical route to removing gas from our heating demand is Heatpumps.

The "we're an insignificant bit of world co2 emissions so there is no point in doing anything..." argument annoys me so much. 1)it's usually made by people who, a few breaths ago, were proclaiming how important and world leading the UK is. It seems we the nation all others shoikd look to for all sorts of things, except climate change. 2)the UK per capita emissions are around aboit mid pack. The real danger is if the vast numbers of people in developing nations who are currently emmiting less carbon per capita look at our lifestyle (cars, consumption, hearing, cooling etc) and think "I'll have some of that". If the UK and other developed nations are moving down it makes it much more compelling to say "hey guys, why not skip the high emissions part of the cycle and meet us at the low emissions phase" 3) renewable power is the cheapest power and the cost of power is a big driver of economic success.

Elec prices are tricky. On the one hand renewable electricity is pretty much thr cheapest there is. Solar is cheoeast, with onshore wind and then offshore roughly on a par with CCGT depending on gasmlroces at any given time. On the other, the high price of elec (effectively tied to gas) means there are big profits in putting in renewable capacity, and hence a big surge in that capacity. So our high prices are helping drive renewable. But also hampering the shift to HPs. On thing we could do is shift some of the so called "green taxes" from elec to gas use. My napkin calcs imply this would slightly raise gas and slightly lower elec, enough to bring the price ration from 4:1 down to 3:1 or even a bit better. At that point HPs start being cheaper than gas in almost all homes. Of course there would be pushback from people who already struggle.to afford gas heating. We would need to ensure there were mechanisms in place to prevent hardship