Radian

Looking at the datasheet for my smartmeter the internal isolator can be operated over the local optical interface. Seems a bit iffy.

I can understand that. But who would be 'remotely throwing' that switch anyway? And in what circumstances?

And they'd be breaking the law on my behalf? This is my point. My CU will need updating in the near future and I've been following discussions on electricianforum (some written by no less than the esteemed @Onoff himself). Everything points to it being dangerous and illegal practice to pull the main fuse unless carried out by the DNO.

I'm jealous of those. I keep meaning to ask... My mother's house was built 8 years ago and has a two-pole isolator between the meter and CU. My house was built 25 years ago and doesn't. Neither does my rental. When the CU was changed in that, the sparky clipped out the seal and pulled the 100A fuse. I couldn't help thinking that was naughty. I'm guessing the DNO should have been involved? Furthermore, rather than have to respond each time a customer wants to have work like this done, might they volunteer to fit an isolator on request?

From their website: AC•THOR works perfectly with our immersion heater but it can also be easily used with existing heating rods.

I don't get that impression but I guess that might be because I tend to read topics that chime with my interests (selection effect).

Mine didn't have that add-on. Was yours FOC with that?

If the water running down your legs and feet wasn't at least 27oC I'd bet you would leap out cursing about having an unexpectedly cold shower. 😃

I can understand why your knives are out for smart meters - the godawful advertising for them is enough to piss-off anyone who holds Einstein in the slightest regard. Other reasons to buck them might be the fact they can be used to remotely switch off an individual house's power at will. But you raised a point about metering... a revenue grade meter is a valuable item and here they are supplied FOC. Sottish power and no doubt other suppliers used to supply these FOC as well (@SteamyTea's favourite Current Cost device in my case) But the lack of real power monitoring makes them of limited use as they're inherently biased towards reporting higher power than actually billed for especially at base load. I want to know the exact power I'm being billed for and also measure it independently as a check on their system. The smart meter allows this process to be automated so I'm OK with it.

That will be interesting. The SE inverter should perform a line impedance test and refuse to start if it thinks it's off grid.

All the talk of batteries in the preceding posts makes me wonder how many people here have off-grid capable inverters to go with them? Hands up please!

There's another sliding patio door around the front. That one is usually the main way in and out. The double one just gets thrown open in the summer to make the room feel more connected with the garden. The idea was to make an indoor/outdoor area that I could use to loiter in front of the computer stuff (i.e. WFH) and which doubles-up as a music/cinema room in the evenings. I basically 'go to work' in this building and by having it separate to the house, create a better work/life balance. Frankly it's totally transformed my life for the better. It may only be a few steps away from the house but it works brilliantly to draw a line between different activities.

That view! Now stop looking at it, get off that floor cushion and finish the landscaping 🤣

I just choked on my wine. By 'small' surely you must mean 7680kWp?

The total daily consumption (load) is as is labelled in the plot: 11kWh. Someone had a very long shower at 10:30 and it wasn't me 🙄

Looking good! Are the little diagonal braces at the top of the posts really necessary with the deck bolted to the wall? (sorry if this has been asked before)

4 hours for 365 days isn't very realistic. Here's how much time my boiler ran yesterday (quite typical for 8 months of the year) 2hr 10mins for HW. Minus a bit for the last push up to 55oC which always entails a couple of on-off cycles when the boiler can't modulate any lower.

That's what I thought too. Hopefully we'll see prices fall as a consequence. Transportation costs of bulky products like these is significant.

I guess that's slightly excusable - although if they thought their non-smart meters were inaccurate and didn't gang up outside their energy suppliers with flaming torches and sharpened pitchforks, that'd be inexcusable.

Update: Tried again today and it worked! I had been leaving plenty of sarky feedback 😁 Duh, yeah, I already knew that. Oh, so does that mean we've been migrated to the SMETS2 network? Sounds like it.

...Fist sized hole. I guess I could attempt a repair using sheet material cut to fit around the cables but it's a compound shape with both the bottom and back of the box having been broken away. I think its glass fibre or some other reinforced plastic so glass mat and resin might be one approach. But so much easier and tempting to spray squirty foam in there though!

My 'nothing special' JAM54S30-410W's are 1722 x 1134 so about 210W/m2

Not heard that before, but as I keep pointing out, in a system boiler with no separate setting for HW, a return of 55oC might limit HW to no more than 45oC as it would take forever to fully exchange the primary water temperature.

Funny you should mention that. I've been trying to address a cold utiility room in my own house and concluded (from thermal imaging) it was ducting crossing the ceiling without a backdraft preventer. However, there can be more than one cause - and today I was feeding a cable for a Current Transformer through the wall behind the utility sink unit, I'd drilled through from the back of the meter box on the outside wall and used a tiny inspection camera on a long goose neck to look inside to see where I'd come through. As I moved the camera I spotted a large earth wire also coming through a sizeable hole in the wall, and exiting behind the plywood back to the cabinet under the worktop. The earth cable was there on its way to emerge alongside the 15mm copper pipe it was clamped to under the sink. So the hole in the inner leaf was unsealed and allowing a draft from the cavity unfettered access to the space behind the cabinets and inside through the penetrations for the copper pipes. The entire area is also open to the space the washing machine sits within so air has an easy way past and into the room. The more I looked, the more opportunities I could see for outside air to come straight in: both electricity meter and gas meter boxes were riddled with holes leading into the cavity. The cavity had holes leading into the gap behind the utility room cabinets. The cabinets had gaps around the plinths and big holes for plumbing. No wonder this room was so cold in the winter. The wall also faces NE which doesn't help. Now I'm wondering what's the best way to fill a fist sized hole around where the meter tails go through the rear of the meter box? (it looks like sparky took a hammer to the box to make the hole). The issue I understand with using PU foam around PVC cables is that while there's no adverse chemical reaction, the extra thermal insulation will de-rate the cables by a finite amount. Could this be significant? I wouldn't think so but it just feels wrong to squirt foam all over the big tails.

There are only really a handful of PV makers globally and their reputations are as big as their operations are gigantic. It's the one area of Chinese specifications that actually appears to chime with reality.