joth

Yes! We talk a lot about renewables requiring grid reinforcement, but in many cases renewables *are* the grid reinforcement. Especially if a battery is also installed at the far end of that long bit of wet string.

Fair point 🤣 What I was trying to say was it would be unnecessarily complex to try and design something elaborate into the standards requiring "intelligent" collaboration across a system of inverts communicating with each other, when you can achieve it within the existing pretty dumb standard.

In principle it's quite easy, unfortunately the grid would need to be re-engineered. It's also unnecessarily complex, from the grid operators view. Scaled over 10s or 100s of houses, the current system of individual inverters just shutting off when hitting the threshold has the system wide effect of gracefully reducing the amount put into the grid (as each inverter shuts of one by one, converging to a stable number exporting during periods of strong sun and low consumption). It just sucks for the individuals that get hit by it first as they don't get to self-consume any of their solar if the inverter has safety shutdown. What can be very frustrating is if the inverter is on a long AC line within the property (after the meter) then it may see >253V even though the grid itself outside the property is no where near that. It would be tempting to say either allow the inverter to exceed 253V so long as it is export limited (to zero export) or if there's a voltage sense at the meter tails. Of course, this is messing with a safety system, and also risks damaging other equipment in the home if that starts seeing > 260V, so a terrible idea in practice. The answer here is move the inverter as close to the meter as possible, and ideally have dynamic export limitation (to do near-zero export when it sees the grid is over 250V) and then it will never need to trip over 253V while still satisfying the home's own demand. A DC-coupled battery also helps capture what would otherwise wasted solar, oc.

In my experience larger pipework and some degree of zoning would be needed. Most of the year I'd like additional cooling ij the upstairs rooms, even though the ground floor is in heating mode. I guess getting one mvhr per floor would be simplest, although adding yet more cost onto already expensive system On the plus side, at least in my house redoing the FF pipework with larger diameter would be simple enough. (Indeed I've essentially already done that piecemeal, by adding ducted Fancoils and then forcing air from outside directly into those ducts at night time. My own mvhr uber bypass). All that said those are specific challenges hit in our passivhaus retrofit, and regardless of the improvement opportunities I'd fit MVHR again every single time. The system efficiency and comfort while avoiding and moisture/mould risk is incredible. And the reduced dust build up a real plus.

Scratching my head - G98/99 and PV connection is managed by DNOs, not by "the" national grid ("National Energy System Operator"). But also National Grid is the name of one of many DNOs. So does this statement apply just in their DNO patch, or sloppy journalism actually meaning all "grid" DNOs, or has the definition of Nation Grid changed yet again while I was out? A link to the original source press release would no doubt help.

One question is your priority documenting if for quotation, construction, or post-completion maintenance purposes? My experience so far is: - For quotation a comprehensive schedule (Google Sheet) of fittings (type, room, wiring required) is sufficient, and indeed preferable to detailed drawings for the reason Dave lists. - For construction, drawings with plans and where relevant elevation show location of each fitting is necessary, but often sockets and lights gets moved about during 1st and even 2nd fix. - For maintenance, ideally one would also have drawings showing the hidden pipework and wire routing. Realistically this would HAVE to be done after 1st fix (but before walls closed) because I've never yet met a trade that will actually follow plans: often times unforeseen practicalities means they can't, but in all cases they will have their own habits and preference and just do it the way they think it should be done rather than how any plan says it is to be done. And in practice I've yet to see anyone actually create such plans: there's too much rush to get started on boarding. These days your best bet is some comprehensive photos (360degree camera is ideal) of every surface of every room. The exception to all the above is if you're literally doing it all yourself in which case you can control a lot more!

Plug PGSPDY2 requires tool TRCSPDY3 https://www.speedy-rj45.com/cat6a-shielded-feedthrough-plug Plug PGSPDY3 requires tool TBSPDY2 https://www.speedy-rj45.com/shielded-plug-for-xl-cable Well that's not confusing at all 🙄

I've typically bought from https://bownetcms.co.uk/ as they had fairly good pricing on CAT6(a) too, but I haven't comparison shopped this for a few years. Make sure you have the correct compatible crimping tool. And buy some spare blades while ordering ... And remember to use the little plastic carrier to arrange the cores correctly before pushing them through.

https://www.speedy-rj45.com/shielded-plug-for-xl-cable

Did they give a particular reason? Curious that a few suppliers suggested it, specifically for bathrooms. Guess because not needed for fire regs? But still curious if any reason for there aside some marginal cost-savings. I'd definitely go with opening, even though we rarely use ours for cooling much as we'd like to: too much street/train noise when the windows open, plus it lets a lot more dust in. (And smoke if neighbours have the coal fire going). Obviously that's all situational. We actually got the master ensuite with flyscreen pre-installed, thinking it would be useful for summer cooling, but in practice is still allows too much noise in but totally ineffective at cooling the bedroom. (Yet makes for an uncomfortably cold bathroom in the morning and makes the UFH in there work harder!) So anyway yeah we never use the opening on it aside for cleaning/maintenance, but I'd still want a stronger reason for not getting it. The next owner of our house maybe German and want their Lüften ritual.

If you buy one of these (first random example I found, not a specific recommendation), I'd wager the driver can be swapped out for a dimmable/CTT/smart one your choice. It comes with a 300mA CC driver and inline switch to select temperature: my expectation is cut the switch off, and there's three cores coming out the back of it that feeds two LED strips internally to the fitting, for warm and cool white.

That one was LED strip and appropriate driver. IIRC it was from DLD with an LTech driver https://www.darklightdesign.com/architectural-lighting/led-tape/112654/ https://www.ultraleds.co.uk/ltech-professional-24v-dali-constant-voltage-led-driver-36w-ip20

My experience is kitchen cabinet supplied light fittings are massively marked up rubbish. One project the customer paid hundreds per cabinet for them just to rip them out and replace with some quality Dali fittings (which also added CTT support). The pre fitted stuff was 12V non-dimmable inconsistent temperature, and random switch on latency. Essentially the cost just went into having the kitchen company route out channels and provide some glass bases for the cabinets. Can't really help with the OP other than say most slimline panel fittings are just an LED strip and a diffuser internally, so like the case i mentioned above you may get some mileage finding a quality fitting and pairing it to an appropriate constant current LED driver of your choice.

Happy to say I've not touched the Smartrhings in years (decades?), but Home Assistant very much is a single point of failure. Which was the point I was making there: aside KNX anything that doesn't depend on an in-home SPoF is probably depending on a cloud one instead (even just for authentication /ownership management) - which is probably worse of two evils. And even KNX doesn't really count as to do any interesting automation you need a PLC server which of course is itself the SPoF. Home Assistant certainly is all local easy to change owner at an administrative level. But handing over an entire installation as part of a home sale is a brave idea and I'd love to hear actual case studies of anyone attempting let alone succeeding it. My experience is Either HA is doing purely "nice to have functionality" (ovens and lawn mowers) in which case no compelling reason to leave it in the house. Or it's running the BMS - lighting and heating - in which case really hope the new home owner is keen on being sysadmin

The problem with all the consumer smart home stuff I know if is what happens when you come to sell the house? Does the new owner need to re-pair every individual lightbulb, blind and heating actuator into their own cloud account? (Or more often, multitude of accounts). Not to mention what happens when the cloud provider gets bored and shuts it down. Centralised systems are only marginally better for succession rights, but for the most part they offer some glimmer of hope. It still requires the seller to transfer ownership (e.g. hand over the admin password or project file) for a smooth transition. But at least I can point to examples of this working out. ... Put another way - an "non-centralised" solution is worse than useless if it exchanges an in-house single point of failure for a cloud-based one.