I unashamedly love my smart-meter. Rather than having my energy provider guesstimate my bill, or having to send manual readings each month, it automatically beams them back to its mothership. It also enables interesting things like variable energy tariffs. By design, the smart-meter is limited in how much data it can send back. You can choose to have readings sent monthly, weekly, daily, or…
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The good folks at Windfall Energy have sent me one of their interesting new plugs to beta test. OK, an Internet connected smart plug. What's so interesting about that? Our Windfall Plug turns on at the optimal times in the middle of the night to charge and power your devices with green energy. Ah! Now that is interesting. The proposition is brilliantly simple: Connect the smart-plug to…
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An interesting snippet about the future of computation: Starting with this build, we are introducing the Power Grid Forecast API. This API empowers app developers to optimize app behavior, minimizing environmental impact by shifting background tasks to times when more renewable energy is available in the local electrical grid. Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26052 Some…
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Whenever you talk about renewable energy, it's impossible to avoid a very particular strain of reply-guy. The "Nuclear is really good actually" dude is convinced that you have critically misunderstood Our-Lord-And-Saviour Uranium. Nukes are clean! They are cheap! They are safe and healthy! They are brilliant! Nuclear power will save us all! Look, I 100% agree that nuclear power is…
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Nuclear power was sold to the world as a safe, clean, and economically viable source of electricity. We were told that it would be "too cheap to meter". Even the most ardent proponent of nuclear power will have to admit that hasn't come to pass. Construction costs for nuclear power stations are dwarfed only by their decommissioning costs. Yes, politics and regulation conspire to increase the…
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We recently upgraded our home solar storage to 4.8kWh. The battery has sensors to detect how much solar power we're generating, and how much electricity we're buying from (or selling to) the grid. That means... GRAPHS AND STATISTICS! Our battery was commissioned just after midday. This graph shows: 1630 - it was fully charged. 2000 - the sun had set and the battery started discharging into…
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The first indication I had that anything was wrong at home was my solar panels's cloud service casually emailing me to say they hadn't generated any electricity that day. We were on holiday - literally on the other side of the planet - and there were reports of snow at home, so I didn't think anything of it. But the same thing happened the next day. And our alarm system app started complaining…
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Electricity demand varies throughout the day. When demand is higher, electricity prices go up. Most UK consumers are insulated from this variability - we pay a fixed price per kWh no matter what the actual wholesale cost. But it doesn't need to be this way. Exposing users to the immense variability in pricing is probably too dangerous - as seen in Texas recently. Imagine if your electricity…
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Every few years, a dodgy stat does the rounds claiming you can save £££ if you switch off all your gadgets at the wall. The standby mode of your TV is bleeding you dry!!! Energy Saving Trust@EnergySvgTrustA quick way to #saveenergy at home is to turn off tablets, laptops and consoles as soon as you stop using them, and ideally unplug them.This is a big potential #energy saver and could save you u…
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I never get power cuts. But, we've had two in the last week. They've both been fixed quickly, but it takes an age for my cable modem to reboot - and then an age for my smarthome to reconnect to the WiFi. So it was time to invest in an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). My friend Paul Curry recommended the APC SMT1500i. It usually retails for around £700, but I found a refurbished one for £200 L…
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Our domestic solar panels have generated more electricity in a year than we have consumed. We installed 5kW of solar panels on our roof in 2020. Half are East-facing, half West-facing. Over a full year, they've generated 4,165kWh. By comparison, the average UK household uses about 3,800kWh of electricity per year. But working out exactly how much we've used is slightly trickier. We have a…
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A few years ago, I took part in a local trial to install a solar battery in our home. The battery was excellent - and made a reasonable difference for our energy use. Sadly, last year, it died. It was prototype hardware, and these things happen. Moixa offered to replace it with an updated model - which was generous of them. While we were waiting for the new model to come in to stock, we moved…
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