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 your WiFi. Plug your bike / laptop / space heater into the smart-plug. When electricity is cleanest, …
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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 computational processes take a lot of electricity. Back in the old days, batch computing meant that…
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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 theoretically better than every renewable power source. Nuclear totally clean! Fewer people die of nuclear…
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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 price - but nuclear hasn't made electricity particularly cheap. Indeed, we mostly seem to be paying…
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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 our home. 0700 the next day - the sun rose and started generating electricity, so the battery stopped…
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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 that it couldn't reach our home network. Nor could our security camera app, heating app, and…
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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 provider could say "hey, prices are going to be high tonight. We'll pay you to use less 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 up to £30 a year.Find out more here:ensvgtr.uk/pS1ut#EnergyEfficiency pic.x.com/q2CWdlkaBH❤️ 9💬 3🔁 01…
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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 Let's put it through its paces! It's a chunky monkey! And weighs about 25Kg. So best set it on t…
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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 smart meter which reads our import and export. And a generation meter which shows how much we've…
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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 house. Then COVID happened... Anyway, long-story-short, we now have a shiny new 2kWh battery…
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I can't find these instructions anywhere online - so I hope these notes help! The AS302P SMETS2 has two buttons. I've labelled the top button A and the bottom button B. Press the A button once to bring up the menu. The display should light up. It should show "General". Press the B button. This scrolls down the display. Press it a couple of times until it says "Registers". If you go past it, press it again and again until Registers scrolls back into view. Press the A button to enter the…
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