New Coal Plant in Cumbria

[JaDanketies]

yeah it's Ecotricity that are absolutely plundering my inheritance

[Sebastian Cobb]

This flat has been with Bulb ever since we had the Scottish Power proprietary meters swapped out for standard Economy 7 in 2017. I'm impressed that nobody has managed to be cheaper in the meantime - I go on comparison sites and they tell me their best deal costs me more money.

I miss working in the energy sector; it's an interesting business.

I used to too! Or at least the software for commercial shipping.

Part of me would be interested in doing something with emerging renewables.

Bulb keep wanting to push a smart meter on me but they can get to fuck. Don't like the telemetry implications and there's a few horror stories with bad practice, one company was knocking out meters that whilst used encryption all used the same private key.

[Sebastian Cobb]

yeah it's Ecotricity that are absolutely plundering my inheritance

Does this now mean me and goose have to draw straws as to who offers you a referral link?

[touchingcloth]

Bulb are apparently shitty when it comes to the £50 voucher in some cases. A friend of mine had recently moved flat and switched to Bulb, but they've refused to give her the £50 because the outgoing tenants were with them.

[canadagoose]

Part of me would be interested in doing something with emerging renewables.

That would be interesting. If any forum types are looking to hire someone in that industry part-time for anything involving Excel, or basic bash stuff, let me know...

Bulb keep wanting to push a smart meter on me but they can get to fuck. Don't like the telemetry implications and there's a few horror stories with bad practice, one company was knocking out meters that whilst used encryption all used the same private key.

Can I swap with you? I'd like a smart meter but we've never been offered one. Bloody Edinburgh. It's probably all the new-builds that are taking the engineers' time.

[TheBrownBottle]

We are saving up for solar panels at the moment. We're in southern Portugal where the ANNUAL INSOLATION makes it theoretically economically viable.

We actually had some installed on what seemed like a good deal with our electricity supplier. They put up a 1.2 kW array on an auto consume setup, where there's no storage so it's not an off-grid system and there's no feed-in tariff as such, but the idea is that your daytime usage comes from the solar first and then is topped up from the grid, with surplus going back to the grid and night usage being deducted from what you have fed in.

1.2 kW wouldn't power all of our appliances simultaneously, but is enough that with careful usage it could cover the vast majority of our needs. However the supplier neglected to mention that our supply is three phase, with the 1.2 kW array being split evenly across the phases so that any given socket gets  a maximum of 400W from the panels, and with our daytime unit rate being double the nighttime one this rendered them utterly fucking useless. Doubly fucking useless, in fact, as the dolt who installed them muffed something up and the surplus we generated during the day made our meter tick up rather than down. Which I only noticed as I'm anal about tracking usage in spreadsheets - less anal people could easily not have noticed.

Our plan is to get a couple of panels. One with an AC inverter and plugged into a phase which can cover most of our day usage - the fridge, office, chargers - and another DC panel plugged into a water heater, which would function essentially as a battery as it's our single biggest electricity cost.

We try not to use AC, but we rent our spare room in summer and holidaymakers cane it. One of the suppliers here offers a tariff where your 50 highest use hours each month are free, so that might cover the AC, especially if we were to put the washing machine on and do some ironing while guests are abed.

That sounds like a sensible approach - I like your idea of using both AC and DC to power different components.   Without me slipping too far into accidental Partridge, our consumption is low for our area but bloody high to me, as we have a 17-cell array with a 5.1kWh yield.  Problem is, even a bog standard air con unit for a single small room is roughly 2.5-3.2kWh.  But we use far less when it's hot - just a 15 min blast of cold air to cool the place.   On our last bill we uploaded 613 kWh to the grid, and drew down 994kWh (over three months).  The problem is that the credits are not valued at the same level as the debits - which they would need to be to further encourage PV usage.  We've insulated the buggery out of the house - it's weird when the neighbours reckon they haven't seen double glazing before - so most of our consumption comes in winter.  No central heating, so we rely on those evil portable heaters (it drops to c.0C in winter here).  They eat electricity, those bastards.

I did read recently that Aussie household consumes 18KW a day, which is almost exactly double UK usage - though apparently the US has an average of close to 30Kw per day, so I can only assume they all grew up in a household where the money actually did grow on trees.  If I was being honest, my consumption could be far less than it is - I'm sure there's plenty of us where that's the case.  Working from home for six months has also skewed some of those figures too, of course.

Sod it, I went full Alan there.  Who needs the Gibbons brothers?

[Buelligan]

We live in my dead dad's house while probate is sorted out, we're planning to move in here when that's done.

He had his energy from some green cooperative and Google says the cost is 40% higher than the cheapest on the market.  And I'd well believe it. The house is badly insulated and we need to get the windows and doors replaced, but the energy bills are still through the roof. Must be nice to be able to increase your energy bills by 40% because you believe in cooperatives.

You got a house for free and you're complaining?

[TheBrownBottle]

I don't think Ecotricity is a cooperative, mind.  I'm happy to admit I could be wrong - but aren't they a company that doesn't pay dividends rather than a co-operative where there's a mass ownership model, with voting rights within the organisation, limitations on shareholder size and dividends are paid on that basis?

[JaDanketies]

Yeah don't know where I got the idea they were a cooperative from.

Buelligan, I still try and save a couple of pennies by buying reduced groceries, free house or no free house. Chucking many hundreds of pounds at an energy company every year makes buying carrots for 40p rather than 60p seem like pissing in the wind.

My brother has a similar attitude, "What's a few hundred quid this way or that way?" and I think "it's a shittonne of fresh carrots."

[touchingcloth]

That sounds like a sensible approach - I like your idea of using both AC and DC to power different components.   Without me slipping too far into accidental Partridge, our consumption is low for our area but bloody high to me, as we have a 17-cell array with a 5.1kWh yield.  Problem is, even a bog standard air con unit for a single small room is roughly 2.5-3.2kWh.  But we use far less when it's hot - just a 15 min blast of cold air to cool the place.   On our last bill we uploaded 613 kWh to the grid, and drew down 994kWh (over three months).  The problem is that the credits are not valued at the same level as the debits - which they would need to be to further encourage PV usage.  We've insulated the buggery out of the house - it's weird when the neighbours reckon they haven't seen double glazing before - so most of our consumption comes in winter.  No central heating, so we rely on those evil portable heaters (it drops to c.0C in winter here).  They eat electricity, those bastards.

I did read recently that Aussie household consumes 18KW a day, which is almost exactly double UK usage - though apparently the US has an average of close to 30Kw per day, so I can only assume they all grew up in a household where the money actually did grow on trees.  If I was being honest, my consumption could be far less than it is - I'm sure there's plenty of us where that's the case.  Working from home for six months has also skewed some of those figures too, of course.

Sod it, I went full Alan there.  Who needs the Gibbons brothers?

We do the same with aircon - 15 minutes before bed if it's a really hot night, but otherwise we try and use a fan or keep the windows open. The climate isn't particularly muggy here, which makes it easier to acclimatise to the warmer nights. We have a wood burner for winter fortunately, but the house is not well insulated, so it's mainly a case of jumpers and socks in the colder months.

The credits/debits situation is essentially why we want to direct surplus into heating water, as hot water is the most constant energy need we have really, and we can manage just about all other appliances around that. We see our goal as reducing our costs on what we use to cover the AC usage by guests in the summer, as it makes sense for that usage to come from the grid because like you say they eat through the electric and a solar and battery setup which could recharge quickly enough and chug through enough of the night would be massively expensive.

[royce coolidge]

yeah it's Ecotricity that are absolutely plundering my inheritance

Fuck off you turd.

[JaDanketies]

abuse

you alright pal? maybe take a walk and WhatsApp your friends