Yes - I switched from oil to heatpump 2.5 years ago. Never looked back. Also have solar and batteries. Wonderful to run the house completely oil/gas free...

I own none of those, but I did put 3.15kW of solar on my house in 2011 and another 3kW on the garage in 2022. Reckon it saves/earns me £1,500 a year...

That was me in 2011, putting my first 3.15kW on my house and everyone thinking I was an eco-loon. Same panels, same inverter going strong 15 years later, currently generating 2.6kW...

Wonderful to see so much UK electricity being generated from wind and solar right now. Less than 5% gas (which is almost certainly propping the price up much higher than it would otherwise be...

Wondered if you're aware of how much UK electricity is now capable of being produced by wind/solar. Here it is right now... The wholesale price is £55/MWhr - on days like this it's usually more like £10/MWhr as there is so much wind/solar, but the price of gas is propping it up... grid.iamkate.com

The wholesale price difference between renewables and peak gas is significant, sometimes 10 x. Remember also that prices are fixed well in advance through futures trading. This is good progress from where we are now and will trickle through in time.

In effect, yes. It means that if we are using 20% gas and 80% renewables, the renewables won't be paid the higher gas price, thus reducing costs overall.

A carpet of bluebells in our blue woods under a fallen hornbeam tree

Glorious. Very lucky to be custodians of this for a few years.

Fluffy cloud, fluffy Swallow.

"The rape is out and the asthmatics stay in. There is money in rape and a yellow country declares it to be true. Its garish beauty adds a psychedelic dimension to the landscape, what one might call the Van Gogh touch." Ronald Blythe, 'Borderland', 2005.

We’ve lost ground. We can’t even get back to where Obama had us because Trump has buried us. So much losing.

If Israel, Iran and Russia all have the full Esptein files now, does that make them worthless to them as leverage? And if so, who would definitively gain by releasing them, since the consequence would like be JD Vance as President... ?

Just... Wow

Earth and Moon from DSCOVR NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured this unique view of the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month. This view shows the fully illuminated “dark side” of the moon that is never visible from Earth. Ian Regan processed this version of the image to account for the Moon's motion. NASA / NOAA / Ian Regan

I hadn't seen this before. This is pretty remarkable.

Earth and Moon in one NASA photo.

ht @astrokatie.com

Another #ChatGPT insight.. New threads are better at debugging than old ones. I pointed it out to a new thread which was enthusiastically tidying code. "Yes, well observed, it says'. Old threads tend to focus on progressing the task you set. New ones want to tidy up first, then take on a new task".

He'll claim he did it, personally...

They didn't have to build a 'Tesla only' network. They chose to.

Also... Both were no longer young and perky, despite strenuous efforts to keep looking youthful. I strongly suspect he doesn't like to see wrinkles on the faces of the women around him.

It's probably modelled on someone with a psychology like Trump, who absolutely does need to be congratulated on everything, several times a day.

"Yes, I know, you're absolutely right. Your way is much better. But that's what I'm hard wired to do...'. So, to all the AI companies out there, if you're going to create a brilliant machine for solving problems, why tie its capabilities with human foibles?

"Perfect, now I have the exact fix". And it works. Me, 'You're supposed to be enhancing human intelligence, but what you're actually doing is mirroring the worst of human instinct with smart-arse knee-jerk response. Which is maddening, because when you have the right info. your solution is perfect.>

Me: 'How confident are you in this fix?' "About 75% - it could also be this..." Me: 'what else do you want to see before you are at 100% confidence?'.. "Ok, try posting this test code..." Me: 'I'll send you the whole file rather than you keep guessing...' (pastes entire .jsx file) >

Latest insight into #ChatGPT for solving code problems. Me: 'Here's my problem...' "Yes - I understand perfectly. Post this". Me: 'Do you want to see my current code first?'... "Yes, paste this exact section" (I paste in some code...). "I see exactly what the issue is. Replace this code here".>

Doubt it - in Surrey in one of those big houses in the woods... Agreed though, once the neighbours have them and start talking about how low their bills are. My first lot went up in 2011, more in 2021. Battery, heatpump, EV, no oil or gas. 'Leccy bill ~£40 a month, all in.

Yes... However,I showed my brother ( an investment professional), that he would get his money back in five years and they would continue to return the same + inflation for the next 10 years at least and he's still not interested. For the ideologically averse, they just can't see it.

I'm not off grid. But with solarPV, a battery and a heat pump, I am almost immune to grid price shocks as I buy so little electricity and most of it at off peak rates.

Well apparently is more complex than it seems. At the moment renewable energy providers get a premium when gas is being used. If that premium is removed, they'll probably bid higher prices in the first place. But they should be bidding stable prices based on known costs, and should still be cheaper.

What drives the price of electricity in the UK? The graph on the left is UK electricity generation today by source. Gas is orange, wind is green, solar is yellow. The graph on the right tracks the price. Compare the price graph line and the gas graph line. The more gas we use, the higher the unit £.

And of course it's available whenever you are ready to work and never rolls its eyes and says 'I explained this to you last week...'