iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The 9th October, you say? Not sure I've seen a triple-dipper before

If my time were worth the minimum wage £12.71/h = 21p per minute, Then it's not worth my time to go round the house turning off lights at bed time. Cheaper to leave them on all night. 10 lights x 4W x 12h x25p/kWh = 12p

* which are 2x better than 2020-era LEDs, who knows that?

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Amazing how old habits haven't kept up with the pace of LED improvements! UK homes have a 6A lighting circuit for each floor, which is the time honoured design for enough lighting without overloading cables. With 2026-era* LEDs, it runs with 0.2 A, could use a USB wire instead!

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Wider point is that unattributed quotes in the G about energy sec possibly looking at something next year that she advocated for in her previous job a few years ago, are unlikely to actually turn into a policy. Just the papers trying to fill column inches with flimsy guessing about the budget istm

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The Low Standing Charge Tariff trial explained

Yes lots of trials Think that one was about trialing people shifting from peak to off-peak in exchange for lower standing charge. (They didn't) The present trial is lower standing charge in exchange for higher unit rates. octopus.energy/blog/low-sta...

octopus.energy

Find out everything you need to know about Ofgem's Low Standing Charge Tariff Trial, including who it's for and what you need to think about before you switch.

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Haven't we just been through a 2-year exploration of Rising Block tariffs as a sub option of Zero Standing Charge? Outcome was Ofgem running a pilot scheme trial that won't conclude till next summer? www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-releas...

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Pretty unwindy yesterday Pretty ungassy a couple of days earlier

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You doubt incorrectly, engineers still walk among us!

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Guess the DC developer will have their JR ready for any govt actions like that, needs to be a legislative framework in place well ahead of time. Plus the govt seems pretty keen to attract DC developers ATM! Despite importance of Drax to the system.

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Guess the grid needs Drax to be exporting most days rather than running a DC, contributing 2.6GW today, but can they use that to stop the proposal in the OP?

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Agree, but who's going to stop them and what power do they have to do that

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Could a gas fired power station do this - come off the public supply and become a private generator for a data centre, while using their existing grid connection as backup? If so a) would that be cheaper than biomass and b) are they all going to do this? Could make sense in a world of 5% CF ?

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"There are 315 datacentres in the queue to connect to the UK’s electricity grid, representing 73GW of demand." Looking forward to how next FES includes all that. Multiply by 0.1, 0.01 or 0.001 ?

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Are plug-in batteries allowed, where you are? They just permitted plug in solar in UK but are delaying on plug in batteries.

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The web of power lines and substations and windfarms being built and upgraded by different companies at different stages and different times is very complex to understand and monitor where there is progress versus delays. Could do with some high end data vis! Animated maps, colour codes, ?

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Yes some of the substations are indeed blocked on some of the new lines, some are in construction, or waiting ready to go once all the other links in the chain are in place! Ofc only needs one missing link to hold the whole thing up, and then the windfarms get switched off until it is resolved.

"major component exchanges"? That'll be Voltaire?

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In this case, they've approved the substations at each end, but the power line inbetween them is a separate application under different planning laws. It has been objected by the local councils and so has to wait for a public inquiry. The wind turbines are separate again, and are already spinning!

Yes feels like a different category is needed that NESO don't seem to report yet 'electricity needed to be stored for later' versus 'electricity couldnt be produced at all' There was talk a while back about they were going to publish storage as a separate category, I missed if anything happened?

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DIUC that the curtailment volumes include battery and PSH sites, which were instructed (paid) to delay discharging and store power until later (or increase charging, to store constrained power for use later) This is an interesting dynamic that seems to be growing! Lots of new BESS onto your map.

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Yes, if you add 50% more polystyrene insulation to get from U 0.18 to 0.12, for a building running on Scottish electricity, did that save carbon? Not addressed afaics.

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Think a lot of people 'down south' are not being informed about the construction going into N Scotland, because it's only reported in the Scottish media, and then only in the context of "locals protest against pylons company" So gets stick from both, going too fast! going too slow!

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Current proposal is to tighten U value limit to around 0.12-0.15 (vs ~0.1 for PH) They still anticipate heat pumps, but at that low level of heat demand it might be overkill to have a heatpump and direct electric could be better Which begs q about embodied carbon, not answered!

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The spades are already in the ground for the 400kV upgrades, and the drones are already in the air! www.ssen-transmission.co.uk/projects/pro...

https://www.ssen-transmission.co.uk/projects/project-map/greens-400kv-substation/#ProjectUpdatesCardTitle-66559

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For entertainment, here is the ongoing Scottish government consultation on how to implement 'Scottish Passivhaus" (Passiv-hoose) www.gov.scot/publications...

gov.scot

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Beats me why no new regs since 23 despite consultation-fest ISTM a problem that big changes are introduced in English building regs every 10 years with navel gazing in between Better process in Scotland, small increments come in every 1-2 years, even if the policies have been a bit variable

Unclear if their new policy is to roll back to the pre-FHS regs (so back to 2012 iirc) Or just not proceed with the heatpumps bit, which doesn't save much £ and equally doesn't cost much £. (£200m /yr) If the deep insulation is retained, then a newbuild doesn't consume much heating either way.

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At this point it's all culture wars so don't expect it to make technical sense, but - FHS was proposed by the (then) gov in Oct 2019 - the expensive bits of FHS (insulation) were implemented in 2021 and 23 (ditto) - the remaining bits are heatpumps and PV instead of gas, and housekeeping eg SAP

WillP @wiilp.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Software filter to allocate any data point reading less than 50W to fridge, and any greater than 500W to hob? Or more fun to build a physical power measurement device at the plug of the fridge and deduct that amount from the hob measurement?

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So total gas on the system staying pretty low The big Scottish BESS were actually importing as planned so 'turn up' actually means 'import less' not 'export more'.

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WillP @wiilp.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Interesting thing I hadn't noticed before: Wind farms in N Scotland curtailed today because constraints on B4, Battery farms in Central belt Scotland were turned up, to supply replacement power, cheaper than turning up gas! Today 12:00

Wind farms curtailed, battery farms turned up

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program-evaluation.ccomptes.fr

"the EDF Group needs to finance an investment programme... €460 billion in 2025-2040... €100 billion also by RTE" Power from 1970s reactors is very cheap, until they have to be refurbished and replaced = 15% of French GDP! And EDF projects are not known for staying on budget.

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bsky.app/profile/acjs...

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And the grid meter has separate registers for import and export, both with positive sign. A large industrial site has hundreds of 3 phase meters reading in kWh and MWh and MJ with different sign conventions and calibration and summation periods. A junior engineer has to keep track of them all 😇

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Yes! And a battery charger is usually the same device as the battery inverter ('discharger'?!) so is it's purpose (positive measurement) a charge or a discharge? And what if it's a hybrid inverter where PV goes straight to battery?

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Though that would equally be true for fleet BEVs and fleet ICEs, so 🤷

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These sign conventions confuse people at the national grid level too!

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Could be! A 3-8 yo car at 90-120k is an unusually high annual mileage - must include a lot of taxis and fleet cars where its someones job to keep it maintained

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Yes, could be? Would worn tyres/brakes show before 60k miles? My (anecdote != data) was tyres suffering on a vehicle where a heavy battery had been shoehorned into a chassis that was originally designed around a petrol engine. But new BEVs platforms come designed around their battery weight.

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MOT class 3 and 4 vehicles: initial failures by defect category - GOV.UK

No - the leading causes of MOT 'dangerous' fails are tyres, then brakes. Rarely emissions. So IDK why BEVs are performing better! www.gov.uk/csv-preview/...

gov.uk

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This was interesting because a MoT test doesn't* test the engine or battery - it tests lights, steering, brakes, tyres, wipers etc which are broadly similar on BEV and ICE cars. So why the different pass rates? *but it does test the exhaust for smoke and unburned fuel. Is that where old ICEs fail?

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Yeah the key is there has to be cheaper alternative travel option (Aside - I'm a School Run Dad again! council have barred sixth formers from using school buses, only legally obliged to transport under-16s. So parents have to drive 6th formers to school until they can drive themselves. Madness!)

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This is what I shout at the TV whenever I hear about "curtailment pushing up bills, those windfarms just getting paid to switch off" - Actually it's "gas power stations just get paid to turn on"! 12GW of that happening today, but would be 20GW if we didn't have wind power.

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Think people are mostly ok with congestion pricing by TfL in London because theyre obviously spending on public transport alternative and you can plan journey round zone. Would be less publicly acceptable to pay because someone crashed in front of you down the M5 and now you're stuck in a queue?

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