diallingtone

@sarah_go_green @GivEnergy On a parallel theme many years ago I was an Ecotricity customer because they promised to always be cheaper than the Big 6 - until one day I realised I was was paying more than some of the Big 6. The promise had been quietly dropped - I left never to return

I'm not impressed with @GivEnergy. They want payment for cloud access. When i bought my battery they said it would be "free forever." They used that exact wording. It's on all their documents. It was one of the reasons i really liked their system. Now they want monthly payments for it!! There was no confusion on this i even went to visit their offices to have a look around. No this isn't an April fool! givenergy.co.uk/wp-content/upl…

@KateFantom There will be a cost to run gas plants whether we’re burning gas or not - I guess that’s the gas equivalent of curtailment. We need significantly more grid level storage but like everything in this country it’s all happening at glacial speed. Why is the LAES build taking so long?

In order to address the issue raised here we need, more capacity to match or get as close to peak demand. We curtail wind every day, so we need more storage, we’re getting it, and we need more interconnectors to allow the movement of that energy to where it’s needed, we’re getting those too. What we need is to switch off the gas when it’s not needed because it’s bloody expensive.

@g__j @OctopusEnergy We need a heat pump solution for combi boilers that does not need a hot water tank

Not a study, not a survey - but the actual live data from every @OctopusEnergy Cosy heat pump installed in real homes is now online. And it shows that over 80% of Cosy heat pumps were cheaper to run than a gas boiler over the last year and delivered a COP of 3.7 over the whole year (about 4.3x more efficient than a gas boiler) There’s so much disinformation from fossil fuel lobbyists on heat pumps - and anecdote based on bad installs or out of date tech - but we hear time and time again how much Octopus customer la love their heat pumps. Cosy heat pumps can run as hot as a boiler (70C+), can often be installed with no radiator changes and no new insulation, work with microbore piping, can often retain your old hot water tank if you have one. But so much more - comfort sensors in up to ten rooms, optional remote support and servicing, software updates to literally make your heating better without a visit. Effortlessly working with smart tariffs to save money. British designed, British manufactured and thousands of great British jobs. Helping insulate Brits from the last gas crisis, this gas crisis and more to come. See the data for yourself: octopus.energy/cosy-heat-pump…

@afneil @TerraOrBust The State has grown beyond the ability of the country to fund it. Even with a record tax burden the Government is still borrowing huge sums to make ends meet. As a country we are drowning in a sea of regulation

This is not good news given what will now happen to UK finances as a result of the war on Iran. And perhaps we can have some silence from all those who piled to exaggerate the significance of January’s freak figures. The UK borrowed a higher than expected £14.3bn in February. The shortfall between government spending and income was £2.2bn higher than in the same month a year ago and far above the £8.5bn forecast by economists polled by Reuters. At a time of peril for nation’s finances it is frightening to have R Reeves as Chancellor.

@wholemars Presumably supervised means someone in the drivers seat paying attention as opposed to someone in the car not paying attention or no-one in the car

Yes, Elon has said this before. Once unsupervised is available that’s all you need to charge for. Using it while you’re in the car can be free.

@DirtyTesLa FSD subscription take up will depend on use case. Those who commute or want to join the Robotaxi fleet will be more likely to pay than those who only use their cars for social purposes such as retirees who will not want to pay much, if anything. Taking away basic AP is a mistake

Will there be a difference between supervised and unsupervised FSD software, and what does that look like to the customer?

@implausibleblog The last time we ran without any gas was for 1 hour in April 2024. Given all the billions being spent on wind energy when will be the next time we manage to run the grid, even for an hour, without gas?

Very good from Ed Miliband on wind energy, "The cost of building new generation gas would be higher than off shore wind" "Off shore wind prevents the need for expensive gas plants to run" "Off shore wind farms will provide enough power to supply 12 million homes" "Also on energy security and sovereignty" "When Russia invaded Ukraine and prices went through the roof and we were subject to the markets controlled by petro states and dictators" "This is home grown clean power that we control"

@Frencheconomics It’s a complex subject and it’s almost impossible to know who’s telling the truth. There are lies, damn lies and cost comparisons between wind and gas. I don’t believe the government is making any serious effort to be transparent on the cost of energy generation

The whole debate/culture war battle over the true cost of UK wind power vs that from gas turbines risks missing the wood for the trees. It is symptomatic of a whole culture of trying to manage the supply side of the UK economy rather than enabling price signals to efficiently allocate capital. Distortionary taxes and subsidies, alongside partisan licencing rules are the scourge of allocative efficiency. Sometimes the lack of economic growth simply hides in plain sight.

@Tesla Top tip: wait for it to stop moving first

Just unbuckle & get out of your Tesla It will automatically shift into park & lock as you walk away

@joshemden So the price of electricity is largely driven by gas (marginal pricing) and because we’re using less gas the price goes up which makes electricity more expensive?

Yes, load factors have been at 30-40% because of policy choices And thank goodness. If you had no carbon tax and you ran gas >90% of the time then, as of today, it would be cheaper than these wind contracts. If we did that 3 years ago? You've just broken the UK economy. 1/5

@paulmasonnews Everyone understands that renewable energy (the supply) does not always meet demand so there has to be a large storage element to balance supply and demand. I see lots of headlines about adding more and more generation but precious little on storage. What’s the plan for storage?

This is excellent news - and cheaper than expected ... a huge vote of confidence in Labour's energy strategy

@DirtyTesLa No idea where this leaves HW3 owners - the Tesla promise that every HW3 car will achieve FSD still stands. Buying FSD would have covered any HW4 upgrade costs but FSD rental does not make that viable. Being in the UK I haven’t bought FSD yet because it does not work

This was inevitable, but sad. Glad I bought FSD for both my vehicles already. But the next Tesla...

@gailalfaratx @elonmusk If you bought FSD the relative value for money was how long you kept the car. With monthly rental the VFM is more tied to mileage - for lower mileage users the pence per mile cost will not be attractive. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this quest to improve uptake

@elonmusk Brilliant decision, this will increase FSD usage. Overall (my 2 cents), I think all Teslas should have FSD enabled for every new owner. No one will choose not to experience it.

Tesla will stop selling FSD after Feb 14. FSD will only be available as a monthly subscription thereafter.

@AndrewCurran_ It all boils down to trust. AIs are great at plausible output which can sometimes just be made up to please the recipient. Truthful output is just as important as the quality of writing. How do you assess its truthfulness without the need for permanent human oversight?

Once it tips, it will happen fast. There will be attempts to outlaw the use of AI, but the economic incentives will be too powerful. Nations will have to figure out what to do with a wave of unemployed, formerly high-income members of the priestly caste who have no prospects.

@janrosenow The issue being 'well designed systems'. How is the average consumer to know whether a system is well designed until the bills come in? This is one area where caveat emptor is somewhat unrealistic

NEW RESEARCH: UK heat pumps can perform far better than many think. Our analysis of HeatPumpMonitor.org data shows well-designed systems achieve ~40% higher efficiency than past trials (SCoP 3.86 vs 2.81), cutting bills (~£224/yr) and emissions. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

@dorfman_p I’d be very happy to see wind and solar win out long term but the comparison needs to be wind + solar + storage versus nuclear. The storage element is still very expensive at scale

@graemesblyth @g__j @OctopusEnergy @agile_phil There’s a lot of people with Ohme chargers so getting the Ohme app compliant with the new Octopus 6 hour limit is very important - I hope they’re busy talking with each other

@g__j @OctopusEnergy @agile_phil Great response GJ, really encouraged after last week. Looking forward to seeing a 6 hr charge cap option in the app with time to test before the changes come into effect

@mapet_hugh @Jenny_1884 By way of contrast my EV was in for minor bodywork (not my fault) and I insisted on an EV courtesy car. Got a Polestar for a couple of weeks. Lovely car. Since I can charge at home anything other than an EV would be inconvenient. Haven’t been to a petrol station for 5 years

Who else still has no intention of ever buying an Electric Car?

@renewablesmiffy @afneil I’m Team Renewables but let’s be realistic - the last time we ran without gas was for 1 hour in April 2024. To provide 24hrs of back up electricity would require in the region of 800 GWh of storage and we currently have approx 30 GWh. In contrast we have 12 days of gas reserves

@afneil I have no idea how 43% of generation is “useless” On storage we have 5GW battery storage with 17GW in development and construction 2.8GW pumped storage with 8GW in development

Meaningless since we can’t store any excess to use on days when the wind is weak or close to zero. Get back to me in January when we could be in the middle of a dunkelflaute.

@abzpaul @sarah_go_green @agile_phil I use the Ohme charger and app which defaults to smart charge. To date I have not had to worry about this - I just plug the car in and it works. The new regime may mean that smart charge is problematic

@diallingtone @sarah_go_green @agile_phil Why have Smart Charge turned on? I don't have it turned on unless I really need lots of power. My day to day charging is within the 2330-0530 period and my Easee car charger is scheduled to that. Octopus don't take over my charging unless I turn Smart Charging on (rare)

Here's the blog post @agile_phil wrote yesterday about the changes to Intelligeng Go. The thing I love about Octopus is they do listens and they've agreed to add a function where customers can limit the charge to 6 hours 😊 If you fixed at the higher day rate it's questionable if it's worth staying on the fixed version of this tariff as you'll be option to use that (if need be) for EV charging over 6 hours too. I took the fixed as I could see something was coming down the track but it wasn't this 😂