Government to go "further and faster" in becoming energy secure
www.gov.uk
The Energy Secretary outlines measures to protect consumers and make Britain energy secure.

The original (very generic) title):

Government to go “further and faster” in becoming energy secure

The Energy Secretary outlines measures to protect consumers and make Britain energy secure.

They are speaking of panels in the 800W range which you can just buy , mount in front of your balcony or on top of your carport, and plug into a wall socket.

These things are wildly popular in Germany. The do not generate a lot of power, but armotize in about three years and save real money. (Depending on how old the metering technology is, they can also make the power meter spin backwards, which I think is only fair considering how much households pay for kWh, compared to energy-hungry companies, which get most of the the massive cost savings from renewables but don’t pay for the necessary upgrade of the grid).

  • Tim@lemmy.snowgoons.roEnglish
    91·
    2 days ago

    The UK though has the added spice of the uniquely unsafe ringmain wiring standard, in which 24A cable in the wall is protected by a 32A breaker at the distribution panel. It’s only “safe” if the load is evenly balanced around the ring, and the ring isn’t broken (that’s why UK plugs need fuses in them - to make it harder to severely unbalance the ring by pulling 32A out of a single socket, and equally to try and protect the appliance cable if a short or similar tries to.)

    I’ve not sat down with a pen and paper to work out how having a generator somewhere on the ring affects things - presumably the authorities have…

    • hitmyspot@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      21 hours ago

      But doesn’t the plug based amp mitigate the very problem you’re worried about at the appliance level?

      • Tim@lemmy.snowgoons.roEnglish
        1·
        18 hours ago

        Isn’t that what I wrote?

        It’s an imperfect mitigation, though - the typical fuse in the plug is 13A, so you only need two fully loaded sockets and you’re already in trouble. Fortunately these days nobody is plugging in 3-bar electric fires or immersion heaters, and it’s quite hard to find those kinds of loads outside the kitchen, so it’s less of a practical issue, sure. (This is also why UK electrical code recommends that any load greater than 2kW should be given its own radial instead of being plugged into the ringmain. It’s not unusual for the kitchen to be on a dedicated radial (or two) even if the rest of the house is on rings.)

        (You could instantly make UK wiring a lot safer by just eliminating the over-rating of the breakers - i.e. if you have a 24A ring, put a 24A breaker on it. In the olden days that would probably have caused nuisance trips (3-bar fires and all,) but these days I doubt anyone would notice.)