Triptych

An energy man came to see us, because we might be guinea pigs in a project designed to engineer behavioural change. Am I pliable?

We learned... 

That the direction in which UK is headed - from an electricity grid with few big generators and many small consumers, to one with many small generators widely geographically distributed among the consumers - is problematic for the network. Locations like ours - essentially the end of the line - do not have components that will carry moderate volumes of power up the line to the main spine of the grid. We already have a couple of solar farms, several large, commercial roof-top PV installations, a lot of domestic PV and an anaerobic digester. That's close to the limit unless a new generator will pay a lot to fund network upgrading

That matching local consumption to local production will help - so incentivise people to change behaviour. Big batteries on the site of the generators will help - that's probably coming

That people who have domestic-scale batteries can charge them up from either their own PV panels or from the supplier at a cheap time, then sell the power back to the grid at an expensive time. Is there a moral dimension to that? 

That the 'dream' of using electric cars as a power buffer - a battery on wheels - storing at times of plenty and returning the power at times of need - is being resisted by car manufacturers, concerned about the impact on battery life. (But keeping your car's battery fully charged most of the time is definitely bad for it) 

That the anaerobic digester nearby - that I have ridden past many times but was unaware of - generates power by fermenting (inter alia) maize grown on the land surrounding it. I have seen the maize - even snapped it as a potential blip - but assumed it was animal feed. Using digesters to turn waste imto power is one thing; growing crops purely to create energy - a lot less net energy than the same area used for PV panels - does not fill me with joy, or food

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Meanwhile, our panels had a good day. The low sun shone through the windows and created reflections. I'd rather have been out capturing trees in a pool, but you take what you are given. The loaf in the oven is, at least partly, sun-baked