The UK needed the National Grid upgrades a decade past. The UK needs to 'Take back control'. Have ENERGY SECURITY. Nationalise the NATIONAL GRID. Forget the Arms race & the spending to be able to fire missiles costing millions of quid or to get a train trip to be 20 minutes quicker (for some, very few. HS2) . As to the Navy, it looks like half the fleet are under maintenance and the rest going in for running repairs far too often, and still not enough humans to be operating what is working.

Edited 14 April14 Apr by Evolution13

PS. Not just Pylons, Sub Stations, huge substations, blocked in planning by residents that block anything. Well reduce power to their regions. Put their tariffs up, and be sure their homes get reduced power day times and stuff them. Not just the issue in Scotland. The Southern parts of the UK need to be dealt with.

Edited 14 April14 Apr by Evolution13

Electricity prices were negative nearly the whole of last weekend.

I got 21 hours free on Saturday and 15 hours on Sunday. The hours that weren't free were still very low.

@Dieselgate Which company was that from?

19 minutes ago, Evolution13 said:

@Dieselgate Which company was that from?

EDF - FreePhase Dynamic tariff.

They have the 8 Nuclear Power stations in the UK & abroad including Torness in Scotland. Even if only 5 are generating in the Uk and all that electricity available. Torness supposedly produces enough to power 75% of homes in Scotland and it is not being used for that. As well to make it 'Much Cheapness' or Free.

Edited 15 April15 Apr by Evolution13

England is being pumped in to the world's largest wind farms ie those in the North Sea which has the perfect blend od attributes ie right latitude and right depth of water.

Along with Wales the English coast line has the potential for huge amounts of tidal ie Bristol Channel and Mersey estuaries.

Probably has been getting the private investors to stump up.

Like with night time energy at 6 or 7 p per kwh who is going to put up billions unless there is guaranteed pricing per KWH and for several GWh per day ?

In England we will have another two big nuclear reactors plants ie Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C. Scotland will probably be an importer when wind not blowing etc.

Overlay ever increasing home production during the day time for the home use, use in one's EVs and exporting back into the Grid it is clear to see even more times electricity has a minus cost as it did for Octopus Agile users over the weekend.

The growth in the UK Battery Energy storage system is exponential and now very significant in the overall real time supply. Oddly I see this as maybe a threat to the cheap electricity ie Night Time period that EVs and households that also use night time lecky as clearly increasingly these ever increasing BESS commercial sites will such up the cheap night time lecky to sell it back to the GRID during the day time and us domestic buyers may well lose out. Even more important households than can make their own lecky via solar panels and store via their own batteries which of course nearly every household can do !

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https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/storage/595248/batter-energy-storage-systems-bess-uk/

Edinburgh-headquartered Fidra Energy is developing a 1,400 MW/3,100 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). International investors have chipped in nearly £1bn to build Thorpe Marsh, which is set to become Europe’s largest BESS once complete in 2027. Across the UK, former coal power stations are undergoing similar transformations, with developers keen to make use of existing high-capacity grid connections and transmission infrastructure. In Wales, Ampeak Energy is transforming the Uskmouth power station site with a series of major BESS projects. Meanwhile in Scotland, Alcemi is nearing completion on its 500 MW Coalburn 1 BESS on the site of a former open-cast coal mine, while Apatura is planning a 650 MW BESS and data centre on the site of a former steelworks near Motherwell. A decade ago, the UK battery storage industry barely existed as a commercial proposition.

Today, it is one of the fastest-growing clean energy sectors in the country, attracting billions of pounds of investment, and an increasingly critical piece of national infrastructure.

Since 2020, the UK’s operational battery storage capacity has increased by more than 500%, rising from around 1,100 MW to nearly 7 GW by 2025.

The grid-scale battery storage market grew 45% by operational capacity in 2025, with 4 GWh coming online during the year.

Edited 15 April15 Apr by lol-lol

@lol-lol You really live in a parallel universe if you really believe nearly every household can make their own electric and store it in batteries. Not everyone is in detached homes, terraced or blocks. There are Flats in all sorts of heights & multi-storeys. Places with no Gardens or places that are Listed or in Heritage areas etc etc. Housing Associations, Local Authority / Council houses, buy to lets etc etc. Houses of Multiple occupancy. Then on Canal Boats / River Boats, Caravans, Mobile Homes & many types of residences. So solar and battery is a major investment which someone has to pay for if it is possible to have. It is like the factual nonsense about how many vehicle drivers have Off Street parking where they can charge BEV,s or PHEV,s.

Edited 15 April15 Apr by Evolution13

29 minutes ago, Evolution13 said:

@lol-lol You really live in a parallel universe if you really believe nearly every household can make their own electric and store it in batteries. Not everyone is in detached homes, terraced or blocks. There are Flats in all sorts of heights & multi-storeys. Places with no Gardens or places that are Listed or in Heritage areas etc etc. Housing Associations, Local Authority / Council houses, buy to lets etc etc. Houses of Multiple occupancy. Then on Canal Boats / River Boats, Caravans, Mobile Homes & many types of residences. So solar and battery is a major investment which someone has to pay for if it is possible to have. It is like the factual nonsense about how many vehicle drivers have Off Street parking where they can charge BEV,s or PHEV,s.

You not seen all the stuff on "Balcony" solar ? As well as people living in high rises using plug in batteries and solar panels, either rigid or the flexi ones, i have a couple of those too which are quite good, use them anywhere. My cheapest battery, small solar panel with a couple fo LED lights was £14 delivered by Amazon.

There seems to be a big lack of inventiveness on this island which is odd as we were suppose to be exactly that, one of the most inventive peoples in the world.

I not spent much at all, relative to this group you think as the privileged few. No solar on roof, no expensive massive batteries like TESLA Power-walls sat in the garage.

Those such installations the install costs exceed the cost of the actual goods themselves. Batteries, solar items can be bought quite cheaply not too difficult to setup and start paying for themselves right away and the pay back time was reckoned to be less than 3 years, probably going to be more like 2 years when the more expensive energy hits in the second half of this year.

Solar and batteries are not a major investment but they are a major cost saver. Got one mid sized solar generator sat next to the fridge freezer, cost about £300 but saves about a pound a day as it runs the fridge freezer during the expensive day time electricity period. Linked up to a £30 solar panel via the cat flap to supplement the super night day electricity. I hear there are many off street charging parking been installed over the place. My company's Source London install bunches of them in London a few years ago and this is being rolled out in many cities. Worcestershire /Worcester is useless but then we have had Con and now Reform run councils so not their priority it seemed /seems and now the UK is paying for the negligence to grow UK energy independence before the current energy crisis.

A lack of creative thinking and self reliance on the part of British society. Good news is that rumours are circulating that the September Excide duty rise by a couple of pence is looking like it will be postponed by a few months. Expect the Treasury mileage rates will go up in 6 weeks time to reflect the higher costs. Get creative !

Edited 15 April15 Apr by lol-lol

Money, easy come easy go to those with money. Millions in the UK have not enough money to pay bills and feed them selves. While Haves get Free or Cheap electricity and grants for Heat Pumps. The law is changing in the UK to allow plug in Solar and prices will supposedly be cheap. Battery storage to power your home is not cheap yet. Then we have the fire hazard. As it is many hundreds of thousands of peoples residences have still not had Cladding sorted out, and have properties they can not sell.

37 minutes ago, Evolution13 said:

Money, easy come easy go to those with money. Millions in the UK have not enough money to pay bills and feed them selves. While Haves get Free or Cheap electricity and grants for Heat Pumps. The law is changing in the UK to allow plug in Solar and prices will supposedly be cheap. Battery storage to power your home is not cheap yet. Then we have the fire hazard. As it is many hundreds of thousands of peoples residences have still not had Cladding sorted out, and have properties they

40 minutes ago, Evolution13 said:

Money, easy come easy go to those with money. Millions in the UK have not enough money to pay bills and feed them selves. While Haves get Free or Cheap electricity and grants for Heat Pumps. The law is changing in the UK to allow plug in Solar and prices will supposedly be cheap. Battery storage to power your home is not cheap yet. Then we have the fire hazard. As it is many hundreds of thousands of peoples residences have still not had Cladding sorted out, and have properties they can not sell.

Reminds me of Mr Ketshaws song. I came from a poor family, lucky enough to get a scholarship to a good school which was fee paying for many attendees. Nothing i have done has been easy and have worked long hours under many difficult scenarios to pay a mortgage and get a modern safe car to transport the family and myself around.

Always tried to look at problems with an analytical mindset, sometimes get it wrong but also get it right sometimes too.

We live in an age where there has never been so much freely available information. We still have schools in the uk where the fees are more than the average persons wages and that is being addressed but through global trade its like Solar panels, batteries with solar input and decent invertors are incredibly cheap considering they are made and shipped half way round the world. I have found all examples I have bought very well made, they shut off when fully charged, no burning smell, nothing. A few fires happen but perhaps where the operator plugged in the wrong charger ie 36 or 48v charger into a 24v battery pack or left it leaned against a radiator. Relatively few examples like EVs being more than ten times less likely to catch fire than ICE, lost in the clich bait ignorance of YouTube scum.

I embrace the new world tech, glad I gave up my ICE cars and fuel card and charge at home from renewable and low carbon nuclear energy and with the metaphor that every cloud has a silver lining this Middle Eastern war, no 3, will hasten the adoption of EVs and help reduce carbon and other pollutants going into the air we all breath.

So anyway. Change is coming. Westminster is changing planning in England and will sort out those councils and NIMBY,s that are holding things up. Not anytime soon. No big rush to get things more green for everyone. More Nuclear eventually and the next generations will still be paying for the decommissioning of what provided cheap electricity for past generations.

Have to say I keep reading this thread every now and then and have visions of Heath Robinson arrangements for batteries and solar panels at @lol-lol 's house and him running around morning and night like Scrooge unplugging and plugging in all his electrical appliances to his batteries and panels...

1 hour ago, skomaz said:

Have to say I keep reading this thread every now and then and have visions of Heath Robinson arrangements for batteries and solar panels at @lol-lol 's house and him running around morning and night like Scrooge unplugging and plugging in all his electrical appliances to his batteries and panels...

Only one which is the fridge-freezer and could quite easily set the fridge freezer to work off the Ecoplay device which, as they all are, solar energy converters, with battery with inverter to AC. Good reason to move fridge plug to wall socket in the evening and that in to the Ecoplay in the morning is there are considerable losses, 10-20% I would guess, so more efficient to move the plug in the evening and back again in the morning, takes 2 seconds.

The office electricals, now a desktop PC as I had to give my work laptops back last month, that Solar energy convertor, battery, invertor device just takes the solar energy from my second 2 axis solar tracking array so no 3 pin plug transfer, shove the solar barrel connector in and press 2 little buttons to swich on the AC and the DC outputs, again 2 seconds, and that run all the devices in the office, PC, screen, printer, desk lights and when needed plug phone in to USB C. No hassle at all.

Just watch the whole house, those little devices, router, TV boxes, Sky, BT/EE, land line phone charger running on 40W or so. Boiling kettle etc is done on main electricity and typical is a couple of KWh so 60p or so. Night time different story with EVs being charged up and a draw of about 50 Kwh for about £3 for 200 miles in the EVs.

Average electricity cost, currently, ie since April 1st massive price drop, about 7.5 p per KWh and no hassle to achieve this !

Edited 15 April15 Apr by lol-lol

According to the Daily Mail, the fire services are starting to investigate and record the actual cause of car fires after claims the hybrid cars are 3 times more likely to kill the occupants in a fire than a normal ICE car.

Interestingly, the government are saying that according insurance analysis the opposite is correct, but they will not share their findings publicly.

It seems that Tusker, insure 30,000 company cars say that they find the hybrids are more likely to catch fire.

So it seems that we shall have to wait to see what the truth is when the fire services actually get some useful data from their findings in due course. It has been mentioned before that the figures that have issued by the insurance industry is flawed, hopefully we get to the truth either way.

Victory for the Mail on Sunday as emergency services start tracking cause of fires in hybrid cars | Daily Mail Online

Is that Hybrids as just PHEV,s since there were be questions on while charging or is it Electrified vehicles like Mild Hybrids, known as 'Hybrids'. I wonder 'The Mail on Sunday journalist or editor knows what is what, maybe their ar53 from elbow. PS, Re deaths in hybrids vs ICE vehicles was not death by fire was it? How many car crashes involved the vehicle going on fire and killing occupants?

Edited 17 April17 Apr by Evolution13

@Evolution13 Well, you read what I read, and that info is just not present. What it does actually highlight, in theory at least, is that the data is just not being recorded correctly, that also seems to be the case in the US. A car fire, is just recorded as a car fire, it does not specify what type of car, its fuel, where it started and maybe not even if the car was in a road accident, etc.

Wouldn't you have thought that that kind of data ought to have been recorded in order to learn from the resultant data in order to ensure that we make progress in the right directions rather than assumptions?

Death by fire in car crashes in England Wales is a figure surely known by Coroners, & others. Office for national statistics possibly from Coroners. Then the Scotlands statistics, & Northern Ireland's. Insurance companies must know exactly how many vehicles insured and involved in crashes resulted in the deaths by fire.

Edited 17 April17 Apr by Evolution13

New electric cars undercut petrol vehicles on price for first time, says Autotrader

• Autotrader data reveals pricing landmark in new car market

• Average price of a new electric car is now £785 cheaper than a petrol vehicle

New EVs are now cheaper on average than petrol models for the very first time. That is according to fresh data from Autotrader, which has found that electric vehicles are now undercutting their fossil fuelled equivalents on price thanks to government grants and sustained manufacturer discounting. The firm has found that so far this month, the average price of a new EV on its platforms has been £42,620 – £785 cheaper than the £43,405 a petrol car typically costs. Experts say that the change has been heavily influenced by manufacturers offering money off, with the average discount standing at 11.7% in April, having peaked at 12.8% in March, following new plate day.

Car Dealer Magazine

New electric cars undercut petrol vehicles on price for f...

New EVs are now cheaper on average than petrol models for the very first time. That is according to fresh data from Autotrader, which has found that

Good to see EVs getting cheaper and cheaper. Renault have just achieved another of their cars getting the full grant of £3750 due to the battery pack being built in Poland rather than LG Chem (S. Korea). Europe competing with China !! European Car of the Year 2024 followed by R5 being European CoTY 2025 !

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The Renault Scenic E-Tech is now available for £33,245, as a result of achieving eligibility for the Government’s Electric Car Grant. It's the third Renault model to qualify for the upper-rate grant, which provides a £3,750 discount off a new electric vehicle (EV). With the grant applied, the Scenic E-Tech becomes one of the cheapest models in its class, almost undercutting the £33,065 Omoda 5 Electric. The Electric Car Grant is available to electric cars adhering to a strict minimum criteria covering emissions, range, sustainability and warranty support. Its criteria require a brand to have Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) verification, which sets greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets in line with what is needed to keep global heating below damaging levels and reach net zero by 2050 at latest. To qualify, electric cars must have a recommended retail price (RRP) of £37,000 or less, a minimum battery range of 100 miles (160km), a three-year or 60,000 mile warranty, and be powered by a battery with an eight-year or 100,000-mile warranty. The ‘greenest’ vehicles in band one receive a grant of £3,750, with band two vehicles receiving £1,500. View the full list of eligible vehicles, here.

Renault's Scenic features a 220PS electric motor and an 87kWh battery pack for a range of up to 381 miles

4 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

New electric cars undercut petrol vehicles on price for first time, says Autotrader

• Autotrader data reveals pricing landmark in new car market

• Average price of a new electric car is now £785 cheaper than a petrol vehicle

New EVs are now cheaper on average than petrol models for the very first time. That is according to fresh data from Autotrader, which has found that electric vehicles are now undercutting their fossil fuelled equivalents on price thanks to government grants and sustained manufacturer discounting. The firm has found that so far this month, the average price of a new EV on its platforms has been £42,620 – £785 cheaper than the £43,405 a petrol car typically costs. Experts say that the change has been heavily influenced by manufacturers offering money off, with the average discount standing at 11.7% in April, having peaked at 12.8% in March, following new plate day.

Car Dealer Magazine

New electric cars undercut petrol vehicles on price for f...

New EVs are now cheaper on average than petrol models for the very first time. That is according to fresh data from Autotrader, which has found that

Are they using their own data? If so, then it's quite possibly flawed.

Check out Barrie Crampton's videos on YouTube for the evidence.

2 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

According to the Daily Mail, the fire services are starting to investigate and record the actual cause of car fires after claims the hybrid cars are 3 times more likely to kill the occupants in a fire than a normal ICE car.

Interestingly, the government are saying that according insurance analysis the opposite is correct, but they will not share their findings publicly.

It seems that Tusker, insure 30,000 company cars say that they find the hybrids are more likely to catch fire.

So it seems that we shall have to wait to see what the truth is when the fire services actually get some useful data from their findings in due course. It has been mentioned before that the figures that have issued by the insurance industry is flawed, hopefully we get to the truth either way.

Victory for the Mail on Sunday as emergency services start tracking cause of fires in hybrid cars | Daily Mail Online

Who would have thought that putting a hot ICE powerplant next to high voltage electrical system was an increased risk.

Think we have a big future problems with hybrids, particularly PHEVs.

2 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

Are they using their own data? If so, then it's quite possibly flawed.

Check out Barrie Crampton's videos on YouTube for the evidence.

I would not give Crapton the time of day. Talk about skewed bias.

As you can see the report is the Car Dealer magazine and Autotrader and the other is a pea brain Youtube click baiter...

@lol-lol In that case, you might be an ostrich. and have a skewed bias yourself?

I really do think that you should actually watch some of his latest videos, see the evidence that he gets from their own website and then try to justify your viewpoint and statement about him being biased.