Rolski 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 🇩🇪

To all politicians - especially Reform & Tories and to anyone else who thinks it's a good idea to leave the ECHR.
Thx @fife4europe.bsky.social

YouTube video by LBC Firm linked to Tory peer must pay back £122m for breaching Covid contract

Great to chat with @mrjamesob.bsky.social this week on @lbc.co.uk about my new book: VIP Lane & ITV doc: The Covid Contracts

The UK wasted £10bn on PPE

We were the only country on the planet to set up VIP Lanes during the pandemic

Link below👇

📖 ➡️ viplanebook.com

🎥 youtu.be/uB58NJi63Co?...

Timeless: youtu.be/ZRc0by2vZ7k

YouTube video by LBC 'It's racism and it's everywhere now': James O'Brien reacts to Trump's UN speech

@mrjamesob.bsky.social once again breaking down a long denied truth.

Media/people have been washing racism to the point where it is mainstream.

Credit: @lbc.co.uk on #YouTube

youtu.be/Vv6f3RfK7ko?...

Just cancelled Disney+ & Hulu.

Sir James Dyson says Brexit was worth it – even if it’s made people poorer Britain’s fourth-wealthiest man has argued it is better to be ‘independent’ than tied to the EU

James Dyson says #Brexit was worth it – even if it’s made people poorer.
The man who moved everything abroad...
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Also wow.
www.ndtv.com/world-news/r...

H-1B: Trump adds $100,000 fee for skilled worker visa applicants "Train Americans," the US commerce secretary told big companies, some of which have relied on foreign high-skilled workers for years.

www.bbc.com/news/article...
Wow.

Ordered!

And an honourable mention to @simonmarksfsn.bsky.social on LBC - whose reports from the USA are incredible - a National Treasure in the making!

I'm sure there are more people that I listen to, but the number is small, and it's sadly seems to be reducing rather than increasing...

Times Radio:- Unfortunately @aasmahmir.bsky.social has left but @cathynewman.bsky.social & @alexisconran.com are great, with @hugorifkind.bsky.social being bearable. Jane Garvey & @figlover.bsky.social are good too.

LBC:- @mrjamesob.bsky.social #1, @eddiemair.bsky.social (retired) & @shelaghfogarty.bsky.social were my main listens, but SF seems to have odder & odder views recently... @sangitamyska.bsky.social was fired, @lewisgoodall.com is ok, Matt Frei is great, as is @cathynewman.bsky.social.

I find myself switching LBC off more & more frequently these days...

‘Balcony solar’ may at last become a reality for flat residents in Britain UK to launch safety study into DIY ‘plug-in’ systems such as Germany’s Balkonkraftwerk as part of plan to triple solar capacity by 2030

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Simply explained, it's like running a bath.

Open the tap - and adjust the plug in the bath to control whether you want to fill it up (= charge the battery) or let some water leak out (=power your house).

It still does depend on Sunshine, but the clever electronics does all the work for you.

HTH !

When the sun's shining, the system will supply 800W directly into your home through the plug and if it's really sunny, the extra energy coming from the Solar panels will charge the battery.

A large domestic freezer might use between 300W & 900W (the actual amount should be in the User Manual - or you can search online).

If it's 300W, then in 1 hour it uses 300Wh (Watt-hours), which is 0.3 KiloWattHours (kWh).

The system that I've linked to is €400 off at the moment.

There's 1.6kWh of storage, extendable (+ €699 for another 1.6kWh) and 2 panels. You have to select your 'mounting' type - laid flat / attached to a balcony / attached to a roof / attached to a wall / etc.

And it plugs in to a wall socket.

Again - I have zero connection to this company - it's just the one I've selected after quite a lot of research - and it's very simple / practical.
It's especially appropriate to me as I'm installing it on the Roof Terrace of a Rented Flat - so I can't make any alterations to the property.

Anker SOLIX Solarbank 2 E1600 Le premier 2 400 W au monde | Kit solaire tout-en-un avec batterie 4 MPPT Détection et ajustement énergétique en temps réel grâce au compteur intelligent M

www.ankersolix.com/fr/products/...

- after all, an Electric Vehicle is a large mobile battery & if you can connect everything together (vehicles / houses / solar / wind) & enable energy flow in all directions, the system becomes self-serving, cheaper, more efficient & much more enviromentally friendly.
Ah well, plans & dreams eh...

I'm not sure that Customer Demand is the blocker here - it's possibly reticence to reduce the profits of the Energy Suppliers & their tentacles in Government which makes things difficult & expensive!
I work in Vehicle Development & we proposed these 'integrated systems' over 10 years ago -

And with systems like the Anker Solix (I promise that I have no affiliation - it's just the one I've chosen!) you can add more & more storage batteries.

Most systems take about ~4 years to pay for themselves.

And the most difficult part is safely mounting the Solar Panels (against wind).

The idea is that you generate & use your own power and you top up what you need during the day from your Electricity Provider. At night (with a Smart Tariff) and when your Solar Panels aren't working, you top up your storage with cheap energy so that you use that during the morning peak.

And clever systems like this are plug-and-play.
The solar panels are plugged into one side of the main 'box' with the supplied leads and there's a lead which comes out of the other side which you just plug into a free mains socket.

So, there are some clever systems - like the Anker Solix - where it can charge the Storage either from Solar Panels or from your mains power and it can decide whether to release power back into your Home when you need it - usually when your mains power is at it's most expensive.

..or back into the Electricity Supply Network - the 'Grid'.
In the UK, you can sell this power back to the Grid if you produce more power than you need.
In Germany, oddly, you can't (yet) sell it back - apparently because there's an oversupply of power at the moment, but hopefully that will change.

The storage must of course be able to be filled (from the mains, or solar panels, or from an Electric Vehicle) and it must be able to release the power back into your home.

If you just have solar panels, then the energy generated needs to go somewhere - either into a storage device (home battery)..