Posts by Peterml

Waiting for speedy broadband? UK's Openreach prioritizing existing work over fiber expansion

Much the same in my small town. Openreach put in most of the main fibres in during 2020 (they pushed them through the ducts to our group of houses late one night in the middle of lockdown 1.0) and since then never a day goes past when you don't see at least one Openreach van and/or one of several contractors out and about. More and more houses are sporting the square box of fibre which is the giveaway regarding the level of take-up. Jurassic Fibre have also plumbed in a big green equipment hut to get in on the action. Great for us but a bit annoying for those stuck on the end of a long piece of copper.

Massive energy storage system goes online in UK

Re: Per home usage

Exactly, the perhome usage is an average over 24 hours. Although this is about right for my usage (covering everything apart from central and water heating which use gas) it sidesteps the inconvenient fact that actual usage is concentrated during cooking and washing/drying. Unsurprisingly these 300,000 homes (or whatever) tend to use large amounts of electricity at the same time and hence the furious nudging that has begun to try and get us all to use appliances at night. I don't know about anyone else but I am not going to run a tumble drier when I'm tucked up in bed given their propensity to catch fire.

Mind you, that 1/3kW average (8kW hr per day) will easily double with a heat pump and last time my daughter wanted her EV charged it was drawing around 2.5kW for almost 24 hours which bumped up my daily average consumption to about 3kW.

As far as I am aware these battery farms are mainly there to cover short term fluctuations resulting from wind lulls and cloud cover, and/or hold power up until a CCGT can be brought on line. It's a good job that we have plenty of gas available .........

Is it decadent that I use four different computers each day, at different times?

Impressions of an early adopter

I purchased the new Kindle Paperwhite to replace the six year old model that had begun to freeze on a regular basis and was a bit tempermental about turning pages. Unusually for me I ordered a couple of weeks before the release date (I usually buy last year's model of anything to save a few quid) encouraged by a £20 trade in and a 20% loyalty discount which brought the price down for the basic model to below £100. The slightly larger screen is a plus point and the option to vary the warmth of the screen is handy though a bit counterintuitive for a device sold on the whiteness of its screen.... Apropos the headphone issue, the new Kindle has Bluetooth which I presume is there to couple to wireless headphones though since I don't go for audio books I haven't bothered to try this feature out.

The new UI takes a bit of getting used to but it does provide quick access to the display characteristics and connectivity which you are likely to need more often.

I get though a book every two days on average (not including re-reads) but manage to find much of what I want on the daily or monthly deals so I reckon it works out cheaper for me than buying real books. The only down side for me is having to deal with Amazon which I avoid if at all possible for any other online purchases.