energy

Should I Trust My Price Forecast? I Measured It

As a price oracle: ~41% trustworthy. As a slot-picking map: 97.4% of perfect. My planner only uses it as the second thing — measured over 26,552 predictions.

The Pipe Costs More Than the Gas

£1.52 of gas, £10.12 for the pipe it came through — and across a full year, winter included, the pipe still wins.

Start Here: the Solar & Battery Story

A battery, seven garden panels and a half-hourly tariff — the whole story, mapped: the build, the brain, the money, the scoreboards.

Gas vs Electricity: A Year, and Six Weeks Away

Electricity and gas behave nothing like each other over a year — one flat, one seasonal. And six weeks away turned the flat into an accidental experiment in what's heating and what's always-on.

What the Electricity VAT Cut Would Have Saved Me

The government's taking VAT off electricity for six months. Measured against my actual bills, it would have saved me about £12 — a number with a story behind it.

One Year of Buying Electricity Cleverly — First by Hand, Then by Script

A year ago I put in a home battery and started timing my electricity buying — by hand at first, then a Python script I built. What the year added up to.

61% of my energy bill is now standing charges

The charge planner squeezed a month of energy down to £16.93 — so the fixed daily fees are now the bill.

Making the Numbers Honest: A Maintenance Day Under the Hood

A Cloudflare 502 sent me to fix one thing. By the end of the night I'd found three more — numbers that had been quietly wrong for weeks.

Five Years of Energy Bills: Cheap, Crisis, Solar

Five years of monthly electricity and gas bills laid out side by side: pre-war calm, the Ukraine spike, the partial rebound, and what installing solar + battery + Octopus Agile did to the line ever since.

Octopus Suggested £97.78. My Bills Say £58.

Octopus wanted to double my direct debit. My own bills — and the slice the battery and Agile actually control — say otherwise.

What My Battery Compares Every 30 Minutes

Most home batteries charge whenever the rate is cheap. Mine compares this cycle's cheapest slot against the next cycle's, the projected drain, the SOC-aware ceiling, and a forecast of tomorrow's solar — every 30 minutes.

Adding a Seventh Panel: 100W More for £63

A £63 upgrade — one extra 100W mono panel — bumps the garden array from 600W to 700W and should pay for itself by autumn.

Solar & Battery ROI: Agile vs the Price Cap

Live ROI tracker for my solar + battery setup: actual Agile spend vs what the Ofgem price cap would have cost, updated every 2 hours.

1,000 kWh Through the Battery — Plus 420 kWh From the Sun

The Fogstar Drift battery just hit 1,000 kWh of lifetime throughput — and 420 kWh of that came straight from the solar panels.

My 600W Solar Array Just Hit 692W — And the Physics Behind Why That's Normal

My 600W solar panels hit 692W. Here's how irradiance, temperature and panel physics make that not just possible, but expected.

A Year of Energy Data: How Solar Changed Everything in the Second Half

Discover how solar power transformed energy independence in just 6 months. Explore real data, battery tech, and dramatic electricity bill savings.

Q1 2026 Energy: An Accidental Savings Experiment (Plus Solar Doing Its Thing)

Discover how a Q1 2026 energy experiment revealed unexpected savings with solar power and smart meter monitoring. Real data, real results.