solar

The Eclipse, as Seen by My Smart Home

Watching the eclipse through Home Assistant's National Grid feed — a 1.7 GW solar hole, a price spike to £226/MWh, and a rooftop-solar demand shelf.

The Eclipse That Fooled My Charge Controller

London saw ~90% of the Sun covered, the biggest UK eclipse since 1999 — yet my solar barely dipped. The real mark was in the charge controller.

The Month the Grid Paid Me to Fill the Battery

April 2026: 142 negative half-hours, 223 kWh imported at 3.91p — the most electricity I bought all year, and the least I paid for it.

One Year of Solar

A year in: 452 kWh made and 1,925 bought for just £254 — the fact-based case for a small garden array plus a battery on Octopus Agile.

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.

The Year the Garden Woke Up

December: 4.5 kWh. June: 72. One year of a scavenged garden array — the season it went quiet, and the season it woke up.

So, Am I Winning?

One-word answer, then the evidence: a 43% cheaper July in an 11% dearer market, a battery filling at 6.5p, and a paper trail that proves it.

Price Capture: the One Number That Judges My Charge Planner

A dearer market, a cheaper bill. One number — achieved price minus market average — isolates the charge planner's skill from weather, solar and luck.

The Days My Solar Beat the Grid — 2026

101 days in this year my ground-level garden panels beat the grid outright. The month-by-month breakdown.

The Night My Safety Net Fought Itself

A week ago I said my battery had never breached its floor. Last night it did — not because the safety net failed to fire, but because a second safety system was running month-old code and kept turning the charger back off. Two backstops at war, and a human at 2am.

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.

Why My Battery Busbar Was Always Too Hot — and What Fixed It

I swapped my undersized £12 Amazon battery busbar for a pair of Victron 250A 6P bars after temperature sensors flagged 76°C peaks. The busbar end now runs 24°C cooler under the same load. Better data made a better decision possible — instrument the wire, not just the cells.