The whole idea of solar panels on rooves is absurd. It's only cost efficient because taxes fund it. As for being paid for electricity you're actually using, what?!

I thought you had to have them south facing, between SW and SE anyway. I tried twice to get them (enough room on a SE roof for 4kW, the maximum subsidy amount), and both times the company refused because during the planning stage the government reduced the subsidy. With no subsidy, they're a waste of money. Power is most efficiently generated on mass at power stations.

The feed in tariff was to help bump start the industry and we keep getting that for another 14 years. (We made the money back on them in ten. the 3.4KW on West facing side will pay for itself in under ten years based on electricity prices after last year's increases so less if prices keep going up. No taxes are funding the ones on the West facing side though shortly after we got them VAT was cut on them.

Facing East or West panels get about 76% of output from South facing ones.

I can't agree that putting panels on roofs is absurd. We are producing more electricity than we use for all but two and a half to three months of the year. For electricity used on site, transmission losses are minimised and for those in locations more vulnerable to storm damage than where I live it isn't too much extra to enable a system to work even when the mains has been taken out. They should be mandatory on all new buildings. With the newer panels that are yet to reach market that slightly over double the efficiency, changing the panels on just the West side would mean I would get enough for nearly all our power even during winter months.

USSR Russia

You do know that despite Putin's best efforts, the CCCP or USSR doesn't exist anymore, but that it's the Russian Federation these days?

I replaced one on a Renault Espace for £30 about 10 years ago. I doubt they're 10 times more. Actually I could have got one from the local scrapyard when I got a new window from him, he charges £20 for any part if you remove it yourself.

Don't be too surprised, a lot of electrical stuff for cars (even old ones) has jumped by more than that :-(

I have just claimed £150 from the Royal Mail for lost post there.

Good luck with your claim, BUT:
The post office is not responsible for any delays or losses if the package is not addressed properly, it is the sender's responsibility to ensure that the address is correct, nor are they responsible if another country manages to "loose" an incorrectly addressed package.

In the case of The Peoples Republic of China they can be VERY fussy about having the correct address as many of their staff do not read "English text", but just do a pattern match against a list of regularly used words and phrases. Really annoying to those of us who do use "English text". Of little consolation, it's even worse if your text of choice is one of the may "lesser used" texts.

Glory.
Overpaid Council Tax by £316.04.
Looking forward to having that back in the bank.
Now that officially retired, the CT reduction is superb, will look forward every year to paying it in just the 1 payment. :-)

Now onto EV's Vs ICE.
With pension available from Monday & receiving every 28 days,pulled up my retirement bucket list created last year.
1 that I highlighted was the Military Tattoo in Edinburgh Castle.
Bus pass/Senior Railcard.
£95 return rail cost
Tattoo cost £30
Travel time (road & Rail) 4 hrs 6 min e/w.
Overnight B&B £103 (Tattoo shows 18:30 & 21:15. No trains south until 09:00 next day
Total cost $228

ICE
321.7 miles
Fuel 181.06
Parking fee £22.20
Total cost £203.26
Travel time 5 hrs 45 min e/w (without a break).

Continued from previous post.

EV's
Same distance to travel.
At this moment in time, no EV can travel that distance on one charge.
Disadvantage EV
Can be on charge while taking a break on journey.

Deuce.

Cost.
Unknown at this time.

Issues for many.
For home charger installation, must have off road parking (especially if 1 wants to take advantage of the Gov's grant of £350}
For those that do not, it will be a case of charging elsewhere.
Here we have a total of 7 charging points, 5 within the city centre (all type 2 no fast chargers) 2 on the edge of the city both of which are CCS.

Using Google, find much info regarding free public chargers.
Yeah right.
Anyone want to buy Tower Bridge, going cheap. :-)

Here we have a total of 7 charging points, 5 within the city centre (all type 2 no fast chargers) 2 on the edge of the city both of which are CCS.

Yes, at the moment, evs do require planning on many journeys. We have around three times that many free ones!

There are massive differences around the country as to how good provision is. The park and ride five minutes from me has a bank of 12 Tesla charging points which have now been opened up to other makes of vehicle, though I have only seen two non Tesla cars charging there since that happened. (They are more expensive than most others for non Tesla drivers and many probably don't know.) There are chargers of two other systems there one with three one with two outlets. Addenbrooke's Hospital five minutes in the other direction has fast chargers though I don't know how many. Zapmap shows more than 5 other charging points within 5 minutes of me (cycling not driving though at times that is much quicker in Cambridge!) A quick search show Cambridge to have over 100 rapid chargers!



DD5 the post code area where my parents lived has 8 locations including one with ten charging points that covers all connection types. Most are 22KW, one 50KW and a couple of 7KW. It has about 80KW of solar and a battery bank but I have no idea of the capacity of that.

Don't be so sure about "all EVs using fossil fuel" as the UK's use of fossil fuel has dropped dramatically in the last couple of years.
If you really want to track the UK's generation there's an interesting site that shows almost minute by minute where the prime energy comes from.
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
(For giggles download the last 11 years of data and see how much the balance has shifted and how it varies between seasons)

As I type wind is in the lead (~30%), nuclear second (~26%), CGT third (~20%).
Then we get to the also rans:
Solar (~8%), Biomass (~4%)
The remaining ~12% is spread over a whole load of other sources.
As solar is not centrally metered this is calculated from the known figures and the known demand, and this being early on a Sunday morning its going to be lower than it will be at midday.
Coal is zero (it's been like that for some time)

Yet again you move the goal posts by not using tenses correctly in the first place.
We were talking about TODAY, not some unknown date in the future
Today there are about 450,000 EVs on the roads, with an increase of over 77,000 registered so far this year (both these figures are a lot more than I guessed.). How many of them are being charged at a given time? It's certainly more than your "none", and somewhat less than "all".
Also you haven't taken into account the increase in both solar and wind generation systems being installed. Remember of course that every domestic scale installation is a reduction on the grid-generation demand, so helps the swing from fossil fuels (albeit by a tiny amount per installation, but multiply 4kW (typical domestic installation) by a thousand and you have 4MW, which is a reasonable figure. Using my eyes as I travel around suggests that the number of 4kW systems is going up by tens per day, which is not an insignificant increase.

That's 320 solar panels the size of a door. So they use that to charge cars?

320 panels is an array of 18x18 panels, so a patch of land about 36x18m (probably about 50x25 to allow access etc) not exactly a massive area.
Will the electricity be used to charge EVs?
The short answer is YES, probably by float charging the batteries, dumping excess onto the grid (only to buy-back at times of high demand or low battery/solar). The operator of the site will have done their sums to make sure they are on the net GBP is on the "sell excess to grid" side of the line rather than the "buy from the grid" side.