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Which is exactly what they did (well, apart from Apple) when the EU mandated micro-USB as a charging port back in 2009 or 2010. All the headlines claiming USB-C as a standard is a "world first" haven't done their research. Now micro-USB is a bit of a fiddly connector but it sure made life easier...

I'm going to have to do some more digging, because I read a fairly recent and apparently quite well-conducted report which didn't tally with that at all (for an air-to-water system). What you say doesn't seem to make any sense unless you don't use hot water in the winter, or, in the winter the...

Something which could potentially be retrofitted and would help with this sort of scenario is a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery (just an example). Warm, stale, humid air from rooms such as bathrooms and kitchens is extracted via a heat exchanger and fresh air from the outside is...

The EPC score has nothing to do with cost - it's all to do with efficiency and CO2 emissions. We had exactly this problem and the root cause is that when we had ours done two years ago (I believe they might have updated it very recently) the EPC calculated Carbon emissions based on the UK...

With regard to new builds, my unfortunate experience is that while the Building Regulations themselves are not at all bad (though they could be better), traditional British building practice leaves a lot to be desired. In particular there is a lack of attention to detail, which means even in a...

Well, your "limiting case" isn't terribly likely in practice, is it? Therefore instead of a small heater running constantly (which is actually better for comfort, given that heat losses are fairly constant too), a larger heater is needed which runs when necessary and if this is to be used in...

One reason (among several) is that lot of renewable generation is in Scotland and transmission links between Scotland and the rest of the UK are not able to cope. The traditional 400kV and 275kV links are now supplemented with a Western HVDC link and an Eastern link is also proposed, which will...

Of course, hundreds of "small scale generation" units disconnecting from the grid was one of the reasons the power went off in August 2019 stranding all those Class 700 and 717 EMUs (see below). It's a while since I looked at it (here's the final report) but from memory National Grid had about...

It's an issue of control systems really. There have been cases where new installations of solar PV have been rejected by DNOs because of the amount already connected to a particular transformer, and the same issues apply to V2G and charging, if you think of it that way. With more intelligence in...

Absolutely not - I used your specific example precisely because I didn't want to turn it into "doesn't work for me so must be rubbish". Even if I recalculate for 45mpg rather than 55mpg (and 45 is quite low for a modern Diesel, even around town) it only makes £20 difference on 600 miles a month...

Thanks for posting that - I see a lot of people arguing that the grid won't cope, but it will. However, it's also worth pointing out that National Grid mostly looks after the "National" grid - that is the 400kV, 275kV and 135kV distribution (big towers), while the 11kV and 415/230V distribution...

Could you point me in the direction of a link for that information please? Because I've been looking at the Ariya on the Nissan website, and having not found any warranty information to confirm the above on the website itself, just five minutes ago I downloaded the PDF brochure, where it says on...

I'm not sure how that works. In pure "fuel" terms (ignoring maintenance costs - I accept there's a difference, but I don't believe it is as massive as some claim), if I drive 600 miles a month (7,200 miles a year) in a car which does 55mpg (small Diesel town/ex-urban) and I pay £2/l for fuel...

I think the thing which annoys me most about the vacuum cleaner argument is all those people (and I absolutely include Dyson in this) who were insisting they needed to build machines with 1,500W motors in order to clean properly one week, and then the next week were selling us battery-powered...

It's the flexibility thing though, isn't it? We have got into the mindset that we can hop into our cars and toddle off wherever and (pretty much) whenever we like. With current EVs some of that is no longer possible, and we're all going to have to change our mindsets. That's not necessarily a...

Goodness, two questions about London travel in one day. One of my children is hoping to start at Queen Mary UoL this year. We're visiting London soon and for that visit a normal Oyster with his 16 - 25 railcard added seems like a good plan. The question I have is, what additional benefit would...

We visited London back in july 2019 and I bought my eldest - then 17 - an Oyster card at Paddington, onto which his 16-25 railcard was added. We were only in London for two days and without internet connectivity we didn't get around to creating an account. We are revisiting London this year and...

Totally agree with the point you are making, but it's surprising how compound interest works. According to the Bank of England inflation calculator, £14k in 2004 would be £20½k in 2021 at 2.2% average inflation for that time period (CPI / RPI). In order to get to your £24k in 2022 that interest...

Ok, well, I grew up with Usenet (NNTP, Newsgroups), email-based groups and other similar forums where - obviously - it was technically impossible to edit an already-posted message. Standard "netiquette" in those days was to quote the part you were replying to, make an attribution and create a...

I haven't posted much in these forums, but as with when I post elsewhere, I often come across a thread after it has become "established". There may therefore be two or three previous replies in a thread to which I want to comment, and doing so to each one individually keeps the discussion...