The current option for charging is wireless charging, why require a charging port?

It's just a little bit pointless, most chargers have USB A or USB C or both it's the cables that differ.

Well if the solar went to storage and was discharged at night maybe. But since the grid is mixed it's more like a loan the price of electricity is high during the day and cheap at night since the demand is lower, when the cheaper producers can take the load, this might include hydro bio gas and wind. doesn't matter really as long as the solar producer is a net exporter of energy.

I don't think there has been that much democracy in the last couple of thousand years. A lot of kings and emperors, some people got a vote if they were rich enough and male.

To make a difference cut your electricity usage between 5 and 7pm or whenever your countries peak times are.

Basically every hour the grid looks for supply to match demand naturally the cheapest generators get turned on first but they don't get that bid price they get the price per megawatt needed to secure the supply for that hour so with low demand you get a lower wholesale price. During the peak 2 hours price is much higher in fact the price for those 2 hours of the day is around the cost of 10 hours at a lower demand. It can be worse when there are failed generators and its getting close to not being able to meet demand.

Ok so what happens if you reduce demand in the peak hours? well that means less peaking plants get turned on which means the wholesale price is lower. Because those 2 hours are cheaper it means your supplier who buys from the grid can afford to sell Electricity to you at a lower price and less of Putins gas is needed and the price he gets for it is lower.

It doesn't even need to be a huge reduction even 10% less use at peak time would make a pretty big dent in the cost of those 2 hours. This is why there are moves to introduce a peak tariff and charge people a lot more for these 2 hours. That's the stick to beat you with but we could switch our usage today or tomorrow without that stick and see lower prices as a result.

To be fair I don't know how to get this widely known and besides if the two hours cost the same at retail who is going to modify their behaviour? It's a bit hard to wrap your head round the concept that you can lower or minimise the rise in your electricity bill if enough people do this. So I guess peak band pricing needs to come in as soon as possible to modify people's behaviour.

The national grids are already connected via interconnectors we do need more of them. In Ireland we tend to use around 6000MW at peak and 3000 MW off peak. We have interconnectors which add up to 1000MW and work both ways. When we have excess Wind Energy it effectively expands demand and allows more Wind energy on the grid, wind is variable but reasonably predictable. There is a series of auctions taking place at 24 hour 12hours and 6 hours in the day. The latest forecasts are made about an hour before the auction takes place. So forecasts are continually updated and are pretty accurate.

The main problem really is the variability in supply you need conventional generation to cover the times when Wind is low and this means there are generators being paid not to produce.

The UK has about 3000MW of interconnector with France and you do get situations where the uk is importing from france at the same time as exporting to Ireland it mostly works ok and the main time there are issues is usually when a large generator trips out say something around 400MW and there is then a scramble to maintain grid frequency until other plants can spin up to replace the lost generation.

As I said at the beginning load varies between around 3000-6000MW on a typical day so mostly there are plenty of generators that can turn on. The dodgy time is between 4 to 8pm which is peak demand and we have had pressure from Covid travel restrictions which has caused maintenance issues and more frequent tripping of power plants. We have coped pretty well to be fair. While low wind days do mean that more gas gets used that is planned for. It would be better to get some more offshore wind commissioned so the minimum wind improves I have seen times where Wind has provided as little as 200MW to around 4,800 MW I know we will be getting more interconnection which will reduce Irelands need for conventional generation.

If you want to be greener just try to reduce your energy usage away from 4 to 8pm. Soon enough the smart metering will allow for demand pricing and you can get some control of how much you are paying out. At least now we should see less extra standing charges which was often doubled if you were using economy 7 with 2 meters which switched over when the bands changed.

There is a difference in how the light is captured, that can make a difference to the image.

Well looking through a lens is something a photographer does more off than taking a photo and to have the actual photons reaching your eyes can be a good thing and that doesn't need any electricity unless you are using an auto focus.

Is there a difference between looking through a window vs looking at a screen? The screen is also going scanline by scan line so what you see at the top of the frame is from a different time from the bottom.

Taking a photograph is easy , taking a good or excellent photo tends to be much harder, spray and pray isn't how to get results. There is definately a difference it's maybe as different as being with an actual woman and watching one on redtube ...

I know a 60 year old woman with diabetes who was vaccinated and beat covid although she was very sick..

I also know two unvaccinated brothers the older around 40 got Covid and was very sick and told his younger brother he should really reconsider getting the vaccine. Well Covid killed him a couple of days ago, he didn't get vaccinated.

Most people I know have had very little reaction to the pfizer vaccine, I do know a couple of friends who were feeling sick with the vaccine for a couple of days.

It looks like this article is suggesting that a lot of poorer countries will have higher death rates than the "west" Maybe it has been engineered that way to fight climate change, who knows.

regardless it seems taking an mRNA vaccine will largely ensure you get through this, it's an opportunity that millions , billions even do not have.
 

4 payments over 6 weeks is going to be 2 if you are paid monthly. Seems you would need to be in financial trouble to ever feel a need to use this "service".

Irelands cattle also produce a large quantity of methane and is also facing a reduction in the national herd in order to reduce carbon emissions.

Thats going to cost Irish farmers and the reduction will not mean more imported beef from argentina, otherwise it's pointless.

We are all going to have to eat less beef and it's going to cost more due to the reduced production.

Weather forecasts need to be reasonably accurate and the closer to the production time the better they are. within the European system there are 4 markets for 24hours from 11pm the first auction is set up 12 hours before delivery is due to start, the next auction is 6 hours later then there is another auction to adjust for the last 12 hours and a final auction for the last 6hours. Each refines the position of the energy suppliers within the period. Wind is pretty good but for grid stability its currently limited to around 65% of the energy required to balance the grid.

Weather forecasts are recalculated every half hour to an hour and the mix of what types of generator runs changes to match the demand, it always has.

Electricity Generation pretty much costs about a $1,000,000 a MegaWatt on average to setup. You need 100MW capacity it will cost about 100 Million you want 5MW then its around 5 million. The cost of generating differs but thats the sort of capital cost you are looking at.

A few days ago a couple of friends who have been vaccinated with the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine have both tested positive for Covid 19.

One has Cold like symptoms , the other more of a chest infection. They will probably be ok.

It looks like Oxford Astrazeneca is around 63% effective, So Pfizer vaccine seems the better option.

Still it hammers home the point the vaccines are not cures but an attempt to reduce the severity of the infection. The numbers of infected people are going up and I think the UK is trying again for herd immunity by letting it infect widely in the summer amongst mostly young healthy people so less die in the winter. Some might say its more reopen the economy and sod the consequences.

Seems if you don't want to become infected you need to mitigate the risk and that's still handwashing , social distancing and masks in enclosed spaces. It does seem we are better off to be in the fresh air, rather than indoors, the contracting of covid 19 appears to be negligible outside.

As a strategy keep on doing what we have been doing seems to be best and lets see how the UKs science experiment goes down.

ios double click on the home button brings up an app switcher or alternatively ask siri and you will be switched to that app. e.g "open google maps" with the relatively cramped phone UI the less navigation the better so you can concentrate on what you are doing. Basically any iPhone from a 6 upwards works well. Can't say the same with android phones, i really got sick of forced close and this app is not responding. Higher end android should be better.

you also find apple devices work well together. I have patchy cell phone coverage at home and being able to leave my phone in a room with coverage and take calls on my iPad is useful.

I still have some android devices but they are buggy although i have 2 or 3 apps that are only on android. I guess i'm not so typical as I use linux osx and windows.

Ok Apple has removed it from their app store but there is a chrome plugin and I like it.

It doesn't just work on product pages but also on your purchase history page and it seems fairly accurate on the rating. It also has a feature which rates the product reviews and it analysed some of mine. I'm pleased to say at least one was rated as most authentic.

This is a useful tool, but what do they gain from it? Do they get affiliate links when you buy?