Good morning all it's winter and so that sees the I suppose unwanted return of Glenn my trusty fan heater. So I've got Glenn running at one kilowatt and I've also got the oil filled radiator which um is about 400 watts. it switches on and off. of course.

Now they're not connected to my home electricity because home electricity is very expensive at the moment. No, they're connected to this double orange socket which comes through a hole in the wall. Yes, as I say, electricity is very expensive at the moment. I'm paying 34 P per kilowatt hour and 42p per day even if I don't use any electricity and what's gas, it's 10p per kilowatt hour, 27p per day and I'm also on the Agile outgoing octopus which means I get paid for solar power that I export and it's actually quite sunny at the moment.

It's a very low Sun um, but I'm exporting to the grid 1.46 kilowatts so over the two or three or four hours that the Sun is up, uh, hi, that is. Um, yes, I'll export a reasonable number of kilowatt hours and the rate is actually quite high at the moment. So here's today's graph: Um, it hasn't actually made it to two kilowatts yet, has it? Um, but I hope it will. I'm slightly uh, west of the South axis.

so I get full sun or the best Sun slightly after midday. What's the time now? Oh, quarter to twelve. But here are the export rates and it's this section. here.

You can see that the bulk of the day um, is actually quite good. It's hovering around 30p, just above, and then of course, at 6 P.m I'll try and point to that bit. 6 P.m is, uh, this peak. Here it shoots up to what would that be? Uh oh, about 45 P So electricity rates are quite High.

That's uh, probably because wholesale gas prices are high. 40 of our electricity in the UK is produced by gas. But also, it's probably not that windy and so the wind turbines aren't generating a huge amount. But back to how these two heaters are being powered like I say the wire runs out through a hole in the wall and so that wire comes from here, runs along past these knackered marine batteries and to this, um, outdoor connector box.

and I Got this box from Lidl And these boxes are really good. Let's have a quick look inside. it's uh, very damp on the outside, but completely dry inside and you can see that you've got the large entry points, the small entry points, and it's perfect for putting a chunky connector in there and keeping that connector dry. Um, yeah, I Bought a couple of these because uh, I really liked them 1795 at Lidl and if you're lucky, you might find they've still got some because they sell them for putting your Christmas light um, multi-way um, power strips in there.

So the black wire comes out of this waterproof box and runs down here to my car, runs round to the front and into the charging socket. Now the car is currently set up in discharge mode. so that's V2l vehicle to load and so that is what supplying my fan heater Glenn and also the oil filled radiator. Yes, it's much warmer in here.

it's getting up towards 20 degrees now. Of course this only works if the electricity in my car can be obtained at far less than 34p per kilowatt hour. And at the moment, um, there are two ways of getting cheaper electricity. One would be using an overnight rate so something like octopus Go tariff currently 12p per kilowatt hour for four hours.

uh, in the early hours of the morning and the other one is Wickham retail Park where the Pod points are still set to 14p per kilowatt hour. So now down at the retail. Park Plugged into one of the Pod points. Uh, not too busy here today.

There's a couple of spare Bays here further down. We've got this chap here and this one appears to be iced. Uh yeah. Excellent parking.

Well done. So I'm plugged in here and I finally worked out what the little bun on the end of the charging cable is for. It's for holding up this little flip lid so that you can hang your cable on top of the connector. otherwise the cable has to sit down there in the mud.

These pod points at Wickham retail Park are as far as I know, the cheapest commercially available electricity that I can find. They are 14p per kilowatt hour. Now if you know of any, uh, commercially available electricity at less than that price anywhere in the UK, please let me know because this does seem very cheap indeed and it just makes me wonder how long it's going to remain at that price. I Can't imagine if KFC and Benson's for beds and Harveys and Wicks and Home, Essentials and Furniture, Village and Marks and Spencers and Curry is down at the bottom there.

Um, would be that Keen to be giving electricity where this incredibly low price? so I can't imagine it's going to stay at this price forever I Suspect it might go up soon and that's one minus four. Wickham Retail Park So the battery is now charging. It's at 70 percent 166 miles and I think it takes about an hour for every 10 percent. Um, that the battery charges.

Yeah, seven kilowatts. It's about 70 kilowatts the battery. So in one hour you can do about 10 of the battery. So I'm going to need to leave the car here for an hour now when it was a bit warmer.

I Used to be able to sit in the car, but it's too cold to do that now and you can't really leave the heater running in the car because it draws a lot of power. So if you sit here with the heater on, it's drawing 24 amps at 370 volts. Yeah, that's 8.8 kilowatts. So the the car's electric heater um, draws a lot of power and that would be greater than the seven kilowatts I would be getting from the Pod Point uh charge post.

So I'd be making a net loss. So I need to head off somewhere warm and really the only shop here that is of any interest to me is Curries. The rest are food or furniture or Home Essentials stores. So let's head down to Curries, right? let's head into Currys because at least it's warm in there.

And I Must admit: I'm learning quite a lot about cameras and washing machines and Tumble dryers and the like at the moment. Hello, Yes! I Forgot about the music they play in here I Hope it's copyright free I Don't want to, uh, get a copyright strike? Yes, this is the warmest part of Currys next to the TVs because these things kick out masses of heat and they're all G-rated Yes! I'm learning all there is to learn about washing machines and so on. I'm actually quite interested in these tumble dryers because these heat pump tumble dryers are essentially a dehumidifier in a box with a drum that turns around and I particularly like the look of this um Hoover one because it's got this in the door. this detachable water tank.

So the dehumidifier part of this tumble dryer sucks water out of the clothes, puts it in this tank. which then hangs on the inside of the door back in there like so so it's nice and easy to empty. I will hang out in Currys for an hour or so just looking at fridge, freezers and the like. Gonna try our technique here I'm recording short sentences with gaps in between and then I'll edit it such that there are lots of jumps in the music and then hopefully Google won't be able to piece together which track is playing.

Half an hour in curries is enough for anyone, but it's still only at 75 percent and I want it to go up to Uh 80. So this shows really the downside of uh, charging here at Wickham retail. Park Uh, you've got to wait. Uh, there's the possibility of all these Bays being taken and I have seen it with all them taken and the possibility of course that this won't remain at 14p forever.

So the other possibility would be to go on to a nighttime tariff. Uh, Octopus Go is currently 12p per kilowatt hour for four hours in the early hours of the morning. and that might make more sense than coming down here. Of course, the other thing we're coming down here is I lose about five percent in the journey and for that reason, I'll probably switch from my agile outgoing tariff to Octopus Go.

you can't have both of them simultaneously and get the 12p per kilowatt hour overnight rate. Cheerio.