https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2l2j1lxdk5o

Hey! I run that website - sorry the Drunk Mode was confusing. It shouldn’t activate by default. Have you previously visited and turned it on?

There’s this thing that writers do called “thought experiments”. It is a form of intellectual exercise to examine what happens at extremes.

It helps us explore an idea by future gazing and, yes, getting a little ridiculous. Imagine someone in 1975 saying “what would the world be like if we all had Gbps Internet?”

There was nothing of that speed available for domestic use, but thinking about an “impractical” technology means they can ask “would video conferencing disrupt the travel industry?”

That’s what I’m doing. 25 years ago home solar was too expensive to be practical. 25 years ago having a 5kWh battery in your home was close to impossible.

In 25 years time will batteries be cheap enough for us each to have a MWh in the loft? I reckon so. What does the world look like when every home has the ability to be energy self-sufficient using solar?

These are called “storage heaters”. They’re still available. https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/home-heating-systems/article/home-heating-systems/storage-heaters-aokoz3G2Em9L

Most homes here are heated with gas - ours is.

So electricity doesn’t factor in to heating (other than a tiny amount for controlling the boiler and thermostat).

I’m sorry you didn’t read my article. If you had, you would have seen me say…

Remember, this is just a bit of fun. There’s no practical way to build domestic batteries with this capacity using the technology of 2025.

And

Is this sensible? Probably not, no.

And

remember, this is an exercise in wishful thinking.

At no point did I say it was a reasonable idea. I went out of my way to demonstrate how impractical it was.

I accept your admission that you didn’t read my post means you are stupid rather than evil etc.

(OP here) Typically, UK homes don’t use HVAC.

I’ve had a few EVs, but moved somewhere with electric buses instead.

(OP here) Sorry mate, are you accusing me of being in the pocket of Big Oil? Here’s everything I’ve written about solar over the last decade - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar/ - feel free to point out where I’ve said “yay fossil fuels!”

I didn’t include AC because that’s not a thing in the UK.

Oh, and I don’t use electricity for primary heating. Solar thermal is pretty useless in my part of the world because you don’t need much hot water in summer (mmmm! Cold showers!)

As I said in my post, this is a purely theoretical discussion about what future technology might look like. Your argument is like someone from 2001 going “a recordable CD can hold 650MB - so you only need two for a really long car trip. There’s no way people in the future will have 1TB hard drives! For anything else, just use AM radio.”

Basically, one of us is braindead - and I’m not so sure it is me!

The secret ingredient is gravity!

Not really. As I say in my article, our roof is full. On a bad day in winter, we might generate 0.5kWh (assuming the panels aren’t covered in snow). So we’d need 20x the panels - there’s no room for that.

1 Watt is the equivalent of moving 1Kg 1 metre in 1 second.

If you want a kilowatt - you need to move 1,000Kg 1 metre in 1 second. Or, I guess, 1Kg a Km.

Plug the numbers together and you’ll see that you need a massive physical load and a huge distance in order to store a useful amount of energy.

I’m pro-nuclear energy in theory. But I’ve got to ask - where do you get them spicy rocks from? Do you have to dig them up from a mine? Do they regularly replenish themselves? Does the energy generation have to be constantly checked for pollution leaks?

OK, they may not literally be fossilised bio-matter - but the end result is pretty much the same. Scar the landscape as you dig, release pollutants as you refine, hope you don’t run out of material, make sure someone else pays to clean up the mess.

(Author here) Yes, this is how it works in the UK. I sell my excess electricity back to the grid. The selling price is a bit smaller than the buying price.

(Author here) As I say in my post, our roof is full. We have 16x 320 Watt panels - 8 on each side of the roof.

OK, but why do you care about uniformity? If it’s just some OCD-adjacent urge - that’s fine; do what makes you happy.

But from a technical point of view, VLC will play back no matter what the codec and compression level.

The question is why do you want to convert them?

If you use something like JellyFin as your media server and client, it will transcode them as you watch them. If you’re on your phone using crappy WiFi, it will adapt the bitrate down automatically. If you’re at home using a projector connected by Ethernet, you’ll get the original file.

If you think you’re running out of space, it’s often easier and cheaper to buy more HDDs. H265 and modern audio codec will save you a maximum of 50%. For about £200 you can get a 15TB HDD.

And yet, I literally have one on my wrist now. It’s not noticeably bigger than the Pixel 3 watch.

Here’s a video of it in action - https://tube.tchncs.de/w/vYTnG6eKghnicdNj5nkhVx