three months later

Late March, we decided to experiment with a new solar PV usage strategy due to the relative rates of chear rate grid power overnight (costing us 6.4p/kWh) and the amount we are paid for exporting during the day (15p/kWh).  Rather than use the battery to power the house during the cheap rate, we would used grid power and charge the battery overnight, then export more during the day.  We assumed, from the relative rates, the power company preferred this, maybe to even out demand.

Late June, we get a letter from our power company.  They are changing the export payment rate to 6p/kWh.  On asking why, they told us that some customers are charging their batteries overnight, then exporting that charge during the day.  So the power company is paying those customers 8.6p/kWh (not accounting for losses) to store and resupply its own power.

Anyhow, the power company obviously thought that paying customers to time-shift its own power was a step too far in power demand management, hence the reduction in export payments for all electricity, including actual generation.

Oh well.  Back to manually setting the battery charging pattern (and a severly reduced income from export payment).  Since it's currently summer, that mostly means using the battery to power the house overnight, as there will be enough sunshine to recharge it during the day.  Things will start getting more complicated again come autumn.

banana bumpy

While I was away in Trieste, some bananas back home went too black to eat.  Usually when this happens, my other half makes banana buns.  Given the current heat, however, this time he decided to try making banana ice cream.

It came out a bit lumpy (despite having been blended for quite a while), and rock hard once frozen (we're so used to soft scoop nowadays we don't even have a name for it any more).  It's perfectly nice to eat, however.

banana "ice cream", just before being frozen

I've decided to call this a "banana bumpy", to distinguish it from a "banana smoothie".

Trieste sunset

After a long day of great talks and discussions, a small group of us went out to dinner.  It was still hot, but not as hot as it has been.  We found a nice fish restaurant, and I had a marvellous herb salmon and green bean dish.  Walking back to the hotel via a gellato shop, we stopped to admire the sunset.  

view from a Trieste hotel window

I've just flown in to Trieste, for the Unconventoinal Computation and Natural Computation conference.  It is HOT (low 30s, plausible for Italy).  But it is just as hot at home (low 30s, totally implausible for the UK).

While waiting in the heat for the train from the airport, there was a sudden cloudburst and high winds.

It's hard to photograph rain.  Fortunately we were under cover.

But by the time I arrived in my hotel, all was calm and sunny again, and still HOT.

It doesn't look very hot.  But it is.  Fortunately, the hotel has air con

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLXII

The latest batch. (I'm trying to do these posts before the batches get too big, which means they are more frequent.)

stacking up

I thought yesterday's SeeStar shot of the moon was good.

But my other half also took a SeeStar video of it.  Why would you take a video of a static scene?  To enhance the view.  He spent today fiddling around with AutoStakkert!, software to stack multiple frames to get a better image.  The result is great, much crisper:

Why not just use the SeeStar to integrate over a longer time, like with other images?  Well, it doesn't do that for solar system objects, so we just have to try harder.

He also played around with a solar video taken at the end of May.  Here's a simple image:

2026/05/29, 17:48 BST

And here's the result of processing the video, with much more detail visible on the sunspots:

further and further

 Another day, and the moon and Venus are even further apart.

Venus just visible on the far right. Photo taken with a Pixel 10 camera; 22:14 BST

This time we were ready with the SeeStar telescope, although, of course, it couldn't get both in the same frame!  The moon looks better with the right focus and exposure:

SeeStar S50 photo, 250mm, f/5, 1/100s exposure; 21:50 BST