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Is Bottled Water Really Safer Than Tap Water in Britain?

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  Is Bottled Water Really Safer Than Tap Water in Britain? We happily pay hundreds of times more for water in a plastic bottle — but are we actually buying something safer? Walk into almost any supermarket, railway station or petrol station and there will be shelves or refrigerators filled with bottled water. Some comes from mountains. Some comes from springs. Some carries images of pristine countryside. Some is sold as mineral water. Some simply describes itself as drinking water. The underlying message is remarkably powerful: This is pure water. And, perhaps subconsciously: This must therefore be safer than the water coming from the kitchen tap. But is it? In Britain, for most people supplied by the public mains system, the answer is rather different from the impression created by rows of beautifully marketed bottles. Tap water is not an untested commodity pumped from a reservoir and sent directly into our homes. It is treated, continuously monitored and subject to strict legal s...
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How Many Home Batteries Would You Need to Survive a Power Cut?

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How Many Home Batteries Would You Need to Survive a Power Cut? A 10 kWh battery sounds enormous—until you start deciding what you want it to power. In my previous article, I looked at one of the great misconceptions surrounding domestic solar power: having solar panels and a battery does not automatically mean that your house will continue running during a power cut . The system has to have been designed and configured to operate in backup or EPS mode. The Energy Saving Trust makes the same point: solar panels and batteries normally need additional equipment and appropriate configuration if they are to supply the home when the grid goes down. Energy Saving Trust But suppose you do have proper backup. The next question is much more interesting: How much battery do you actually need? I have around 50 kWh of battery storage at home. Compared with the roughly 10 kWh that the Energy Saving Trust describes as a typical domestic battery system, that sounds enormous. Energy Saving Trust So, p...
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Could Your Solar Panels Keep Your House Running During a Power Cut? Probably Not.

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  Could Your Solar Panels Keep Your House Running During a Power Cut? Probably Not. You have a roof full of solar panels, the sun is shining brightly — and a power cut leaves you sitting in the dark. How can that possibly make sense? It seems completely illogical. The solar panels are producing electricity. Perhaps your monitoring app was showing several kilowatts of generation only seconds earlier. The washing machine was running, the fridge was cold and the house was happily using electricity that had never come from the National Grid. Then the grid fails. Everything goes off. Surely the solar panels should simply carry on powering the house? For the majority of conventional grid-connected solar installations, they won't . And that isn't a fault. It is a deliberate and extremely important safety feature. The Great Solar Power-Cut Misunderstanding When people buy solar panels, they quite reasonably imagine that they are installing their own miniature power station. In one sens...
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Could You Feed Your Household for Two Weeks If the Power Went Off Tonight?

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  Could You Feed Your Household for Two Weeks If the Power Went Off Tonight? “Open your cupboards tonight. How long could you actually eat if the shops and electricity stopped working?” Most of us do not think of our homes as particularly vulnerable. There is food in the fridge. There is water from the tap. The cooker works. The kettle works. We can order groceries online, drive to a supermarket, pay electronically and look up almost anything we need on a phone. But all those conveniences depend upon systems working around us. A serious storm, flooding, local infrastructure failure or prolonged power cut does not have to become a disaster before it becomes extremely inconvenient. Electricity may disappear. Internet access may fail. Mobile networks may become intermittent. A gas boiler may still need electricity to operate. Shops may struggle to process card payments, refrigeration may stop, and in some circumstances the water supply can also be disrupted. The UK Government'...
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