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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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Take an Empty Bag on Your Next Walk—and Bring It Home Full

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  Take an Empty Bag on Your Next Walk—and Bring It Home Full Imagine what Britain would look like if every walk left the neighbourhood slightly cleaner than before. We often talk about environmental action in terms of enormous projects. Renewable energy. Electric cars. Heat pumps. Recycling plants. Rewilding. Government targets. Changes to agriculture and industry. All of these matter. But there is another kind of environmental action that requires almost no technology, very little money and no committee meeting. Take a bag with you when you go for a walk. Bring it home with some litter in it. That really can be the whole idea. I am not suggesting that everyone suddenly becomes an unpaid street-cleaning service, nor that anyone should pick up anything potentially dangerous. The point is much simpler. If you are already walking along a road, through a park, beside a river, around an estate or across a footpath, could you safely remove two or three pieces of rubbish as you go? One ca...
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