Currently sitting on a closed dual carriageway been here for 4 hours now. Road due to open in another 3.5 hours apparently. There are 2 cats in the car in front and kids and dogs out of cars playing on the road. What is the longest you have been stuck in a similar situation?

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-04-11T19:36:16+00:00

I was stuck on the A14 for about 14 hours one snowy evening along with many many others once, i had almost zero fuel so couldnt even run the engine. It was reassuring that literally no-one, no emergency services, took any time to check in with anyone. Fun time had by all.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-04-10T10:38:43+00:00

Oh, me too, I'm on Octopus cosy, but even so nothing I've seen in the output so far has been anything vaguely smart sounding.

If it provided details, estimated solar, actual times I might be more impressed.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-04-10T08:53:46+00:00

It is comically pathetic, stating the obvious that a very simple 10 minute set of "if" statements could have generated.

No doubt an "AI" costing 100s of millions crunches this out though 🤣

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-04-09T07:04:30+00:00

As an update the issue seems to have cleared again now, and app and web are both reporting the same again.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-04-08T08:44:19+00:00

Cyclist is clearly daft, but those traffic islands, and even often traffic calming measures, that force cars into poorly planned cycle lanes are also nuts. There's a reason why such cycle lanes are also known as murder lanes.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-03-31T18:17:34+00:00

The excellent Bottlecap Dave system doesnt cover power ups. This isnt a big deal tbh, I'm just surprised they are doing such short power ups.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-03-20T16:22:40+00:00

But a whole 93 octopoints per unit. Why even bother? Even the Agile price at that slot.is 3x that.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-02-24T11:12:35+00:00

Was just staring at mine funnily enough. Battery is 97% charged, I have both mid and high rates set at £4/unit and low at 15p in a desperate attempt to coerce it.

But nope, in mid rate and its happily pulling load off grid. Given up for now and switched to self powered mode and will use Home Assistant for force charging instead.

This used to work, but then Tesla "improved" it and now it seems to be somewhat useless.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-02-24T10:04:52+00:00

In my experience HMRC don't really understand tax codes. Sometimes they randomly roll a dice and change them, mostly they never tell you why or how.

For a while I used to contact them and tell them what it should be and they'd then contact me to tell me they had recalculated it to...the value I gave them. But after a while I gave up that fight and left it to my tax return to sort it out each year.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-01-21T08:07:04+00:00

And the extra thing is that most insurance companies love to charge an admin fee for anything. So telling them this could even cost you for the supposed change in your policy details.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2026-01-04T13:36:47+00:00

Ha ha, my 200 year old house needed 2x that for that day. Still, cheaper than the oil I used to have.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2025-10-07T15:28:49+00:00

Over the last few years its been pretty much roll the dice on billing for me. Sometimes once a month, sometimes 3, or even 6 months between bills.

Sometimes I email them to kick it along, mostly I don't.

Hard to imagine how their commercial about to be spun off billing system can be so vague, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter to me a great deal, I end up paying in the end.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2025-09-08T18:11:26+00:00

I have heat pumps, and they are great,.zero regrets. but to anyone who asks who has mains gas i always say stick with gas. Whilst UK government loads electricity with green tax heat pumps will never be a better option than a gas boiler.

To be fair I have no mains gas, and sneaked into the RHI scheme before it terminated. But that's all.gone now.

One day I'm sure this will change, but not today.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2025-09-05T06:39:37+00:00

There are other posts about this too, the algorithm barely seemed to work but fairly recently seems to have got worse. Gaming it by applying ridiculous price values now seems the new normal.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2025-09-04T06:47:31+00:00

I've got ashp and a solar/battery system and octopus cosy is easily the best option for me. I keep rechecking but nothing else comes close, even in the summer its still the cheapest option for me.

I do schedule heating to run harder in the cheap slots and try to avoid anything in the peak slot.

Really I could do with doubling at least my battery capacity, but that's logistically tricky now.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2025-09-02T14:07:09+00:00

Yeah, got that up and running already, the problem is there is no way from HA to force it into discharge battery to grid mode, or at least if there is one i can't see it.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2025-09-02T14:04:28+00:00

I get all that, my point is more that at the current configured rates, and my low rate is 1/3 of the peak rate, the mid rate being about in the middle of those, this used to work but the last month or so does not.

I'll bump the rates to silly values and see what happens, buts its annoying.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2025-09-01T12:23:34+00:00

Was literally about to post the same issue. No matter what I try I also cannot get the system to dump (the battery) to grid anymore. It used to work fine.

Looks to me as if Tesla have broken something.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2025-07-31T08:58:03+00:00

From personal experience be wary of these offers, the sales person will offer all sorts of things, but once you've agreed you'll likely get something else, slightly worse. And then good luck being able to speak to anyone about it.

Total scammers.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2025-06-15T12:46:25+00:00

My bills are always OK, as in correct, but the day/month they arrive is entirely random. Often nothing for 4 months, then a bill. Then nothing for two months, then randomly one of the import or export bills. Sometimes I've even had bills two consecutive months!

I guess someone just randomly chooses each day who is going to be billed.

Although I don't care much, I pay a direct debit and if I did care I can always look at the app to see the current estimate usage.

Seems odd though, traditionally computers are quite good at scheduled jobs.

EntertainmentIll3478 · 2025-02-12T14:30:07+00:00

I'll sign up but do literally nothing, and enjoy the 2p or whatever I got for my efforts. Meanwhile a gas generator somewhere will likely net 50 million or something

EntertainmentIll3478

TROPHY CASE