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.

On Android you can designate certain notifications to be high priority.

Or, in GB, on the notifications app list you can click the cog next to an app and use those filters. I haven’t played much with it yet though.

It doesn’t have storage or a headphone port. But it will stream music over Bluetooth. So if you want to annoy everyone you job with, you can listen to its tinny speaker :-)

Yeah. GadgetBridge allows me to set up an allow-list / block-list for notifications. So I can get SMS on my wrist but ignore social media pings.

It has a small rubber lug - which has worked so far at keeping out the grime. But I don’t have a manual labour job.

Get something which works with GadgetBridge. You’ll be in complete control.

Thank you 😄

I wrote about it at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/01/graphing-the-connections-between-my-blog-posts/

Happy to say the latest nightly does support notifications. My wrist is buzzing with action!

I’m the author. I’ve now set up notifications on the advice of just about everyone. It’s pretty cool!

In which case, you might like the eInk screen on the Watchy. I reviewed it at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/06/review-watchy-an-eink-watch-full-of-interesting-compromises/

Screen is always on but eInk gives it great battery life. Although the rest of the watch is even more experimental than the USB-C one 😆