{"id":2917,"date":"2024-02-07T09:00:52","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T08:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/samjwatkins.com\/blog\/?p=2917"},"modified":"2026-10-01T10:33:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T10:33:47","slug":"what-ive-learnt-the-past-few-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samjwatkins.com\/blog\/?p=2917","title":{"rendered":"What I&#8217;ve learnt the past few days."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thankfully, I got a whole seven and half hours sleep last night and finally got my blood sugar behaving itself.\u00a0 Looks like the bug is on its way out, I now get to recover.\u00a0 I&#8217;m taking a couple of days to gently get back some stamina before starting work again &#8211; the idea is not to go back too early and find I am then not fully recovered.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully, that&#8217;s a reasonable course of action.\u00a0 If only foresight was as good as hindsight!<\/p>\n<h1>Yawn, is this just about being old?<\/h1>\n<p>Cheeky.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;ve been finding out about the freely available smart data available in the UK from a company called <a href=\"https:\/\/data.n3rgy.com\/consumer-login\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">n3rgy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Simply register your meter with its MPAN (Meter Point Administration Number for electricity meters or MPRN for gas which is the Meter Point Reference Number) and its IHD MAC (the in-home display access point number).<\/p>\n<h2>Eh?<\/h2>\n<p>The MPxN is found on your bill &#8211; this is how the power generators and resellers get to bill you.<\/p>\n<p>The IHD is a second look up.\u00a0 If you have both gas and electricity, you only need the electricity one to get access through n3rgy.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a lot of scribbling down long reference numbers but once registered you can get your browser to remember these for you.<\/p>\n<p>Then the fun begins.<\/p>\n<h2>OK, I&#8217;m intrigued: how so?<\/h2>\n<p>You can download your meter data.\u00a0 For gas, this forms two sheets, one with the tariff (largely blank for Ovo users), and the other with your consumption in cubic meters&#8230;<\/p>\n<h2>Hold on, m<sup>3<\/sup>?\u00a0 Aren&#8217;t we billed in kWh?<\/h2>\n<p>Oh yes.\u00a0 Naturual gas is not measured in kWh but in the volume of gas delivered.\u00a0 This then has a calorific (power) value multiplied to it and a conversion to kWh and a correction (wobble) factor.\u00a0 The calorific value varies day to day and is available from <a href=\"_wp_link_placeholder\" data-wplink-edit=\"true\">https:\/\/www.nationalgridgas.com\/data-and-operations\/calorific-value-cv<\/a> but an average of 40 works quite well.\u00a0 (This website is going to take some figuring out to get the data for us out, but there is a great deal of information out there.)<\/p>\n<p>The electricity is all a bit easier seeing as a kWh is just what the meter is measuring and there&#8217;s none of these extra steps.<\/p>\n<p>The really interesting thing is you can see what is really happening.\u00a0 During the winter, unsurprisingly, the V2G is not coming to the fore overnight.\u00a0 The windy nights we&#8217;ve had recently mean there is plenty of wind power &#8211; upto 60% &#8211; and a small amount of solar, meaning only 1.3% of our electricity in the East of England is coming from buring gas as I type this.<\/p>\n<p>Which is really hopeful in allowing the UK to reduce its carbon footprint for energy generation, making the move to electric vehicles much better all round too.<\/p>\n<p>If we could recharge me as easily, life would be pretty good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thankfully, I got a whole seven and half hours sleep last night and finally got my blood sugar behaving itself.\u00a0 Looks like the bug is on its way out, I now get to recover.\u00a0 I&#8217;m taking a couple of days to gently get back some stamina before starting work again &#8211; the idea is not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[231],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sustainable-living"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - 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