EDF direct debit

Well unless you’re comfortable with higher risk investment interest on capital is pretty s**te. Meanwhile I got paid nearly £1000 for my exports last year

Tim

Eh? Where did you pluck that figure from? I’m sure folk on this tariff are doing far more than that as it would make economic sense for a low mileage user.

Intelligent Go has been available for several years now and is a great deal for anyone with an EV and home battery.

I used 1,450 kWh last month at an average cost of 11p per kWh plus £16 standing charge.

Tim

On 29/12/2025 18:29, Tim+ wrote: Meanwhile I got paid nearly £1000 for my exports

For which we all paid extra on our bills

There is a word for people like you.

Just guessing that the "fair use" limit might be enough electricity for around 1200 miles a month. (That's 20mile average out, 20 back, 30 days a month.

OK, what *is* the fair use limit?

At a reported average of 4miles/kWh that's 360 miles, which seems a little low.

So luckily that's a tariff which hasn't suddenly gone unavailable.

In message <sG$ snipped-for-privacy@perry.uk, at 19:56:53 on Mon, 29 Dec 2025, Roland Perry snipped-for-privacy@perry.co.uk> remarked:

Argh! reciprocal error. Should of course be 5800 (190 miles a day), which I'll risk saying seems a bit high. Or maybe that consumption figure isn't just for the EV.

Agreed. I would need a 100% saving to manage that.

"Fair Use" rules reminds me of those 'Unlimited' Broadband packages which were only unlimited if you kept within the limits, which 'they' had in mind but didn't tell you about, until you transgressed the unwritten rule.

The poor batch I mentioned was a box of 100, bought last Christmas, and now nearly used up. They seem to last little more than half as long as the previous batch when used in the same devices. There also seems to be some inconsistency between batteries in this batch - which complicates matters when seeing how long they last.

I can and I have. But for some reason this does not stop the phone (iPhone) displaying both WiFi strength and cellular network strength readings.

In message <xsB4R.2999$ snipped-for-privacy@fx10.ams, at 20:25:02 on Mon, 29 Dec

That's a bit unfair, all the "Unlimited" packages I had on ADSL published the cap quite openly, and generally all that happened was the throughput was throttled for a while thereafter.

The caps were only there to dissuade people from running websites/P2P at home (usually stuffed full of pirate movies) and it was difficult to get near the cap if you were only downloading what you needed at that moment.

That’s my whole house consumption. I do about 1,200 miles a month on about

Tim

Offering a capped service is fine. On the other hand, claiming an "Unlimited" service in the headline (which they did) and then apply a limit - which in my experience was 'published' by having it buried somewhere in the fine print. That I do have an argument with. Still, that's yesterday's problem.

Only in that particular case; similar practices continue unabated elsewhere. Every year we receive a 16-page glossy brochure from Thames Water describing all the good works it has done, starting with environmental improvements and going on to charitable donations, support for vulnerable customers, etc etc. Nowadays we simply turn straight to page 14, where the small print tells you how much their exorbitant charges are going to rise next year.

In message <EQG4R.3804$ snipped-for-privacy@fx09.ams, at 02:32:04 on Tue, 30 Dec

In telecoms, like all-you-can-eat restaurants, there's always a 'fair use' clause; whatever words are used by the marketing people.

Another example was Amex with their "no preset spending limit" slogan, which too many people read as "infinite credit limit", whereas in fact what it means is 'dynamic credit limit, based on your recent spending and repayment patterns'.

So let’s do some numbers:

Cost of panels, battery, heat pump, insulation iro £30,000

Loss of interest on capital = £1200pa or £100pm

Income from exports £85pm

Net costings pm

Outgoing/losses

Income £85

Total cost pm = £276 - £85 = £191

Which is exactly my monthly outgoings for gas and electricity including running an EV.

So where is the payback for your capital expenditure?

Even worse:

Any decent ISA roboinvestor will earn you 12% tax free, so your losses on capital could be £3600pa or £300pm, dwarfing your energy costs.

Perhaps you shouldn’t have invested in electricity.

If you want the cellular radio to be off, put it in airplane mode, wifi and bluetooth will both stay on (provided you've turned them on in airplane mode on another occasion), you'll still get wifi calls in and out ... maybe watch out w at happens when you go out of wifi range, you might end-up with no signal?

I have just examined my NatWest one and there is a piece the right size to hold a flat battery about the 2016 size. The entire back is held on with phillips screws but there is a little square hole at the edge of what I assume is the battery holder and at the bottom of the hole is a small round dent. It looks as though putting a probe into that dent and pushing it from the top to the bottom of the square hole will release the battery holder.

I am not going to test the theory because if the battery is going to last 20 years I will probably be dead before it is necessary, and why fiddle with something that is working? However it does show that there is at least two ways of dealing with replacing the battery.

My Barclays pinsentry uses 4x LR44 batteries, I have a NatWest one too but not seen it for ages, thought it was identical? In practice I use the PinSentry phone app 99% of the time.

It wont. The key is whether it is displaying a wifi-calling icon - a telephone handset with radio waves..

If on android 7 or later its buried in the menus and no icon is displayed at all.