What astounds me most (and I know it shouldn't) is that the decisions and actions of one man can inflict this much damage on billions of people around the world.

What hits me hardest is how heavily this penalises the very people who have been trying to do the right thing. Tens of thousands of us here in the UK have spent our own hard-earned money on solar arrays, heat pumps, batteries and insulation precisely to reduce our reliance on volatile fossil fuels and protect ourselves from exactly these kinds of global shocks. Now those careful, responsible steps are being undermined in real time. Even with renewables on the roof, the knock-on effects (higher wholesale electricity prices, inflated grid charges and the wider cost-of-living squeeze) mean the financial payback stretches out and the sense of security we thought we’d built evaporates. It feels profoundly unfair that those trying to act responsibly are being penalised so heavily by events far beyond their control. I've spent the weekend (again) thinking how we can limit the impact on our household and our finances.

I feel your frustration and anger.

I try to lessen those feelings of anxiety by looking at how much we would now be paying for oil had we not ripped out the oil boiler and replaced it with an ASHP. Our bills are low instead of currently being sky high, and we are as well placed as we can possibly be to remain being resilient to future shocks. I realise everyone is not as fortunate as ourselves and that is immediately apparent talking to my neighbours who are still dependant on heating oil and their petrol & diesel cars.

Regrets, Toodles.

I have to admit, the longer this Iranian saga drags on, the more I struggle with it. As I grow older, these situations irk me more and more. My patience for arrogance, ignorance, flexing, bullying, gold-plated White House ballrooms and the casual disregard for the human cost of big decisions is getting noticeably shorter. It genuinely gives me anxiety.

I cannot see any way this is now going to end quickly, simply because there is no way out for either side that doesn't involve accepting defeat (and America wont 'win' by sheer might).  My current guess is that it may well last just under 3 years, ie until shortly after the next Presidential elections and even that assumes that the poorer people in America don't choose to shoot themselves in the foot again.  I hope I'm wrong, but Vietnam suggests I may not be.  If you read what the trustworthy commentators are saying its mighty depressing.

What astounds me most (and I know it shouldn't) is that the decisions and actions of one man can inflict this much damage on billions of people around the world.

What hits me hardest is how heavily this penalises the very people who have been trying to do the right thing. Tens of thousands of us here in the UK have spent our own hard-earned money on solar arrays, heat pumps, batteries and insulation precisely to reduce our reliance on volatile fossil fuels and protect ourselves from exactly these kinds of global shocks. Now those careful, responsible steps are being undermined in real time. Even with renewables on the roof, the knock-on effects (higher wholesale electricity prices, inflated grid charges and the wider cost-of-living squeeze) mean the financial payback stretches out and the sense of security we thought we’d built evaporates. It feels profoundly unfair that those trying to act responsibly are being penalised so heavily by events far beyond their control. I've spent the weekend (again) thinking how we can limit the impact on our household and our finances.

And this stopped being about oil and gas a while ago. It’s now rippling into just about every part of daily life. For the average Brit, we’re already seeing higher food prices because fertiliser costs are climbing, transport and refrigeration are getting more expensive and the entire supply chain is under pressure. Supermarket staples, imported fruit and vegetables, bread, milk, fuel for the car, bus and train fares, building materials for home repairs, insurance premiums... almost everything is starting to feel the strain. Personal finances are being squeezed as inflation eats into savings and wages struggle to keep up. The weekly shop, the monthly energy bill, even something as simple as a meal out… all of it is becoming noticeably more expensive and it's just going to get worse the longer this situation goes on.

Globally it’s even worse. Families in India, Egypt, Indonesia, Philippines, across Africa and many other developing nations are watching cooking fuel, fertiliser, basic transport and the price of a simple meal climb beyond what many can afford. What feels like an annoying extra £200-£400 a year for a UK household can be life-changing for someone on a much lower income elsewhere.

The latest forecasts suggest this won’t clear quickly either. Restarting production, clearing the backlog of rerouted tankers and rebuilding inventories could easily take many months. Looking at previous disruptions like the Red Sea issues, where elevated costs lingered for well over a year, analysts are now talking about the full effects working their way through the system over 12 to 24 months, with some inflationary pressure still being felt well into 2027 and possibly 2028. 

It’s also particularly striking when you look at other examples of strong-arm tactics on energy supplies, the effective US blockade of oil shipments to Cuba, for instance, which has caused severe hardship for ordinary people there through rolling blackouts and economic strain. 

What has also left a sour taste is the recent oil trading activity. Exchange data showed traders placing bets worth around $500-580 million on crude futures just minutes before President Trump posted on Truth Social about postponing strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure. The timing was, shall we say, remarkable. 

Vent session over!

Off-topic subject closed?

Or just add any further discussion to the other thread. I know it has been somewhat dominated of late by a bun fight between two Mitsubishi heat pump owners over what their respective data, collected in different ways, show, but in a way that is just a reflection on how difficult it is to answer the question of whether setbacks (including the defrost special case) do or don't save energy/money. I'm still collecting my routine data, and come the end of this heating season I will attempt a matched pairs analysis, the matched pairs being days matched on weather, but one with a setback, the other without. This goes at least some way towards solving the baseline problem, at least for whole days, the day without the setback is the baseline. It will be less useful for assessing defrost energy use, because if it is cold enough for defrosts, they will occur, so there are no matched controls without defrosts. But for now, I am sufficiently persuaded on the evidence to date that defrosts do not of themselves increase energy use. It appears to be a classic association is not causation situation, defrosts are associated with high energy use in cold weather, but they are not the cause of or even a contributor to the high energy use. Instead the high energy use happens (a) because it is cold and (b) because COP falls, creating a double whammy to push energy use up.   

Off-topic subject closed?

The sampling is only every 5 mins so the accuracy isn’t wonderful. But I would contend that the overshoot (in terms of the integral over time) is greater than the dip of reduced electrical load. To do it accurately I would need to establish the nominal power of each cycle once the boost has finished, which is different on each cycle, and compare the energy above nominal to that below.

One of the things that has emerged on the setback thread is that even minute sampling may miss some events during a defrost. You need to look at minutes rather than hours on the X axis. Here is a defrost from my heat pump in January this year. The darker blue line is energy in (Wh not kWh!). You can see the defrost dip and then the post defrost recovery. Do they cancel each other out? It all depends on where you put the baseline (what would have happened without the defrost).

I used some AUC estimates (using pixel counting) to get some idea of the energy values from some other charts (see the other thread for examples eg this one and my comment 'I don't have to change the baseline very much to reverse the result, such that the setback and recovery uses more energy than steady state running' - I don't want to hijack this one too much!) and it suggested the energy in deficit during and boost afterwards are not far off cancelling themselves out. The 'nominal power' or baseline, ie what would have happened without the defrost, is extremely difficult to establish, most often because the OAT will not stay steady, and it matters, very small differences in the baseline can reverse say a net energy saving into extra energy used and vice versa. 

I have been making the same point whenever I hear people raising concerns about fossil fuel prices and arguing for lower taxation.

Also the fact that my virtual equivalent petrol tank is staying still below £9 ... 

I appreciate some people were not able to switch yet but worth highlighting as it is a point not made often enough 

I have a number of neighbours who are dependent on heating oil and at the time of me installing my renewable's equipment thought I was spending a large amount of money unnecessarily. Now those same neighbours are facing a 100% increase in their energy costs and are looking at me with jealous eye's. Will this Iran conflict reinvigorate the UK population to transition to renewable's in the future?

Interesting thought

One can only hope.

We were in that position back when Putin invaded Ukraine, but I fear that as long as bills just continue rising, many a person may not be able to see or understand that prices may have risen more had we chosen to build more new gas fired or nuclear power stations. It worries me that political parties (I'm looking at you, Tories) are quick to set policy (to abandon Net Zero ambitions) to win votes as polling tells them it's easier to sell a narrative that building wind farms is driving up the cost of bills only to spend even more curtailing their output than it is to sell a vision of what the future looks like if we do nothing.

Anyway, I'm happy that my heat pump is currently costing me five times less than oil to heat my house (COP of 4, Cosy tariff 14.8p/kWh, oil at £1.55/L locally). I'm currently draining the last of the oil from my old oil tank for my neighbour in my good deed for the week.