Posted by: @batpred

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Posted by: @jamespa

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Be careful what you wish for, and even more careful what you vote for!  And if you think authoritarianism represents a risk, explain to people why things take time rather than criticising the delay.

can they not run it with more of a sense of urgency? 

 

No. 

You have to give people time to provide quality responses not off the cuff un evidenced opinions,  otherwise it's not a genuine consultation. 

I have been there, I get the competing pressures!  It's deeply frustrating but the alternative is authoritarianism.

Democracy is bad, unfortunately most if not all alternatives are worse.  The underlying reason for that is that humans are for the most part selfish, and a good proportion are also deceitful.

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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If anything the IET has made his job very much easier by signing up with the trade bodies (who have clear biases) and to mostly ludicrous claims. 

I agree with that, I'm frankly deeply disappointed with the IET (of which I remain a Fellow but i am now reconsidering), they seem to be going the way of other outwardly similar organisations, whereas previously they stood out as a beacon of genuine, unbiased, professionalism.

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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Posted by: @jamespa

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Posted by: @batpred

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Agreed, but there seems to be a focus on alleviating energy poverty, so lots of people living in flats may be interested in this. It looks like a quick fix even if it the sun typically does niot shine here when heating needs are stronger 

I suspect Milliband is deeply frustrated by the protectist crap from the esttablised industry.

Unfortunately that doesn't give him carte blanche to ignore it.  Practically speaking, although Government is sovereign, he has to work through a process first, getting consultation responses, evaluating them etc.

 

Well strictly speaking he doesn't, but not to do so would be authoritarian, and I doubt he supports authoritarianism and therefore wouldn't want to establish a dangerous precedent.

Nearly spilt my tea laughing at that one. People arrested for holding up blank pieces of paper or telling jurors their rights. Government mandated digital ID, ID checks on all social media coming, trying to ban VPNs, government not parents to decide what their own children can access ? 

I agree to a large extent, some of the things this gov has done recently were "controversial" and there would have been a lot of value in consultations. At least to save embarassment in u-turns..

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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If anything the IET has made his job very much easier by signing up with the trade bodies (who have clear biases) and to mostly ludicrous claims. Had they stuck to RCBOs, panel grounding, cable temperature calculations and aspects of things like downrating protection Milliband would have had a challenge. But as they've mostly gone for the obvious comedy stuff that can be ripped apart that'll (for good or bad) also attach to their more relevant questions.

But getting back to point, Ed may have been more concerned about issues surfacing and giving ammunition to the fossil fuel lobby, this time supported by part of the renewables. 

But for this, it would have been simpler to commission a simple report to back him and then press ahead with it. 

And then they could spend more time trying to tackle that impossible one, with the building industry regulation... without an id system! 

Posted by: @batpred

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But for this, it would have been simpler to commission a simple report to back him and then press ahead with it. 

Not so.  The reporter would inevitably request 'expert witnesses' (and therefore have to give them time to respond) to cover their own back and anyway the author would likely be from the established industry because that's where the expertise is available.

Without truly independent experts it's simply impossible to do what you suggest.  Where would they come from unless they are retained on a high salary by the civil service, which they aren't.

We got ourselves to where we are by outsourcing expertise to industry.

I just saw this from IET, that seems over the top: 

https://www.theiet.org/media/press-releases/press-releases-2026/press-releases-2026-january-march/24-march-2026-iet-urges-households-to-check-electrical-safety-before-using-plug-in-solar-products

It restates concerns ...

• Older RCDs may not work correctly with plugin generation: An RCD (Residual Current Device) is the safety switch that cuts the power if there’s a fault - for example, if someone cuts through a lawnmower cable it protects you against electric shock. But some older RCDs were never designed for electricity flowing back into the circuit, as can happen with plug-in solar. This can stop the RCD from tripping when it should, meaning it may not protect you during a fault. Households should check with a competent electrician whether their RCDs are suitable before plugging in any energy generation equipment.

Is the risk higher in the UK than in Germany? 

• Risk of overload or back feed: Plug-in solar can create scenarios where parts of a circuit carry more current than intended, even if the circuit breaker appears to operate normally.

Ok, but can adding 800W to a circuit really do this? 

I would have hoped there would have been more constructive engagement from the IET..

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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Nearly spilt my tea laughing at that one. People arrested for holding up blank pieces of paper or telling jurors their rights. Government mandated digital ID, ID checks on all social media coming, trying to ban VPNs, government not parents to decide what their own children can access ? I think telling the NICIEC that they are a joke for most of their supposed risks like extension cables is way more democratic then their usual practices.

Ok but that suggests that you may be opposed to authoritarianism.  If this is the  case you will surely understand why consultation processes are necessary before changes are made, even if they take a frustrating amount of time.

If you aren't opposed to authoritarianism, then you may well be opposed also to frustratingly long consultations.

You are entitled to hold either opinion, or anything in between.  However if your opinions apparently lean one way on some issues, but the other way on others, people may be confused and seek clarification from time to time.

The data on RCDs is interesting. For comparable countries the stuff I read through they had found one possible example which was not caused by plug in solar and which doesn't appear possible with plug in solar (as it cuts so fast when grid power is lost). There are much bigger risks caused by the older unidirectional RCDs in the presence of things like switched mode power supplies. So actually your PC is probably more dangerous than your solar kit 8). We know RCDs are a theoretically bad idea in a modern electrical environment anyway, this is not news to most of the planet 8).

The backfeed the IET should have gone and done the maths on. When this came up in Germany the regulatory bodies went off and did all the calculations on worst case scenarios, realistic scenarios and cable behaviour. In Utah they same happened. Lots of charts of cable temperatures in air, walls etc with timescales and overcurrent levels.

Germany concluded moving from 600W to 800W was safe - their cables could take it (remembering they don't use ring mains which are intrinsically unsafe and we ought to stop using in new builds too), and the scenarios for failure were not related to real world behaviour. Switzerland is utterly paranoid on electrical safety so concluded 600W was safe from basically the same data.

Utah concluded 400W (remembering its funny 110v power so same current as 800 to us) was safe using similar approaches. They also approved 1200W (equivalent to 2400W here) providing that the protection on that circuit was derated by 1200W so that even in the hypothetical circuit loaded with space heaters magically kept just from tripping by the solar the cable would remain totally within spec.

Derating a ring to 20A is an interesting approach to the problem certainly, and one electricians are used to doing all the time because EICRs (when done properly) routinely find that 32A rings are broken and thus unsafe, the break is probably buried deep in the customers wall and so shove a 20A trip on it.

Proportionality is what actually matters here

- Ring mains are intrinsically dangerous as they fail silently and allow severe overloading

- RCDs are at risk from all sorts of DC elements getting onto the circuit anyway

- A 32A ring (assuming it's in working condition) holding 36A of heaters and 4A of solar so not tripping is not a realistic scenaro (especially compared to the existing higher risk from broken rings)

The rest of the stuff from the "professional" trade bodies is a joke though.

The IET bits at least are sensible and actionable, although I don't see why they didn't just action them instead of raising them. Maybe they think there's money to be had to do the analysis, maybe there's real money needed to do it right. The RCD risk seems low but telling people to check their protection is bidirectional (RCBO or old wire fuses ;)) is an easy ernough action, and quite frankly "should have a valid EICR" is a recommendation I think a lot of people would consider sensible for most houses in the first place if plugging solar into what you hope is still a working ring. It's already mandatory for rentals so the poorer folks wouldn't get a cost hit. Recommending an EICR might be a good bribe to the makework trade people too 8)

The rest of the stuff from the trade folks about extension leads, flat cables and repeating FUD about how quickly units shut off though is sad, and the IET shouldn't have put its name to the same document as it seems to have (if the press isn't being inaccurate).

@etchedpixels 

I think I can agree with all of that in particular the bits about proportionality (life is, after all, a sexually transmitted fatal condition) and the iet getting involved in trade fud.

In an authoritarian society (or a society with a much higher level of trust for politicians than we have, and a technial civil service,) this is a cleae case of JFDI

Posted by: @jamespa

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Ok but that suggests that you may be opposed to authoritarianism.  If this is the  case you will surely understand why consultation processes are necessary before changes are made, even if they take a frustrating amount of time

Politics aside one of the roles of government is to consult but another one is to have enough in house expertise or independent expertise to tell people who are making up nonsense where to go stick it.

So to me there are two things

1. Properly consulting and understanding the real risks and consequences of any policy decision

2. Making a democratic representative decision based upon that risk *and* the public willingness to accept the risk.

A fine example being the automobile. Those murder about 5 people a day and severely injure another 80 people a day. If plug in solar killed 1 a year that would be about 0.0005% of the deaths from cars. Nobody however would say that a minister getting up and banning cars tomorrow would represent the will of the people. There is a knowledge of the risks (though rarely the astronomical cost to the tax base) and an acceptance that whilst lower would be better the risk is something society accepts.

So I'd submit that if the risk is really low and the public want plug in solar then Milliband is correct (after considering the actual risks not the made up ones) in allowing it. Nothing is perfectly safe.

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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Politics aside one of the roles of government is to consult but another one is to have enough in house expertise or independent expertise to tell people who are making up nonsense where to go stick it.

I agree.  Others, most notably the governments we predominantly elect, don't.

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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So I'd submit that if the risk is really low and the public want plug in solar then Milliband is correct (after considering the actual risks not the made up ones) in allowing it. Nothing is perfectly safe.

I agree, but if one person is ever injured by something that could faintly be tied (however spuriously) to plug in solar, just imagine the headlines in the Daily Fail and the response of Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells if there hasn't been a robust process.

Risk is something that the public don't understand (or don't understand but accept until it affects them) and the media exploit.  In some cases this impedes progress.