Reading down the comments I do tend to agree that this series lacks the details, but....but I don't believe It's aimed at us 'old hands'. If like many below you're a long time 'FullyCharger' (did I just create a new word for you Robert?) all these items so far proposed we've seen and investigated with Robert months ago. However put these series in front of a newbi and I think it's a winner. As a side note, I'm so pleased to see the talking heads in their 'sensible British clothes', not all smarmed up and using big words. Congratulations Fully Charged team. You've done a great quality job.

How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings account? No one.

Long time viewer, who was really looking forward to this series. Unfortunately, as others have said it seems to be little more than a set of commercials for companies offering products and ideas that have already been covered, with frankly little to no substance included. I love Fully Charged - especially the car reviews, even if I can't afford one at the moment, as I see EVs as the way forward. If someone would release an EV with a decent range and about the size of a Honda Jazz I'd be interested in a few years if not now. Yeah, I know about the Honda Fit, but a new version of that would need a bit more range and to be available in the EU (oh, OK - and the UK) for me to consider it. On the issue of cost, I was really hoping that this series would have more episodes, with each one going FAR more in-depth about one or at the VERY most two of the things covered in each of the episodes we are seeing. Pricing, efficiency, cost/benefit, return on investment... the whole deal would have been superb. A couple of episodes actually talking to people who USE smart thermostats or TRVs, with real-world examples of pros and cons, would have been worth FAR more than all of the present three episodes combined.

I have to say that this format is slightly frustrating - we already have the equivalent of glossy magazines with companies telling us what they do. The problem with all of these ideas is that we don't know what they will cost, whether they will work for our particular house, whether there's someone in our area who can install the thing that we're interested in. What are the other practical problems? It's really hard to get useful information and perhaps the best information would be not so much from the companies that are offering some service in some limited area but also from the people who did it and what problems they solved. We also could do with some completely honest ideas on price because as far as I can tell none of this stuff is financially worthwhile except for very specific types of people and I'd be delighted to be proven wrong. Example: is it worth removing your chimney? With modular inverters we'd expect not but then can anyone actually supply modular inverters in the UK? Can I put solar panels on a wall where I get a lot of sun? Are these solar companies really interested in "little guys" like me or are they chasing more lucrative work? Can I install panels myself and pay for the electrical work on its own? etc etc etc.

Having dived into the topic neck-deep during our various lockdowns, I'm going to try to answer the question Dan posed at the start and then didn't answer: is domestic wind worth it? Short answer: no. For a long answer, we need to look at a rule of thumb for wind power size, types of turbine and the situations where small-scale wind does make sense. As a rule of thumb with wind power: the bigger the better. Bigger wind turbines are more efficient and have less variable output power. The largest wind turbine in the world, the GE Haliade X, is basically a small skyscraper, with 3 slightly smaller skyscrapers attached to an axle at the top. Building it is stretching the limits of our skills and capabilities as a species, but it's worth it because it sweeps a huge area, is highly efficient and ends up pretty much unaffected by turbulence. Wind turbines ideally want steady flow through the swept area and minimal turbulence. The Haliade X is going into offshore wind farms, and the large turbines and open surroundings of offshore wind make the wind farms less variable and more efficient. Onshore wind farms use smaller turbines, and are more variable and produce less total power, but are still worth it overall. Once you're down to the scale of individual buildings, the efficiency is too low, turbulence takes that down even lower and the turbine's output will be extremely variable. You've probably, so far, been imagining a conventional fan-shaped horizontal-axis wind turbine. If so, fair enough: horizontal axis wind turbines are by far the most common, most mature and most overall cost-effective design, particularly for large installations. But you've probably seen one or two vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). Rather than the axis of the spinning turbine being pointed into the wind, VAWTs have, well, a vertical axis. You might have seen a triple-helix spinning VAWT out in the wild, but there are also designs that have scoops - the helical ones use aerodynamic lift to generate torque to drive the generator, and are more efficient but more complex, whereas scoop-based ones use aerodynamic drag and are less complex (and therefore cheaper) but less efficient. Have a Google image search and see, and I'll also recommend the KZfaq channel Engineering with Rosie, which recently did a video the broke down the physics of VAWTs (she's a professional wind turbine engineer, and really knows her stuff). VAWTs are less affected by turbulence, which makes them arguably a better choice for more turbulent areas, in towns/cities and around or mounted to buildings. They are more expensive and less efficient than HAWTs, though, so don't expect them to start cropping up in wind farms. If small wind is going to work, it will probably have to embrace VAWTs. So when does small wind make sense? Basically, if you're living off-grid and/or in a location with lots of wind, like out on the American Great Plains or on a small island. Urban areas, and even small villages, are too built-up and the wind will be too interrupted and turbulent to get substantial output from a wind turbine. If you're going to install a turbine, put it on a pole, not on your house (you might need planning permission and/or get objections on aesthetic grounds). The higher up you mount it, the less turbulence you'll get from the ground, but the wind hitting the turbine and pole will cause vibration and noise, which for building-mounted turbines may be audible in the house and/or damage the fixings. Most locations where people build houses do not get enough wind for it to be worth it, though - you're better signing up to something like Ripple, or a variable tariff that lets you use overnight wind energy from the grid and its larger, more efficient turbines. Disclaimer: I might be a professional engineer, but I'm an electronic engineer. If there are any mechanical or fluid flow engineers out there who want to tell me I've made a blunder, please do so :)

Why is this series just an ad (and no disclaimer on any episode) for selected and favoured, providers. There's little no actual information in any of these videos... for example - You stated at the start does it make sense to have a wind turbine on your road / estate and is it worth the investment... you never answered that? Why not? Also, what does Ripple actually do? How do I pay towards a wind farm and then get my electricity from another provider? That wasn't explained at all. I ẃas really looking forward to this series, but you've really given no actual, usable, actionable information - e.g. who do I calculate how much cavity insulation do I need? Is it better than another form of insulation. How do you actually manage the direction of the electricity created by the PV Panel? I think I'll give the rest of them a miss as the lack of information is highlighting terrible reporting. Fully Charged used to be better.

I loved the premise of this series and was looking forward to it but so far it's just a series of adverts for start-up companies selling their goods & services. What this is doing is making me think 'are they being objective with their advice or are they just trying to sell me something?'. Disappointed.

I would like to see mobile homes, camper vans etc all with batteries and all with V2G as standard, They are often parked up for months at a time and are perfect as part of a distributed grid. If you have a caravan with 20-30 KWh battery, as on grid in the winter, and then as a range extender while on holiday. Like why not!

What a waste of space, where were the residential wind generators, no mention of VAWT. As already mentioned ads & large part about solar, nothing new ! VAWT = vertical axis wind turbine, not an enormous windmill but an aesthetically pleasing compact design.

I was excited for this series when it was announced-hoping to hear more of the nitty gritty ideas and real world examples. Instead it's just a load of spokespersons for companies. Unfortunately, I can only assume the premise of this series was driven by revenue rather than content. The "Moonstone house" tour episode you did last year still provides more relevant info than 3 episodes of this series so far. I don't enjoy being negative-simply adding my voice to mix of how I'd hope to see this channel progress into the future.

At least "Maddie goes electric" was titled like a kids show and hosted by a kids presenter. This series is horribly basic and condescending. At the start of this episode, the practicality of home wind power is mentioned and dismissed with "we have our doubts" or whatever, followed by corporate advertorial to a company that isn't yet producing anything. Any chance of rewinding to home wind power and explaining? What makes it impractical and for who? Is it the height of the installation, the size of the required blades, electrical connection stuff?

You should create an episode just on food and the impact of changing your diet :)

Wow, the Ripple Energy model would be awesome to see in Australia though wind farms here tend to be a hated blight and various arguments against them from bird kills to ugly view whereas I would love to have a view of wind farm better than looking at a Nuclear or Coal power station.

This is just getting worse no information here

I’m persevering with this series in the hope that there will eventually be some material I would feel confident promoting in my local community (as I did with Maddie’s) but I haven’t seen it yet I’m afraid. It’s probably too late now but I think it needs a PRACTICAL roadmap for households in a variety of scenarios as I thought had been trailed in the first episode. We aren’t getting that yet and going off on things that aren’t here now addressing homes emissions outputs - V2G at early trials with some suppliers and a few cars, Ripple currently closed to new investments -and anyway wouldn’t it be better to encourage households to invest in the carbon efficiency of their own homes - insulation, lowering use, low carbon heating etc rather than in over-complicated schemes which are more like offset offerings. Institutional investors will provide the cash for wind farms surely. Cant Dan take a different type of home each time and work through the practical steps and measures that could apply with realistic costs and likely benefits - and base these scenarios on UK data on numbers / types of homes and typical levels of energy efficiency currently existing in them? So far just not very helpful unfortunately.

I think how this series was teased was a problem, but it's still an interesting 'state of the industry'.* Not really any new information, but it's consolidated in a nice format. *for the UK.

I am both surprised and happy to see so many women in this series.

Excellent series Dan, I have solar and battery - can't wait for heating solution to replace my gas boiler! Eamon ( see you at the Outside FC game)

I've joined the ripple waiting list, hopefully won't be too long

I'm a big fan of PVT panels. Where the back of the panel is used to cool the panel with a glycolic substance. You get heat for the tap water, and increase efficiency of the PV part of the panel due to lower temperature of the panel itself. As an added bonus the temperature range of these panels is much smaller which will increase the technical life expectancy of these panels.

I actually don't have a problem with this series. Yes of course there is an element of selective promotion here and also they do cover things that a lot of people who follow this channel already know a lot about (but not everything). However I think sometimes we need to look beyond ourselves and see how helpful having a series like this is to a wider, less informed viewership. It may be high level but If it gets people thinking about what to do to help the environment and then starting to look into things in details (you have to as all this stuff is relatively new and evolving) then it must be a good thing.

I love this videos and feel like I’m learning so much from watching them, but it deals feel like this area is in constant development. This makes it so hard to decide when to jump in, and to pick which solution is the best fit.

Empowering us all globally cool thank you

great addition to the Fully Charged show

As people have said, this is slickly produced, but disappointingly content free.

This has been a pretty lame series so far .Mostly evangelists for their products preaching to people who need much more detail to make a choice for the way forward .They need challenging on the assertions they make .Not sitting passively soaking it all up like a new convert.

Thanks for another great video series

Love the home series!

Vehicle to grid (V2G) will be a game changer! Well done Octopus for the trial 🐙

Most of the new houses I see have no solar and a had boiler. They are very clearly built to be as cheap as possible. It's such as shame as retrofitting is much more expensive and instead of massive profits we could have affordable, green housing.

Another video which is sponsor advertisement. Keep your heat pumps. My gas boiler has another 10 years lifespan. Who has the money to add phase 3 power line for power wall and EV charging ?

This series looked promising from the ad, not delivering so far

That's great news hoping we get rid of ages of black oil to the new beautiful environment and cheap electricity that boost uk and Europe economy... from Egypt

Love to see a program dedicated to virtical loop heat pumps

You might be planning to cover this but I'd love to see some options that are designed for those who are renting homes. Lots of the options and products out there require investment in the property which renters aren't going to want to spend money on. Is this something that you can cover?

So much cool stuff! I don't know where to start. I like the idea of vehicle to grid especially if I could run my house during a black out say but I want a EVan.... And they all seem so expensive so I feel like I'll just watch from the sidelines a bit more. Oh and ride my electric bike everyday 🙂

This is a good series to show to my client to get a better built house.

Really loving this series, great work Dan

i'd be interested to see how the numbers stack up with that ripple thing vs. buying shares in a renewable energy investment trust. the latter would be less complex and restrictive. independent decision on your energy provider, don't need to faff around with it when you move house. the trust income and capital gains would trigger tax though. hard to know how it would work out.

Vehicle to grid - in other words, distributed energy storage. A good idea. Let's hope the tories don't fvck these sorts of things right up with their nepotism, greed and corruption. (e.g. David 'Dodgy' Cameron, most "top" tories)

V2G - maybe best used as emergency backup only. The labor of replacing a battery in your car far higher than a one in the garage,, although v2g is gentler use on the battery. ALSO for house energy you can use a second life battery. I don't know if they mentioned, but solar also stabilizes the electrical grid.

blah blah blah, commercial, advertisement, some people talking while having some tea, more blah blah. i was expecting this series to actually learn something usefull. show us how they work. teach us, why and how istead of advertise.

Less infomercials and more journalism please

Ripple is all very well but out of reach for those of us who have chosen our primary energy supplier carefully, because Ripple need you to move to their specified provider. Pity, I love the principles of democratised distributed renewable energy production, but I am fussy about where the remainder of my power comes from, and Ripple’s designated one doesn’t cut it for me.

I love the vehicle to grid idea. I've been working from home since the arrival of the pandemic and have been putting my excess PV generation into the battery of my car since I'm at her me in the day. If I could then use that saved up power in the evenings it would be amazing.

Why do not more PV use thermal as cooling. More energy caprtured(heat) and better efficency in the PVs?

I am about to move to a house that has no gas supply, but is heated and lit by a combination of grid electricity and solar photo technology. It is a new area for me and I was looking forward to this series as a resource for education. I'm afraid I'm not going to bother with the remainder of the series as so far, it has been little more than three glossy infomercials. Shame, really. Normally, FC does a brilliant job. This ain't one of them.

Winter tends to generate such high winds that many wind turbines are turned off to avoid damage. How is Ripple any different from buying shares in a wind energy provider? We also know that lots of that power is lost in the transmission system depending on your distance from the wind farm.

I read recently that wind provided nearly 50% of the British power requirements when the wind blew strongly all over the country about 13 gigs. A great summer day was had recently and wind provided 67 MW.

You keep saying "stop burning stuff". I want to burn calories before I put on weight. Before I forget; Dan I would like to apologize for all the times I bugged you at Fully Charged live in Austin, Texas 2020. You are a very patient person and did a wonderful job taking care of the events and discussions in Robert's absence. Great job. Texas fan of Fully Charged.

Well what a disappointment………the usual sharada of wind energy pricing. I am now retired but about 15 years ago the company I was involved with did the then Dti studies on the cost of all forms of generation. The most expensive was off shore wind and from memory was about £150/MWhr. The installation costs are high because of subsea foundations, subsea cabling,maintenance costs are high because of location, reliability poor, life span 20 years. But most importantly the utilisation factor is around 27%. Ie because the wind does not blow all the time you only get 27% of the rated name plate capacity. The result is you need an equivalent generating capacity paid for and installed ready to pick up the load. The study showed the cheapest form of generation over it’s lifetime of 60 years was nuclear and that included decommissioning at end of life. So how did wind energy suddenly become cheaper? Yes there have been improvements in manufacturing and reliability but the vast difference in cost shown in the latest government studies is the invention of the carbon market and carbon pricing being applied. So the latest studies show the carbon price for conventional gas and coal generation and the price of carbon that would have been produced by gas fired plant is deducted from the wind generation costs thus giving a massive drop in price. There is a massive cost of going to zero emission which is of course a good thing…..however it will be carried by all people including the less well off. A time bomb for any government! V2 G is unlikely to succeed but V 2 H is a winner. The big thing now is new battery technology for local power DNO network storage so that when the wind does not blow there is stored capacity. Eg liquid metal batteries , rust reversal batteries, however all are in development phase at the moment.

I really dislike the sound level editing to have one person louder on each audio channel left/right in an interview.

Really interesting thanks

Can you guys press some more of the system owners (tado, myenergi etc) about interoperable APIs? It's crazy that these things will work with things like nest/Alexa but not with each other! The "one app to rule them all" world is only possible if lots of apps can rule the world: that's how you get the best one. Otherwise it's which proprietary system rules the world and not only have I had enough of that crap, it's also a barrier to people building systems piecemeal when they can't afford to do a full rip and replace without getting tied to one supplier in the future. I mean that's business I guess but it seems against the ethos that most of these companies espouse.

Loving the titular nod to Tomorrow's World!

As a life time renter I’d love to see energy saving solutions that are mobile and can be removed when i move property, currently substituting house power with 3kwh bluetti solar generator (attached to shed roof) :)

Hi Fully Charged - for the next video, could you interview someone without a company logo on their shirt?

I looked at Ripple and it simply wasn't economic. Either I misunderstood completely or it's yet another premium product.

A single rotation can power a home for two days 🤯🤔

Do you need to go phase 3 for this? A real top down approach to real world problems and cost would be helpful. If I have batteries can I avoid going phase 3? Can I dump spare solar?

Sorry Fully Charged. After persevering with the last advertising episode, i made it 5mins before stopping this advert. I get enough ads already. Sad to say i had high hopes for this series but its just ad after ad and very light on details.

Yes, there are a lot of companies talking their products up but I'm assuming the idea for this series was based towards newcomers to the idea of renewables and the ways we can move forward. In that regard it's a great series, well done fully charged. There are a host of youtube providers talking in depth about each facet of the series, if you want further info. P.S. I enjoyed it regardless.

The music and graphic intro is so Stranger Things

When the last lady said "you can tell the car, when you want to go to the shops" does that mean you don't just unplug it and drive, do you need to update the app? If so, that will not scale. I wouldn't use it at all like that, and I am watching fully charged, the average Joe will never accept that.

I'm not sure about using your car battery to power your home or the grid is a good idea. Car Batteries will only last a certain amount of charge cycles before they need replacing so essentially using your car battery in this way only makes your car old quicker. (Rather like adding more miles on the clock of a combustion engine) I should imagine it would be very expensive to then replace a cars' battery too. However, replacing batteries in a power wall I would suspect would be much cheaper because it would be much easier. Also discharging your car battery only means you have to recharge it again to drive it and I believe there are losses involved in charging. I'm all for renewables but it seems when you look closer at this idea I'm not so sure repurposing your car battery is worth it. I could be wrong here so please could you let me know. Thank you

Are there not apps that only sell the excess power to the grid when all other local sources in the home are not needing it (warm water/radiators/heat pump/BEV/storage)

So, the concept of V2G(selling off peak energy back to the grid at peak prices, correct me if I am wrong!) besides sounding like profiteering, can surely only last as long as it takes the energy suppliers to realise that someone else besides them is making money from off peak electricity? Confused! And what charge level can I expect my EV to have available should I need it at short notice?

Why not visit a few houses that have installed different solutions, show us those solutions and go into detail about install costs and running cost savings vs what they did have? That would be useful . And not a sales pitch by various companies but real world experience

OK so it's Monday morning you have 100% battery in your EV, you go to work and in the evening you get home and you have used 20% of your battery so you plug in to give the grid some of your electric back but later on you want to put electric back into your battery for next day going to work, so what is the advantage and what happens at midnight and an emergency crops up will you have any power in your battery to use your car.

Be nice to have V2H with solar diverter.

For seeing that it has a Cadillac Escalade ESV Electric like the 2020

suppliers really need to crack on with V2G, enough trials, loads of 24kWh LEAFS out there almost 10 years old capable of this. Saying that as Chademo is disappearing going to be even longer before V2G is made use of, more CCS "trials".

Could someone please explain phase 3 and if it’s really needed to increase my solar capacity

Is it easy enough to get an Economy 7 tariff, charge a battery overnight, use that to exclusively run the shower/kettle/oven in the morning/evening? What are the economics?

Well I quite like the series so far, a couple of niggles, but overall gives a few things to think about. As for it being a series of adverts, well I'm perfectly capable picking up ideas from one company and seeing who else might offer a similar service. A question, for V2G, can any/most cars do this or is it limited to those built to do it?

What about hybrid systems solar and wind? Can you tell more about it and how to save that energy, cost comparison with self generating energy and if you'll buy it from the grid. Thanks for these series very interesting!

This series is so great and informative as you interview the experts in their field.

Can we please have episodes on PVs and types

I looked at Ripple but was concerned about getting locked into an energy provider to make it work, and for a huge period of time.

I am sure the first one said they didnt do anything just enabled people to use wind power. How is that different from choosing a supplier who uses renewable apart from put someone else in the middle to take their cut? Shame the one app to rule them all was then just a short clip. No sure about using the car battery for V2G does it reduce the battery life? It would be nice to see the stats. As said just look like adverts with no stats.

It's an interesting idea.

This audio stereo panning is painful to hear with headphones. Please, don't. Just center it

So much potential for this series, and something I asked for in the survey that was put out, however it seems that the potential for content has not been any where near what I hoped for. If this is a taster of things to come then OK, however that’s not how it has been delivered. I hated the piece how how much room we have, but come on it’s not that simple. And don’t go on about battery driven cars that is not the answer to a green planet. Sorry guys but this series needs a revisit.

Does anybody know why my electricity has gone up from 15p to 19p /kWh when I am using 100% green energy. I am very confused and disappointed. It doesn't seem to make sense.

Do you have any info on: GAC Aion V Charging from 0-80% in 8 minutes?

Good Idea

Can I have energy shares from a nuclear power plant?

Wind power at home? "we have our reservations" then on to a middle-man/woman to sell their system. Humpf! I expected a bit more...

I'm afraid I'm also going to add my disappointment to the mix too. I was hoping to hear some really good advice on setting up my house for green fuels and advice on things like mixergy and solar and how to go about integrating and what are the best things to do... Instead I get spoon-fed one commercial after another after another ... Such a disappointment... Makes me feel like cancelling my Fully Charged donations .... The cynic in me is wondering how much kick-back cash you earned from these "info-mercials"..... So unhappy right now !!

It's a shame that solar batteries are so expensive. We recently looked at getting a Tesla Powerwall to go with our Solar installation, but only the v2 was available meaning that the cost went up to $30k NZD for the complete 4.8kW installation :-(

Customers, not Consumers. It pains when I hear that.

Sono Sion vehicle to load 11kw via it's charger. So you don't need house batteries to store solar or just use your car to power your house during peak demand then recharge on cheap EV tariff. Tesla are you listening??? There are such yawning gaps in the logic behind some of this stuff it beggars belief. Sono Sion £21,500, not available in RHD yet. Proper EV of the people. Best review of it is on this channel, 19mins of nodding and smiling guaranteed.

I would like to see a V2G adapter that would work with all EV's. I don't know if that is possible. Seems like the Nissan Leaf is the only mass market car that can do that. During the power outages this winter(Texas) I would have loved to tap into my EV's stored energy and keep the basic functions of the house running. I can see that the battery has more potential than moving the car. An EV has more potential uses that going to the store; I would love to harness that potential. We have to depend on Europe to prove and implement the technology. I don't see any organization in the states working seriously on V2G or V2H. Not even Tesla has announced those features. I would choose V2G or V2H over autonomous driving if I were looking at another EV. Agree with the comments, no hard examples of the technology just marketing.

How about Vehicle to Vehicle???? Will we be able to charge each others vehicle....

Can’t hear on speaker have to use headset for clarity

V2G is not going to be good for normal people's vehicles. The Chademo standard is the only one that supports it so far and is now dead in Europe and with CCS vehicles not currently supporting the standard, it's not going to be viable. Also added to the fact MOST people's vehicles won't be at home during the day to charge on excess solar/renewables and may return home with an empty battery so will be unable to supply a home at peak times. I do see it working on a business scale though especially with fleet vehicles like buses and vans where it could support the grid and help to pay for the extra costs of using EVs for a company. Also, the extra hardware costs would not be such a limiting factor. Battery storage at home needs to be accessed to charge or power 24/7 to make it work fully and the unreliability of the access to a V2G vehicle just does not give that.

Vocal volume is less please amplify a bit

Vehicle-to-grid - what is the impact on battery life with increased charge/discharges involved over time? Listening to all these solutions I reckon only a small percent of people can afford these. The total cost will dwarf the Pandemic costs to convert homes. Need some kind of payback over the life of the device although people would say 'but mine works fine now' so why pay extra. Big selling project to the public required - not something this Govt is good at!

What about using your battery power you have to recharge it and how can you guarantee you have a fully charged battery when you want it

What's wrong with having a magnetic turbine no wind is required and it will work 24-hours a day come rain or shine.