Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Light of whose life?
POWER your home “24 hrs a day with green energy generated by your solar system,” says the website , plugging the “revolutionary product” Midnight Sun. It goes on to say that users can still benefit from the “Feed in Tariff”. That’s what the “guaranteed” price at which people with solar panels can sell their excess electricity to the National Grid.
Reader Simon Mallett dug around and found reports that , and its rated storage capacity is 9 kilowatt-hours of energy.
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Simon wants to know how long it would take to recoup your investment. A friend of Feedback contacted Awe Energy for details, but received no response. As far as we can tell, the device stores electricity generated when it is sunny, leaving you with less to sell to the grid at the Feed in Tariff. It supplies a rather small amount at night, reducing what you buy at a normal price. The tariff structure is complicated, but Feedback thinks the answer to Simon’s question is probably “not in your lifetime” and may even be “never”. It’s impossible to be sure, because the “guaranteed” tariff can be changed at the click of a government mouse.
What should James Parsons make of the sign in a shop that sells beer declaring: “No alcohol that’s opened to be consumed on the premises”? What is forbidden that’s possible, and why?
Tinkerers defeated
DECADES ago, Feedback met “green” tinkerers experimenting with solar photovoltaic collectors, batteries and “inverters” to produce of alternating current – exactly the set-up that we presume lies behind the Midnight Sun device mentioned above. The tinkerers gave up.
Parcel of puzzles
FEEDBACK is more confused than ever about how many dimensions parcels have, and what these are. We reported Mike Goldstein’s puzzlement at receiving a box marked “26 × 15 × 7 × 1.4” (19 October). We wondered, as did he, whether the 1.4 was in units of time.
Michael Teasdale writes of a carrier that “calculates the charge by multiplying the volume of the parcel by the weight”. That could get pricey fast. And Feedback has met the concept of an “index” of volume computed by adding the longest dimension to double the width and double the height – giving a one-dimensional measure of how hard it is to fit the parcel in a sack (6 July).
Looking for more evidence, we discover the UK Post Office concept of ““: multiply the three dimensions in centimetres, divide by 5000 and pay the charge for the resulting number, as if it were a weight in kilograms, if it is greater than the actual weight. Ouch.
Norman Paskin says that Mike’s fourth figure may be the thickness of the card, in an unspecified unit, and Markus van der Burg points out that this could indicate what the box is suitable for.
We still suspect time is involved: possibly how many seconds after we popped out for a pint of milk did they visit, find us gone and leave a failed-delivery card.
A holiday in the past
THE “TravelZoo” two-day holiday offer that Rachel Hankins found on informed her that if she took up the offer, the adjustable “Arrival Date” for her holiday was set at “Thurs 01 Jan 1970”. The page failed to explain what method of time travel would be employed to arrive on this date (which happens to be the beginning of time for Unix-flavoured computer systems).
Sculpture is not for everyone
RESTRICTIONS on visits to the near Auckland, New Zealand, had Shane Dwyer and his wife impressed but a little concerned. The park’s website emphasises that it is privately owned and is open just one day a month, by prior appointment only. And not everyone is entitled to visit: only “artists, educational institutions, charities and the public”. Shane asks what the restriction means. Feedback deduces that official delegations of non-artistic uncharitable MPs are forbidden.
Waiting at the wetland
SUCCESSFULLY gaining entrance to a holiday destination, Simon Holloway saw a sign in the UK Wildfowl and Wetland Trust’s . Above a charming picture of an otter, it says: “Otter talks 11.30 am, 3.00 pm.”
“I waited,” says Simon, “but didn’t hear them utter a thing.”
Clock-watching
FINALLY, holidays also exercise the Victorian Government in Australia. Peter Bennet, who works in one of the state’s high schools, quotes its : “An employee is entitled to long service leave… at the rate of 495.6967 hours (three months) after 10 years full time service and at the rate of 247.84835 hours (one and a half months) for each completed five years of service thereafter.”
Peter reckons this means that leave is calculated to the nearest 10,000th of an hour in the first case and to 100,000th of an hour – 36 milliseconds – in the latter. “I knew they were keeping a close check on my time off,” he says, “but this seems excessive.”