AnthonyL wrote:
It was of course a nice sunny day - ideal for solar generation, and
both my next door neighbour and the house opposite have got panels.
Could they take advantage of the situation? No way. The bloody
things need electrical power to operate.

They can, if they have batteries and appropriate controls. If they don't
have batteries, they're at risk of a brownout or cut if the sun happens to
go behind a cloud at the wrong moment. That could be unfortunate for
equipment that isn't expecting intermittent power - and isn't uncommon in
our weather.

You can get controls that switch over the house to solar power, while
preventing making the inlet live and frying any technicians working on it,
but presumably your neighbours didn't invest in such things.

Theo