The channel is built like a tree. The trailer is the root, the topics are the branches, and every branch has three levels. You pick the branch and the depth.
Two ways through the content
The topic tree on this page shows how the channel is organised.
The logic map shows how the system itself is organised.
You decide how deep you go. Level 1 is complete on its own; levels 2 and 3 add the details.
1 · Understand
for everyone
What is the problem, and why do we solve it this way? For everyone, no prior knowledge needed.
Main episodes, 8 to 20 minutes
2 · Look inside
for the technically curious
Which numbers matter, which strategy works, and where it gets tricky. For the technically curious.
Detail videos and in-depth articles
3 · Rebuild
for builders
Physics, algorithms, code and the literature behind them, plus how the work with the AI went in detail. Built so that you, or your own AI, can adapt it to your setup.
Articles, code and downloads on this website
Every topic comes in three levels. Even at level 1 you won't miss anything important. Levels 2 and 3 are there for when you want to know exactly why.
Topic tree: five branches growing from one trunk, each with three levels: Understand, Look inside, Rebuild.
A battery and an electricity price that can change every 15 minutes are a powerful combination. They're also a good way to make expensive mistakes very quickly. It all starts with one question: what does a kilowatt hour in the battery actually cost?
1Understand
What a kilowatt hour from the battery costs, and why it's not the market price.
What do you do with sunshine when the battery is already full?
Solar power that nobody uses is simply thrown away: the inverter turns the panels down. Avoiding that starts the evening before, with a forecast and a plan.
1Understand
Why a full battery at noon can be a missed opportunity, and what a forecast is good for.
Ep. 4How much sun comes tomorrow?Planned
Ep. 5Teaching the forecastPlanned
Ep. 6What does my house actually use?Planned
Ep. 8Making room for free electricityPlanned
Ep. 9Throttled instead of flat outPlanned
2Look inside
From weather forecast to hourly solar curve, learners that correct it, and making room in the battery overnight.
Articles and downloads follow with the videos.Planned
3Rebuild
The physics model, the correction table, the forecast duel, and the search for the lowest safe morning charge.
Articles and downloads follow with the videos.Planned
Combining heating systems
Which heat source is the cheapest right now, and how does the house know?
A heat pump and a gas boiler in the same house sounds like a truce. In practice it's a daily price comparison, plus the question of how warm the water really needs to be.
1Understand
Why the cheapest heat source changes during the day, and what a heating curve does.
Ep. 11From outdoor temperature to flow temperaturePlanned
Ep. 12Why the heat pump raises its own flow temperaturePlanned
Ep. 13Who decides how warm the water gets?Planned
Ep. 14Heat pump or gas?Planned
Ep. 15Hot water right on timePlanned
Ep. 16Talking to the heat pumpPlanned
2Look inside
COP, flow temperature, short cycling, and why a small bathroom shouldn't outvote the living room.
Articles and downloads follow with the videos.Planned
3Rebuild
The price comparison, the learned heating curve, and the rules for talking to a heat pump without crashing it.
Articles and downloads follow with the videos.Planned
Control that's actually smart
What separates a system that thinks from one that's merely labelled “smart”?
“Smart” on the box usually means an app and a timer. Real intelligence starts with a boring question: can I trust this value at all? And it ends with a system that notices when it's wrong.
1Understand
Why “unknown” is not zero, and what a safe state is.
Ep. 2Unknown is not zeroPlanned
Ep. 3The map: from sensor to decisionPlanned
Ep. 10One plan for the next 24 hoursPlanned
Ep. 17How a house learns itselfPlanned
Ep. 18Learners need common sensePlanned
Ep. 19The invisible heaterPlanned
Ep. 20What if something fails?Planned
Ep. 21Fail-closedPlanned
Ep. 22The flight recorderPlanned
2Look inside
How old a value may be, learners that get graded, safety nets and a flight recorder.
Articles and downloads follow with the videos.Planned
3Rebuild
Freshness rules, fail-closed switches, dead man's switches, and the planner that ties it all together.
Articles and downloads follow with the videos.Planned
Building software with AI
What happens when an AI is your development partner?
The whole system was written together with an AI. That worked surprisingly well, and now and then surprisingly badly. This branch is about the collaboration: what an AI is good at, where it's confidently wrong, and the difference between software that runs on its own and systems that let an AI judge situations while they run.
1Understand
What working with an AI looks like in practice, without the hype.
Episodes for this branch are being planned.
2Look inside
Where AI-written code goes wrong, and how tests, reviews and clear rules catch it.
Articles and downloads follow with the videos.Planned
3Rebuild
Project structure, working rules and prompts that made it work, in detail.
Articles and downloads follow with the videos.Planned
The series
Series 1 · Energy
Power Flow Logic
Sun, battery, grid, heating, learners and safety nets. Six chapters, one playlist each. Main episodes run 8 to 20 minutes.
How does a weather forecast become an hourly solar curve?
Planned
Ep. 5
Teaching the forecast
How does a forecast learn from its own mistakes?
Planned
Ep. 6
What does my house actually use?
How do you predict your own consumption?
Planned
CBattery, grid and flexible loads4
Ep. 7
Grid charging in winter: never just fill it up
How much grid power, and when?
Planned
Ep. 8
Making room for free electricity
Why empty the battery on purpose at night?
Planned
Ep. 9
Throttled instead of flat out
How do you use flexible loads efficiently?
Planned
Ep. 10
One plan for the next 24 hours
How do many wishes become one plan?
Planned
DHeating with a brain6
Ep. 11
From outdoor temperature to flow temperature
How does the house find the right flow temperature?
Planned
Ep. 12
Why the heat pump raises its own flow temperature
What is short cycling, and why does it happen?
Planned
Ep. 13
Who decides how warm the water gets?
Should the coldest room decide for the whole house?
Planned
Ep. 14
Heat pump or gas?
Which heating is the cheapest right now?
Planned
Ep. 15
Hot water right on time
When does the hot water need to be ready?
Planned
Ep. 16
Talking to the heat pump
How does software talk to a heat pump, and what goes wrong?
Planned
ESystems that learn3
Ep. 17
How a house learns itself
What is a learner, and how do you know whether it's any good?
Planned
Ep. 18
Learners need common sense
Why does learning need an anchor from outside?
Planned
Ep. 19
The invisible heater
What throws the learners off?
Planned
FSafety nets3
Ep. 20
What if something fails?
What is a safe state?
Planned
Ep. 21
Fail-closed
What happens when you forget something?
Planned
Ep. 22
The flight recorder
Why is every decision written down?
Planned
Planned titles. They may still change.
Series 2 · What went wrong
Lab Notes
One failure per episode, told as a story: what happened, why it happened, and what I took away from it. Each Lab Note belongs to a Power Flow Logic episode.
Note
The zero that switched off a house
A restart briefly sent a battery limit of zero. The inverters obeyed. Blackout.
Lesson: Missing means: send nothing at all. Never zero, always a safe floor.
fits Ep. 2
Note
Phantom solar power in the middle of the night
A frozen value, identical to the last digit for 16 hours. The learner learned the failure too.
Lesson: A value that never changes is not a measurement.
fits Ep. 2, Ep. 5
Note
The clean fix that invented power
A well-built fix, complete with tests. Only the roof areas it corrected had no panels on them.
Lesson: Understand what something is for before you repair it.
fits Ep. 5
Note
Green, although it never calculated
The status light counted incoming data, not results.
Lesson: Measure the error, not the activity.
fits Ep. 17
Note
Time zone traps
UTC read as local time, sunlight values that belonged to the previous hour, shifted time slots.
Lesson: Always store a time together with its zone and its meaning.
fits Ep. 4
Note
Two controllers, one valve
A valve moved back and forth for hours.
Lesson: “No demand” is not the same as “close it”.
fits Ep. 22
Note
Errors that hide each other
Too optimistic plus too pessimistic looks perfectly plausible.
Lesson: Never repair one link of a chain on its own.
fits Ep. 10
Note
Whoever searches for the best match always finds one
15 out of 15 “matches”, and the drawing itself was out of scale.
Lesson: Enough free parameters will always find a winner in noise.
fits Ep. 17
Note
The test that aborted after 3 seconds
It measured the distance to the target instead of the rise.
Lesson: Measure change, not state.
fits Ep. 18
Note
After the third hole: rebuild
A metric failed the same check four times. Every repair opened a new hole.
Lesson: Make the property true by construction.
fits Ep. 10
Planned titles. They may still change.
Later: other systems in the house
Energy is only the start. Security, garden, documents and a few other systems in the house do their own thinking too. They'll get their own series once the energy core is done.
Security
Garden
Documents
…
Your idea, a new branch?
The tree isn't finished. If a question keeps coming up in the comments, it may well grow into a branch of its own.
Your experience counts
Which system runs in your house, and where does it get stuck? I'd like to hear about your experiences, your doubts and your ideas, in the comments under the videos. Good ideas get picked up and built in public: as a video of their own or as an addition to an existing one.