Finding the chase and cutting to it

As I type this at 07:45 British summer time, we have only just stopped using our battery to supply our power and yesterday we used just 0.6kWh of electricity sourced from the grid.  At 26p a unit (I know, I know), that’s a whole £0.16 bought electricity.  Which beats Friday, which was a whole £0.25 spent on purchased electricity: that’s for our hot water, travel, everything!

For us, April is a great month, usually, with generation figures between the high 300s and mid 400s kWh. It’s still cold enough to be efficient (solar panels benefit from running a bit chilled, don’t we all?) but the sun is high enough to hit the panels for longer and the leaves are yet to put in an appearance on the trees. This year, we’ve averaged 22kWh a day.

Of course, being chilly means we’re still heating the house, so we’re not quite off grid, and it’s all subject to the weather – clouds at midday make a huge difference to our generation values.

But we’re making the most of it. Keeping our waste quantities down too, we cook much of our own food. Careful selection of the containers used for raw veg means we are keeping our carbon footprint down in more ways than one.

When solar first became available in the UK, I said it would impact gas providers. I didn’t predict heat pumps or the UK government making them mandatory, but by 2014, we weren’t using gas over the summer.

The response to a decreasing market has been for energy providers in the UK to put up electricity prices and keep gas low. Basic A level economics in action here, cut demand by putting up prices and generate it by keeping the price low.

Which is one of the painful things about our power providers being commercial operations rather than government owned – they need to make a profit, with regulation being used to ensure to the UK meets its climate promises. How big a fine makes it worth the cost of obeying the rules?

For us, we’re just enjoying the lower costs, because we’re still coming out ahead. From Ovo’s Energy Insights calculator and comparing us to “similar homes” (battery, solar panels, electric car, washing machine, tumble dryer, 2 people, electric cookers, etc), we are consuming roughly half the amount electricity the others are on average?

Which seems odd.

I don’t think we’re being overly careful in our usage. My house is warm: I’m having baths a couple of times a week! We wash our clothes, use the dishwasher. I don’t use chemicals to clean the house – that’s all done by a steam cleaner!

Charging up the car battery does take a load of power: the last time we did it was Tuesday, and that took 7kWh compared to our daily usage of 20kWh. We’re both making more effort to use the car less as the weather has become warmer, at 08:15, it’s a balmy 7°C out there. Even so, my commute on Monday into the local office typically uses that very same 7kWh. I should drive more economically…

A goal to aim for?

As a closing thought, we’re not the only ones to enjoy a good April – 1st April 2025 is the first day the UK reached 12,569MW being generated by solar power.

I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it, I’m about…

Why are you singing like that, with a stupid grin on your face?

Well, today is the day…

Mother’s day?

No, concentrate, I get to look at our heating costs and compare a winter with an air sourced heat pump to a gas boiler – like I said, I’ve been looking forward to doing this analysis.

You really ought to get a life, you know, you only get one!

Cheeky, this is what I like doing. Making things better and I like to be a person of action. It’s been killing me the fact we couldn’t make this move earlier…

Would you mind doing the figures, so we can all get on and have some fun?

Sorry. This is the approach I’ve taken. 1st October to 31st March is the duration of a British Winter. Taking our old figures for gas consumption from https://www.n3rgy.com/, I have compared that to the heat pump’s consumption figures.

This makes sense for us because gas was only ever used to heat water and the house – no gas appliances here.

I have cross checked the heat pump’s usage figures with our hourly usage for electricity, and again that seems a reasonable way of sanity checking them.

Each winter is called the year of the January it falls in, so this winter was 2025 (1st October 2024 to 30th March 2025), last winter was 2024 (1st October 2023 to 31st March 2024).

Wait a second, this winter is going to be a day short!

Yes, I will complete the figures tomorrow or later this week, but I didn’t want to delay publishing.

So, what are the numbers? Does a heat pump make sense from an energy conservation point of view?

You’re finally interested – a contented sigh this side…

Here are the numbers, going back to 2022, all in kWh (kiloWatt hours).

Year	Total power used	Jan – Mar usage	Oct-Dec previous year’s usage	Winter totals
2022	15,013.391	5,502.894	7,109.310	12,612.204
2023	13,270.888	5,360.847	6,727.941	12,088.788
2024	4,433.757	3,105.757	6,170.366	9,276.123
2025	2,075.000	2,075.000	1,328.000	3,403.000

In 2025, the “Total power used” and other figures are electricity, all the others are gas.

Now, the difference between 2022/23 and 2024 was the use of programmable radiator valves and zone thermostats. The average temperature in a room was 18°C, but the lounge and kitchen often run at 20°C and above for all years.

Temperature-wise, the winters were comparable. Last winter, we didn’t have a winter’s holiday but in the end, we didn’t turn down our heat pumps running while we were away, so again, probably a fair comparison.

Our boiler died on the 23rd March 2024, so last year’s figures are a little light, we used electric radiators on the cold days, but I am not counting them.

So, what is the usage difference between 2024 and 2025? 5,873.123 kWh or 37% of what we used last year.

So, from an energy conservation point of view, it’s a no brainer.

Cost is a harder sum. In March we have generated 476.9 kWh of electricity from our roof, and our solar batteries (the second one finally got installed on Monday), which goes towards heating, lighting, dishwashing, laundary, transport (our Leaf), and cooking.

Which covers our heating costs this month (469 kWh) but it’s close. On average this month, we’ve paid £4.54 a day for all our power, or £140.74.

January was by far the coldest month: our gas usage last year was 1694.77 kWh, this year it was 909 kWh, nearly half the power we used went towards heating and hot water, of course some of that was generated. The costs were, on average, £10.61 a day for the 1327.0 kWh we bought.

Of course, that’s not our total energy bill: for January, it was 1327 kWh or £328.79, that’s on top of what we generated, which was 92.7 kWh (it was a dull and overcast January, our worst ever, typically we get 145-170 kWh off the roof).

Feb we paid for 1044.6 kWh and generated 146.3 kWh. March was 544.2 kWh bought, and generated 450.7 kWh.

We’re relatively heavy users of electricity. But it is powering our car, as well as the house. My commute to work has relied heavily on the car the past few weeks: while it is now sunny, it is still chilly.

So, is it cheaper than using gas? If you’re not generating your own power, possibly not. Over the summer, we should be grid free.

If you are, it’s an absolute no brainer, go heat pump!

Time rich, money poor is the mirror of money rich and time poor, which is the problem of our time as we return to the office at least 3 times a week.

My commute at the moment takes 4 hours out of my week, and it is shattering. Before I took this role, my commute was 30 minutes a day, 2.5 hours a week (unless I was part of a big jam). But it meant I had spare energy.

Next week, when the clocks go forward, cycling becomes an option again. I will be on a fold up bike, heading into the office – so at least my exercise for the day will be met.

But the clocks going forward means it will be day light in the evening. We walk: after cooking and washing up, we pound the pavement.

Except Wednesdays when we hit the gym.

Other things I do to get back some time is working out our meals up front. Google calendar means we share those decisions – it menas it takes out a decision a day. Only 10 minutes or so a day or nearly an hour a week!

While I’m out for my walks, I remotely start the waI’shing machine. By the time I walk through the door, the final spin is happening giving me time to wash and decoat, ready for hanging up the washing.

Normally, I wouldn’t say I look forward to the clocks changing, but next week I get to see the results of our move to an electric heat pump.

We should also, finally, have our 2nd Tesla battery added. Here’s to running off grid for the summer…

It’s Sunday, in March, and I’m cooking a 1.7kg medium(!) chicken from Waitrose.

Why on earth would you do that?  So much for trying to be carbon neutral!

Actually, we’re going to get four meals out of this chicken. And that’s excluding the stock, which I will use for a soup tonight and pie later in the week. Wednesday is pie night, where possible…

Doing the chicken in the microwave takes 45 minutes. I do the potatoes, courgettes, broccoli, and some peppers in too. Quick and tasty.

Gravy is delivered from the left over vegetable water from boiled carrots, leaks, and baby sweetcorn. I heat the plates on top of the microwave.

We eat about a quarter of the chicken in this sitting.

I then make chicken stock in the microwave from some saved vegetables, garlic, and most of the carcass. A 1.7kg bird should give me about 500ml of stock in two sittings.

Tonight, a soup with some fresh baked bread will use half the stock. Tonight I’m doing celery and stilton and one of us should have a serving of celery soup tomorrow for lunch.

Tomorrow will be chicken rissotto, from the one of the left over breasts. Sandwiches will come from the other breast and the stuffing – a little recurrent sauce and that is one tasty home sandwich for not many carbs.

Tuesday is quorn chilli night (on a roast chicken weekend). Or potatoes gratin. Or pasta arrabiata. Or vegetable fahitas. Something meat free.

Wednesday is pie night, what-ever the roast, the left overs are done with some onions, potatoes, carrots, garlic, stock, and other boiled green veg. I typically use up the store bought puff pastry with some frozen fruit and ice-cream. It’s delicious and stops us throwing the pastry or wasting the heat from the oven.

Thursday is potato gratin.

Friday is all about the soup, or quiche or pasta, or stir fry. A little something for the weekend.

How do you make the plan stick? I forget the plan half way through the week as the stresses and rush sets in…

Me too. We never got our shit together like this before, but I started something new a couple of week’s ago.

A shared calendar (such as Google) works great for this – we started doing this for our Sunday rota and last week I had the idea for doing it for the week too. (It helps stop repetitive meals too).

The really odd thing is, doing this on a Sunday while cooking resets your expectations. How much left-overs are you expecting? If it’s elaborate, what’s happening work-wise which will act as a distraction? For next week, I’m on version three of the plan, but it looks good now.

That sanity check is vital. But it’s odd how writing something down and communicating it will make it happen.

The UK news channels are all extolling the arrival of spring. Yes, we have finally have had sunny days and today the temperature did rise above 6°C, in fact it is a barmy 16°C.

But with a low front through the early part of next week, it’s short lived and all the flowers triggered by warm temperatures are resisting put on a show at the moment.

But from a solar generation point of view, sunny but cool is your ideal conditions. For the heat pump, early morning sun warming the air feed to the heat pump are your friends too.

Indeed, Friday 7th March 2025 was the first day most of our used energy came from the sun and our battery. The usage was helped by the fact solar gain in our rooms meant we did not need to warm our house…

From 9am Friday morning, we were off the grid. Our battery got up to a full 100% full – it finally discharged at 5:30am Saturday morning.

This time of year, the UK mornings can be bitter. The past week, it has not been unusual to be below 0°C until 8am. So it will be a few weeks before we can be 100% off grid.

A full break down saw half of all our generation powering the house, the rest going to the battery. Discharge then started at 15:45. Our heating, cooking, and hot water, all came from our battery! The tesla app reported 30% of our power came from the battery, 31% from our solar panels, and 39% from the grid.

It will be a while before we’re at 100% self-generated, but the hope is there!

All I want to be talking about here is how we’re doing with our heat pump.

But at the end of the third week of February, we still have 25 days until the end of winter:- 20th March 2025 is our first day of spring in the UK.

So, I cannot do that.

What I can say is I seem to have finally broken my infection – today it felt like spring when I woke up! My sheets were sodden – a good fever will do that, but I can breathe easily and my head no longer feels like it weighs a ton.

Ironically, I owe this to allowing a hypo to ride last night after my body decided to put up a fight – stubborn highs that cannot be fixed by normal corrections, that will be an infection.

Our anatomy is no different to a non-type 1 diabetic’s. A non-type 1’s body will trick the body into releasing a huge amount of insulin just to get a hypo – what’s different is the scale and speed.

A non-diabetic will do this in a matter of a couple of hours. Because we’re gently trying to bring down the low, we can go a couple of days like this – all the while feeding the bacterial/viral/fungal infection with some excess sugar.

Our immune systems are different and expecting them to behave the same maybe a little unrealistic.

Sounds logical-ish. What’s the answer?

It’s easy to say don’t be afraid of the hypo, but that is actually the answer. And many of the “hybrid loop” systems in use today are exactly that – so when we’re feeling our best, we need to step up and take control.

And everyone is different, and every infection is different. Worse than that, my body is killing and reproducing new cells, every day to the extent that no cell in my body is older than seven years. Today really is a completely different day to yesterday.

Ah, that’s sounds like a nightmare!

It’s one of the reasons many type 1’s look knackered most of the time.

What worked for me yesterday was hanging in there, not panicking when I started to drop, fasting most of the day, drinking 3 litres of water and not doing a thing. I was lazy, I achieved very little, although just living I did get 3,250 steps under my belt. I passed a kidney stone.

I’m not going overboard today either. It wasn’t my turn to do lunch or clear up. I did do some washing, took the soft plastics and glass to be recycled. I will have a bath in a few moments. I will recalibrate my watch’s blood pressure monitor.

I’m considering my post for the 23rd March. I’ll draft it asside from the final figures next week.

Because, patience is a virtue. As well as being utterly annoying.

My husband and I celebrate our birthdays within a couple of days of each other, so it is always tempting to combine the celebrations.

Especially as we’re down to one wage.

But there’s no need if you have some skills in the kitchen, a bit of time and energy, and patience.

For my husband’s day, I asked him what he’d like to have, and the answer that came back was my home made French onion soup. I will be deploying my food processor to finely chop the onions and grate the cheese, but the only thing I’m really doing is expending some time.

A lovely bung ’em in the oven sourdough baguette will make a meal fit for kings, all for less than £4 a head, and a bit of washing up.

We’re having some friends over on the Saturday for a roast chicken dinner. Two people don’t eat complex carbs – and one of those doesn’t eat any – so I’ll be working a couple of special side dishes for them and a lion’s share of the main protein. But again, this is not an expensive pleasure.

One of our good friends makes the most amazing cakes. So, we might skip making an option no-one will take!

Hopefully, a good time will be had by all, with smiles all round

The ancient Christians (in fact most religions) understood the benefits of Having something to look forward to. Be it heaven or the next public holiday or feast, they understood the need to celebrate life.

These days we call it Wellness, but that feeling that things are OK and can only get better is powerful, hope is everything.  Indeed, some forms of torture are based on breaking someones hope.

Hope can be intangible, as simple as one small step to make things better, to ease an area of suffering.  In medicine, it was given a name in drug trials: the placibo effect.

Of course, for many, where there is no life-impacting condition, contentment is seen as good enough.

But hope is a fire, a light in the dark.  Hope is a driver, an end goal, a life-raft to cling to amongst the dreary everyday…

That’s very philosophical!

I guess so…

What’s brought it about?

We’re on holiday, skiing in France and it’s the first time we’ve done this trip by train. Not the easiest journey but as 90% of 800 odd miles was powered by electricity, a relatively green one.

It was not plain sailing: our first train, and indeed the whole track, was closed due to a tree falling down. But we made use of an alternative route and as it was our time, we got to recover.

The international stations were amazing, pianos were available and talented passengers regaled us with music – some from memory.

Lyon station had a room with many wheelchairs, walking frames, and walking sticks to help those with mobility issues. On top of that, every staircase was mirrored with a ramp and lift. As we had wheeled cases, it made our lives so much easier. We live in a county town – the equivalent in Suffolk of Lyon, but the facilities in the SNCF stations meant the transfer times were not unentertaining.

Right at this moment, I am watching it snow. In fact, it’s a bit of a white out from our chalet’s window. We’re choosing not to ski today, having got a 5 days skiing out of a 6 day ski pass.

I’m cosy, sipping a fruit tea, trying to get my wayward glucose ranges back under control. And resting my achy breaky knee.

I had hoped it would be better by now. It hasn’t turned out that way, but I am skiing and the fresh snow tomorrow (once pisted) will be incredible.

Hope springs eternal…

Yesterday, on our second train of the day, the TGV from Lyon to Lille, there was a proud poster which I could read while queuing for the loo: using this train is by far the best way to travel to reduce the impact on the environment.

Indeed, https://www.sncf-voyageurs.com states that France’s electric trains cost 3g of CO₂ per km compared to 260g
of CO₂ per km a flight would have cost us.

Which was why we let the train take the strain. Here’s what the cost was.

Going there.

We live in Ipswich – one of the best things about that from an ecological point of view is that the trains to London are all electric. So our first leg, Ipswich to London was planned on being electric down the East Anglian line from Norwich to Ipswich – a distance of 103km. First bill is 309g of
CO₂. Plus the 3 miles the taxi took to Ipswich station = 141g.

Only it wasn’t. To be fair, I was gladdened by the taxi showing up and being electric – we should have been doing the whole journey as minimally impactful as possible. But we were scuppered at Ipswich, finding that all the trains had been cancelled due to a train taking out the powerlines and the power coupling on the train trying to pass underneath at the same time – thankfully no-one was hurt…

The advice was to travel to Cambridge then down to St Pancras – actually, great for us, as we were staying there over night. Thanks to delay, repay, more than cost effective. Only, those trains are not electrified: instead of 3g
of CO₂ per km, we’re now costing 106g per km and travelling much further than 103km: 71km from Cambridge to Ipswich and then the distance from Cambridge to St Pancras, another 76km – so that CO₂ cost is 15,582g (71+76 = 147km * 106) or 15.6kg!

Now a night in a hotel, and we can set off for the next 3 trains across France.

All electric to Lyon.

The Eurostar is electric to Lille, as was the TGV from Lille to Lyon. Going we had some long transfer times, but as we were taking it easy, that wasn’t an issue.

So, distance to Lille from St Pancras was 245km, so 735g Lille to Lyon is 556km, so that’s another 1,668g or 1.7kg of CO₂.

We then swap to a diesel train to do the last leg, again a diesel train: so 106g per km doing 132km, so the charge is 13,992g or 14kg in terms of CO₂.

So that ( 13,992 + 1,668 + 735 + 15,582 + 141)g from home to the alps. Not including the transfer bus (16km for 108g per km, so 1,728g), again diesel, from the station to our chalet, a grand total of 33,846g or 34kg of CO₂. For a holiday.

But this was better than us taking the car across the channel to the same location and significantly better than taking the plane, which would have been 260g per km, at 760km that would have been a whopping 197,600g or nearly 200kg. Driving down would have been around 100kg.

What about the big cost: time? What did it cost you in terms of time?

So, including transfer times, we travelled from 5:30am Saturday morning to 19:30 local time – so 11hours.

And you did it all in one go coming back?

Yes, we did, but that is a different tale!

A granny stoppers is a device used on a public path that is intended to discourage “grannies” or the less physically able to progress with a route. It is widely used in the UK as a means of excluding people from what other people have deemed “unsuitable paths for them”.

They can be narrow stiles, which do not let wheelchair users ascend a path, or steps, or anything that makes this as awkward as possible. And they have been widely used over the past 50 years on our footpaths and national parks.

Thing is, it’s not just grannies who get discouraged – it’s people nearly in wheelchairs or prosthetics, people with pushchairs… Get outside is often cited as a brilliant means to lift your spirit, allow you to escape the everyday grind of living with a disability. Then such routes are built on purpose to be inaccessible.

There are campaigners doing their bit to change this – it is not about putting in concrete paving, but just removing the purpose built barriers – let people decide what is accessible to them.

Sounds good, I think. So what?

Well, all of life needs to be that. Having had antibiotics a few weeks ago, I finally decided I wasn’t kicking out a small bit of thrush it encouraged to grow and on my way to getting my insulin, asked for a treatment combo I know will kick it into touch.

The pharmacist refused to sell it to me – you need a referral to the doctor, it’s the law.

No, it’s not. You have made a decision that because I’m on insulin, I cannot possibly be controlling my diabetes and need permission from a pressed GP service – and possibly you think my GP is going to tell me what to do with my insulin doses.

Angry does not cover how humilitating this experience was for me. On one hand, my endocrinologist is telling me I’m not diabetic and a pharmacist is telling me I cannot have medication that a non-diabtic could by in similar circumstances.

Thing is, I know my value to that pharmacy – I can buy the canestern somewhere else. If I get such treatment again, my contribution to the profit line of that pharmacy will go with me.