Finding the chase and cutting to it

Yesterday was the first day this July we were using electricity supplied from the national grid. In fact, since the middle of May this year, we have, where humanly possible, run ‘off-grid’. Where humanly possible? Some things are scuppering this philosophy. This sounds so ungrateful, but our electricity supply company gives us free hours of electricity and […]

Last week, we looked at the cash return on replacement windows, which, on the face of it looked marginal at best. But of course, we have made other investments over the past twelve years. Easy steps, let’s look at the LED lighting. About a year, just in saved electricity. Initial cost was about £350 for […]

You’re one in a million is one of those adages that crops up from time to time. In a world with 8,224,932,469 people (at time of writing, please see the latest figure at https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ ) in it, it is meant to make you feel a little bit special – it is such a great marketing […]

Get your minds out of the gutter, I’m talking about solar generation and battery size. When we first bought our system, we were recommended to get 27kWh of battery. We didn’t have the spare cash when we bought our initial system, so we bought half of that. Having just shelled out for the heat pump, […]

Today is the 15th July, and I am writing this as I have a brief moment of perkiness which will wipe me out for the rest of the day. Stop writing then! I’m chronically bored. Every movement is painful and I’ve not been able to work since last week. Having signed myself out last week, […]

The week 28th April to 4th May has had some brilliant solar collection days in our little part of the world. Indeed, April itself was the sunniest we’ve ever had, with a whopping 524.5 kWh being generated by our grid – and the thing about solar is that everyone whose cells were orientated in the […]

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 […]

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 […]

One of the things you hope for when ripping out your gas boiler and putting in a heat pump is things are not going to be worse for you. Obviously, having our own solar generation capability means that unlike distilling our own natural gas, we can generate our own electricity. So, if it’s sunny and […]

Few people like surprises. Some say they do, but when you ask them, it’s about fun things not things like a spider dropping down on a thread before their eyes while they watch TV. Really, do you have to? Sorry <shame>. One of the things we were not expecting with our Smart Meter when we […]