Progress, me thinks
We moved house 7 years ago (almost to the date) and got a bit of a shock when our first month’s energy bill came in – our electric bill was £101. For a month.
My friends are all groaning at this point, as I tell of how I sat in the kitchen looked up to the ceiling and realised what was burning the electrons. 27 50W halogens in the ceiling and 12 20W ones under the cabinets.
As you know, we swapped out the halogens for LEDs and gradually made a number of changes including getting solar panels 5 years ago.
Today, we can tie our electricity use to our charging – a smart meter is allowing us to tune our usage which has brought our monthly consumption down to £40 during the period we were using £100.
Sitting in the dark then?
Not at all. Smart lighting comes on as the sunsets in two rooms: the hallway and lounge. Partly, as this is where we live but also as a welcome to us as we come home during the winter but also to show the house is occupied.
Task lighting in the kitchen is now all LED as is the cooker hood. If we have all the LEDs on, they use less than 2 of the old 50W halogens, but to be honest, you never need that much light! Task lighting for working and overhead lights for chilling. Lights power down automatically at night ensuring little waste and no stubbing of toes.
So what about the other power source, gas?
Good question. Swapping out the Honeywell analogue thermostats for programmable ones, we have full control over all our zones. I haven’t had the chance yet to swap out our radiator valves upstairs but compared to other similar houses, we running about 25% of their costs as one of the things our supplier does is show you that comparison!
To help with air quality, we are using the log fire less.
Not so bad. Doesn’t the electric car hurt all this?
Not at all. When we do charge the car, we spend £4 a day instead of between £1 and £2. On a dull day, when we cannot charge the car from the solar power we are generating.
That’s a hundred miles for £2 max or 2p a mile. That’s cheap motoring compared to £1.33 for a litre of diesel.
At home, we have used 430 kWh of energy for the car over the past six months for 46 charging sessions: that’s roughly 8 charges a month or two a week at 18p a session or £84.28 for six months of driving for a 1,000 miles (we have charged else where, but that’s been for free).
Doing OK then?
I think so. I’m not saying being off the grid wouldn’t be great, as would be using solar to heat our water during the summer, but we are definitely doing out bit. In 2018 we used 3.9MWh in electricity and 21MWh in gas. Annually, 805kWh of that was used to travel 4k miles. We cycle and walk where we can to help keep congestion down too.
Our fridge may be coming to the end of its life, which would help us reduce the daily costs too.
Posted: May 8th, 2019 under 42, Driving off the grid.