Finding the chase and cutting to it

Last week, we looked at the difference using our solar panels has made to our carbon footprint. Of course, that isn’t in isolation. At 27kWh, we have a large amount of battery capacity. But what got us here, why is that working so well for us?

What is the easiest?

Energy. I don’t use a hairdryer often. I dry my hair naturally. It means I don’t use much product at all. I put on a jumper if the room is 19°C, it’s not cold, if I am. So, I need more clothing. Thick socks are worth their weight in gold to guard against a chilly feeling.

The transport is next. If I possibly can, I walk or cycle. Blood sugar management makes a difference to what I can and can’t do, and that is really hard. But if everything else is working well, I can enjoy being outside and feel the sun against my skin.

We made the choice to move to using our combination microwave for most of our cooking. This is not a downgrade on taste but a huge upgrade in energy saving. I use it for all solo cooking and most of our two and three people meals. Even when using it as a fan oven, it is a much smaller cavity, so it heats up quickly without using more power.

Timing our cooking makes a big difference too. Last Friday, while the oven was warm after baking some rolls, I did some shortbread. The oven didn’t spend energy on cooling down then heating up, and the shortbread was a lovely, cheap, treat.

If you haven’t tried a combination oven roast, you haven’t lived. Tasty chicken cooked with peppers, tomatoes and roast potatoes and courgettes. All for less than £0.40 of electricity, if you aren’t generating it yourself (when of course the energy cost is zero).

Check out your kitchen and bathroom for halogen bulbs. At 50W a pop, having more than a couple in a room can ramp up that carbon footprint. Swapping to LED GU10 bulbs can make a significant saving – we had 28 in our kitchen (28*50W= 1.4 kW) and another 100W under the counter. Swapping them out in 2013 cost £200, but saved that in electricity costs in a month. We had 200W on average in 2 of the bathrooms and another 4 kW in costs around the rest of the house.

Swapping out the lighting took our summer monthly bills (at the time no solar power) down from £110 a month to £40. Of course, electricity was significantly cheaper in those days.

OK, so there are things I can do to reduce my carbon footprint and my draw on electricity. Why does that matter now?

Knowing our footprint and reducing our need for electricity means we have options available to us right now. Soon, I’ll be able to pop into my local Lidl and pick up a solar panel to plug into my 13amp socket and donate spare energy into the grid.

That’s without any need for some professional advice or delay in getting scaffolding to put it up on my roof. Or if I rented, no need to get permission from my landlord.

But that could mean wasted opportunities for people to use those panels in the most effective manner for their needs.

TechoSolara (please see https://techosolara.app) has been updated to provide users with the recommended “pitch” for their location in the world. TechoSolara gives the range of pitches applicable to the site in question, one value for the summer, one for the winter, and a third for the equinoxes (that’s autumn and spring to you and me).

Why are these different?

Because the Earth is tilted towards the star it is rotating around (Sol or the sun), during the summer the sun seems much higher in the sky. This makes a huge difference to the way photons emitted from the sun hit solar panels. The beauty about these “balcony” panels, is you get to easily change the angle at which the sun strikes the panels – effectively to track the sun.

Team that with the Cumulative Report in the “Planner 3 aspects” screen, and you can see when the sun rises in a given month, and when it sets.

If you are investing in some of these panels, it might be worth checking out TechoSolara on the Google play store.