Finding the chase and cutting to it

The past six weeks have brought many changes with them, not least summer holidays.
As a dual parent working household, the summer was always a chance to enjoy “normal working hours” and my son was safely amused at the child minder’s.  He had company and care.  A real break from school, but also from home.

When he stopped going to the child minder’s as he left primary school, that disappeared.  The first couple of weeks, we try to take the time off but after that, he is effectively on his own.  My husband works from home, so he does have company for lunch.

At least, that’s the impression we get.  He is a gamer, so he has the world at his finger tips, certainly all his friends.  Skype (or other voice/video comms service) on one device, games on another.

At 14, he goes out to get some food for lunch (enforced break from games and, hopefully, some useful life lessons) and this year he has moved away from simple meals on to ones with either some vegetables or rice or pasta or potatoes which he cooks from scratch.

We discuss meal options in the evening for the next day.  We discuss measurements for the main starch (i.e. how much from the bag of rice or pasta makes a portion).

Of course, this was put to good use as number one son headed out on his trial Duke of Edinburgh award.  My son is aware that if you are putting peas with your rice, you don’t need a full 50g of rice, you can just have 40-45g and still be happy with your meal.  We had progressed as far as fresh carrots before school started again.

Useful tips for him once he leaves home.  May be next year, he can help with the preparation of tea in the evening one day a week or fortnight.  Spaghetti anyone?

I have to be honest: I want one!

I am sitting at home on a rainy Sunday morning, waiting for the oven to switch itself on to cook the Sunday roast.  We’re having it late today as the 45th Ipswich to Felixstowe vintage car run is due to go past our place in ninety minutes or so.  It’s a great event, and though the weather may dampen the grip, the enthusiasm will be high and all will enjoy the ride past!

Two years ago, this was our first weekend in our new house and watching the rally was a very welcome break from unpacking boxes. 🙂

That’s not what I would really want.  I saw the news of Tesla’s Powerwall and thought, finally, something to enable us, in Blighty, to make good use of the Sun’s energy which is freely deployed while we’re at work, school or out for the day.

Why do you care?

We got solar panels installed late August last year and despite it being winter, we’ve managed to collect 2.5MW of electricity, which is doing great things feeding it into the grid, but unless we’re totally organised and got the washing machine, dish washer and hot water running off timers the only item in the house when it’s sunny is my server.

It would be great to store the peak in batteries and run the cooker in the evening or even charge the Leaf.

Sounds good.  So when is it arriving?

Of course, it’s not. 🙁

Like the Roadster the release is initially in the USA.  But it is really competitively priced.  Like many, even with the grants and feed in tariffs, it wasn’t until the price came down that it made sense for us to get solar panels.   Given our life style (you know, out of the house during daylight hours) it seemed like a nice thing to have but not an essential.

A £2,000 Tesla Powerwall (read battery that charges up from the sun and releases when the solar panels are no longer providing the power directly) makes that useful and the return on the investment should be within two or three years.  Teamed with a Combined heat and power unit during the winter and the potential for going off grid looks good rather than an absurd pipe dream.

Tesla are well placed to do this.  They have access to battery technology: their chief research has focused on this for their electric cars.

Maybe other car manufacturers will follow suit and beat Tesla to it in Europe?

It’s been incredibly busy the past few months so this is a long time after the fact.  I thought you might like to know…

What?

Well, we had our first service of the Leaf (although to be honest, we have enjoyed owning it so much that it really didn’t feel like a year).

It was a bit cheaper than we were expecting which was good.

It also gave us a reasonably comprehensive set of results from the battery testing.

In an electric car, the battery is everything.  The longer you can keep it performing well, the longer the range of the vehicle and the more confidence you have in it.  It should also prolong the life of the car with its first battery.

The life of the battery, according to the Leaf’s manual, is dependent on many factors not least the way you look after it.  Being a lithium ion battery (Li-ion) it prefers being often and lightly used (i.e. not running the battery down) and not too many full charges.

Apparently, the way we are managing the battery is all good.  Which is a little surprising.

Surprising? Does that mean you been reckless?

No, I have just used the car as I would a car with an internal combustion engine.  I try to ensure it doesn’t go past 15% before charging and I don’t bother charging it if it is above 60% in my normal day to day running.

We have done the odd long run and too be honest, I’d like to take it a bit further this calendar year.  I just wasn’t expecting the way I run the car to give us five stars.

Over the winter, we have found we are using more of the battery for the basic runs to work, for example.  It will be interesting to see how it compares during the summer.

Nice to know…

The other piece of news the past six weeks has been the loss of the Source East and London cards.  These allow us to charge the car at work for example.  Instead, all of our charging has been performed at home.

Expensive! Would it be better to have a petrol car, especially given the fuel prices…

Actually, no.  I thought it would be, but as we have solar cells we charge for free during the weekend and only a few pence a couple of times a week.  This has had very little affect on our electrical consumption.  The other surprising thing is we’re not having to queue for fuel.  Time wise, I get back a good 30 minutes a month.

I cannot believe how cheap petrol is at the moment and filling up the motorbike is a good deal less than it was.  For convenience the electric car has it beat for the commute.  I don’t know if the car is better at its estimation levels or I accommodate it more, but a couple of evening charges a week is plenty with a top up on either Saturday or Sunday.  I now find I can get 90 odd miles from an 80% charge even with the heater on.

What has been strange is not being able to use the Waitrose charging points.  We haven’t lost the car yet, but nestled in with other cars in the shopper’s car park, it is very ordinary looking.

Having ordered replacement cards when the Source East one was lost and the Source London one stopped working as it snapped during use, it did feel a little restrictive.  But in reality, that didn’t appear to be the case.

But then the Source London one finally arrived yesterday.

The last 12 months seem to have flown by, and we are approaching the first anniversary and service for the Leaf. It has covered nearly 5,000 miles as I write this. That is around 500 journeys to work, which seems about right.  After all, this is why we bought the Leaf: to provide a clean, safe, easy journey to and from work.  This it has done with aplomb and has become a valid choice for any journey.

To celebrate, I took it for a bit of run this morning in the -2°C environment to provide that essential service to mankind – picking the kid and his friends up from last nights’ sleep over 🙂

I don’t know if you live with teenagers but the whole ease of 24 hour communication means nothing is properly arranged any more, so armed with a postcode and house number and a fully charged Leaf, I plunged into the January chilled Suffolk Countryside and really returned to my roots.  I was heading to roads I last travelled as a 17 year old in a newly covered (insurance wise) version of my mum’s car.

In those days, I was driving a four year old Carlton 2 litre CDXi where the D stood for Delux and not diesel.  My mum adored that motorcar and as I was then limited to an automatic gear box, this was real freedom and so much responsibility.  I was armed with a map – a Phillips/AA car drivers version with a great spiral spine which allowed easy book marking of the current pages and my favourite mixed tape.  At 10am on a Saturday on the A14, the roads were easy and relatively quiet.

January 2015, I had a similarly colour painted electric car (the Cartlon was maroon, the Leaf is burgundy) and the spiral spine map’s function was being covered by the Google connected Sat Nav, my mum’s car phone by a bluetooth connected 3G smart phone and I was heading over to act as taxi. Very little changes as time goes by.

The biggest shock I have had driving since November has been how difficult it has been to achieve the 12% of battery use getting to work and 14% on the return journey.  De-misting the windows has been the biggest draw although I have found the following tips really help get the most from the lithium ion batteries:

1. Turning off the LCD screen gets around 4 extra miles from an 80% charge.  This is achieved from Menu->Settings->Display and change the “on” to “off”.
   Hitting the moon/sun button turns this back on permanently and turning off needs the same lengthy procedure.  If you want to flash view the map or battery consumption that will come up for 30 secs and then the display will turn off again – really useful if you need the Sat Nav to show a junction or roundabout layout!
2. By turning off the “heat” and “auto”, the fan can be used to demist the front windscreen using only the lead acid battery (another 4 miles per 20 kW/h charge).
3. The lead acid battery goes in to recharge mode (the right blue flashing light on the charging indicator is activated) in the small hours of the morning.  It is worth activating the charge timer to cover this and get back the 2%.
4. The climate timer is really not happy if the battery charge is below 80%!
5. Turn back to D mode rather than B when climbing up hills and if you’re really brave, turn off the Eco mode too.  Remember to switch B Eco when going down hill to get the most regenerative charging.
6. Charging at home or in Waitrose for 30 minutes gives about 10% on the battery charge which works out at around 50p.  An hour gives you 20-25%.  So an hours’ charge covers most of the next day’s run to work.
7. A garage means you don’t have to waste time or battery defrosting the car.

Today was the first real experience driving on sub-zero roads and snow and the car was beautiful: predictable handling and easy visibility – I made the most of the auto-wipers.  The rear seats meant the passengers were comfortable and the 50 mile round trip was a breeze.  In the summer though, I would not expect that to use 80% of the battery (much closer to 55%), so I was glad I had set up the route before hand while still charging in the garage!

I did find I switched on the head lamps rather than wait for them to come on automatically but that’s not really an issue as they switch off when the Leaf is switched off.

All very nice and informative: what about the power consumption for the year?

In a year, up until 15^th Jan 2015, we have covered 4764.4 miles with 1160kW/h or 1.2 MW/h of electricity.  That’s around 4.1 kW/h per mile, which is around 4.3p per mile (at 16p per kW/h).

Even with the recent drop in petrol prices (we have motorcycles and a diesel car so we still notice that) the Leaf provides very cheap motoring and we are not paying for every piece of electricity used to power the car.  Some of it is now coming from our own Solar Panels (958 kW/h have been generated since 23^rd August).  That distance, if we’d charged at home and paid for it, the year’s electricity would have set us back £185 (that’s 1160kW/h at £0.16 per kW/h).

The longest single journey was back from London on a charge (est. 124 miles) and I have spent 3.5 hours charging the car at fast chargers provided either by Nissan or Ecotricity during the year.

I still wish there was a fast charger in Ipswich but we’re heading in to London at half term as a family and the Leaf will provide a means of driving that distance which is much cheaper than taking the three of us by train from our home town and comparable in terms of time.  Both forms of transport are powered by electricity, doesn’t the 25 year old train look a little dated, expensive and inconvenient?

I wonder where we’ll go next year with the Leaf.

It is Sunday, 14th December 2014.  13,516 days ago (that’s 37 calendar years to you and me) I received insulin to treat diabetic ketoacidosis as I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes mellitus.

The expectation at the time was not great: being a girl and before the introduction of home testing for blood glucose, it was hit or miss whether I’d make it to 20 in one piece.

In the early 1980’s, as blood glucose kits became widely adopted things began to change.  Yet, it wasn’t until the Diabetes_control_and_complications_trial was published in 1993 that it was proven that maintaining blood sugar levels as close to a non-diabetics levels would significantly affect the chances of developing complications from long term diabetes mellitus.

Before that, it was guess work.  I was reasonably lucky in that my mum was a pharmacologist and bought my first blood testing kit.  We’d made a decision to aim for normal blood glucose levels as much as possible but the data we’d previously got from urine tests was never particularly meaningful and difficult to make effective changes to my insulin levels.

The early sets of data led to guess work, careful testing, recording and analysing.  Even then it was assumed that women did have a more complicated regime as we had the menstrual cycle, but so little guidelines were provided as I hit puberty and there was so little the research  published in the journals we read.  That’s now changed, thanks to the internet.

As I “celebrated” my anniversary on Friday, I started a new job and was describing my pump and the display on the screen, presenting the readings from the sub-cutaneous blood glucose sensor.  The readings probably suggested my period was due in the next week.  I was greeted with shock that such a fundamental gearing of the human metabolism would affect my insulin requirements.

“I’ve known two insulin dependant diabetics in my career and they were both men.”

It’s definitely Autumnal at the moment, so naturally, I am planning a reasonably long journey with the Leaf.

116 miles in the South of England is not a treck across the Himalayas!

No it is not.  But it is the first long journey I have done in the Electric Car on my own.

It will also be the first time I have used the Leaf for business (albeit training) and to be absolutely fair, I could do this journey in our diesel.  Which would probably be much more sensible on so many levels.

One of the reasons we have the Leaf is to help with air quality: that’s why the UK government is still subsiding this technology.  So, having done the preparation with routes etc, I am looking to do this in the Leaf.

On your head be it! So, what’s the plan?

First leg: Ipswich to Thurrock Service Centre, M25 (that’s just before the Dartford crossing to you and me).

Then on to Chertsey.  Charge that evening at Cobham services.

Return: Leave the hotel and charge again at Thurrock via Ecotricity point.

This time though, I’ll be travelling during rush hour and will take the time to enjoy tea at Ikea, which also has an Ecotricity point, before completing the journey.

Sounds reasonable, how was it in practice?

When you learn Prince 2, you are taught to anticipate what risks can de-rail your plan.  In my case, every charge point has some options in case one doesn’t work.  Where possible, the plan has two points available at each stop or a fast charger within 12 miles.  All I need to ensure is that I have at least 12 miles on the clock.

The exception is Cobham, the nearest one to there is 40 miles away.

So I left Ipswich at 5:40am on Tuesday and headed to Thurrock.  It has to be said, Lakeside’s turning is amazingly quiet at 7am as I turn in to Gray’s services and quickly find the charge points.

It’s the first time I have used the Ecotricity card but the fast charger had the same user interface as the ones hosted in Glyn Hopkins’ Colchester and Romford branches, so I started the process.  I found that with the first charger, my card wasn’t accepted at all.  As this was something I wasn’t expecting, I got in touch with the help number on the card.

Marcus, from Ecotricity, answered my call.  He asked me the try the 2nd charger and this time my card was accepted.  It has to be said that the fast chargers are not the most trivial pieces of equipment I have ever used and it took a couple of goes to get the cable seated and ready to go.  Only to find it had a fault.  Blast.

“How much charge do you have?” Marcus asked.

“11%, around 11miles.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Oh, the only one I can guarantee you can get to is 12 miles away and I am not happy to recommend that.  Ikea has a working point but I don’t know if it will be accessible before they open at 9am.”

Marcus very kindly texted over the postcode for Ikea and I headed over.

I knew from my previous research that Ikea opened at 10am and the one at Thurrock has a serious number of gates which are locked while the shop is closed.  I also knew this was probably my best option, so I drove the extra 1.7miles to find the gate I encountered was closed and the deserted car park did have 4 cars parked.  Did that mean a gate somewhere was open?  I headed towards the parked cars and turned towards Ikea as I ran out of road to find an open exit 🙂

The point is really obvious and within 2 minutes of parking, I was recharging with enough to get me to Chertsey and back to Cobham.  Time was now the big worry.  As was keeping warm – I had remembered my mobile so set the heater on while I charged and dealt with my planned toilet break thanks to B&Q and bought a planned item as a thank you.

Did you make the meeting?

Absolutely, with 20 minutes to spare.  The experience did mean I made the effort to charge the car that evening.  Cobham worked beautifully (well, one did!) and that meant I could return to Chertsey for the remainder of my course and get back to Thurrock the next day.

And home again?

Again, I returned to Chertsey and spent 12 minutes getting the charge up so I could make Thurrock and travel at an average of 60mph (traffic permitting).

As per plan, I headed to Ikea.  While one space was occupied by a petrol driven Merc’ the other was available and I started the charge and headed for food.

I had a comfortable meal, toilet break and wondered around and return to find the car ready to go and a 2nd Leaf driver ready to start their charge.  I found they were heading to Peterborough and would get a 2nd charge from Cambridge.

This stop enabled me to get back home easily.  The entire journey took just under 4 hours including the queue for the Dartford crossing.

Would you do it again?

Yes, not least because this allowed me to claim expenses and the company has not caught on to the fact that EVs do not cost as much to run as ICE’s.  The single claim more than covers the electricity for the quarter we have bought for the car and the charge for the SourceEast card.

begins with one small step.

Today is a beautiful Autumnal day in the East of England.  Last Friday, my family and I finished the final stage of a flight from Cape Town, ZA to Heathrow Airport, UK and finally the last lag home.

Not an environmentally friendly trip, but over the past three years we’ve travelled to Europe by car rather than aeroplane for our holidays so we don’t increase our carbon foot print more than we have to for this special journey.  It was incredible, if you get the chance, South Africa is an amazing country.

So, you took the Leaf to Heathrow?

Unfortunately, I lost the distance argument.  Seriously,  I believe the Leaf would have breezed the 111miles from Heathrow Terminal 5 to our place.  We travelled outside of rush hour, so kept a constant speed the majority of the way (roughly 67mph on average).

I think we could not only have made it there on one charge but it would have been as convenient as taking the diesel.

Here are the sums 🙂

Our road to Heathrow Terminal 5 = 111.86 miles (as the car drives or rather Google Maps and Nissan’s zero emission route master).

So that’s only a maybe.  Looking at Zap-map and the various web sites the obvious thing to do is fast charge at South Mimms going to and returning from Heathrow.  It has to be said at this point, South Mimms services has no mention of having a charging point on the South_Mimms page!

So, home to South Mimms is 81 miles approx.  Allowing a 100% battery to get us there at an average of 60mph.  On a good day that should take us 90 minutes.  As I have a Ecotricity card, we can charge there for free.

From there, onwards to Terminal 5, another 30 miles.  We can charge here for free if we need to but that charge would need to be done while we were through security, potentially, as it is a 3kW charger.

Or we could leave the car, while away on holiday and come back to a car which will almost certainly need a 30 minute charge before getting back to Ipswich or even South Mimms.

The closest fast charger (CHADeMO), to Heathrow, seems to be the Moto Services on the M4 Junction 23.

That would give us a fair 95% in 30 minutes – so we could make it all the way back to Colchester (our nearest fast charger).

In short, going there:

1. Leave Ipswich with full charge
2. 80-90 minutes later have a 30 minute break 90 miles from starting point, 95%
3. Park at Heathrow normally.  Total journey time approx. 2 hours and 50 minutes.

Coming back.

1. Leave Heathrow with 50% charge.
2. After 10 minutes, charge for 30 minutes, giving approx 95-97%
3. 98 miles later, park in the centre of Colchester and fast charge to 80%, 30 minutes.
4. 16 miles to home.  Total journey time, approx. 3 hours 20 minutes.

What would have enabled this journey to be a guaranteed choice?

Let’s face it the Leaf would have got us there, we just weren’t willing to make the choice.  We did discuss what would have made it an immediate yes rather than a no for where we live in the country.

A single step would do that: charging points every 60 miles along the major routes, e.g. all dual carriage ways and a fast charger every 120 miles.  It’s beginning to come, in large thanks to Ecotricity who are installing many of the fast chargers at service stations along the major routes.  This is a completely free service, which is amazing.

(Personally, I think a fast charging point at the junction between the A12 and M25 would have sealed the deal, even a paid one.  This is currently a void, the nearest one in Romford, within the M25).

I say 60 miles as a 3/7kW charge point, the Leaf seems to get about 10% in 30 minutes (remember the trip back from Colchester) which if you are driving carefully and getting something back on the regenerative braking that would allow you to to ensure you had an extra 12-18 miles.  The 60 mile distance then ensures you have opportunities to get enough to get to a quick charger if you stick to the UK speed limits.

When we bought the Leaf in January 2014 there were only 146 fast DC chargers available in the country and few public charging points in East Anglia.

Since then the numbers have grown in the UK.  There are 490 rapid DC chargers sited throughout the UK today and 210 AC ones.  Nine of these rapid charging points are in East Anglia including Bury St. Edmunds (9am-5pm most days) and just past Cambridge on the services bridging the A14 and M11 (this is really new, the last time we looked at going to Cambridge we had few options of getting back to Ipswich on a Sunday).  This really opens the country up for the Leaf.

What seems to be happening on the A12 and A11 is the adoption of “Charge your car” pods.  This works by attaching a credit card to the account allowing a fixed price per charge.  The charge is only collected by “Charge Your Car”: the pod owner actually gets the cash.

The most common form of pricing for these is a fixed price per charge no matter how much electricity you use or time you spend occupying the point.

A fixed price per charge is fine if you are charging from 0-80% but not so good if you only need an 10% to get you home.  This something I have used on longer journeys because that is only 8 minutes on a 50kW DC charger.  £5 is a high price for 10 units of electricity (retailing at £1.60).  There is much debate on the forums about how this should work and compared to petrol which is governed by the weights and measure act 1985 this seems to be an unregulated market.

As per the map above, I am really glad I don’t live in North Wales or North West Scotland.  Outside of the M4, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in providing the infrastructure for the Welsh despite a reasonable population size.  I am not sure what the population of North West Scotland or whether that’s reasonable.  The Isle of Harris looks good though 🙂

Part of me wishes I lived in Northern Ireland.  All of their points are free and within the magic 60-80 miles.

In fact, while we were discussing it, I’ve noticed that my husband could easily take the Leaf down to his office in Woking the next time he has a meeting: there’s a new fast charger on the M25 at Junction 9/10.  Thanks Ecotricity 🙂

I like winter, from when the leaves start to drop from the trees to when the  rain is sheeting down and when you wake up and the snow has decided to stay beyond the rising of the sun.

It is no where near that cold outside yet (this is a picture from Dec 2010), though after the warm summer, it might as well be.

This drop in temperature, from 20°C to 9°C has brought concerns to many I speak to about the electric car.  The chief one being, doesn’t it take longer to charge in the cold?

Obviously, now really isn’t the coldest part of the year.  I have many pictures showing conditions in East Anglia during January and February, which is when the UK is at its coldest.

This is when we first had our car.  The only time we had a slight concern was visiting my parents with the new car and needing to charge it up from their 13Amp socket.  The car was outside with the cable running in to their garage and it was 2°C during the whole charging time.

Now we have our home charger, things are much more civilised.

The Leaf displays the temperature of the battery while you are driving.  This shows that during the cold, the battery heater does come on automatically or its cooler, ensuring the battery is at optimal temperature for use.  This means when you start charging, this equipment is being run from the electricity source.

Also, because we’re not using the air conditioning the impact of driving on the lithium-ion batters is much less.  The dash can show that break down.

Basically, because the car is producing no C₂0, I am not worried.  When we go and see my family, we use the fast charger at the Nissan garage in Norwich, on a Saturday.

As part of the Adastral Park Electric Vehicle showcase, I borrowed a Vauxhall Ampera as a demonstrator for the day.

At first glance, on paper, the Ampera looks like a hybrid, yet the petrol engine included with the Ampera does not drive the wheels of this great looking car.  Instead, the “engine” acts as an electrical generator feeding extra electrons into the lithium-ion batteries supplying the Ampera’s electric motors.

In practice, this makes for a civilised driving experience.  The cabin is sound proofed in a way our Nissan Leaf doesn’t need to be and it’s really hard to notice when the engine is running.  There are no gears like the Leaf, so acceleration is smooth and instantaneous, yet the range is over 300 miles when the petrol tank is full.  Different driving modes are accessed from a button on the fascia.  These include “normal”, “sport”, “hold” and “mountain”.  Normal runs the car economically as an electric car (equivalent to “brake” mode on the Leaf) and Sport is electric with less regenerative braking.  Hold and mountain both engage the petrol generator to either maintain battery charge level or allow more power to be provided to go up a hill.  Otherwise, the generator will come on when the battery has reached a factory set low level.

In my case, I never put any petrol in from arrival of the car, so it hovered round the 136mile mark and I topped up the battery both at work and at home.  At work, I used the 3-pin plug charging cable at the pod-point at work and at home it used the normal Mennekes type 2 I use with the Leaf – the British Gas install charge point worked beautifully although it does look different to the Leaf with the connector’s different surround it is completely standard and charged quickly off our solar cells.

The battery is not huge, even really trying, my journey to work consumed a third of the battery.  True, I don’t have to charge at work with the petrol, but that’s not really the point.

The layout of the cabin is much more traditional than the Leaf, with a lever for the “gear” selector: park at the top followed by reverse and then neutral and then drive and low gear.  This translates in terms of the Leaf’s drive and brake modes.

One of the biggest disappointments is that the cabin does not seem to be designed for as a right hand drive model.  For example, the parking brake is to the left of the main console just above the gear selector.  This distracts from an otherwise serene environment.  Or at least I thought so driving it.  On providing my son a lift, he was not impressed with the red patterned fascia trim.

The boot was the biggest shock: it was large and had space for the charging cable under the boot floor (which the Leaf lacks) but there was no rear shelf – so although it was a hatch-back you had to peel back the cloth boot cover which protects the contents from the sun and prying eyes.

Entertainment wise, this car is packed.  The £37,000 version has everything including DAB with a pause function – need to take a call, no worries, pull over, pause the live radio and rejoin the programme you left before rejoining the carriage way!  Beware though, if you want the satnav displayed on the screen, the radio has to be on although we found that choosing an empty source meant you could enjoy the sat nav at lights without having to endure anything while moving.  There is also a DVD player, which is useful to read the manual on while parked up.

I didn’t mind the touch screen controls although I have spoken to a few people who found them a little annoying.  What was difficult was achieving the basics like turning off the aircon’.  I managed it in the end but the user interface is a little clunky.

Parking it in the garage was no trivial – unlike the Tesla Model S and the Nissan Leaf the Ampera doesn’t even have folding mirrors as an option.  This is strange as by far the cheapest way to run it is through charging it at home rather than filling it with petrol.  Maybe in America garage doors are much wider.

So?

I wouldn’t swap the Leaf for it per se, but if range were an issue it’s a much better option than a Honda Insight and much cheaper than a Tesla Model S.  It has a much softer, less sporty ride than the Leaf but the front spoiler was not a great edition in town (especially with speed bumps).

Were money no object…

NB this is not teaching you what pumping is and expects you to be familiar with some of the terms.  It is a breakdown of the operational and design features of some of the insulin pumps on the market with an in depth view on the Accu-chek DTron, Early Medtronic Paradigm and Animas Vibe pumps.

After my operation in February, my DTron insulin pump reached the end of its life. While I was recovering (and not working) I returned to multiple daily injections.

I did this for a number of reasons, not least because it was the first time in 12 years I had not used the pump (!!!). In those twelve years, I used the DTron for the first four years then changed to a DTron plus. I did try a Medtronic Paradigm with a combined continuous glucose meter system (CGMS) during that time.

The DTron and its successors were beautifully designed, from the ease of swapping out the cartridge to getting the status of any of the actions I had completed.  It was simple with

• a four button control interface (and the alarm codes on the back) that you can use with your eyes closed (or if you had retinopathy)
• a battery which lasted 8-10 weeks
• it was reasonably water-proof, I certainly used it in the pool for days at a time
• from realising I wanted to change to the cartridge to gathering all the items and plugging in the new cannula set took less than five minutes – no further prep necessary
• the 3ml glass pen compatible cartridge provided all three millilitres to me: I once swapped out a cartridge early for a trip, but used the remaining 10 units as back up in my Humalog pen
• a great size, smaller than my hand and beautifully curved.

I am gutted that Roche have stopped making it.

Hey, what about the Medtronic Paradigm?

Plenty of people love the Paradigm combined pump from Medtronic: I am not one of them.  I used it for eight weeks.

Compared to the DTron, the Medtronic had a 1.5ml “syringe” cartridge.  This meant you have to fill up a syringe and then load it in to the pump before priming (filling with insulin) the tubing and the cannula (the tube that sits under your skin).

I injected with both pens and syringes from 1977 to 2002 and nothing is as fiddly as the syringes used by insulin pumps.  Where-as a syringe used for insulin has a mechanism for gripping and holding the syringe while you draw up the insulin (and inject), a pump cartridge syringe has no such help (that may be a little mean, they do provide a detachable extender, but they always fall off, especially if you are trying to shake out air bubbles).  If I get a small air bubble in for an injection, it is no big deal and easy to resolve.  A small air bubble in a pump cartridge can mean not having any insulin for a couple of hours which leads to extremely high blood sugars.  But in December 2007, that was what I was trying.

Now though, this process is being performed twice as often.  Joy (or not).  The worst thing about this system is that you end up losing a lot of usable insulin so that you are not performing this hideous process at an inopportune moment (Dtron, change cartridge over at 3am, not an issue, trying to get the fiddly cartridge in at 10pm, nightmare).

But it would be worth it for the CGMS.  Or not.

The other big difference between the two pumps was how frequently the basal was delivered.  I use a very small amount of insulin mid-afternoon.  In the DTron, every 3 minutes the pump gave me 0.005 units of insulin.  The Paradigm didn’t, it gave me a 0.17 unit dose 10 minutes apart.  I felt grotty, which wasn’t something I was used to having got the pump set up back in 2002.

But it would be worth it for the CGMS.  Or not.

The CGMS was OK: when you learn to use the pump, you are taught the values it provides are a guideline only, available for three days.  For me, I have a little trouble spotting a fast drop in insulin (typically experienced with an infection say).  I am aware I am in the hypo, but because of the speed of the change in blood sugar, one minute every thing’s fine the next I have a hypo which needs treating quickly.

This was the reason I wanted CGMS, to provide that cut off in the change of blood sugar levels where I could spot the hypo and where I couldn’t.  It would also give me an idea of the changes going on over night to prove the over night basal rates.

Which it did, for £450, I had three days worth of graphs.  It was interesting.  But not enough to get over the inconvenience of using the DTron: I visited MIT during that time and the short life of the cartridges was a complete nightmare, jet lagged, tons of paraphernalia and in a hotel suite, it was just annoying when the DTron would have provided all the insulin in a single cartridge.

The deal breaker came after my third sensor.  Remember, one of the reasons I had the sensor was to spot a fast drop.  I spotted the drop one beautiful sunny Sunday morning while the sensor said there were no changes (none, nada, not one) in my blood sugar levels (it maintained that my blood sugar varied a little between 6.4mmol/l and 6.7mmol/l over an hour.  When I tested I was 2.7mmol/l which is a massive drop from the 10.3mmol/l I had been an hour earlier).  I was back on the DTron within the hour.

So, it’s a really bad thing they stopped making the DTron

I feel that.  But injections are such hard work.  In the end, with alarms reminding me to inject, I ended up on six injections a day with highs indicating that that may not have been enough.  After 6 weeks I was ready to accept any pump.

When I got the DTron in 20002, I was choosing between two pumps (really).  Now I had a choice of four: the Roche Spirit pump, Medtronics latest Paradigm, Animas’ Vibe and the Omnipod.

Wireless is the new latest fad which must be great if you have a really young diabetic you are reasonable for as you can  bolus and check the screen while the youngster is off playing 10 feet from you.  As an adult, rushing around much of my time I do not want to be hunting for the user interface of my pump in my bag or round the house.

Cartridge size was the other important consideration, which meant the Animas Vibe was the only choice.  The Vibe has a 2ml cartridge and a similar basal rate delivery as the DTron, so even if the CGMS was not good, it would behave as a better pump for me than the Paradigm had.  (It was also seriously water-proof, up to 3.6m).

The CGMS would be provided for 7 days and had a really good reputation.  So, with the choice between that and injections, I chose the Vibe.

Learning how the vibe works

Basals and setup

The Medtronic was a nightmare from the training on.  I wasn’t told that I needed a vial of insulin to draw up the cartridge – obvious I know, but I didn’t consider it.

So this time, I was really sorted out.  Animas have a really useful orientation course too.  I was promised it would take 90 minutes by the hospital but it was much longer than that, nearer 3 hours.

Chris Sargent, from Animas, helped me set the basal rates and although there wasn’t a straight copy through from the DTron to the Vibe, it was reasonably close (remember that’s the back ground insulin the body needs to function).  The vibe has 12 slots for a day’s basal rates compared to 24 in the DTron but it is programmable in 15 minute segments.  It’s close to perfect by the end of the week.

Bolusing

It is reasonably difficult to place the pump under my clothes and perform a bolus.   There are buttons are all round the pump, so no convenient carriers/bags are available to do this anyway, but even if there were, I have not been able to successfully perform a “fast bolus”, which should be available by pressing a single button.  The idea is obviously to prevent accidental pressing but it is not something I can do easily and requires more presses than using the “normal” bolus menu.

I compensate by a double click of the OK button to get to the simple bolus screen.  This I all miss from the DTron: switching from a simple (a single dose) to a combi (a set of small boluses to cover slowly released carbohydrate) was really simple.  This is a completely separate menu screen, however some thought has gone in to the flexibility of this extended bolus.

One of the nicest features on the Vibe is insulin on board value available from one click of the button on top of the pump.  The CGMS has all its history available from the CGMS sub-menu – this would be great from the bolus screen, it’s not, which is really annoying.  To go from any sub-menu to another takes four button presses!  Though a tip to the wise is to use the fast bolus button: a quick hold on here and a press on the OK menu gets back to the home screen really simply.

There is a lot of data accessible by the pump everything from complete total insulin delivered in a calendar day to total bolused, when the last bolus was to basals and temporary basal rates.

Even now, some of it still doesn’t feel very logical.  It would be great if the insulin on board (that’s how much of the last bolus is still active in my system) was available from the bolus screen not the CGMS screen.  If I don’t think about it that means 6 button presses if I land on the bolus screen and think, I’d better check.

Battery and use

The battery is pretty good and I can swap in a standard AA battery as an emergency measure, which is good.  Unfortunately, to see the screen, I have to press a button, which makes hanging the pump off my belt reasonably pointless, not least because the holder means that I am reading the pump upside down.  I gave up after day one.

What about the CGMS?

It’s really good: the sensor lasts for 7 days minimum and it seems relatively accurate.  I have used four and the data has been really interesting.  It has led me to change some of my behaviour as well as my doses.

I have tried in various locations and have ended up with a site that is both accurate and doesn’t get in the way.  Unfortunately, it means the CGMS is on display, but that’s OK.  People assume it’s feeding in drugs and seem quite disappointed when you say it’s just the transmiter for the sensor and show them the readout.

The colour screen is so easy to use and get that fast reading on what’s happening: whether the readings are static or moving up or down, slowly or quickly.

It seems much more sensitive that the Medtronic had been and responds faster to a recalibration result (I feed it 4 a day: breakfast, lunch, go home/tea and bed).

Ironically, the screen layout makes it much easier to use the CGMS but also to not use it.  There is no wasted space on the home screen if you are not using the CGMS.  It is easily accessed and scrolls between the past hour, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours and 24 hours and a single reading with the insulin on board screen.

The transmitter lasts for around 6 months.  The sensors seem really robust: they don’t need to be chilled while in storage.  The insert devices for the sensor and transmitter are really well designed and can be done single handed with very little hassle.

The alarms can all be configured.  This is really good, giving a welcome break if there’s nothing important going on, but you get that loud warning that things need checking when you’re outside or in the car.

I have had a little trouble with the cloud upload.  There is no way to get the data off the pump with the standard tools without it going to the web site.  That’s appalling.  I appreciate the thought is out there that all mindless morons but actually, there are plenty of us who can work out the numbers if we have the data.

And let’s face it, this is my data.

On the other hand, the sensors do seem to just work.

I still want MY DATA without HAVING to be connected to the internet.  Diasend will not work on a ship without access to the world wide web.

So not only do I have to pay for the sensors but network access if I want to access the data.  This is not cool.

It also is another set of tools that do not work with Linux.

It does seem to be accurate, lasts the distance and is reasonably comfortable and relatively easy to insert.

When in a jam

All of which means when I travel to Africa later this year, I will be taking my DTron and its adapter for my computer.  The night time carrier, the belt carrier, under-clothes holster and a spare injector pen.  Though the fact every one of the new infusion sets will work with my DTron and has its own inserter.

All the data from my testing kits and DTron can be analysed anywhere in the world.  I don’t even need a power supply to do that.  If I really want to use the other pump as a CGMS, I can do that.