Finding the chase and cutting to it

My beloved husband has got to an age when he prefaces statements with, “I remember a time when…”

Which freaks me out a little. I know there is a 7 years, 2 days, age gap, but just recently, it has felt like a big thing.

Only to find myself doing that very thing today! Not least because I was asked when the first house I bought was likely to have had its double glazing put in….

Where have we come from to get to this point, please!?

OK, a couple of steps back. We bought this house in 2013, and it had OK double glazing, not terrific but not bad. Fast forward twelve years, and as well as caulking (a real word, honest) a few of the windows, some of the units are failing.

Basically, we need to start the whole replacing windows thing. Being eco-conscious, I want to up the specification of these windows to the latest standards. But, like everyone, we have had some plans in the back of our minds on what would make our house a “bit wow”.

The fact you only used 3,403kWh to heat a 250m² house over winter isn’t enough of a wow?

OK, when you put it like that…

But the fact is, we don’t have a corner the south end of our lounge (not uncommon in the 1960s but less beneficial than you might think in the 21st century).

We also, technically, cannot open the doors to the courtyard (it took a good five minutes to prise it open today). True, we have some doors the north end, but trust me when I say that isn’t as convenient as you might think.

Several units have “blown”, which makes their thermal insulating properties near zero and using that little power is going to be harder as time goes on.

The number quoted was a scary number – thankfully we were both sitting down, but given our wish list, it wasn’t a bad price. Triple glazing almost everywhere, a bit of building work to give us a wow sliding patio door and corners in our lounge. A Juliette window ready for a balacony in the future in our bedroom, which again, gives us some corners ready for curtains.

Those two things alone are a fair price.

It should mean we can fit external shutters, a boon for shutting out the sun during the summer but keeping us snug in the winter with the solar gain.

Because the first house I bought had windows by this manufacturer we were eligible for a discount. Ironically, the price wasn’t that disimilar to my first house’s mortgage!

The weird thing is, actually, it could cost in during the winter. Yes, the air sourced heat pump uses 75% less than a gas boiler but electricity is four times as expensive as gas. So, anything extra we can save… for the extra expenditure…

That’s not the reason we’ve been doing this. We are keen to reduce our carbon footprint. It’s not the only steps we’re taking of course. With our current windows failing, we may not have that much of a choice.

We don’t have to do anything more than just replace what we have.

Bangs per buck, it may be much more effective to get the same size and slightly better spec windows (for significantly less) and buy more solar panels.

Decisions, decisions.

I have rearranged my pre-planned publishing list to squeeze this in, because I think it’s pertinent to our time.

Which contradicts the subject of this post: procrastination.

There are all things we procrastinate about and research actually shows this isn’t necessarily a bad thing (unless you have a time limit on anything). Waiting to or delaying the start of a task gives your subconscious time to process things in the background and come up with better answers.

Over the past week, I have had a serious case on ennui about three things: sorting out my office, sorting out the next few years of my career, and the final pieces of decorating and gardening in our first phase owning our house.

The office problem.

Let’s be honest, when I’m working, I do not notice very much about my surroundings. I’m not inheriently a slob, honest, but my priority is the couple of screens I use to do the magic of my job.

August is when the general decay from the last big tidy has got to the point where serious action needs to be taken.

I even managed to find a lampshade and desk chair a few weeks ago that I thought my spur me on, but all I feel is more down about the state of the room rather than garning the task.

It’s slightly worse than that. Because I do video conferencing call, all the detritus has been put in bags and hidden from view.

I clean out the actual rubbish, and wash the dishes, but I need it tidy for a call on Wednesday. This is not one I want to do with a filter on the camera. Just at the moment though…

The career problem.

I have a great job but the big task I have been doing is coming to an end, just one little bit to finish and next week is the time to do that – I have a plan and it looks achievable and fun.

But after that, it’s back to the day job which isn’t really my kind of thing. It’s handle turning, which fills me with dread.

I am doing some things about this but like many, it feels like it’s falling flat. Maybe while I’m clearing my office, inspiration will hit on what to do next?

The final hurdle, or the last jobs in the house.

We all have these plans when we move into a house, and over the past 12 years, we have achieved them and more besides.

I love our home. It’s very much a joint venture, and it is a place I can chill or entertain or heal after a big or learn something new…

What “needs” doing?

1. Carpet in the spare room and a repaint.
2. Redoing main bathroom. We have a design in mind, and a scoped cost.
3. Kitchen – much more involved than the bathroom, let’s face it.
4. Garden, specifically the back garden. We have vague ideas but it is going to be a huge task.

On the list this year is the windows for the house. The windows originally fitted started falling apart 5 years ago, so we’ve been fixing issues and filling gaps. And saving. We have 26 windows, given a range of £500 to £5,000 is the range of prices for replacement windows in the UK (including fitting and taking away the old ones), you see why we wanted to have the cash before getting in some quotes.

Of course, like many in their homes, we had some ideas of what could make our nice house great and up to date. So that is being factored in too.

We’ve been able to go for triple glazing on the north side of the house, and the normal bedroom windows. Everything else is double glazed – important for the french doors in the kitchen and lounge.

It might mean we’re finally able to get that EPC A grade for the house.

You and your EPC!

Actually, we think this is really important. I don’t think it adds to the value of a house but if you have two lovely houses in a great area and one is has an EPC grade D and the other a B, choosing the B means you don’t have to do much to keep your costs down. For us, since we’ve made the investment, life becomes pretty cheap no matter the weather.

We last got the house assessed in 2022, which is a year examined in how do you get an a rated epc. Our house was one of 56,678 or 3.78% of the assessments that got a B.

Since then, alongside the planned windows, we’ve got a couple of batteries and, of course, our heat pump. We’ve finally got Cadent to check the removal of our meter and all is good as far as Ofgen are concerned.

We’re producing 18.8% of the CO₂ footprint the average home does in the UK in terms of energy usage. Because it’s a 244m² house, we’re unlikely to do much better than that, even with the new windows, but it should keep us current.

It’s all money 🙁

It is, but as someone who used to watch the House Doctor series, you should spend 1% of your home’s value on its up keep, excluding bills. A finger in the air makes ours about £9,000 per year! Our 26 windows at £2,000 a pop is £52,000(!) so we’ve saved that money over many years to incorporate some building work. It’s come in at much less than that, thankfully, even with the building work!

Same with the bathroom renovations and the kitchen, when we get round to it. Doing the windows should make those final two jobs much easier.

Fingers crossed.

As we have travelled to another part of the UK, Glasgow to be honest, one of the greenest places in the country in terms of power generation…

Preciously what, may I ask, has that to do with on-line shopping, please?

Oh, sorry, got distracted by the 20 or so wind turbines I can see spinning on the horizon as I write this…

Can we get back to the point, please?

Oh, yes, of course. I bought shoes. Always a difficult thing to do back home, but I thought there might be a chance of finding some that fitted here in Scotland.

Go on then, did you?

Yes, and having learnt my lesson from the past, I bought in bulk. But having got the boxes back to my hotel room, I was reminded why I don’t buy shoes on-line and really why that should be possible.

The boots and shoes I bught were American size 7 ½ and European size 39. That’s somewhere between a UK 5 ½ and 6 in shoe sizes.

What I should be able to do is give a vendor my foot length, the circumference of my widest part, and ideally, how far from my toe and heel that widest part is. You can do this in centimetres, which are the same where-ever you are in the world.

It would then be really easy to say whether a shoe was going to fit and be comfortable.

There are few other clothes that can be as easily achieved.

Yet, I have not seen any vendor do this. Why is that?

What on earth is an Eddi?

Good question – it is a solar diverter and to be fair, it was setup’ish, it’s just now talking to the internet.

Why, oh why…

Hey, this is my thing. Everyone needs a hobby!

A solar diverter is something we have had since we first got our solar panels and our old one, a Solar iBoost, was exceptionally handy when our boiler stopped working or during the summer, when any spare power we had generated would heat our hot water rather than just go back onto the grid.

A simple monitor reads what is coming off the roof and what is being used. If more is being generated than used, the immersion heater is used as a solar dump.

Our Solar iBoost was simple but did a great job. The Eddi2 is a little more complicated but allows us to set everything up on an app and track how much we are diverting too.

This functionality is very useful if you have an air sourced heat pump during the winter. Setting a schedule allows the hot water tank to heat up to 60°C or so using the immersion heater, but powered from the solar cells.

But, unless the temperature gets to sub 4°C, the air sourced heat pump is going to be more efficient – yes, it goes down to getting 3.4kWh of heat out of 1kWh of input energy, but that is way better than the 1kWh to 1kWh of input output we get from the Eddi.

That doesn’t make the Eddi only useful while it’s cold, our recent travels made the Eddi invaluable not least in keeping the battery 100% full while reducing our overall usage.

Of course, during a heat wave, this is not as efficient as using the air sourced heat pump, though any spare would be used for that (were the hot water cool enough). In fact, because solar cells do not perform as well when it is hot, it may be much more expensive to use the solar divert function in place of the heat pump’s hygiene programme.

Hygiene programme?

Heat pumps typically heat “hot” water to between 40°C and 50°C, which is plenty for a lovely hot bath or shower, or washing up, or cleaning dishes or clothes..

But it is also a temperature which can allow legionella to thrive. So, at least once a week, aim to have your water taken up to 60°C or 65°C for an hour or so.

We’ve timed ours during the summer to run when the solar divert is unlikely to be kicking in.

Of course, the solar divert is doing this task during the winter months, when the cells are operating at their peak, a couple of times a week.

Saving us a little money but making sure everything is kept in tip top condition from an investation point of view. We’re happy, the legionella is not, as our bills are kept as low as possible.

Are you sure this is worth all this fuss?

Yes. You need to do this kind of thing with a gas boiler, but it requires the same kind of “fuss” or rather conscious decisions being made on what happens: when and where if you are looking to reduce your carbon footprint and be a responsible user.

We’re just doing the same with our electric powered heating, which measn the decisions are a bit more tangible when it comes to tracking usage.

Speaking of which, I’m off to jump in the bath before the hygiene programme starts.

I had one of “those mornings” where a high blood glucose reading had settled in a refused to budge.

It’s hard to work out if it’s the tail end of my infection, or the fact I actually managed to do an hour’s walk/hike to our local park and back home through the cemetry and it’s a case of my body saying – ready for next time. To be fair, it was the first time in 17 days I had done more than 6,000 steps in one go – the entire total for the day was 14,759 steps. Not as good as my best ever (23,000) , but way better than my nearly three week average!

So, pumped insulin until it got reasonable, had some lunch then fought the next high. Joy or joys.

As soon as it looked like everything was working as it should, we went for a smaller walk today. Just 40 minutes or so, taking it a little bit easier.

My blood sugar dropped like the proverbial. The best thing about this is I have a clear measure of how much insulin is on board, so it should be short lived.

And of course, I have had the benefit of the exercise. Which is always important.

We’ve changed things around a little with our home rota, just because, due to one thing and another, we had got out of sync with the whole “buy it and cook it” thing.

My beloved has bought the meat and veg, and I am cooking tomorrow. A 1.647kg chicken, combination microwave roasted in 44 minutes. With stuffing, carrots, roast tatties, peas, baby sweetcorn, gravy, cougettes, broccoli, and baby roast peppers. Much of it, like the peppers, will be roasted in the combo microwave.

Quick, easy, disappears into the dishwasher, home cooked food.

We are going to see a play Saturday night, and my husband bought quiches. Is it wrong to say I’m a little put out? Home made quiche is time consuming but so nice. I’d have made it yesterday with hot veggies, and we could have had the rest tonight.

I am getting quite good at the whole rolling out the pastry too.

In fact, I’m tempted to try some puff pasty tomorrow – there’s a way of doing it, I think could make use of the pasta rolling machine I have to achieve the laminating. If not, it’s quite the work out, but should keep for until Monday, our pie day! I can make the pastry while I do the stock in the microwave from the cooked bones…

Yawn, isn’t this all too much effort – and washing up? Aren’t you being ungrateful?!

Can I be honest? The thing that gets me about homemade is that the food tends to “work as expected” with the whole get the insulin right and blood sugar thing.

I had a bit of a surprise yesterday, taking some homemade sandwiches into work on Friday.

When I said homemade, I had cooked the bread from scratch and the chicken was from last Sunday’s roast. Unlike the ones from work, I needed far less insulin, in a much simplier configuration, and it was seriously tasty.

Everything just worked like it was supposed to. Sunday roast at home is the same. I’m going to have to work tonight in a way I just wouldn’t have to had I pulled my finger out.

And isn’t that priceless?

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, we were looking to spread the cost and see what we actually need. We might have been left without the option to do so, but thankfully, that was not the case, though getting any more capacity might be tricky.

Generally, over the winter, the 13.5kWh battery we bought did pretty well. It’s the first day of meteorological spring in the UK, as we are getting better 3.0 and 3.5kW off our roof and we only need 1.4kW to run the house (heating, water heating, and the washing machine), the rest is being stowed in the battery and when a cloud passes, the battery is filling in the dip. So far today, 22% of our power has come from the sun, 3% from the powerwall (charged by the sun) and the rest from the grid – 19.4kWh of which have warmed the house and heated the water – I have not only washed my dark delicates but had a lovely bath earlier.

Now, I do know some hardy souls who turn off the heating as soon as spring starts, they just heat the water. We don’t do that – I am not saying the house is heated to 22°C, or that we’re wearing summer clothing, I love my jumpers and warm socks, so a barmy 16-19°C suits us, the lounge is currently 18.1°C which is where I am writing this piece, largely achieved by the infrared power of the sun heating the room. Solar gain is a beautiful thing, this time of year.

Indeed, I am making use of it to warm up the veggies I am using in a butternut squash soup later, which if I’m lucky, can be cooked from power from the battery.

Yawn, so what?

This, oh so boring shit, is so worth doing. I am enjoying all the benefits of modern life, without having to pay for the power. At £0.2603 per kWh, this matters.

For February, we were charged for 1,044.60 kWh of electricity, but our usage was 1,179.4 kWh. Our heat “usage” over February was 2,720kWh, while our “spend” was 685 kWh. That gives us a seasonal coefficient of just under 4 (from 2720 divided by 685). Not bad.

Semi-interesting, go on…

Whatever! We’re not turning our central heating off – it’s between -2 and 0°C in the UK around 5am and I like to be warm. So, I am enjoying the sunshine today.

Hope you are too! But going forwards, we have now got that 27kWh of battery. Which means, during the summer, we are off grid – a good solar day for us is 20kWh coming off the roof – if we are in the office (i.e. not heating the house, boiling the kettle, or cooking food), that power goes out to the grid.

In the UK, that is not a disaster, we get paid for that “sale of power”, though in reality, it’s our neighbours who potentially get to enjoy the use of that greener energy.

The battery changes that: now it’s summer, electricity prices are now £0.2602 per kWh, so everything we can use gives takes money off our bill. But thanks to the longest days being upon us, our usage is down too – barely 11kWh, so a full battery or good day of solar means we have enough electricity stowed for a really dark couple of days.

On average, during June, we fill up our battery easily by midday. We barely empty it either.

Timing our dishwasher to go on at 2pm (our peak generating time) means that we get less money for our exported energy but are paying significantly less for our electricity.

We’re doing the same with the EV. Nothing gets charged while the sun is not giving power. Not the house battery, nor the car. Phones, watches, laptops, all wait until the sun is providing.

Our Samsung Smart things does some of the watching for us. Making handy hints of when to put on the washing or dishwasher. Or make a cup of really strong tea…

Post script: it’s not what you do, but the way that you do it.

One of the things to watch with this connected to the grid but drawing as little as possible life style, is the rate things are powered at…

What does that mean? Well, a fast kettle in the UK draws about 3kW for a very short time, but it can mean you need more than your solar panels are giving just at that moment. Switching to a 1kW takes longer to boil (same amount of energy but over a longer time frame) but probably keep within the levels being produced by the solar cells. The difference is, with the 3kW kettle, you will be paying the energy company even though you have solar cells.

The electric car is a great example of this. We have 10kW, 5kW, and 2.5kW chargers: if we’re using the grid, it makes sense to go for the 10kW one for as short a time as possible, where-as for the solar cells, the 2.5kW makes much more sense. Limiting the charging to the suniest part of the day, also makes a great deal of sense. But the downside is, it’s going to take much longer to charge the car.

My parents had bought some solar cells some years prior to retirement. Retirement meant a huge reduction in earnings, so they did this to the ulitmate extreme and, please bear in mind, they didn’t have a battery.

So, they recorded things on their sky box and watched them during daylight hours. All cooking was done at midday and either thigs were reheated or eaten cold in the twilight. They went to bed when the sunset and time shifted, to only be awake during the daylight hours. They got their electricity bill down to less than £30 a month on average, and vast majority of that was the standing charge.

A small part of me really admires this, but with a full time job, it’s not something we have to do.

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, I saw the doctor yesterday… which was exhausting. Like I say, a brief respite…

Go on then… but you should be resting!

Legend has it that rain today will mean rain for the forty days, but the British weather is much too fickle to follow any rules. Indeed, the only predictable thing about the UK climate is the unpredictability.

In my fair town, we get 4,383 hours of daylight a year, rendering 1,460 meaningful solar generating hours.

That’s a bit of a swizz, isn’t it?

Love the Brit’s turn of phrase. No, you would expect that due to the angle of the sun to the horizon, that makes perfect sense. Just under a third of daylight hours providing some level of sunshine. We get much more of the available daylight as sunshine during the summer, less during the winter.

In the summer, because of the longer days, we typically start to generate electricity from 6am, in July, start generating more than we use from 8am. As our panels face due south with a big house behind them, we cease generating about 19:30. Extrapolate that out and 1,460 potential hours of generation sounds about right.

Indeed, this year has been a bit of a bumper year compared to last year, with a generation total of 2.4kWh by today compared to 1.9kWh from the 1st January 2024 to the 15th July 2024.

This makes having the batteries really pay in for us. Last year, we were billed for 568.9kWh. This year, we have been billed for 12.2kWh.

For those who are more comfortable working in percentages, that’s 98% less or our electricity coming from the grid, and electricity price has jumped from 21p per kWh to 24.77p. We’ve paid on average less than 23p a day for the electricity we have used from the grid in July, so far.

Of course, the batteries are only half that story. We’re not buying gas or paying a standing charge. The heat pump is returning a seasonal performance factor > 4, meaning for each kWh we use, we get at least 4kWh of heating. If we’re careful with our usage, even boiling a kettle or charging the car is being done within our usage envelop.

Our batteries have a maximum power delivery of 5kWh – so if our usage is less than that (and whatever is coming off the roof, a maximum of 3.5kWh), it should be free. I am certainly watching when I am boiling the kettle. Of course, it can be caught short, with an unexpected demand not being met by the battery unless you conciously make the decision to go “off-grid”.

This picture is reversed in the winter, when there is much less solar power to be had and the house really wants to be heated and lit. Our shortest day is only 7 hours 32 minutes of daylight – if we’re awake for the rest of the time, that needs heating and light. Call us southern softies.

That’s kind of the point. It’s why I don’t mind paying a standing charge too much, just wish it wasn’t quite as much as 43.75p a day.

You would say that, wouldn’t you? You want to have your cake and eat it too!

Well, I think we should be incouraging people to move away from fossil fuels towards greener alternatives and more than 50% of our electricity comes from renewable sources in the UK.

The standing charge to heat your house by gas has a standing charge of 33p a day (ish). Which seems the wrong way round.

Doesn’t that hit those who cannot afford to make the move with a double whammy?

Yes, it could. But there is help for people in that position as per details of ECO4, ecoFlex, and home upgrade grants. These schmes aims to help people who cannot afford to make such moves. For ECO Flex, the family income needs to be less than £31,000 pa, and helps to pay for a variety of measures, including insulation, heat pumps, double glazing, and solar panels. HUG is for everyone making a positive move, and ECO4 is for those on benefits.

Which could be a good way for this change of pricing to work. The main issue with our system is, you have to apply for it, no-one is watching to see if you are in trouble.

For ECO4, the only downside, it seems to me, is you need to be “off the gas network”. I don’t know if that means you cannot use gas or if it means you have to be using oil fired heating from a tank…

There’s a big difference here between making a postive move or taking a step away from non-networked heating sources, surely?

My son believes I work too hard. I love my day job, so it doesn’t feel like work to me but my fitness app is of the same opinion “try to optimise rest today”.

Economically, I’m very much of the belief that hard work pays dividends, gets rewarded, etc. But only 10% of effort is typically worthwhile out of 100% of time, think of it as an oven coming up to temperature – yes we can do without the pre-heating often, but the results are not necessarily achieved any quicker.

Like the mind, the human body is much the same, hitting the gym harder and more frequently does not reward. But it’s hard to say no, to sit quietly, and do “something selfish”. I am “resting” by making chicken stock today, for goodness sake. Yesterday, I made a quiche from scratch, pastry and all. And working out how to make puff pastry from scratch – not necessarily stress free options!

My quality rest time is in the bath – but because of my wearables, it isn’t the escape it used to be with a paper book and no screens.

I do try to day-dream, but it’s a different kind of rest, an examination of the art of the possible and there is always the phone there, waiting to tell me I’m right or wrong. Yesterday, I was reading about radiator reflectors and different u values for windows… strange where the mind goes.

Today, shock of shocks, I left home to get the Sunday paper WITHOUT my phone. Honestly, and when I realised that was the case, I very nearly ran back to get it, just because I would not have the convience of my blood glucose reading on my wrist!

I stuck to my guns though and had 14 minutes disconnected. Although my pump does read my blood glucose sensor, so I wasn’t operating in the dark.

But, that’s what we did. I often tested more than my contemporaries to ensure my pump was working as expected, but we didn’t have an always on read out of what was happening.

How on earth did you make decisions?

It was guess work. Point readings and guess work and, sometimes, those guesses were spot on. But I did rely on listening to my body, and that is still with me – I do question when I get an “unexpected reading” from the intistatial monitor, for example.

Was it less stressful?

That’s a good question.

It was quieter, and I do miss that. Doing a basal run (fasting to establish background insulin requirements) was painful and lacked clarity of when basal rate change times needed to be done, but it was usually done in three days or so, one to get the readings and two to see what the changes meant.

Life is better but it’s all very chatty and sometimes, I just want some quiet. I know Libre doesn’t suit me well but doing that for a month might be a nice holiday. Or even going back to capillary blood testing.

It’s been five years, don’t I deserve a break?

Can I be honest here? Although I had “done the numbers” and figured out that we would indeed be:

• Reducing our annual carbon footprint. From 1.2 tonnes per annum to 0,3 tonnes.
• Making the most of the energy we were generating.
• Paying off a big up-front payment for the batteries and heat pump.

I didn’t expect to feel as happy about all that as we do. I think I expected to feel anxious and nervous about the dramatically higher electricity bills.

I feel like I am waiting for the other shoe to drop, but our Tesla battery set-up is working really well for us. We have hot water on tap, and during the summer, that costs us nothing to achieve.

From the grid’s point of view, we are low energy users between March and October. We haven’t reduced our usage dramatically, we are just sourcing it from our roof.

Last night, because a thunderstorm was predicted, we used a whole 8.0kWh from the grid, to absolutely guarantee we were not impacted by a power cut. Because we live in the UK, there are few power cuts in these circumstances, but we were ready just in case!

As today is fairly sunny, the battery is currently charging while 92% full. Since getting to 100% on Friday, it has kept between 70 and 100% all day. We got the panels cleaned a fortnight ago, which has dramatically improved the output from each pannel. Despite some cloud, most days we’ve harvested 19kWh a day.

The only days we take any more than 2kWh from the grid is when we’re cooking, washing clothes, and charging the car. And making many cups of tea. I have proposed cutting tea consumption, but my beloved husband just gave me a look to say, no honey, no way!

During the summer, the heat pump is typically returning a seasonal performance factor (SPF) of over 5 (so for 1kWh power we put into the system, we get an equivalent 5kWh in terms of heat). Indeed, during June that went up to 6 – although you do need to compare that to January when the SPF was 3.7.

At this half-way through the year point, is our electricity use dramatically higher for going all electric?

The short answer is no, when you ask the grid. Because of the batteries, everything we generate (bar some losses) is used by us.

Last year, we got the first battery in October, the second one in March 2025, and you need to remember we were using plugged in heaters from end of March (the coldest March in living memory!), so I am going to go back to 2023 for my comparison.

Month	2023 usage (kWh)	2025 usage (kWh)	% difference
Jan	697.10	1,327.00	190.4%
Feb	537.60	1,044.60	194.3%
Mar	615.65	560.70	91.1%
Apr	547.15	205.80	37.6%
May	492.45	186.75	37.9%
Jun	493.51	68.0	13.2%
Jul	787.54	No figures yet
Aug	678.75	No figures yet
Sep	609.60	No figures yet
Oct	471.45	No figures yet
Nov	577.10	No figures yet
Dec	625.30	No figures yet
Total	7,133.200	3,392.85	47.6%

Woah, January and February look terrible!

Yes, but remember, we are not spending anything on gas and that is alll our:

Bearing that in mind, everything since March has used a lower amount of electricity from the grid, on average 0.2kWh a day at £0.2602 per kWh. About £0.05 at day.

If we take out the heating power, we are dramatically “using less” from the grid.

Our solar power had always worked well for us: what we couldn’t use we sold back to the grid. Which meant what looked like high bills were dramatically off-set by the SEG payments. If we use the energy ourselves, we do lose the SEG payments…

Though when the battery is 100%, everything we don’t use is exported.

We’re a long way off being self-sufficient, but we’ve used half the amount of power from the grid this half-year (and that includes our heating and hot water!), and are paying relatively little in our direct debit and are warm, clean, fed, for relatively little.

And protected from power cuts.

Out of interest, what were the values for the “excluded year”, please, 2024?

Last year, we used 8,414.56kWh. It wasn’t dramatically higher than 2023, but the figures for March and April were extraordinarily high, so would stand out like a sore thumb.

Of course, by mid-July, we had our heat pump, so the numbers would look comparable, which wouldn’t do for the comparison. By November, we had the batteries…

Happy that I did the right thing for the comparison, please?

And your actual usage, not just what’s coming off the grid?

According to the Tesla app, our figures are shown in the table to the right.

Month	Electricity usage (kWh)
Jan	1,400
Feb	1,200
Mar	1,000
Apr	670
May	590
Jun	290
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Total	5,150

That is high usage. Really, high usage. Bearing in mind 2023, our whole usage was 7,133.2 kWh…

Without that up front investment in the solar panels and the batteries, that electricity would have cost around £1,854.36. Instead we’ve paid £834.78.

That’s driving to and from the local office, heating the house, etc.

Maybe that’s why I am fairly relaxed about it. Our investment in solar panels and batteries is making a difference to our standard of living, without costing the earth.

Actually, that’s a good question, what has the CO₂ cost been?

About 100kg per cell, making about 1600kg, and about 2700kg for our two batteries.

So the up front cost were dramatically higher than one year’s reduction. But our solar cells are now 12 years old, so that footprint was recouped in the first two years. The Tesla batteries were recouped in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th years, we had our solar cells.

The past 5 years, we’re easily carbon netural in terms of the costs of making our equipment. They should all last at least 15 more years and that’s 15 years of saving 1,300kg CO₂ per annum.

In a world full of Baby Boomers and Millenials, my generation were never called anything by Gen X.  Born between 1965 and 1980, I am slap in the middle of “my generation” and I am going to be talking about it.

We’re the misfits.  Our parents are boomers, and we just make up 20% of the UK population, our folks are still about the same (and they are begining to die off – think about that).  The Millenials also have parents in the Boomer generation and when my Gen Z son disagrees with something I say, he calls me a Boomer!

Gen Xers grew up with the 3 day week a recent memory, and staggering inflation in the 1970s.  We were the first to play games consoles in the home (if your folks could afford a pong machine), and the first to learn computer languages both at school and in the home.

I bought my first computer in 1994, and learnt my 3rd, 4th, and 5th computer language on it.  I learnt how to use a mouse and a WIMP OS (that’s what Windows and Mac OS is to you youngsters).  I built it a modem, and first interfaced to the internet, though it wasn’t really called the internet then.

I was lucky, my dad bought me a mobile handset for my 21st birthday, that fitted in a pocket.  I have had conversations on the 2, 3, 4, and 5G mobile networks.

I left home at 18 for a job 250 miles away from my home, and after three years of doing that job, took myself off to university.  I bough a home at 24, a 3 bed semi that I could pay the mortgage on.

In 1994, I was able to work from home, if I couldn’t make it into the office – it was a condition of my contract – I built that in having had a job where that wasn’t a possibility.  When I had my son when I was 27, I owned a car and a house, and could drive him to the child-minder and head into the office.

I took nearly 9 months off to both have him and return to work when he was 4 months old.  It did hurt my career at the time, but I’ve just about caught up.

I have been lucky – I know many of my generation feel they haven’t had the benefits of the boomer and Millenial generation (22% of the UK population) and the Gen Z (20%), I feel I have grasped the available opportunities and got what I wanted and needed.

Somethings were harder than others: being “healthy” meant I had to buy my first insulin pumps – my success with them allowed my hospital to give funding for the consummables, which was like an automatic pay rise – an extra £1,200 and year. Having the pump allowed me to beat the odds and get to my 48th year of being on insulin without major complications developing.  That has had some awful and frightening moments, but I managed to survive.

I got promotions as my skills improved. So my wages have tracked – something that wouldn’t have happened if I’d just let things tick over. I haven’t been made redundant, again, spotting the trends and putting myself forward, I have avoided that, though it took me a while to work all that out.

I managed to live through Covid-19, as did my parents. My dad died towards the end, but that was from being a smoker for 60 odd years rather than being ill with a seriously bad cold.

I never picked up the habit. I am almost certainly on the autistic spectrum, but I have managed to mask it most of the times. I have had sexist and ableist discrimination over the years, but have been in a position where I was able to largely ignore it.

I still feel like I have been lucky enough to stay being true to myself, through work and my personal life. I have a private pension and can draw a full state pension.

I own my own home. I have travelled from Canada to South Africa, most of western Europe. I hope to visit Vietnam and Japan before I get too old.

I have a son who left home a while ago now, who is looking forward to buying a house in the next few years. I am proud of him, and love when he comes over on a Sunday for a family meal, once a week. We are close enough to meet regularly and help each other out, but we have room to grow and do our own things.

What’s not to love about my generation?