I love my solar panels. But the solar panels don't love the British midwinter. Most of the year, my panels produce more electricity than I can use. But in winter we're lucky if they produce 3kWh per day - and most of the time it is considerably less. So our winter electricity bills must be massive, right? Nope. The normal cost per kWh is 28.5p (including VAT). We're paying less than half that - 12.4p per kWh. This is thanks to two things - a smart tariff and a home battery. The Octopus…
Continue reading →
As part of our quest to make our house more efficient, we've installed solar panels, a battery, insulation, and all the other stuff you're supposed to do. The next step is working out if we can reduce our dependency on gas. Octopus Energy (join and we both get £50!) offered to send an engineer around for free to assess our property for suitability for an Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP). The engineer was friendly, knowledgeable, professional, thorough, and just full of bad news! Here's a short …
Continue reading →
Every few years, a dodgy stat does the rounds claiming you can save £££ if you switch off all your gadgets at the wall. The standby mode of your TV is bleeding you dry!!! Energy Saving Trust@EnergySvgTrustA quick way to #saveenergy at home is to turn off tablets, laptops and consoles as soon as you stop using them, and ideally unplug them.This is a big potential #energy saver and could save you up to £30 a year.Find out more here:ensvgtr.uk/pS1ut#EnergyEfficiency pic.x.com/q2CWdlkaBH❤️ 9💬 3🔁 01…
Continue reading →
After my disastrous attempt to upload data under Ubuntu, I found a Windows laptop to upload my energy usage data. The good news is that Sam from Humm is actively working on making the Adobe Air upload application work under Linux. So, how does the process of uploading your data to the service work? All in one The Application is a real "one click" experience. It autodetects your SD card, sees which files are there, and sends them straight to the server after you click the button. Here we…
Continue reading →
So, I've hit my first snag with the Humm Duet Energy monitor. As I mentioned in my first post, the device doesn't have any Internet connectivity. Instead it records everything onto an SD card. In order to visualise the data, I have to manually upload the files to the Green Energy Options MyEnergy site. Rather than a simple web based uploader - GEO have decided to go with Adobe Air as their platform for uploading and viewing the data. Here are the steps I had to take to get the service wo…
Continue reading →
As part of my ongoing quest to save energy and save money, I decided to look into changing energy suppliers. Eon were doing a special offer in their Energy Shop for a free PowerDown Plug worth about £15. Here's the unboxing. …
Continue reading →
Green Energy Options have sent me the Duet home energy monitor. The Duet offers a secondary display that is attached to the Solo display and provides the monitoring of up to 6 appliances and central heating. It also provides the ability to compare the energy usage of the appliances and heating over time. In addition to the Solo, the Duet displays: Current energy usage (load) Overall consumption today Environmental impact: CO2 emissions and cost of energy used today …
Continue reading →
