Episode #6 – Still living the (electric) dream??

Just a quick update from where I left off last year, as we now have some real world numbers to look at, and a LOT of water has gone under the bridge since my last post in Feb 2020!

As a re-cap – at the end of 2019 we invested in:

• a 6KW solar panel system
• a Solar iBoost system which would take any excess solar power and, via an immersion heater, heat the hot water up 
• a rather snazzy fully electric BMW i3

Why? Obviously we want to reduce our carbon emissions. However, we also, maybe ambitiously, hoped to save about ￡550 from our annual energy fuel bill, and approximately ￡2,400 from our annual car fuel bills in order to fund the initial outlay ands see how viable "going green" actually could be. See Episode 5 here for how I got to that prediction: Episode #5 - Living the (electric) dream! :-) | LinkedIn

So…over a year in, how accurate were our predictions?

Financially - pretty bang on target (well, just under 3% out in terms of our overall energy costs). Notwithstanding the small matter of a global pandemic that has somewhat blurred the numbers, our energy bill forecast vs reality is as follows:

As you can see – our gas cost has come in a little lower than expected, with electricity a little higher. There are a number of factors at play potentially here – including the fact that we’ve probably used the electric car a LOT more than we would have expected (9,930 miles since we got it in December 2019 = 6000 miles / year): however – on the flip side, I had expected to reduce the costs of my (diesel) car significantly – but in reality, they have dropped pretty much to zero having only driven it a handful of times over the last 12 months (which is in itself another potential blog discussion!). In fact – the only real reason to go to the local petrol station now is to go and pick up a bottle of wine! The main contributing factor to the lower gas actuals is, I think, the effect of the Solar iBoost system and the fact that we get potentially "free" water heating when the sun shines: that has actually proven very effective, and as can be seen in the graph below, the cost of gas in June, July and August last year was just ￡3/month:

However – the cost of gas for us in the winter months is WAY too high – and has been the subject of much discussion in the Brooks household and with colleagues. I’ll leave those discussions for future blogs as there are a number of discussion points here around replacing gas boilers (in my case a 20-year old gas boiler!), the cost/benefit of heat pumps, the most effective home insulation, the best energy tariff, government policy (for example the Green Homes Grant (or lack of)), introduction of hydrogen, Vehicle to Grid car charging, etc, etc, etc.

On a sidenote - I read with (unsurprising!) interest today that the % share of electricity produced by wind power was broken over the weekend (May gales help Britain set record for wind power generation | Wind power | The Guardian). I also remember reading in May last year, that solar production reached new highs. That is evidenced by the readings on our solar panels – in May last year, with just our 6KW system, we managed to generate over 1MW of energy – averaging over 30KWH / day:

I fear that we may not even generate 50% of that amount this month at this rate!!! I'll update that situation at month end next week....

As a country, the challenge we have therefore, is that the energy system is changing incredibly quickly, and is getting increasingly variable going forward – in terms of generation, distribution and consumption. With generation moving from a low number of large generators to supply a “relatively” stable demand, to a large number of small generators (like me) against a hugely variable demand, balancing supply against demand is getting ever more complex. And coupled with the cost of change at both an industrial and consumer level – which I am trying to bring to life in a very small way on this blog – you can see the challenge the energy industry, and all of us really, has.

Getting to the point – in summary - from an environmental impact perspective – what has been our contribution to date? 

In terms of the environmental impact from the changes we have made then, I have one specific measure that I can refer to – and that is from the solar panel mgt system: it is currently showing that we have saved approximately 2,128.07kg of CO2 – the equivalent of planting 97.41 trees.

So – I suppose that, for now, both environmentally and financially, we are still living the (electric) dream….

…I just wish this damn rain would stop and the sun come out again!