Archive for Energy supply

Electricity Usage Monitoring

January 4, 2007 at 7:29 pm · Filed under Energy supply, energy

The Electrisave display

I bought an Electrisave wireless monitoring device a while ago (now costs between about £60 and £70). It works by beaming a signal from an induction device connected to my power line to an LCD display in my lounge. I can view the instantaneous (well every 6 sec or 1 min) cost, usage or CO2 output in addition to temperature and humidity (useful heating regulation info).

Although I’d already replaced most of my lights with energy efficient versions and tended to turn devices off, it’s still been a useful guide. In particular, it’s made me think about my baseline energy usage (about 300W) and the huge amount of power that the washing machine, kettle etc. use. Will most definitely be looking for energy efficient versions when replacing (the UK has a reasonable system of labelling white goods with energy efficiency ratings – would be nice to know about the miriad other gadgets too).

Perhaps a campaign to persuade gadget reviewers to test the power usage of the items they review is needed? My PC/server tends to be on all the time (for TV recording etc.) and it would be useful to have readily available info about the expected power consumption of it’s innards.

Knowing your base-line usage may also be useful when deciding if to buy a home generation device – if you know that there will be a consistent 300W requirement then the choice may be easier/better informed.

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Electricity supply

December 21, 2006 at 11:13 am · Filed under Energy supply

A while ago I switched to Good Energy for electricity. They state on their website that 100% of the power you use comes from renewable energy, although it can take up to a year for this to work through:

“Good Energy customers will always get a supply of electricity even if the wind stops blowing. We promise to buy the same amount of renewable electricity over 12 months as our customers need, so at some points during that 12 month period Good Energy will be purchasing too much renewable electricity, and at some points it will not have sufficient renewable electricity. However, over the 12 months the supply and demand of renewable electricity will match.”

In addition, they now offer the option of selling power back to them. However, the price you pay (about 11p/unit) is quite a bit higher than the sell price of about 4p/unit. If I ever did get a wind turbine installed, this would help to off-set some of the costs. Not only would I save just by being able to generate my own power, but because the wind doesn’t always stop when I’m not using power the excess can be sold rather than wasted.

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Home-installed wind turbine

December 21, 2006 at 10:54 am · Filed under Energy supply, HowTo, Wind

Well, I was quite keen on getting some sort of renewable energy thingy installed in/on my house. However, my pitched roof faces roughly East-West which doesn’t make it very suitable for solar devices. So I had a quick look round for potential wind turbines and initially got quite excited. Sound like a great idea.

Unfortunately, it’s just not nearly cost effective at the moment. Normally, this might not have put me off – after all, what’s the point in attempting to be a first adopter if you’re not willing to take the plunge and pay now so you and others can save later when stuff gets popular and cheaper?

However, given that I’m planning on moving house at some point in the next couple of years, spending £1500 – £2500 on installing a wind turbine didn’t sound like a clever idea :-( In addition, my house is what you’d call a classic first-time-buyers place, and it’s not clear what effect having a wind turbine installed would have on the sale-ability of the place.

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