Planet Savers blog

A friend has just bought us an Efergy Elite Wireless Energy Monitor. He came over at the weekend to fit it.

It clips over the main electricity supply cable and monitors everything. It’ll be interesting to see how it compares with the bill readout but, since I am in the IT logging business, I don’t expect it to coincide.

It shows what you are drawing in real time and calculates your daily average. After four days we are up to 4.62kWh

This has now given rise to a new game:

Every time you turn on (or off) some electrical item, you have to  look at the monitor to see how much the reading has changed. It’s compulsive viewing!

I love Solartubes. Pat has now fitted the second light tunnel in our kitchen. It was a particularly dark area between bedroom and bathroom walls with no windows. Even on bright sunny days, it was too dim to work. Now that the ‘tube is in there, I just don’t think about turning on the light.

The SolarTwin hot water panel has now been fitted it to the roof and Pat  is currently connecting it to the boiler. It’s all getting quite exciting:>)

Our new home has gas central heating and gas hot water. The solar panel will soon replace most of our hot water requirement with top up, if required, from electricity (courtesy of Ecotricity). In Winter we will have the wood burning stove and we can top up on cooler days with electric heating.

That will leave me with an old gas cooker whose evergy efficiency is seriously in doubt! As soon as I can afford it, I am planning to replace it and get away from gas altogether.

I shall, however, be sad to see it go. I’ve got used to its foibles and I have to say that everything I cook tastes heaps better on gas than it did on my previous halogen hob and fan assised oven. So I’m not sue, as yet, what to replace it with.

However, gas is another natural resource we should not be frittering away. If not for that reason, this latest bid by the Russians should persuade us to wean ourselves off the stuff.