Improvements in and around my home
The next phase of the project for covering the batteries was to make a roof This is about 3,700mm long and 400mm wide, so cannot be made from a single length of board, as these have a maximum length of 2440mm. I was originally intending to make it from a sheet of 18mm OSB, but…
I have known since I put the batteries on the outside of the house that having them in direct sunlight for even part of the day was less than ideal. I looked at various options for covering them, but most ended up being a little too expensive for my liking. I ultimately settled on using…
There were a number of Saver Sessions during the month of March, but more on those later. March Electric: I managed to maintain a 24% Peak/Off-Peak ratio, which is an improvement on last month’s 39%. Electricity costs for the month of March: £135.10 for 2025, £438.81 for 2024 and £676.87 for 2023 – some great…
There were a number of Saver Sessions during the month of February, but more on those later. February Electric: I managed to maintain a 39% Peak/Off-Peak ratio, which is an improvement on last month’s 46%. Electricity costs for the month of February: £210.21 for 2025, £401.60 for 2024 and £692.51 for 2023 – some great…
Almost as soon as I commissioned my solar and battery system, I wanted to be able to monitor it outside of just the Enphase app on my phone or the various Enphase URLs. I had been considering a Home Assistant installation for a while and thought this was a good time to start. My initial…
I have decided after a year of maths heavy monthly postings, to make these a little lighter from that view point. I will still be doing the maths in the background, but only posting the savings and comparisons here. There were a number of Saver Sessions during the month of January, but more on those…
I bought my first Arduino back in about 2011 around the same time as I was building my first 3D printer. The controller for that 3D Printer was a Sanguinololu board which is based on an ATmega644p, the big brother of the ATmega328p used on the various Arduino boards. This gave me exposure to single…
I made the switch to Octopus Energy in early January 2024 and have made a few additional changes since then, with the addition of my solar and battery installations coming online in April and July. Even the initial switch made some huge savings compared to what I was paying with E-ON over the previous few…
This is the eighth full month with the solar being active. Energy prices remained the same for this month, although there was 1 ‘Saver Session’ during the month. December Electric: The average daily consumption, including solar, for the month of December was 56.50kWh, solar production was pretty poor with a low of 0.95kWh and a…
This is the seventh full month with the solar being active. Energy prices remained the same for this month, although there was 1 ‘Free Electricity’ event during the month. November Electric: The average daily consumption, including solar, for the month of November was 55.17kWh, solar production was pretty poor with a low of 0.77kWh and…