... editing as I'm typing this watching a BBC program on Iplayer called "The Trick"
I lived abroad Percy at Fradley Junction for a couple of years /winters in 2015 and 2016. It was a great experience and an ambition realised. It was simple living, I burned a bit of coal, gathered some rays of the sun and used some gas. The power at that time ( I had not reconfigured the electrics to allow me to run off a genny) was batteries and they supplied power for lights pumps and tv etc - simple storage and it worked. I would have liked to have had more solar but at the time solar was expensive and I had limited roof real estate to locate it on.
So why not add such storage and solar to our moorlands cottage - well we have had two solar quotes the latter actually had a battery as well - a house battery as opposed to boat batteries. Same problem with solar panel, locations limited real estate on out little cottage roof, and less than ideal roof orientation to the sun. I asked on the first quote about house batteries and they said they did not do them.... second quote I asked for a price for just house batteries and it was not supplied.
On the 26th November tomorrow as I type this I am hoping to get a check quote for just house batteries as we now are on a Octopus go tariff that will allow us to draw up to 12KW if power overnight at 5p a KW ( the charger on Go Energy battery system can only draw a maximum of 3kw/h) and use it during the day. Our yearly average daily use is 19.1KW/h. Obviously more in winter less in summer. In opting for a bank I need to consider the return on investment as well and the environmental advantages*
We have tried to focus our actions on improvements to the cottage to be intelligent to get best bang for our environmental buck. It scares the shit out of me how indifferent the world is to the reality of climate change. I am conflicted on how much I can do that allows me to have a 'happy' life while reducing my impact on the world's climate. I burn hydrocarbons at home and in travel, not good but I/we try to minimise this as well as look for alternatives that are sensible - hence the delay in replacing our cars with one electric car; that's based on not wanting to waste the resource used in making our existing car while it's still useable. I did scrap my old diesel burner and brought a petrol car off a chap who was buying an electric car..... that I like.
So hopefully the house batteries will arrive and help again....subject to some financial modelling. Maybe we should spend more time on Percy and get some bigger solar panels - might not look right but would mean less impactful living for the time we are aboard....
What are you doing or going to do or have done ?
* You should try and watch 'The Trick' - it's on Iplayer and an insight into how big players are/were/still are aiming to slow down the climate change lobby.
2 comments:
Have you looked into rain harvesting? we have a 3500 ltr tank buried in the garden (done at the time of some house renovations and four above ground 700 ltr tanks plus two standard water butts. We use this for flusing loos, washing machine and garden/pond purposes.
Until coal dependant, China, Russia, India, USA and Australia, and the smaller economies which are coal dependant with no alternative sign up to the pledge and South America stops felling trees quicker than you can install a heat sink boiler
I wouldn't feel too guilty about enjoying Percy's lovely vintage engine, or your fleet of motorcycles, one of which was built in coal powered India!
You can defend the RT on the grounds that the German government has invested in state of the art coal powered power stations and scrubber systems and are now the worlds premier manufacturer of steel, thanks to the UKs lack of investment in British Steel! and outside of the box thinking regarding fossil fuels!
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