A summer of generation and consumption

At the holiday house (www.VarisHoliday.co.uk), we now have about three months data (96 days).    The house has had guest in for most of this time but we ran the heating regardless as we wanted to bring the house which had sat with minimal heating through the winter up to proper warmth throughout.

From 5th May to 9th August:

Total house import                            1066 kWh
PV Generation                                  1073 kWh
Air source heat pump consumption  1082 kWh

So on average, 11kWh a day for each measure.  

We've experimented with the setting on the ASHP so that it runs more during the day so we maximise running the ASHP on sunshine. 

Generation, consumption and import

We have just had the first full year where we've had PV panels and monitoring of our energy consumption.  We have also been sad enough to take daily readings of generation and import.

So for other energy anoraks out there (showing 7 day moving averages to get rid of the 'noise'):

The captions are a little difficult to read, but you see that Consumption (green) generally sticks in the 10-15kWh/day with dips when we are on away, import (red) seems to have a baseline of 5kWh/day in summer, rising to 10kWh (or more) in winter and that the PV panels (blue) are more or less performing as we expected (dark blue). 

The electricity bills have more-or-less halved as a result of the PV panels.

Annual figures come out at: 
PV Generation 2856 kWh
Import 2505 kWh
Consumption 3913 kWh 
... and therefore we estimate Export at 1447 kWh.  


We are pretty focused on running the washing machine and the dishwasher when the sun shines (or at least during the day) but it's diffcult to time-shift much of our other consumption.

You can see an overnight cycle which is fridge/freezer.  The peaks are the cooking and kettle and then we have computers and TVs.

The apparent base load is getting our attention but the honest calculation is that moving to more energy efficient appliances but it's not worth us making a special effort so we will think about this as we need to replace   The induction hob however does seem to be efficient (all our cooking is electric).  We do have a few gizmos to help ensure that we don't leave things on standby. 

So, what we really need is cost effective ways to store our electricty to use it later (see previous post below) - and focus on using less oil for water and space heating.  The woodburning stove is great for cold days and we have ready supplies of wood - but I think tackling the insulation of our solid walls is the next serious investment.   


Thanks to the Macauley (now James Hutton) Institute for the Consumption Monitoring kit.