Vriconian - Saving Energy: A taste of things to come ...

Okay, so there's been mention of energy savings and the beginnings of a site structure, but what's it really all about, surely this is just another blog by someone who's done little else than installed solar PV ..... isn't it?

Well, yes solar PV is somewhere in the energy reduction mix, but it goes much, much further than that, probably much, much further than most expert information would dare propose possible ... so here's a quick taster of the effect, the cause being described later ...

The journey to becoming more energy efficient begins in the mid 1980s with the adoption of early generation CFLs in what would have been considered a well insulated property at the time, so we've never really been wasteful with regards to energy. Move on 10 years and we get to the present property, a larger than average detached house built in the early 1980's to insulation standards which surpassed building regulations at the time, but on occasions has still required in excess of ~40000kWh of gas and ~5000kWh of electricity to be purchased in a year, so efficiency improvements obviously needed to be made.

Low hanging fruit came first in the form of running the heating system on a timed profile instead of constant, moderating temperature settings, upgrading the central heating controls, with electrical items being replaced with with more efficient versions as and when needed, but this was on a totally unplanned basis apart from being efficiency and consumption aware. Overall energy requirements had been reduced considerably with little effort, but that brings us towards the beginning, so here's a taster ...

At the top of this article & below we have charts detailing monthly and rolling 12 month average energy consumption for the past 12 years to the end of May 2017 for both electricity and gas.

Many I talk to find it interesting that this level of energy reduction can be achieved in a property built in the 1980s, and of course, according to almost every official source this is impossible - well, apparently not, hence the reasoning for this site.