The cleanest (and cheapest) energy is the energy that you don't use!
Reading energymatters.com.au Fred found that the average consumption of electricity by households in Australia is 8MegaWatts!
Our consumption here adds up to 1.46MegaWatts (precisely!) Apart from a deep freeze, and air conditioner, (both missing in this house) I don't know what people use the stuff for...
In the meantime, (while waiting for our generating capacity to be nearly doubled), we are trying to understand how the feed in tariff that is being introduced in NSW will work. Seems we will have to change our meter. (even though Fred reads the inputs and outputs from the new one that went in after the first panels.)
We don't hold out much hope of actually being paid money for the electricity we will put into the grid. (to run our neighbours' air conditioners.)
It would have been nice, but then again we didn't put in the system to make money. Just to make a point. (very expensively)
Hmm. James and I used 7.88MegaWatt Hours in the year to Oct 2009 in an all-electricity apartment. The big differences to your place, I suspect are electric hot water and reverse cycle heating and cooling. Then there's the stove, washing machine, etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteWe do buy 'Green' !
Hi Brian, maybe you could be using some of our excess power that we generate as "green". :) Nice thought. We did start with a rammed earth house. It does make a huge difference!
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