We are half way down on our big tank now with watering each evening. There is still 2/3 in the top tank, so we are moving to another electricity efficiency measure - changing over from town water to our tank supply late afternoon to 8 am. This way we have rainwater showers and can water the garden, but not use the pump during our peak generating hours when we sell into the grid at a premium price.
We recently had a free home sustainability assessment - part of the Federal government's Green Loans initiative. I had hoped for a rating, but it was more about saving cents than dollars.
No mention was made of window drapes, areas of glass and shading of walls, or aspect. Incandescent bulbs were noted and loss of heat into the roof cavity through our extract fans in the bathrooms - which also keep our bathrooms free of steam, although we have never used the fans themselves.
We could get a loan to replace our 10 year old fridge to save a star or so of electricity, likewise with the 10 year old washing machine which also works very well, and being a top loader suits us for reusing bath water.
So I suspect it is another stimulus package to encourage people to spend more money to reduce their excessive power bills. It will be interesting to see the report. Will they lend us interest-free money to get more photovoltaic panels? We can only fit two more with our inverter anyway.
I am still in favour of it as it provides jobs for assessors - money from Canberra to Toowoomba. And we did get something out of it so far - we put a timer on our beer fridge so it turns off during peak generating hours, when it is usually not opened anyway. Ten days on we seem to have an automatic defrosting beer fridge, working better than ever.
With our new off-peak water pump program we may be saving a couple of units a day to sell to the grid.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment