Another little power station goes live in West Bridgford

Although I've been somewhat preoccupied with air tightness of late, other things are happening. Today, the new PVs were hooked up to the electricity meter and we are now generating energy and feeding it to the grid. Now all we need is some sun....

Compared with all the other work we've had done, the 2 visits from the team at Carbon Legacy to install the PVs have been most straightforward. What is there to say? Day one and the panels appear on the roof, day two and the cables link to the inverter and from there to consumer unit and meter.

The amount of electricity which we hope the system will produce in a year should be a little over 3,000 kWh.    This will hopefully equate to a significant proportion of our total annual energy use (electricity plus gas) once the low energy refurbishment is complete. (I'm expecting total energy use to be between 6,000 and 9,000 kWh a year - watch this space!)

For comparison, the original estimate for annual energy use in the "as bought" state (based on a SAP energy model) was 36,000 kWh. In fact, energy-saving habits meant that we only used about 24,000 kWh of gas + electricity in a year.

This is like a mini version of the UK's energy challenge. The Department of Energy and Climate Change anticipate that the UK could face energy shortages by 2015. Hence the interest in generating more renewable energy in one form or another. However, there's a very long way to go to meet ever-growing demand for energy, especially with certain older power stations reaching the end of their lives soon.

However, if homes, business etc. were very energy efficient and used MUCH LESS energy (through additional energy-saving habits, insulation, more efficient appliances and equipment, etc), then the scale of the challenge would be reduced - and the chance of power outages in 2015 would also be reduced.