Mark Roddis

It’s true. I fear the melting polar ice caps and global warming might all be my fault!

Let me explain

When we moved into our new energy efficient home Three and a bit years ago I spent a lot of time and effort trying to sort out our electricity supply. It wasn’t that the lights didn’t work or that the cables weren’t in the right place, just that nobody would admit to being our supplier and so each quarter I would pay my gas bill, pay my water bill and so on but was always very aware that I was missing an electricity bill.

So it got to the point where I spoke to the regulator who told me that the rules had just changed and that if a power company fails to bill you, when they do eventually realise, the most they can back bill you is 12 months. At this point I gave up writing letters and making phone calls to random power companies on the basis that with every month that passed, that was one more months worth of electricity I would not have to pay for.

I was however aware that “one day” a bill would arrive so in our new and super efficient home, we have replaced every single light bulb with energy efficient ones and made sure all our appliances are A rated.

So just before Christmas, that day did indeed come

However once I had explained to the power company that their rules stated that they could not bill me for the full Three and a half years and then we had negotiated a little more, the final bill was not painful at all.

All’s well that ends well as they say.

But now I need to start paying for my electricity and this does focus the mind. I am also in a position to actually shop around now for the best deal on both my electricity and gas so as a result, over the last few days I have taken a good hard look at out homes electricity usage.

Now on gas, things are looking really good. Based on industry figures, our gas usage based on the size of house and the fact we use gas for hot water and heat is over 33% below average. I put part of this down to using a Heatmieser electronic thermostat that paid for itself on the first bill and partly down to having a home insulated to the latest regulations.

But electricity is looking bad. Apparently for a house like ours the average usage is 4000 to 5000 kWh per year. Our usage is over 8000 kWh so is not looking healthy. Now my wife was quick to point out that that in my home office (which I rebuilt and refitted over Christmas), I have over FIFTY 3 pin mains sockets in use. Yes that’s 5 x 10 gang power strips and they are all in use. Look deeper and there are the 2 servers, lots and lots of hard disks, 1 desktop PC, a couple of laptops, network hardware, 5 large screen monitors, 2 laser printers and a really nice lava lamp.

I think we have found the culprit. The lava lamp has to go.

So over the next few months, I need to take a close look at power consumption. My first stop will be tools to actually measure usage but beyond that I need to look at how I can turn all this tech green. I will be posting here as I go and please feel free to comment with ideas and things that have worked for you.

Who knows. By this time next year, I could even have saved a penguin or Two.