July 22, 2014: Three month’s results… All Positive!

Our third month’s results are just in and  I have to say that I’m feeling extremely optimistic for meeting our goal of an Energy Positive year. For each of our first three months we’ve made a lot more energy than we’ve used. In fact, if you look at the updated table on the Results page, you’ll see that for July we exported more than four times as much energy to the grid as we imported from the grid.

The main reason for the big drop in the energy that we used compared to the previous two months is that I was away for the better part of the month so there was only one person in the house instead of two. I have to say I’m very impressed with how little energy Cintia used considering July is typically the coldest month of the year here.

As you can also see from the table, the indoor temperature got down to a pretty cool 12.4degC. Now that know we’re consistently making a lot more energy than we’re using we will feel more comfortable turning on our one little portable heater when it gets cold. But I was here the morning it was 12 degrees inside and I have to say that I didn’t find it uncomfortable. There’s something about the Greeny Flat the feels cosy even when it’s quite cool. The more concerning issue for me is the amount of condensation we have been seeing on the windows in the mornings. I’ll write more about that in my next blog post.

The other result that I find interesting is the water use figures. July’s figures were almost the opposite of June’s, i.e. instead of using three times as much tank water as town water we did the opposite. This is a bit disappointing but entirely due to the fact that it pretty much hasn’t rained for ages. In fact it’s been a very dry year. The up side is that it has also been a very sunny year which has helped us make lots of solar power and solar hot water as well as keeping the inside pretty comfortable.

We made it through the middle of winter with a very positive energy balance so it should just keep getting better from now on.