Today is the first day we’ve generated 40kWh, which is (to me) very exciting. Sad I know.
Octopus are offering half price Intelligent Go on Tuesday morning, so it’s time to drain those batteries this evening and refill them and charge the car in the morning. Power for 3.5p per kWh seems a bit bonkers. I’ll be driving to my Pétanque game tomorrow for under 1p a mile.
And washing machine, dish washer, immersion, phones, tablets, toothbrush, work tool batteries?
That’s impressive - what are the efficiency ratings of the panels and area you have to generate?
As we currently rely a lot on electric heating in winter months and use up to 70 kWh daily in colder periods it’s under 30 kWh even with multiple family washing machine/dishwasher cycles/gadgets etc each day during warmer periods.
In terms of ‘fuelling’ the car yes but how much extra per mile might the additional cost of an EV add to that? I just don’t have a feel for it apart from EVs being around 10k more expensive than ICE equivalents. Does it work if you do low mileage?
Currently down to 1 car which is a PITA but in some ways quite liberating but probably not sustainable in the medium to longer term due to diametrically different work patterns/locations. A couple of taxi rides/car rentals each month to non public transport suitable workplaces would probably be far more expensive as well as a massive decrease in convenience.
I’ve wondered about a battery assisted bike but the routes for the workplaces are not ideal for an ageing cyclist. Pretty concerned such a bike would be nicked within 5 minutes too.
Well it turned out we did cause a stir in the village… as we were the only ones with power 
We have no gas and all our heating and hot water is done by the heat pump. In January we were using up to 40kWh on cold days to run the house and charge the car.
Yesterday we used 14.8kWh, including heating the house in the morning, a 60° towels wash, the dishwasher, running the oven for dinner, and all the other bits and bobs.
Because we have the heat pump the idea was to have a lot of panels - we have 16 500 Watt panels - so that we can generate as much of our own power as possible in winter in order to keep our reliance on the grid down. Of the 40kWh generated yesterday, over 30kWh was exported. Back in January we averaged generation of about 5kWh a day.
We bought our Megane because we no longer wanted to use fossil fuel rather than to save money. The Megane costs us £299 a month on a PCP with the option to buy in four years time. It’s on an interest free deal so not too bad. It’s our only car and we don’t do lots of miles, only 1,500 so far this year. But next month we are taking it to Northumberland and in September it’s going to the South of France. While we can charge cheaply at home it’s a different matter when out and about.
I’m in no doubt it would have been cheaper overall to keep the Audi, but we wanted en EV. Of course it not just about cost, it’s about choices. Just like nobody needs a Naim system when there are loads of cheaper alternatives. It’s interesting how people analyse solar and EVs to the last penny, yet are willing to shell out thousands on expensive hifi they don’t need. It’s as though entirely different mindsets are in play.
That’s helpful, especially in terms of panel numbers/output - had not quite envisaged you’d be generating that much on a good day and presumably there will be better to come.
I got very excited when we generated 10kWh on a couple of days at the end of January. That’s nothing, said the installer, you’ll get 40 to 50 in the summer. Of course, there were dark days in January when we’d struggle to get 1kWh.
The difference I think is that the majority of us have built up hi-fi systems which would be very expensive to replace over many years/decades - the modular nature of hi-fi separates allows you to do this over a long time, whereas some more ecologically friendly systems are probably less affordable at various times of life whether you’d do it for a greener lifestyle or to try to save money over the years. There are many things we could all do differently in hindsight.
The Megane sounds like a reasonable deal, but off-road parking for charging is not feasible here - many of our choices are determined by practicality as well as affordability. Appreciate one would not be your cup of tea, but it’s why I took a look at the Tesla model Y more recently - superchargers a short drive away, good national supercharger network, charging there subsidised for Tesla vehicles along with various free charging deals at certain times of the year if you time your contract well. Don’t honestly think I’ll go that route but we’ll have to see. I want to take a test drive in some of Toyota/Honda’s hybrids.
Even with much lower output over the darker months, from that seems you might well generate 4,000-5,000 kWh or more per annum.
Easily, I would imagine. Last year we managed 4300 in cloudy N. Wales, and we weren’t up and running until Feb.
This month (April 2025) we have passed the total for our best month last year (June) with a couple of days still to go, so I’m hoping this year will be better.
Nice to see that solar can, in some conditions, make a significant contribution to UK demand when there’s not much wind.
I do hate seeing that gas figure though. At least us solarites are helping.
Yes, but it’s that biomass figure that really bugs me.
April was a record April for us far exceeding the previous two Aprils by some margin. We actually bettered our last two Augusts whereas in previous years August was a better month than April.
I totally agree..
Interesting here on the east coast, the greatest peaks I had were late March, and not in April… this looks like because most sunny days in April have been quite hazy (milky skies) other than the start or end of days where the east and west panels have helped, but the energy is attenuated at these times, and we had several thick cloudy rainy days in mid April. March was very sunny and dry.
However April overall was better than March due to the longer daylight hours of course as well as higher angles. April export was up 47% on March.
37kWh is pretty good for May here in NZ. We get a nice long flat curve as well thanks to our NE and NW arrays.
We generated 923.8kWh in April, and this was our April bill (3 April to 2 May).
I’m really surprised how it worked out, as I thought balancing the books would be a good result. It’s particularly pleasing given that it covers everything, with no gas heating, as well as charging the car.
Isn’t it a nice feeling, after making such an investment for environmental reasons, to see the electric bill approach zero over a full year.
Best regards, BF
