Near the end of 2018 we moved into an ordinary-looking house in a pretty village in North Dorset. We chose the house because of the lovely view across the Blackmore Vale, and because the house was south facing and wasn’t thatched!

We discovered that it had cavity wall insulation (so an expense we didn’t have to budget for) and thick loft insulation, so it was already cheaper to run than most houses of the same size. And it has the benefit of a glazed extension (conservatory is too grand a word!) which warms up very nicely, even in winter sun. However, it had an oil boiler which was smelly and pumping out CO2 at a rate of knots, so we embarked on our plan to reduce our carbon footprint, which we’d been wanting to do for years but never had the roof space nor the southerly aspect.

Four months after moving in we had 15 solar panels installed, giving 4+kwh at peak, and a month or so after that, the 13 kwh Tesla Powerwall was installed to store the solar-generated electricity. We just managed to qualify for the last of the FIT grants, albeit at the lowest rate of about 4.5p a unit, and estimate the solar will pay for itself in about 12-15 years.

In November of 2019 the Air Source Heat Pump was installed. This involved an upgrade of all the radiators because of the lower water temperature in the system. We quickly learned that because of the slowness of heating the house, unlike oil or gas heating, switching everything off overnight in winter is not an option! We now just keep it ticking over all the time. With the RHI payments we’ll recoup about 3/4 of our outlay in 7 years.

We originally had an Economy 7 meter so used off peak electricity to charge the Tesla overnight, and output during the day. " This worked well for a while but after a smart meter was installed, we could make use of more sophisticated tariffs. We were on the Tesla Energy Plan for two years, but this was withdrawn in 2023. Now we switch between Octopus Flux in the summer and Octopus Cosy in the winter, exporting stored energy at peak times at a better rate than our FIT payments give us.

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Please email me bob.shirley.uk@gmail.com to make and appointment.