Psychologically Important

Whenever one hears about rises and falls in the stock market, the analysts mention 'the psychologically important' figure of something or other.

I reached that last week when our annualised electricity usage went below the psychologically important figure of the 5,000 kWh figure - and is still falling.

Click to enlarge the above chart.

That represents 1/3rd of our average annualised usage of 15,000 kWh and 27% of our highest ever annual usage of 18,000 kWh, when we had my two sons living in caravans in the drive, heating the whole of Old Sodbury.

The costs, however, have not dropped as spectacularly. This is obviously because of the price hikes and, as you can see in the chart below, the disjoints are the points at which the new tariffs kicked in (note that the upward direction is low and the downward direction is high). 

That 5,000 kWh usage represents, at current prices, a £3,000 a year saving, far more than the £400-£500 cost of a good supply of logs for winter, which I must order soon, while they're cheap. 

This saving was all brought about by not using the underfloor heating last winter and not using the air-source heat pump this summer. Instead we used the log burner in winter and are relying totally on the solar thermal system to heat the domestic water during the summer. It's pointless running an air-source heat pump when I have totally free, solar thermal heating during the summer and the hot water tank being insulated to within an inch of its life, thereby retaining any daytime heat through to the next morning. On serially cloudy days we merely use a kettle to heat washing up water.

The tariff increases have really focussed my attention on electricity wastage as never before and have provided me with some salutary lessons.