PAUL OCKENDEN’S ADVANCED ENERGY HACKS
OUR REAL WORLD COMPUTING EXPERT HAS BEEN TINKERING WITH ENERGY-SAVING TECHNOLOGY FOR DECADES – HERE ARE HIS TIPS FOR THOSE WILLING TO GO DEEPER
MAXIMISING A SOLAR INVESTMENT
If you have a south-facing roof and own your property, then it’s a no-brainer to fit solar panels. You should more than halve your electricity costs, although it will cost around £6,000 for a typical system, so the payback is by no means instant. You’ll be quids in within a few years, though, and doing your bit for the planet.
Fitting battery storage will reduce your energy bills and improve your green credentials further still, but prices here vary considerably, so be careful not to spend more than the system will save. Unless you have a battery system fitted alongside solar panels, you’ll have to adjust your lifestyle to maximise your savings. Try to run energy-expensive appliances such as dishwashers and washing machines only around midday when the solar generation will be at its maximum; luckily, many modern appliances have timers to make scheduling easier.
If you have an electric car (and let’s face it, in a few years we all will), it’s far better to fit a home charger that will interface with your solar panels if you have them, or be able to use TOU energy tariffs ( see opposite) to charge your car at the lowest possible price. Many so-called smart chargers really aren’t that smart at all.
RUN THE BOILER OFF OPENTHERM
Modern heating controls are great, but try to connect them to your boiler using a connection type called Opentherm. Traditional controls are just on/off devices and they will pulse the boiler between nothing and full-blast a few times an hour, resulting in the room temperatures oscillating around a set point. Opentherm tells the boiler to deliver a lower but constant flow temperature instead – just the amount needed to deliver the right amount of heat to the house. This usually feels much more comfortable and, because the temperature won’t swing as much, you can typically set the thermostat a degree or so lower. The Energy Saving Trust reckons this will save you around £55 a year. Most smart heating controls support Opentherm, and it’s becoming increasingly common on boilers, although some require you to fit an additional low-cost module.
CLAMP DOWN ON ELECTRICS
Although it’s easy to monitor electricity using a smart plug, not everything in your house has a plug fitted. Your immersion heater, for example, is probably hard wired, as might be your cooker. And your lighting circuits won’t have a plug in sight. It’s still possible to monitor these by using a device called a current transformer (CT) clamp. These clip around the live wire and will need to be connected to a suitable monitoring device. There are many on the market; take a look at the Open Energy Monitor project( open energy monitor.
org), a Welsh team designing open-source monitoring hardware and software. It’s keenly priced and well supported.
Another great resource for advanced energy tinkerers is the range of modules available from the Bulgarian company Shelly; although it has a UK web presence, there’s often a greater range of kit available by buying direct from Bulgaria at shop. shelly. cloud. Using Shelly modules you can switch things on or off, control lights (including dimming or changing the colour of RGB lamps), and monitor energy usage using CT clamps. You do need to be comfortable working with electrics or have a tame electrician on hand.
STUDY THE GRAPHS
Many monitoring devices produce raw data, but you can’t beat a good graph to spot problems. For example, you might notice a spike every few hours where an old frost-free freezer is running its defrost cycle more often than a modern appliance might. Or if you monitor temperatures at room level, you might notice that when you heat your downstairs rooms, within half an hour a lot of that heat rises upstairs, unless you keep doors closed. Some good tools for graphing energy usage, room temperatures and many other things are Home Assistant, Domoticz and OpenHAB. All three systems will run on something like a Raspberry Pi, which is great because the power requirements will be low: it defeats the object if your energy-monitoring system has a noticeable power draw!
Each of these systems is open source, with great user communities providing updates and support.
Not only will they let you monitor your usage, they will also allow you to control devices and link the various sensors and controllers together. So, you might have a rule that says if the conservatory is cold then switch on the radiator in there, unless the garden door is open. Or perhaps you work shifts and keep your rota in a Google calendar – you can use such systems to make sure you turn down your heating when you’re not going to be home.
That’s really the key to advanced energy management – linking things together and treating your home or office holistically, rather than focusing on appliances on an individual level.