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It's a year since we moved to Sweden, and here is the first of the one year retrospectives of what we've achieved and how we're getting towards our goals. This first one covers energy consumption. Firstly, let's get this out of the way straight away, we didn't meet our target. I can't say I'm surprised.
The idea of moving to a new country and instantly saving half the energy being used when we were in the UK, despite being in a house well over the double the size and with the farm to run as well was always going to be difficult. And to be frank, I would have been gobsmacked to get even close to our target. I'm gobsmacked. Once winter was out of the way, and Spring was nice and warm, the energy consumption started to plummet again. Our target was about 31 KWH/day, and we've reached a respectable 37 KWH/day on average. This compares to the UK where we used just under 60 KWH/day.  I don't think that's bad for a first attempt. Sure, we've still got things to do to try and reduce by that pesky 7 KWH/day, but that's part of the fun, and part of our challenge. A 37% reduction in energy consumption in one year is not to be sneezed at. Looking at our usage patterns over the year it's fair to say that somewhere around 25 KWH/day is our "background" usage, covering things such as cooking, heating water, computers, tv etc. Everything above that is heating. It's clear the area where there is the biggest opportunity to try and save energy is in the heating area, though part of me still thinks I should be targetting the background as 25 KWH each and every day for "stuff" is quite a lot. The reality is we'll be tackling both. There are routine things that need to be done before winter sets in, such as re-doing all the window and door seals. There are things that are going to be new, as well. I have plans to install more sophisticated heating controls. The interesting question is going to be whether the power that the controls use can ofset the power saved by using them... |
