I was interviewed on Monday by a researcher from the University of Wollongong about my experiences with installing solar hot water at our old house. They’re looking into why people choose solar, how they choose the system and supplier, what their experience has been, etc. Sitting in on the interview was an interesting guy from … [Read more…]
I finally got the chance to set up my chest freezer as a fridge a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been testing it out so I could write up this post. You may recall I mentioned that we had an old fridge/freezer running in our garage as a second fridge. With three young kids … [Read more…]
If you want to reduce your energy bills, you need to know what it is in your house that’s using all the electricity. An Efergy energy meter is a great way to do that. The Efergy meter is installed inside your electricity meter box, and transmits real-time energy usage information to a display panel inside … [Read more…]
I just read an interesting article in [ReNew Magazine Issue 104](http://shop.ata.org.au/cart.php?target=product&product_id=16521&category_id=300) about the [guerrilla solar movement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Guerrilla) and one individual’s experiments with his unapproved DIY grid-connect solar panels. It’s not as dangerous as it sounds. Solar guerrillas use commercial mains power inverters which meet the relevant international standards to feed their electricity into the grid. You … [Read more…]