What does it mean – to go off grid? It’s a term that is thrown about a lot these days and is often perceived to being in a state of complete energy independence for electricity & heating. The question many of us immediately ask though – is – well, can this be achieved? Is it truly possible to be untethered, so to speak. Our modern lives are centred on energy consumption from the moment we wake until the moment our head hits the pillow and more commonly these days, extending overnight too with a plethora of gadgets and smart phones on a never ending charging cycle.
Over the last few months, it’s a question which I have pondered quite a bit especially with terms like climate crisis and carbon neutrality seeping evermore into our collective psyche. This increased consciousness and awareness of our carbon impact on the planet has driven governments to declare climate emergencies and encouraged a swell of youth activism. Quite often it can feel overwhelming and with it, a profound sense of being stranded and helpless against the leviathan of economic capitalism which continues to demand further consumption of fossil fuels to maintain its existential existence. This is a totally normal response and one which many will have confronted over the past couple of years. The truth of the matter is though, that small acts on a personal level can lead to a collective and powerful shift.
The purpose of this blog series will be to look in detail at how one can potentially take this leap of faith and move towards a low carbon lifestyle within the constraints of the economic model and framework we seem to be perpetually trapped in. The process cannot and will not happen overnight and patience is required to take the small steps, however I will aim to show you my own personal method as a potential template for others to follow. This is by no means a one size fits all approach and other circumstances will be different however, I hope that if you are reading this then there may be some snippets of useful info that you can take away and adapt to make your own.
Unhooking from the Mother Ship
One of the biggest challenges to going carbon neutral is gaining energy independence. It is the biggest single act that you can take but also the one that deters most people due to the apparent cost and outlay of doing so. If I was going to move forward with my goal of gaining independence then somehow I had to make this piece of the jigsaw work. For most people, this option takes the form of Photovoltaics or PV for short. Often installed as panels onto an existing roof, they are built to harvest solar energy from direct and/ or indirect sunlight and convert the photons emitted from the Sun into usable electricity. I knew straight away that from a practical perspective, my home was ideally placed to take advantage from this arrangement. The rear of the property sits 30 degrees off south and as a result becomes a real sun trap during the day. This doesn’t mean that if your house is sat east/ west that you cannot take advantage of solar but what I am emphasising here, is my thought process and the logical decisions that one must take into consideration when looking at renewables.
The next step was to investigate cost. Its the elephant in the room with solar and although the pay-back time is decreasing considerably as prices for the panels decline. It is perhaps the single biggest stumbling block that hinders many for taking this leap. For me, the way I tackled the question was by looking into ways that I could potentially make a continuous monthly payment that either matched or bettered my current gas and electricity monthly cost. If I could unlock this then the rest would surely fall into place.
So…I’m going to lay these figures bare and let you decide on whether you come to the same conclusion that I did, then I will show you how I achieved the break for freedom! First up then, was my quote for continuing my dual fuel tariff with my current energy provider in 2021 against the install quote for a 4.6kW PV system with 4.8kW battery storage. Looking at electricity independently, my estimated usage for the year was 1800kWh and my estimated yield from the solar panels for the first year was 3941kWh. At this point you’re probably scratching your head and thinking; well why do I need that much electricity if I only consume half of the estimated yield. The short answer is in future-proofing. At present my heating and car fuel do not come from electricity directly and therefore I need to consider the impact of incorporating these into the system at a later date. The battery storage is also another important aspect too of which I will go into more detail later.
Quoted Monthly Cost for Electricity & Gas (2021): £58.00
Quoted Cost for Installation of PV Panels (4.6kW) and Battery Storage (4.8kW): £8500
Investigating ways of bringing this £8500 down into manageable monthly payments I was keen to look at the option of taking out an additional ‘Green Mortgage’. Many banks and building societies now offer these and they are taken out at a reduced rate of interest to encourage people to upgrade their homes to renewable sources or make them more efficient through insulation etc. I was quite clear from the outset that I would only proceed with this, if I could a) match or better my current quoted monthly cost for gas and electricity and b) maintain my remaining mortgage term length, which in my case is 20 years. In this way I reckoned the plunge to be fairly cost neutral.
You can therefore imagine my joy when, after a relatively quick and painless meeting with an advisor, I received a quoted figure of £44.63 a month. At this point I had an epiphany moment, suddenly the route to renewables was open and I decided to march towards it at a fairly rapid pace. Within two weeks of agreeing and signing up, the panels were installed. The company I opted for was a local based business called Contact Solar and I honestly cannot fault them. The installation was professional, fast and the communication leading up to it was extraordinary. I had no pushy sales team and the surveyor that came to the house prior to installation took time to explain my options. (Their website link is as follows: https://www.contact-solar.co.uk/information/solar-panels-solar-pv/)
The system installed also connects to your smartphone wirelessly and as a consequence I am able to read this data almost live throughout the day. This can naturally be quite addictive and there is a constant temptation when the sun shines to have a quick look and see how much the system is kicking out. As it has now been five weeks since installation I can now look back over April and share with you, the stats for the month. It is worth pointing out that barring the odd day, we have had little rain and blue skies from dawn to dusk, however, the results are nonetheless impressive.
Total Monthly Yield for April: 473.7kWh
Export to Grid: 332.1kWh
Consumption: 142.1kWh
Battery Charge: 83.5kWh
Best Generation Day: 22nd April @ 22.3kWh
Worst Generation Day: 4th April @6.6kWh
At this point – it’s important to note that export to grid is normally a figure that you can get paid from and until I have a smart meter installed, this has effectively just leaked away for free. Quite lucrative for my neighbour’s energy providers for sure! If you were to apply a typical export cost of 5p per kWh I could have been paid £16.61 for this month’s generation, which if you were to offset it against the monthly cost paid for the panels would effectively mean that my electricity cost this month has been £28.02.
Great! I hear you shout, but this is April and we have had sunshine for 30 days. What about in Winter when these figures are massively reduced? Surely you’ll not have enough to meet your demand? Well – this is were the next step comes into play.
Growing Arms & Tentacles
You’ve probably guessed from this sub-heading what I’m going to discuss now and also discovered how bad my attempted puns are.
Octopus energy was a company that I’d heard banded about from time to time in the past. I’d never really looked at them in any great detail and had never really considered switching to them. However, when you go solar, it’s important to remember that you still need an energy provider for electricity. There will be times when you need to import power from the grid. Even in April I paid for 4kWh! This is mainly due to a process known as balancing. When you switch an appliance on such as an oven or kettle, it momentarily has to draw power from the grid whilst the battery or panels catch up. On an average day this ends up being somewhere around 0.2kWh. Which is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. In winter though, there just won’t be enough solar power to get you through the evening even with battery storage. However, with battery storage comes the ability to charge up at any time of the day and with a smart meter installed you can work out every half hour what the wholesale cost per kWh is going to be. Chuck in a smart battery/ inverter and you’ve suddenly got the option to pre-programme the system to only take electricity when it falls below a manually preset level.
With Octopus’ agile tariff you can download an app which tells you what the price is going to be each day in advance and in some cases when generation is high and demand is low they will actually pay you to take power off the grid! I.e. the price per kWh will be in negative numbers. An example of what this app looks like is shown below.
The great thing about this is that you don’t need solar panels to take advantage of the tariff, you could opt for simple battery storage or even none at all. It gives you total flexibility to plan your day around the pricing.
At the same time, the agile tariff also works in reverse, so I can establish when the best time to export energy back to the grid will be and maximise the amount I get paid to do so. With the inverter installed as part of my system, it is designed to automatically connect to Octopus which means I don’t even have to use the app above to work out what and when the prices will be favourable. I simply tell it how many half hour slots I want to import and export and what maximum price I’d like this to begin from.
This transforms how we consume energy in a way that I’ve not seen with any other provider. What is exciting is the ability this brings when considering the future moves to electric heat storage and car charging, which we will all inevitably have to move towards. Why pay top dollar for electricity when you don’t need to? Whilst I’m in no way plugging octopus in any way, the stats behind their growth in the industry are impressive and I’d encourage you to take a look yourself.
If you do consider switching, you can also get £50 credit using the link below. This also gives me an additional £50 too but its a no brainer if you’re signing up to them and you’ll also receive a link for sharing too once signed up.
share.octopus.energy/reed-ant-528
Next Steps
So, what are my next logical steps with all of this? As I alluded to earlier, I’ve more energy than I can possibly consume at present, which seems a waste on investment.
Firstly, my Smart Meter, which will be installed in a few days, will at least ensure that my export generates some earnings however I’d prefer there to be minimal export in the first instance ideally. It therefore means that I could either look to move towards electric heating or an electric vehicle. The latter of which is my current line of enquiry. With a 12 year old petrol car sat on the drive, this seems like the next progression for me. Why pay £50-£60 to top her up when I could charge a car for free? Granted, there will be a monthly cost with a new vehicle but this pays itself, particularly if I was driving the same number of miles pre-pandemic. It also goes without saying that an old petrol car will not last forever without the usual faults that come with it. If I sell now I can use the money as payment for a wall charger and further add future value to the house in the process.
It seems to me, that we are now moving towards a tipping point where the costs associated with EV and PV take up do outweigh the costs of inaction. Wholesale electric and petrol prices are only going in one direction and soon this gap will be even more acute.
In my next blog, I hope to bring more information and insight into my shift towards renewables and I hope that you have found this blog useful and thought provoking especially if you are on the verge of considering the switchover yourself. What I hope you take from this, is that it doesn’t have to cost an extortionate amount to go green and that your pocket can actually benefit from the move as well as giving you peace of mind. Taking these active steps is liberating personally and ultimately better for the health of the planet and the health of everyone.
Finally – if you’d like to ask any questions or find out more information on the topics I’ve discussed, please leave a comment or get in touch. I’m happy to talk you through everything in more detail.
Paul’s Patch 