Life has a tendency to get in the way of even the best intentions so there has been little in the way of blog activity. However, more progress has been made at www.conserveandsave.co.uk so its worth a visit. A new look and more focussed content.
The last posts were on monitoring and logging such things as fuel usage and temperature to help with analysis. In fact two XBees were purchased and a start made on developing the equipment. Having said that, on reflection, I felt that much more could and should be extracted from the basic information before getting absorbed in other disciplines such as software development. Consequently, useful work has been included on the site such as analysing energy consumption from meter readings with the theoretical calculations.
First and foremost the objective of this work is to be practical. Although energy costs a lot - £1000 pounds a year for my project house, it is just as costly to make improvements and so difficult to justify. So many 'problem areas' are intrinsic to the house design and the era in which it was constructed. Compared with much of the equipment we now use our homes are crude. They don't help us to save. They don't tell us how much energy they are using or adapt to our needs. Its all possible now but again, costly to retrofit and justify.
Therefore, another key objective is to quantify areas of saving and estimate the financial return rather than spend money on the basis of what a company says in an advertising claim. Hence the work on www.conserveandsave.co.uk to analyse theoretical to actual energy consumption. If the calculated results prove reasonably accurate it is an approach available to all on which decisions can be made. Money is too hard come by for most at the moment and its important to know that every penny spent is earning good interest better than the bank etc.
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