Recently in Energy Category

My existing fridge and freezer are over 20 years old and there are better insulated quieter models available that use less than half as much electricity.

Being under the worktop without any rear ventilation uses 25-30% more electricity too because the heat has nowhere to go. The fridge also becomes a freezer in the summer because the trapped heat at the back affects the internal thermostat resulting a feedback loop until my carrots are sitting in a frozen pool of ice.

Not enough space

Before I can get a new fridge and freezer they need to fit under the worktop. There are two popular widths for these appliances (55cm and 60cm) and both of the existing ones are 55cm wide in a space designed for that size only. In order to get the models that I want to fit I need to find an extra 5cm of space because the new fridge is only available in 60cm wide.

The cabinets to either side are made of wood so I took one of them out and made it 5cm narrower:

The cabinet doors are now too wide for the cabinet so one of them needs to be made smaller:

There's now an extra 5cm of space so I can fit a 60cm and 55cm appliance under the worktop.

Not enough ventilation

The instructions for the new fridge and freezer come with warnings of damaging the compressor if there's no ventilation at the back. Some of the heat can escape over the top (to the front of the worktop) but not enough to stop an excessive build-up of heat in the summer.

I cut a long narrow ventilation hole in the back of the worktop and laser cut a cover for it out of plastic:

There's now enough ventilation for the heat to escape at the back. Be careful doing this with old appliances because my freezer immediately developed a condensation problem now that the excess heat was no longer warming the outer surfaces.

New fridge and freezer

With all the worktop and cabinet alterations complete, I can now install the new fridge and freezer:

I've recently installed an 80A Power Meter on the electricity supply to my house. It measures the current active, reactive and apparent power as well as providing a count of the total active and reactive energy. These reading are updated every second.

After installing a 100A isolator and pulling through extra cables, the installation of the power meter was relatively straight forward. It's in an enclosure with an 80A circuit breaker, located inside to avoid inconvenience if it ever trips and because the distribution board doesn't have enough space for it.

I intend to write an Android app for a real-time view but for now I'm just collecting historical data:

The Scottish Power tariff I was on ended a week ago, so I tried to change to their currently available cheapest tariff. Unfortunately they won't let me do that: Please be informed that ScottishPower is not offering Online Energy Reward to its existing customers. This service package is only available for the new customers.

This is ridiculous. In order to get their cheapest deal I would need to change supplier twice. They don't even advertise that this isn't available to existing customers. The website just hides it from the list of tariffs if you're viewing the "existing customer" version. (It's also difficult to get from the marketing summary to an actual price list for each tariff; there's no direct link).

Their other options all strangely have £50 penalties for changing tariff or supplier early... perhaps they want to stop people leaving for those suppliers like themselves offering new customers the best prices.

I can find the cheapest suppliers using online comparison websites, but the cheapest option means separating Electricity and Gas so I'd have to deal with two companies who will most likely both give good deals only to new customers and both make arbitrary guesses at future usage so that I end up paying for it all in advance.

Either I repeatedly change supplier every time one or more of them have "new customer only" deals or cease caring about how much it costs and stay with one of them just because it's easier. I've been doing this with Scottish Power for several years now (on whichever tariff appears to be cheapest - this is deceptive because you end up stuck on one while they bring out a cheaper option).

Another option which I've wanted to do for a while is switch to a "Green" Energy tariff. This is easier because the best tariff isn't necessarily the one that has the lowest price. Ecotricity have recently started doing a Green Gas package too, which means I don't end up negating any benefit from sustainable electricity with my gas usage. They're also making good progress towards generating 100% of the energy they sell themselves from renewable sources.

Why does it take several weeks to change energy supplier? I can understand that the first 2 weeks are caused by vulnerable people being sold tariffs on commission by rogues, but why is the additional time required?