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Solar PV and the Eddi. Should I heat all the water??
My Eddi has been installed for about two months now. It has been a great addition to my setup quietly mopping up mountains of surplus PV and heating hot water. I installed it myself and documented it over on my YouTube channel, so if you’re interested in that, check it out: But it hasn’t all…
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First sunny month with new solar PV
With June being the first really sunny month of the year, I wanted to share my thoughts on how well my newly installed Solar PV setup performed. Setup I have two arrays on my house, consisting of eight plans on the main roof of the house, south facing and a smaller four panel array on…
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Predicting periods of excess solar power
My solar PV has been in and working now for several months. We’ve tried to adjust our usage patterns to take advantage of when there will be excess solar after our battery and hot water tank are filled. This has been something I’ve been thinking about for a while and I have a few ideas.…
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Wiring for smart lighting with Shelly relays!
I’m building an extension to my kitchen. As readers of my blog and Twitter will know, I love home automation and building work presents an opportunity to incorporate more of it! My Current Smart Lighting The vast majority of smart lighting in my house is provided by Shelly devices. These are incorporated into the ceiling…
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Matter, Unifi and mDNS
I started playing around with the connectedhomeip repository last week in an effort to get a better understanding of Matter and Thread. One of the issues I ran into was related to how Matter uses mDNS and DNS-SD. After hours of messing around with both my nRF52840 and ESP32 boards, I could see both WiFi…
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Gas Energy Usage – Nov 22
With Christmas around the corner, I wanted to post an update on my November 2022 gas usage before I wind down for Christmas. Usage in November last year 292m3, which is around 10m3 of gas a day. That’s about 110kWh per day. November 2022 was a different story. We were out of the house for…
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Gas Energy Usage – Oct 22
As it’s now the first of November and heating season has begun, I wanted to do a quick comparison of my gas usage between Oct ’21 and Oct ’22. In Oct ’21, we used 93.2m3 of gas, which is approximately 1024kWh. We were away for eight day’s that month, so the usage was zero. Spin…
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First Tesla Model Y Road Trip
Back in 2019, we booked a 2020 trip on the famous Jacobite train, which starred as the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter film series. COVID-19 closed the railway, which meant we had to postpone the trip until this year. The original plan was to drive up to Fort William, in Scotland. At the time…
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My Mixergy IoT device – The start!
I’m loving my Mixergy tank, but one of the main issues is that the temp display is connected to the tank by a short wire. My tank sits out in the garage, so without consulting the app, it’s hard to know how much hot water you have. Using my Home Assistant Mixergy integration and Siri…
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Smart Bulbs: my lightbulb moment?
I’ve always disliked smart lightbulbs. Turn them off at the wall and you immediately question why you paid 1000% more. I’ve held this position for years and years, until one day I came across a tweet by Troy Hunt where he used the words detached and Shelly1. This immediately captured my interest! Now, I’ve had…
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My Mixergy Smart Hot Water Tank
I recently installed a Mixergy smart hot water tank into my new house, as part of a total renovation. I’ve been very impressed and wanted to share my thoughts on the product after using it for a few weeks. The problem with hot water tanks For me, the problem with hot water tanks two fold.…
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Automating our dual fuel towel radiator
As I explained in my earlier post, heating our bathroom, we installed a dual fuel tower radiator. A dual fuel radiator is one that can be heating by both our central heating and an electrical element inside the radiator. This allows us to dry our towels without having to turn on the central heating, something…
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