I don’t know about you, but I have been reading and worrying about the proposed Eskom increases lately as we are a rather large household. (family of 5 plus a live-in domestic worker 5 days a week)
We think we are doing ok, we have a solar geyser we absolutely love that has saved us about a 1/3 off our account already, we switch all the lights off we don’t need, we only switch on the second (small) geyser for a few hours every day, we have energy-efficient light bulbs and we have a gas stove and heater. And yet, our account is in the region of R1 500 every month and we don’t even have a pool.
I asked the kind people on Facebook and twitter today what their electricity bills were and the short answer is between R500 and R3 200 per month. (The most was R7 000!!)
We have been thinking about saving electricity and trying to figure out where we could still be more efficient. We have also been thinking about our carbon footprint a lot lately and all those nappies that ended up in a landfill and won’t decompose for many years to come. And a vegetable garden (more on that later) and grey water irrigation.
On Saturday we were at the Fairmont Fair (a local High School) and met the lovely Juanita from Consolidated Carbon Solutions Africa (@carboncreditSA) and got to talking with her and Neil from Homebug.
In a nutshell, Juanita’s company helps businesses and homes become carbon neutral and provides solar power. Before you run screaming, I’m still wearing a bra, I haven’t disappeared behind the lentil curtain and I haven’t taken up smoking dope!
And yes, maybe I have been watching too many episodes of Grand Designs.
BUT, imagine your house could function off the Eskom grid without you living in a hut. Imagine that you could generate solar power and never pay Eskom a single cent EVER again. Imagine you could generate electricity, put it in the Eskom grid and take it out again as you need it. Imagine you could generate electricity and add power to the grid and (hopefully!) one day get paid by Eskom for that power? (this is apparently not so far off)
This excites me in a big way. I have been dreaming about it since Saturday and will continue to do so until we get around to doing it, which I am pretty sure we will eventually.
I’m also not even going to try to pretend that I know anything about being carbon neutral, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in becoming carbon neutral and teaching our children to be so. We just don’t know where to start and we are all forced to think about it as our empty pockets will soon force us to.
What do you think? Is it something that you would consider? How do you save electricity or have you given up trying?
PS: Thank you so much to everyone that shared today, from the bottom of my heart.
PPS: This is in no way a sponsored post, just something I’m passionately curious about.
This is definitely something I would consider doing. We rent right now so it might not be possible considering that the landlord would need to be on board too but if I owned my own place … there like a well-insulated-yet-low-energy-consuming bear.
It’s definitely something I would consider. I would love not to pay a cent to Eskom.
What me and hubby started doing, is cook on gas. Gas only, no more electric stove. We are looking into gas lamps as well, so that we can permanently switch off our lights at the main switch as well.
Just by not using our stove, we cut out R400 from our electricity bill.
All very well in principle, but the capital expenditure required to do it is just HUGE.
That’s cos the green lizard aliens want to destroy the earth.
I would be keen to do this too. My wife and I rent, however. I figure the cleaner the energy, the better for the planet. I do sometimes wonder if we are doing too little too late.
And as for getting paid by Eskom? I doubt anyone would see a single cent, if it came to pass.
Cynical, I know.
Solar water heating is the low hanging fruit. Our family of 4 uses around R600 worth of electricity each month in summer and around R750 in winter, and we have a pool nogal.
My wife and daughter(25) bath in winter and shower in summer. My son(21) and I shower most of the time.
The combination of solar and timer is a surefire way of saving a substantial sum of money and I can happily say that our Solarent system has paid for itself already. We have installed a monitor to track usage and during October the geyser consumed R65 worth of electricity. November thru February is generally even lower. Pretty impressive hey?