Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
We haven’t quite made it to being self-sufficient from an energy point of view yet but we’re not far off. Considering the fact that it is only March that’s not too bad. Not only that but much of the energy we have imported from the grid has been during off peaks times so it doesn’t...
We’ve just had a nice sunny weekend. The first one for a while and an early taste of Spring. This meant that we beat our records as far as solar production is concerned with both days producing over 20kWh each. Unfortunately we gave far too much of it away on Saturday. We weren’t really prepared...
A post just for Laura as she seems to be more interested in our solar panels than she is with her own! We’re beginning to get the hang of how to make the most of them. That will change throughout the year of course and we’ll have to adjust as we go. The issue with...
No doubt you have seen the various news reports of the massive volcano that erupted near Tonga over the weekend. The eruption was likely the biggest recorded anywhere on the planet in more than 30 years. Dramatic images from space captured the eruption in real time, as a huge plume of ash, gas and steam...
Well, we’re 10 days into 2022 and I’ve yet to write a blog post. New Years is usually quiet for us, but this is ridiculous! There just hasn’t really been anything exciting happening. New Year The New year was a quiet one for us. Anna and I went for a stroll around Furnace a couple...
I added to my solar monitoring systems over the Christmas break. I’ve already built a Solax WordPress Plug-in. The plugin corrects the data from our inverter and displays that info and lots of other data on our website. I wanted to see this data on a constantly active screen in the kitchen too. So, I...
We’ve been a little obsessed with our electricity usage lately. All prompted by the fact that we’ve had solar panels and battery storage installed. This came with the ability to track our usage a little easier and I built a nice addition to this website that shows how our solar panels are performing. I added...
I couldn’t resist building a Solax WordPress plugin as a project following the installation of our new solar panels and battery. The Solax Inverter has a Wi-Fi dongle that uploads data to Solax Servers where we can see various stats about the usage on the Solax Cloud portal. There is also a Solax App that...
Our new Solax solar system seems to be working well. There were a few teething problems and plenty to configure to get it all working in what we think is the most efficient way, so here’s the deal. The solar panels started working straight away. Even on cloudy days they were pretty much covering our...
Our first proper drive in our new car yesterday was like driving through an advert. Winding Welsh roads, leaves blowing in the wind, driving rain, splashing through pools of standing water and stunning welsh countryside. There was even a medieval castle. Meanwhile we were warm and comfortable as we glided along almost silently in our...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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