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Smart Home Blog
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1st March
The big change this month is that Octopus Energy have reduced the export rate for the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff to 12p/kWh. Last year, I made about £1290 from exports and this is now going to drop to about £1032.
5th March
A new best day for solar generation in 2026 with 45.7kWh. March has started off pretty well so far. 44.4kWh of this was exported, earning us £5.33 at the new lower 12p/kWh rate.
6th March
We have been away in Cornwall for most of this week, so I have set the gas central heating and hot water to standby mode. The central heating still runs but, at a lower temperature in each of the three zones. All my smart home, entertainment kit, 3 fridges, 2 freezers, etc. were left running.
This gives a good opportunity to assess our baseline electricity usage and as you can see from this graph it is quite flat. 6.1kWh over 24 hours averages out at 254W, which is pretty good considering all the things we have running on electricity.
6th March
We took the CUPRA Born to Cornwall and did a total of 830 miles in this EV. With the car fully loaded (4 adults + luggage), I pumped up the tyres to the recommended figures (36psi front, 45psi rear).
We left home with the odometer reading 15612 miles and with 100% SoC. The trip down was much cheaper in the EV, as we stopped at my brother's and charged at his house. I also used the Tesla chargers at Reading Services, which cost 56p/kWh. We arrived at our accommodation with the odometer reading 15994 miles and did a few trips around Cornwall whilst there.
We were fortunate to have a "free" EV charger at our Airbnb accommodation, so we started the return journey at 100% SoC and with the odometer reading 16057 miles. Annoyingly, this charger was not installed very well and kept tripping out at the full 7.4kW charging rate. Fortunately, you can configure the Born (via the Cupra app) to charge at a slower rate and this worked well, with no more issues for the rest of our stay.
- Traversing Bodmin Moor in the wet makes a dent in the normal 200+ mile range, so we stopped at Exeter Services. We added 30.94kWh at 89p/kWh, costing £27.48. We stopped for lunch and by the time we had finished the car had charged for 50 minutes.
- Range improved once we got onto more level ground and we stopped at Chieveley Services for a snack and drinks. We left at 88% after 53 minutes with 40.58kWh at 89p/kWh costing £30.03.
- We had enough range to get home at this point but our satnav diverted us up past Braintree due to traffic and so we stopped at Gridserve Braintree for a toilet stop and a quick charge. We charged for 9 minutes and added 9.71kWh at 85p/kWh, costing £7.67.
I always pick the most convenient places to charge, regardless of cost. Because we use public chargers so infrequently, the costs savings from shopping around are not significant. I do try to use cheaper Tesla chargers if they are available though. We got home with the odometer reading 16437 miles, so that's 380 miles in one day.
It might have taken slightly less time in my old Mazda CX-30 or my older Mazda 6 2.2TD but, realistically we would only have saved about 20-30 minutes, not waiting for the EV to charge. I'm always surprised how much time we are charging at services but, the first thing you do is plug the EV in and the last thing you do is unplug it, so this time includes walking to/from the services and finding something to eat/drink, paying for it, eating, drinking, etc. The charging rate (40kW to 60kW is typical) has never really been an issue for us and the Born does not support the quickest charging rates by some margin.
I have real-world data for my old cars, so I know what it would have cost to travel the same distance home in them. The EV cost £71.19 (though £7.67 of this was not really needed), the CX-30 would have cost £62.48 and the Mazda 6 would have cost £59.33 (based on the lowest, current fuel prices near our home).
If you factor in the cheaper Tesla charging, the free charges at my brother's and at our accommodation, then our EV was cheapest option on the round trip, even before you factor in the other savings.
9th March
The clown Trump (the idiot temporarily in charge of the USA) started a war this week and the implications are rippling around the world. Here in the UK, gas shortages are looming and petrol/diesel prices are climbing. Energy costs are going to rapidly increase and our smart home solar installation project will give us some protection and flexibility. Despite having gas central heating and hot water, we generally switch our central heating off from mid-March to mid-November. With 11.2kW of solar panels, we could use the electric immersion heater to heat our water and our air conditioning to heat/cool our home. We moved from a gas hob to an electric induction hob as part of our smart home extension project. We are already generating enough solar energy to take our whole home off grid if need be and we can use our Tesla Powerwall to keep everything running until November. We can also use solar power to charge our EV, even when off grid. This isn't going to stop price rises hitting everything else we buy though.
16th March
Solar generation in March has been good so far. This is my first March with the extension solar, so I'm not sure what to expect. My smart home solar installation project (South panels only) has generated from 442kWh to 898kWh in March in the past though.
18th March
Another solar generation high for 2026 with 54.6kWh generated. 15.7kWh of this was from the extension solar and 49.6kWh was exported at 12p/kWh (£5.95 earned).
If you compare this generation curve to the similar one above from the 5th March, you can clearly see that the generation starts earlier and stops later.
23rd March
Lots of talk this week about the government's plans to allow plug-in solar. Up to 800W (two 400W solar panels) on the end of a UK 3-pin plug. Thes panels will not allow export and they will not work during power outages. In winter, they are unlikely to generate any useful power. My 11,200kW of solar panels generates less than 1kWh on the worst days of winter.
Much is made of the fact that it "doesn't need to be installed". This is along way from reality. A 400W solar panel is typically 1.7m × 1.1m and heavy. It's wider than the average door and almost as tall. Unless these are 'installed' in a suitable location and orientation, they will generate very little. There are not any convenient locations in the average UK home to leave two solar panels sitting around. They will also catch the wind very easily.
The best thing to come out of this initiative is the increased visibility & discussion around solar energy and less red tape for councils to install solar on social housing, to benefit the poorest in our society.
26th March
Another solar generation high for 2026 with 56.8kWh generated and this was with a few clouds. This is mostly down to the solar zenith, which reached 50° and the sun being 40° above the horizon.
31st March
This was delivered today 😎 Emma (daughter) has been loaned this Lotus Emira V6 SE by Lotus Cars for a few weeks and it just happens to be in her favourite colour 🙂
We didn't quite make it to 1000kWh of solar generation this month. 666kWh was from our South facing roof and this generated 898kWh in 2025. 185kWh was from our East facing roof and 119kWh from our East facing roof. The worst day was 6.1kWh, the best 56.9kWh and the average was 31.3kWh.
We exported 804kWh at 12p/kWh and imported 696kWh at 7p/kWh. This includes EV charging. Our energy bills will be negative for this month.
2026 •
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2011
