Electricity - Good and Bad

Back from my our holiday and two bits of electricity news.

First, the bad news...........

We generally turn off all appliances at the wall when not in use apart from the computer, fridge, freezer and clock radio/alarm. All are necessary apart from the computer, which is just laziness. Before we went away last week for 9 days G turned off all of the computer stuff but did not realise that the small freezer is also plugged into that powerboard!!

So...........we came home to a freezer of thawed food - luckily it was not full, but we have had to throw out the following:

Ice-cream 2 litres
Grapefruit juice 1.5 litres
Chicken stock 1.5 litres
Chicken breast fillets x 3
Banana cake 24 slices
Rice 1 serve
Shepherd's pie 2 serves
Chilli con carne 6 serves
Pumpkin soup 5 serves
Bolognaise sauce 2 serves
Refried beans 4 x 500g

One of my jobs for tomorrow is to put red duct tape on the cord where it plugs in with a reminder tag "DO NOT SWITCH OFF".


The good news is that for the first time since we had our solar panels installed about 10 weeks ago we have had a day of full sunshine and I was here to note that we generated 24kWh today from our 20 panels.  I am really pleased as our average daily usage is about 10kWh so this is definitely going to make money over the long term.  We knew that after doing our sums and discussions with the solar company but it is fantastic to actually be able to see it on the meter.