Student Switchoff Initiative

Lucy Siegle's Ethical Living page in the Observer Magazine features Ashleigh Stevens, a student at Reading University, who has started an initiative to persuade students to reduce energy consumption
http://www.studentswitchoff.org/

Voltage Optimisation

We've had an email from an Earthpill member about Voltage Optimisation.  We haven't tried this ourselves but it looks like a good idea and claims to reduced electricity bills by 10% and also extend the life of light bulbs and appliances by smoothing the voltage.

The cost of the unit is £299 plus fitting.

For more information see http://www.vphase.co.uk/

Free Earthpill iPhone App available

We've created a simple Earthpill iPhone App that lets you search the Earthpill database when you're on the move.
If this app is popular we'll put in functionality for adding readings into the database.

You can download the app for free from the Apple App Store.  Just search for Earthpill.

Comments are welcome to our usual email address 

More information is available at http://www.earthpill.com/iphone.aspx

Central Heating Zoning

I work from home two days a week in an attic room office.  To have this room heated in the winter I had to turn on the central heating for the whole house which seemed such a waste or turn every other radiator off manually.

The solution that I came up with in the end was to zone the house into four zones which can be independently heated.  To do this I used Honeywell CM927 wireless thermostats connected to Honeywell V4043H motorized valves.  The valves were installed by a plumber and he had to find points on the existing pipework where the pipes supplied the zones that I had identified.  He had to cut into the pipes to fit the valves so the whole system had to be drained and it took a whole day.

The original central heating timer and thermostat are still there and these now turn the whole system on and off.  Each zone has a wireless unit that can be used to set the times and temperatures of heating in that zone whenever the whole system is running.  It's all worked perfectly for the last year, my gas bill is down by 15% and my office is warm for the first time.

The parts cost £560, the labour was £300 and I'm saving £120 a year so this should pay back in just over seven years.

Gas price increases

The wholesale price of gas goes up and the retail price goes up.  The wholesale price goes down and the retail price stays the same.  

British Gas have announced a price rise of 7% today and Scottish and Southern have announced a rise of 9%.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11743778

Here's a link to an article on the Consumer Focus web-site with a nice graph of wholesale/retail prices since 2007 http://www.consumerfocus.org.uk/news/consumer-focus-response-to-sse-gas-price-increase

Scottish Island Told to Stop Using Toasters

The Scottish island of Eigg has most of its energy provided by hydro-electric generators but, according to this article in the Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/stop-using-toasters-islanders-are-told-2014033.html, a recent shortage of rainfall has resulted in islanders being encourages to use their energy hungry appliances less.

Islanders have been able to halve their energy use by 47% by "learning to use less energy" - described in this article in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/01/eigg-island-renewable-energy. We think that they could save even more if they used Earthpill.

Article about Eigg Electrification Project: http://www.isleofeigg.net/trust/eigg_electric.htm

Campaign to Measure Everything

Earthpill has launched a campaign to measure every electrical item in the world.

According to Colin Bennett, one of Earthpill's founders "It's a big job but we think that the community nature of Earthpill means that it's possible. The alternative is to keep on wasting the electricity that we are using up the world's resources to create".

Steven Chu, a physicist and Nobel Laureate has just been appointed as the new US Secretary of Energy and we think that this signals a change in attitudes to energy consumption and waste. Mr Chu recently commented "Energy efficiency is not just low-hanging fruity; it is the fruit that is lying on the ground". Earthpill does the job of picking up the windfalls.

The Measure Everything campaign will be promoted through press and schools' organisations. If you would like to get involved please email us at