Category: Energy Efficiency

  • How Much Did I Pay for Electricity, Petrol and Gas in 2023?

    Am I one of those minimalists? No. The secret is, I paid 0 for petrol and gas – I have no need of them since I fully electrified my home. Here are the milestones of my journey to full electrification: I suspended my gas account in May 2023 and the process costed me $88. With…

  • 3 Years Later, How Is My PowerWall 2 Keeping Up?

    TL; DR: I’ve installed my PowerWall 2 3 years ago. It wasn’t cheap but the quality is great too. There’s 0 issue so far and it helped a lot to “keep my lights on”. And if calculated using recent electricity rate, it has saved me $3,115 so it’s still a long way 🙂 Uptime: 100%…

  • Home Owner’s Guide to Free Gas Heating

    Home Owner’s Guide to Free Gas Heating

    TL; DR. No there’s no free natural gas but there’s free electricity, hope you don’t mind heating up your rooms with reverse cycle air conditioners instead My old house had an equally old gas heater, and we had been using it for years. 4 years ago, the heater broke down, so I had it replaced…

  • Home Battery, Worth Buying?

    During the lockdown days in 2020, I got A Tesla Powerwall 2 + Backup Gateway 2 combo installed by Natural Solar. The total cost was A$14,000. “Is it worth buying?” or “Would it pay for itself?” those were the question I got asked a lot. With a full year’s data from 2021, I think I…

  • Bill Shock: The Real Cost of Tesla Model 3 After 1 Year

    Bill Shock: The Real Cost of Tesla Model 3 After 1 Year

    VicRoads timely reminded me that it’s time to renew my Tesla Model 3’s registration(rego), so it’s been a year already. I think it might be interesting to calculate the real cost of owning a (Tesla) EV. I also put imaginary figures of my previous diesel BMW there for an unfair comparison. Tesla Model 3 Previous…

  • First Month With Sanden Heap Pump

    TL;DR: This thing is purely awesome! It’s been almost a month since my Sanden heat pump system being installed. The unit is scheduled to start running after 9AM. It probably should start a bit later than that because my solar system can barely produce 900w of power at 9AM in late winter, if it’s sunny…

  • 1-Step Away From Fossil Fuel: Sanden Heat Pump

    After weeks of waiting, thanks to lock downs in Victoria, I finally have a 315L Sanden Heat Pump installed, replacing my who-knows-how old gas instantaneous water heater. The job has been done professionally by SolarFlow, kudos to the team! I can label myself an environmentalist who keeps trying to minimize my own carbon footprint but…

  • Real Life Cost of a Tesla Model 3

    It’s been a bit more than 2 weeks since I got my Model 3 as a result of my impulse-buying, so as an end user I think I’m qualified to do some cost analysis and projection based on the first 1000km I’ve done with the car. Disclaimer: The following analysis is based on my calculation…