How I became an Energy Addict: freezing to death for a few cents
I remember when I got access to my smart meter. I plugged in my HAN port dongle and opened the app. My energy was bouncing up and down, and my curiosity wanted to understand what these dancing energy spikes were about.
An innocent curiosity that soon would take over my life.
Actually it started off as a great idea. The first thing I found was an amplifier spending over 100 watts in standby, shutting it off was, by itself, enough to be satisfied. I should have uninstalled the app and get on with my life.
However, I continued, turning on and off appliances. Watching the graph in the app spike when turning on my oven. Cracking up and down my heating to see what it meant for the daily energy costs.
From this point onwards my competitive mindset came into play and the fun experience was starting to vanish.
The energy madness unleashed
I started out with smaller changes, pushing the thermostats down a couple degrees. Then I stopped using the toaster in the morning. If I waited 15 minutes I could eat my frozen bread just barely frozen. Then I reduced my driving, charging the car felt like setting money on fire.
Adding solar panels to this obsession made the job go from part-time to full-time. The job payment: some cents an hour and a freezing house. No more time to swing golf clubs, watch football or forest hikes. I found myself checking the energy apps ten times a day, cross checking weather forecasts with solar production.
I became that person:
- Running in and out of the house to plug in the EV the second a cloud moved.
- Postponing a shower until «peak solar hour».
- Working from home to babysit the charging cable.
The Salad Days (Literally)
The easiest way to cut energy consumption is to not use it. I took that to the extreme.
I reduced my indoor temperature to the point where you wear two sweaters not one. I only heated the living room. I stopped cocking food and ate salad for dinner.
So there I sat. Working from home in a freezing house, wearing double layer wool, eating barely frozen bread and cold lettuce. All to save a few cents and win my internal competition of spending the least amount possible on energy.
The awakening
One month in and I realized this made zero sense. My goal of saving energy costs was reducing my comfort and replacing my hobbies. Neither of which I wanted to give up.
Why should I spend my life looking at energy spikes in an app and run out to plug in my EV when clouds move?
If I wanted to save money I should've just moved into a studio apartment. I realized that comfort is the whole point of having a home. Optimizing energy is smart but not if it ruins your day.
My new rules was simple:
- The car will serve me, not the other way around. I stopped stressing about the optimal time to charge and just plugged it in when I got home. I just needed it ready when I wanted to.
- My morning shower routines stay the same. I’ll take my morning showers at 07:00, that is peak hour but that is when I like to shower.
Balancing energy costs and comfort (And how Alva helps)
I didn’t want anything to influence my daily comfort but I didn’t want to throw money out the window either. I clearly saw saving opportunities, I just wanted to stop thinking about optimizing my energy. I got other things to spend my time on.
One of many examples is my morning showers at the no sun peak energy price. The house could’ve delayed reheating that water until peak solar. I will be at work not needing hot water in the time period in between.
This is exactly the kind of optimization Alva does.
Alva is the help I needed. It learns how I like to have my comfort and adapts around it automatically. It does everything in the background of my life; shifting loads, optimizing solar utilization and charge the car at optimal times.
It saves my costs without sacrificing my comfort. It realizes that we are people with preferences and that it has to adapt around our needs.
(Okay, this post may be a slight exaggeration of how I actually lived, but the mindset was spot on. Also if you really like the misery of killing comfort for cost savings we will include a «hardcore-savings mode» in Alva that will force you to reduce comfort for energy savings. Of course, for the ultimate savings hack that costs absolutely nothing, you can always switch your main breaker off.)
