Being eco-friendly

... or at least trying to.

A couple of years ago, Donna and I bought a 2600 litre rainwater tank to use for irrigating the garden. Literally within half an hour of us getting it all hooked up it bucketed down rain. It was a quarter full by the end of the storm.

Last year, the state government announced that they were going to bulk buy a thousand 1kW solar systems and asked for expressions of interest for those householders that wanted them. Because it was a bulk buy and because of the federal government rebate for solar energy, they reckoned it would end up costing us about $1500 for the complete, installed system.

That was an opportunity to good to pass up, especially since the system feeds back into the grid. This means that any excess energy we generate, we get paid for by the energy company.

Well I sent in our expression of interest as soon as I heard about the deal, so did about 5000 other people. They stopped asking for applications after only two days. Because there were only 1000 systems available they had to have a ballot to see who would get them and we were lucky enough to be one of them. In fact, we turned out to be even luckier when they finalised the price. All we had to pay for the complete system was... wait for it...

$185. That's right, one hundred and eighty five dollars.

Well they completed the installation the other day and guess what. It's bucketing down rain at the moment and has been since about midnight. It's so gloomy at the moment I've had to turn on the living room light so I can see to study. We're under that blue bit on the weather radar picture, about a third of the way between the centre of the pic and Cape Moreton.



I guess we won't be generating any excess energy today.

At least we aren't out delivering junk mail in it, although the next lot will be dropped off soon and I'll have to go out and bring it upstairs.