A Tour Of Robert Llewellyn’s Ultra-Efficient Eco Home

[Applause] hi foreign my name's Robert Llewellyn and welcome to my low emission home [Music] foreign [Music] energy and how we use it at home has scarcely been more relevant so we're going to be bringing you a lot more home energy content on our everything electric show and to do that we've drafted in an expert hi I'm Emily and today Robert's given us a tour of his home and how he's made it as low Mission as possible [Music] tucked away in the pocket of the Cotswold Hills this quaint Timber structure building has been Robert's home and playground to experiment with various sustainable Technologies for the past 30 years we filmed many episodes of the free chart showed here hello and welcome to another episode of fully charged for battery and solar installations two electric diggers in May 2022 Robert said goodbye to his large remaining carbon powder plants meaning his home is now capable of running solely on renewable energy so how exactly has Robert managed to do this let's start with the solar panels [Music] so we've got 10 here and 14 on the roof of my office and that it some adds up to a total of I think it's 11.5 kilowatt Peak maximum it can possibly do which it never has done but it's got close to 10 on a really good day in June yep well it was a super clear sky yeah it got to that I know the other thing I've noticed if it's a super clear sky but quite cool like it's not hot weather when it was really hot yeah I got less even though it was sunny I guess the panels get very hot they do yeah so um on the roof there's not a lot of air space so you will get a hotter panel whereas the ones you have here are ground mounted yeah and so you get a nice airflow and then this is going to keep them cooler more efficient right and what's the most you've ever generated oh so in a day yeah about 65 kilowatt hour 65 and a bit kilowatt hours was it hard for you to get permission for this one here or no it wasn't that hardened I mean the installers got the permission which is good so I didn't have to do anything because I'd have done imagine the form would have been a disaster if I filled it out but it was I think it was partly to do with the fact that they weren't we weren't setting them in concrete so we weren't digging up the ground lips pouring in loads of concrete fitting them out these are ground screws they literally are screwed in by a digger yeah with a like it's like a big Autumn electric screwdriver but it's a dig on it and it's amazing watching them go in so that that was put in so that means it can be taken away and it leaves very little damage you know if you if you want to something so I just want to explain what's going on here uh these are the big screws that we put in the grounds all really straightforward no problem at all that one there that one there splitter water pipe that I put in 20 plus years ago that takes water up the garden so that we've got water up the Top Gun a little tap up in the Hedge why is the pipe here it makes no sense and this is one of those classic things on a really rubbish day that we've got to be outside all day sorting this I've now got to go down the plumbing merchants and get a special twisty on Joiner you've got to cut the pipe and join together can you power a lot more of your house and they've got this yes I mean that's the big changes that the the effectively the ones on the roof of the office probably would have run the house a lot of the time yeah with batteries but not with cars so as soon as you get electric cars that's a lot more so in a sense this is to help charge the cars which we've done a lot but the but so we've done we up until fairly recently we did 41 days without any uh power from the grid that's amazing so in the British summer and we've had a quite a sunny summer this year so I would be I'm always like super conservative about how much they really produce but this time it really was for real it was 41 days without anything yeah and and then my daughter visited in her Nissan in my Nissan Leaf that she's using and plugged in when I wasn't here uh during the day when it was really cloudy and she used some grid electricity to do that so that that ruined my dad but I mean on the whole it's a that is an amazing thing I think and that's also charging cars wasn't just the house yeah yeah foreign [Music] s convert energy from the Sun into electricity which can then be stored in the batteries so on a sunny day like today when Robert is able to generate more electricity than he needs he can store and save that excess energy ready for a rainy day which with the British weather as unpredictable as it is can come in rather handy well the power from the panels comes in actually I can see the wire that's one of the wires and the other one comes in out by that door comes in from the solar panels into those two feathers there those are the inverters you can tell me more about those but those are I've learned to know those two white boxes of the inverted so they change it from DC to AC that's right yeah right and then that feeds into the two batteries that are behind me so those are both 13 and a half kilowatt hours each so it's a total of 27 kilowatt hours of storage capacity and then there's a lot of other boxes that are kind of I would call fuse boxes I don't really know but then that one there is the Gateway which I do understand that because that is the thing that if there's a power cut which bizarrely we get probably more than average people would in the UK we get them quite often here for a short periods of time 20 30 minutes because we're in a fairly sort of frail old bit of a grid yeah yeah uh and in a rural area so those that what that does is cut the power from going into the grid if there's a power cut so in case someone is trying to fix the wires they're not getting electrocuted yeah and also we still have power in the house so when when there's power Cuts in the winter and our neighbors look at look at our house we've got our lights on yeah and we don't even know I mean we won't know that there's been a power cut until one of our neighbors tells us so how much of the charge sort of your or your store charge do you use for your own house oh yeah all of it yes yeah I mean I think I mean it's hard to know but I mean we use all of it in the fullness of time but in a day we wouldn't use so if they were full uh it's hard it's hard to work it out if they like in the winter let's go let's do winter and summer because it's very different so in the winter we charged them at night so they'll start charging I think at about one o'clock in the morning and we use and that's an off-peak tariff so it's a cheaper rate for electricity much cheaper and so they will charge them then and then in the morning when we wake up they're at 100 well by the end of the day in the winter when it's not Sunny they're probably at 30 so we've used 70 of what the batteries have got over that day and that's Heating and cooking and showers and water and everything so that we I don't think we've ever used all of it in the house in a day I think there's more than we would have use on average in the house and then in the summer it's really hard to tell because basically they're they're it's usually at about a hundred percent from solar by 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning which means we've then got from 11 till say seven or eight when it stops generating what are we going to do with that juice which is one when we put it in the carbs yeah so next you've got the uh the zapi car charger which is a great one because you can't take excess so to put directly into your car don't you which is yeah and that is so easy to use you just set it to I think it's called Eco plus plus yeah and then it just takes any excess solar that would go into the grid it just puts it in the car so and and that what surprises me more with the cars rather than the charger is a car will charge at a very low speed so it's only one and a half kilowatts coming off the solar and you're putting it will still put that in the car and up till up till as much as much as the solar can do but when it comes to like you managing what you've got in terms of your cars and stuff how how do you manage all the electric use well I mean the good thing is that most of it is automatic all the time and I don't do anything so you know a lot of it is completely automatic and I mean I'm probably more involved than most sensible people would be so I'm a bit obsessed with it and I'm sort of checking what it's doing but actually it needs minimal hassle from my point you know from the point of view if you had this in your house and you're not bothered about it once it's setting up is a bit of a hassle once it does that it's automatic so to change it so that at the moment these batteries don't take any energy from the grid ever in the summer but in the winter it's literally one one little flick of a button on the app and it changes it and it's such an easy thing that I think if someone my age can use an app without being shown how to use it by a 19 year old it's a good app and it works and I don't like there are many days go past where I don't look at anything I have to do nothing I plug the car in it doesn't charge till there's enough excess solar it charges and I get in the car and drive it you know like and nothing else so it isn't it isn't a constant obsession [Music] so the batteries are charged by the solar panels when it is sunny give back to the grid when they are full and are charged by the grid when the Tariff is low overnight the energy from the batteries is used to charge his car and also to power his heating hot water and electricity to the house so we wanted to find out all the clever and unique ways Robert can make his energy stretch as far as possible so yeah the way we heat the house now is through this this is the tepio boiler yeah and that fitted in it basically was very easy to replace so those pipes are already there for our old gas boiler which used to be on the wall there and then they just had to do a bit of adaption to fit it onto here so it it it's a really simple fit this took maybe an hour to of the plumber putting that in it was really really quick so what was up on the wall here for 25 years it's been there is a gas boiler so that used to be here and that's the flu going out of the wall uh to you know where you had to exhaust the toxic gas after it was burnt that's the wire that will power it because it is seven kilowatts nine kilos okay so that's the that's the why so you can't really I mean there's a plug socket there but that isn't enough so it's a nine kilowatt feed because it charges it basically heats up at night to a very high temperature we had three months of winter with it and it worked definitely work the radiators are really hot we actually have to turn the thermostat down and work it out as it was when it started up but what that does is it it fills a thermal store at night from on off-peak electricity so cheaper electricity that heats up a big block of and it's quite clever metal it's got some special Ceramics it's got ceramic Ceramics and it's a patented device no one else has got it so it Heats it up to really high temperatures like 300 degrees Centigrade yeah and then that store is then during the day when you want your heating on you turn the heating on and it takes the that heat from there not from electricity at the time which would be more expensive electricity and again it's got an app that I can understand as an old bloke which is a good plus but I'm not fiddling with it all the time you know just once it's started up you know you could it was very simple I didn't do anything to it and there was one specific day when it was sunny and cold yeah really clear day and I had excess solar and I've managed to put that into the thermal store so I could re-charge the thermal still with solar so it didn't cost me anything yeah and that gave us ample heat for the whole day with a lot there was a lot of people here and it was a cold day so we had all the heating on so why did you choose the the tapio over an airtel's heat pump for instance well it was a difficult decision and it was partly I thought we're going to cover really from the point of view of the show the fully charged show we're going to cover heat pumps we already have we're going to do a load more this was sort of slightly different and it also would suit a lot of people who where you really couldn't use a heat pump so if you're in an apartment building yeah and you haven't got anywhere outside to put the the equipment yeah then this this is a really good replacement for a conventional gas boiler so there's quite a few properties that heat pumps can't work for absolutely yeah yeah I still think there's a huge majority where they can and they really do work work and I suppose it's a bit like a heat pump in the fact that it does heat only it won't do it's not a Combi it won't do heating and hot water so I guess you want something different for your hot water storage you get mixer G water tank which I've had for a few years and that is miraculous that's my Miracle piece of Kit it works that works so well just heats water really quickly really efficiently and it Heats it upside down doesn't it heat it from the top down to the bottom yeah yeah and that works so well I mean then that's become a integral part of the house we don't even think about you know you know do we always have we'll have hot water yes I do that's about as far as I know have you ever had a shower and it's gone cold no so you know that works yeah it's working yeah and I don't really have anything to do with it so this is still a bit new and I'm a bit excited about my yeah my tapio [Music] foreign [Music] so what other energy devices do you have to reduce your carbon footprint in your house well I suppose the obvious one is LED lights and that made a really early difference when we had that every because we had a halogen bulbs I was always replacing because they're always breaking since we've had LED lights they just work and they use much less power and it's really noticeable reduction an energy saving fridge I don't know what that means but it just it keeps things cool and then that behind me was that replaced a gas powered Argo that we inherited yeah and like that used to drive me mad but everyone else whoever came to the house really loved it so we've got that which is an ever hot electric stove which is lovely and it's made just down the road in Stroud so it's a local locally produced a piece of equipment and also I just want to say this to alleviate my guilt because it is definitely the most indulgent thing we've got that is made using renewable energy so it's made in an old water mill and they produce their own electricity in the old water mill and they use that to help build and weld together all their metal stoves so that's so I'm supporting a local business we're looking at Dan because you know everything we've done that is very self-indulgent and a bit unnecessary we could have got a really cheap cooker that used much less energy so that's a bit that is a bit borgy but other than that then it is the um infrared heaters in the studio and my office which are Herschel infrared heaters and they're weird because they're just like really thin sheets that you've kind of Bolt to the wall me just plug them in and then they've got brilliant thermostats and control stuff but they kind of don't feel like radiators but when you're in the room you're warm it is different heat yes and so I'm still getting used to those so this has all happened a lot of that's happened this year so it's it's the Last Arc to get rid of gas was to get rid of all those sort of old-fashioned gas boilers and everything so the infrared replaced radiators out there I guess you've got things like wall cavity insulation Loft insulation got all that kind of stuff yeah and we did that a long time ago so about 20 20 plus years ago when we rebuilt the house that was the one thing we did right then we did made loads of mistakes and loads of things I wish we'd done better and all that but we did insulate the house really well so the whole house is extremely well insulated except for these old doors yeah which aren't perfect so they've got shutters so that helps but you know in the fullness of time if I could replace those with really proper engineered doors that didn't let win drafting yeah so that's that's our one weak point everything else um is really good so it actually has always been a cheap house to heat anyway and what I've tried to do is make it even cheaper even the more efficient but we started with insulation so I mean that's absolutely you know if you're going to say what do I do to make my house more energy efficient insulate it is absolutely number one it should be fair Robert and you've got more Technologies in this house than strictly might be necessary but to your credit you've invested your own money yeah in them but I'm interested to know about your feelings about payback yes I have mixed feelings about payback because in a sense there's the annoying thing where you know someone might buy a new kitchen and no one ever asks them what the payback is on that kitchen or buy a new car what's the payback on the car there isn't you just pay and so there is that side of it that goes well you know I didn't do it for the payback I did it to to reduce our energy bills which it has done it's going to take some time so a mate in Oxford suggested who is a statistician and cleverer and can do sums really good at maths and he suggested that I that I would have to live till I was 102 to maybe that was about three years ago he since commented you said and like in a jokey way he said you've now got to live 2072 which for me is um the six years so the payback is much less and I would have invested more but it's over such a long period of time it's over 12 years that I've been doing all these various things it wasn't overnight do you have a gut feel then what things have a most uh economic because we were talking about thermostatic radiator valves early they're quite they're quite cheap and make quite a big difference I love the fact that I've got thermostatic radiator valves and I didn't know yeah so that shows how really on the case I am but you have a feeling for what the things you've done whether it's the battery or solar which you think is actually the weather it's the infrared or the tapio things that might have made the biggest difference I mean I think now if I was going to do something now I absolutely insulation is the thing and that when I remember some of the builders saying when we were doing this house up and the Builder saying you've got insulation in The Loft that went no so we've got like proper so that and I knew that was a sensible thing to do and particularly because this house is Timber it was a very easy it wasn't a challenge to do so we could fill the walls with really good insulation without much it's not like having an Old Stone House or a brick house it was easy to do so it was that wasn't a big challenge but then I I think I'd go for Batteries first and I don't know if that sense well I mean you would know much better than me but in a way that the the experience I've had with charging batteries off peak so much cheaper and then using that power when power is more expensive is a really simple logical thing you can understand it very easily well I know I paid you know five now seven Pence a kilowatt hour for this electricity last night and I'm using it now in the day where it would cost me 55. so that is pretty obvious yeah massive saving and that payback I think I think the batteries have paid back the quickest of anything even though they're inexpensive installation to start with so payback might be difficult to talk about because you've added lots of bits on over the years but you must have sort of an income of what you what you've used and what you've been saving so I can see as soon as I open the app I can see what I'm What's Happening Now 6.4 kilowatts coming off the solar panels of which 1.3 is going is being used in the house but which means 5.1 at the moment is going into the grid so that is running all my neighbors appliances with clean electricity and I feel very well smug and proud and I'm virtually signaling like a Nutter to do that but then if I look this is what's shocking so if I look at uh the the year so far which is I never do this so I unders check what is going on now and make sure oh I can charge a car you know that's what that's how I would think about it um so 11.57 megawatt hours this year we have used in this house which strikes me as insanely High yeah that's because of two electric cars I guess that's the thing so because that's what's so hard to judge and where you need a statistician and someone with spreadsheets and who can remember numbers is how much would we have spent on Petrol in the same period a lot is very obvious um we've produced with solar 7.7 megawatt hours this year so far which also is because I never look at this when you say I look at the day but I never looked at the the whole year 7.7 and we're only in August so that's a lot the the battery I don't know what that means the power wall has discharged 4.14 megawatt hours so it's obviously had that put in and it's discharged it and then the yes the grid we've we've taken 4.46 megawatts but we've delivered 0.28 megawatt hours so is that that's 2 800 kilowatt hours yeah yeah yeah so the standard sort of UK two-bedroom house for gas board it would probably be that about a year right okay so we we have supported the whole house yeah on top of everything else we've done oh that that is extraordinary yeah so that is yeah that's I mean I don't look at those things I'm going to from now on I'm going to be obsessed do you know how much I've done this year how many megawatt hours but yeah but it is also the usage I think you don't you consider it like on a daily basis or a monthly bill you don't look at the whole year but I mean 11 megawatt hours just sounds mad all that we need to say then is thank you for letting us into your home you're not a normal person though are you your house isn't normal so we'll be doing more normal houses but yeah what a great place to have a look at all the different Technologies in one place foreign [Music] for showing us around his home today and if you like this episode don't forget to follow us on our everything electric show and if you have been thanks for watching

Channel: Fully Charged Show

Views: 576,886

Keywords: electric car youtube channel, why should i buy an electric car, green energy comment, grid storage technology, renewable energy youtube, new transport ideas, green technology review, renewable energy comment, renewable energy electric vehicles, electric vs ice cars, latest news on renewable energy, crowd funded youtube, kryten, fully charged show live, ev show, fully charged show, robert llewellyn, electric cars, fully charged

Id: XZZisnQi7Ww

Length: 22min 42sec (1362 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2022