Sustainability thoughts
I really think a lot about how to be sustainable.
There’s many things every person can do to simply have a smaller carbon footprint.
We are definitely not perfect in our house, and we want to improve even more.
We already do a bunch of things already, and obviously out next big thoughts is on an electric/hybrid car(We got one recently) and/or solar panels.
All the small things we do, all count – but we also want to do real impact if that possible.
We grow some vegetables, but we could do more – and every year we try to incorporate new things.
We save on our heating by incorporating smart monitoring.
We save on our electricity, by using smart plugs and sensors. So there’s no power usage when not needed.
Obviously the wifi is always on. 🙈
We recycle everything we can, and also try to do less nice to have shopping.
When we buy groceries, we usually pick season items.
I know there’s a lot more we can do in the small scales.
But now we want to think about bigger things.
Solar panels vs. Electric car vs. Both.
What makes most sense for a normal family. Nobody shits money and nobody wants to waste any. So obviously we all want to make the best investment with our money.
Pros and cons.
Investing in solar panels.
125.000dkk
By mounting solar panels, we will be producing our own power. Including battery bank, to store power for outages, or just extending the period we are unreliable on the power grid on shady times.
Some of the solar company deals promise, that the savings and the income from excess power sales will cover almost all the cost of the solar plant installation.
So that sounds like a pretty nice investment. Paid of within 7-9 years ish. And the effect on the solar cells is still at guaranteed >85% up to 10 years.
Buying an electric/hybrid car
+200.000dkk
This is one huge amount to spend on something that is pretty much just a nice to have. Nobody in Denmark really needs a car. But everyone has one anyway, as a symbol of status or simply a reliable commuter option.
And we are no different, we have a car.
We recently switched out our old diesel car (which was fine btw – and i am sure i make another family happy right now), to a plugin hybrid and installed a home charger.
The reason for this was mainly that we wanted to emit less pollution during our daily commuting.
If everyone bought solar panels, we would still need some fossil fuel power plants in the world to feed the need in peek demand, when there’s no direct solar, wind or hydro energy.
If everyone bought ev’s and relied on the grid for charging, i assume the price of power would go through the roof, because the increased demand wound increase the need to fossil fuel in the peek demand when there’s no direct solar, wind or hydro energy.
IMHO, We need private power storage options, like molten salt of sodium hydroxide, in mini scale with personal wind mills to make sure we can harvest as much of the green energy, when it’s there and use it when it’s not.