Our new 1kW solar power system produces twice as much energy as we consume – making us a solar power company! Over a year our system averages about 5 kWh a day and we only use 2.5kwh! Details on how we’ve made our energy consumption so low are under energy. We’ve got a grid connected system, so all our excess power feeds straight back into the power grid, and our bio-directional meter measures the outgoing and incoming power. Soon we should get an energy payment instead of an energy bill arriving in our letter box...and with talk of electricity prices skyrocketing, that’s a pretty good position to be in!

Well it’s time to dust off the winter woollies and pull out the beanie, because the winter chills have arrived. Ways we’re keeping our place warm and toasty include:

• Insulating the ceiling
• Using heavy hemp curtains
• Sealing cracks in the windows, floors and around doors
• Heating only the room we’re using, and closing doors to other rooms
• Using the reversible ceiling fan

On those extra chilly nights we put our slow combustion wood heater on for a few hours. An efficient wood combustion heater (not an open fire), fed properly seasoned hardwood logs is the most environmentally friendly form of heating. It wins hands down over electric and gas heating, especially when you can use local, sustainably harvested timber. All of the timber for our fire will come from trees grown right here on our small suburban block (mainly fruit tree prunings). It’s cost neutral, carbon neutral heating! And the ash will be returned to our soil as a fertiliser at the end of winter. Sounds good to us!

For more info about the benefits of wood heating compared to other forms of heating, check out the following article written by David Holgrem: http://www.holmgren.com.au/DLFiles/PDFs/Firewood%20Web.pdf

After insulation, heavy curtains are an efficient and affordable way to keep the warmth from escaping through the windows in winter. To best stop your warm air escaping, you want good coverage over the window. We hung our curtains on a rod with wooden rings and placed the rod a good 10cm above the top of the window architrave, and let the curtains fall 30cm below the bottom architrave. We also placed a small hook in each of the brackets that support the curtain rod, so we can hook the curtain right around to touch the wall, and enclose the window nicely.

We made the curtains from heavy, natural, sustainable and attractive material - 100% herringbone hemp we ordered from www.hempgallery.com.au. And many thanks to our brilliant Nanna who turned them into beautiful curtains!

It's so good having a hot shower knowing the water has been heated by the sun rather than a coal fired power station! Making the switch to solar hot water should cut our electricity bill by a massive 60% - electric hot water systems are real energy guzzlers. We went with a 300L Solarhart hot water system, and fully installed, after the rebates, it cost us around $1,800.

There's federal and state rebates to take advantage of at the moment, if you're switching from electric hot water - check out www.environment.gov.au/settlements/renewable/solarhotwater and www.environment.nsw.gov.au/rebates for the details.

Summer’s almost upon us, and one of the easiest and most effective ways to help keep our homes cooler in summer and warmer in winter is to pop in some insulation in the roof, and in even the external walls, or under the floorboards if your place is above the ground.

We’ve been surprised at the difference it's made since we put insulation into our roof last month. And there’s rebates available at the moment too - the NSW state government will pay half the cost of installing your insulation, up to $300. Bring on summer!

A quick phone call was all it took to arrange for someone to come and swap all our incandescent light globes for energy efficient CFL's. And they did it for free! The new CFL bulbs are brilliant - they last much longer than incandescents, and use a quarter of the energy. Please don't be put off by the flickering, long warm up time, and stark white light of old compact fluorescent lighting. The new CFL lights have all overcome these problems and you really can't tell the difference between incandescent lighting and CFL lighting now, except for the shape of the bulbs!

Remember when disposing of CFL lights at the end of their life, you can't just throw them in the bin - they need to be properly disposed of on your Council's chemical clean-up day. This is because the CFL's contain more mercury than incandescent bulbs - but overall in places like NSW where most electricity is from burning coal, they result in less mercury being released into the environment because they require less energy.

For more info contact Green Alliance on 1300 787 749 (local call cost), email info@greenalliance.com.au, or visit www.greenalliance.com.au

Let the wind blow because today we’ve gone 100% Green Power! By joining more than 500,000 Australian homes and businesses that support Green Power, we’re supporting the development of exciting renewable energy projects like solar, wind, and wave. Perhaps Wollongong could be the first Green Powered city???

Check out our article on Green Power for more info.