Earth Notes: The Earth Notes Podcast @Home
Auto-updated 2025-05-29.Listen to the Earth Notes occasional podcast on all things eco and green and efficient @Home! #eco #snackable #podcast
How to cut your carbon footprint at home without pain! All Earth Notes podcast episodes (audio-based articles) are listed here. Look out for the full transcripts.
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(You may also like to try: the basic feed, site technicals, saving electricity and gas. Oh, and the EOU Mastodon feed.)
The podcast started in . The first two episodes were created to support a local naturalist who leads guided walks around our local council housing estate.
Episodes are typically:
- 'snackable' at just a few minutes long
- on a green, or energy efficiency, or energy data topic: 'storycast' not 'chatcast'
- based at home
Some episodes are a little more tangential, such as listening to the temperature of your radiators for a whole year in one second.
Some episodes are longer. Watch out for video too!
There are also ambient and sonification episodes with little or no commentary.
Episodes
69 episodes, newest first:
- : Why Do Start-ups? (2025) 16 min a c
- : A Home-heat Carol (2024-12) 12 min a c
- : MUSIC RSS Podcast Feed Efficiency Sonification 2 2 min a c
- : Crows in the Cemetery on a Hot June Afternoon (2024-06) 6 min a c
- : MUSIC RSS Podcast Feed Efficiency Sonification 1 2 min a c
- : KEHS talk: The Truth About Heat Pumps (2024) 13 min a c
- : KEHS talk: Why Do Solar? (2024) 20 min a c
- : KEHS talk: Fresh Home Solar PV Install in Kingston (2024) 25 min a c
- : KEHS talk: Draughts, Insulation, Ventilation (2024) 12 min a c
- : Repair Café Kingston Report to Council and TTK AGM (2024) 6 min a c
- : Diarycast - Year In Review (2023) 5 min a c
- : 16WW Hot Noon Garden Ambient (2023-09) 7 min a c
- : Paris Gard du Nord Train Station Afternoon Piano (2023-09) 5 min a c
- : UK Home Heating Decarbonisation Seminar Presentation (2023-08) 17 min a c
- : MUSIC Yearly Electricity Grid Flows Sonified 2 min a c
- : MUSIC Water Music: In The House 1 min a c
- : Diarycast - Year In Review, and One Weird Trick (2022) 7 min a c
- : The Sound of Campsite (2022-08) 8 min a c
- : Six Minutes of Med-ness (2022-08) 7 min a c
- : TTK AGM Overview (2022) 7 min a c
- : Statscast - Energy Storage Stats Special (2022-05) 8 min a c
- : 16WW House Suburban Sparrows Ambient (2022-05) 11 min a c
- : Hanwell Hootie Ambient (2022-05) 11 min a c
- : Diarycast - End of Year Roundup (2021-12-28) 3 min a c
- : Diarycast - June to November Roundup (2021-11-14) 6 min a c
- : English River August Ambient (2021-08) 11 min a c
- : Microbrewery Ambient (2021-09) 11 min a c
- : Direycast - I'm All Right Jack (2021-08-28) 4 min a c
- : On Being a Hardware Developer (2021) 12 min a c
- : Herne Bay Ambient (2021-07) 24 min a c
- : Wren Loud and Bold Ambient (2021-06) 2 min a c
- : Diarycast - March Warm, April Snow, June Xmas (2021-06-14) 3 min a c
- : Diarycast - Smoke and Snow to Census Jab (2021-03-21) 4 min a c
- : Soundscape - Going Postal in Audio 21 min a c
- : Diarycast - Interview Snippets (2021-01-14) 4 min a c
- : Statscast - Load Profile (2020-12) 4 min a c
- : Soundscape - Solstice Exercise Mile Walk 20 min a c
- : Diarycast - Solstice Lockdown Edition (2020-12-21) 8 min a c
- : VIDEO Smart Radiator Valves Video 17 min a c
- : Statscast - Baselines and Bats (2020-09) 9 min a c
- : Weymouth Ambient (2020-08) 22 min a c
- : Diarycast - Summer Catch-up (2020-09-25) 5 min a c
- : Soundwalk - an hour on the Cambridge Road Estate (2020-09-12) 61 min a c
- : Bats Around our Home aka 16WW 38 min a c
- : Diarycast - Conscious Uncouping - Travel (2020-07-26) 9 min a c
- : Diarycast - Conscious Uncouping (2020-07-12) 7 min a c
- : Statscast - Normal-ish June, Heating Re-viewed (2020-06) 9 min a c
- : Statscast - Lockdown Changes, Log Noises (2020-05) 11 min a c
- : Diarycast - Urban Dawn Chorus (2020-05-23) 24 min a c
- : Diarycast - Ambient Sound of a Graveyard (2020-05-13) 11 min a c
- : Diarycast - Lockdown Patently Workable (2020-05-10) 4 min a c
- : Statscast - PV Up, Travel Down, Weakly Weeklies (2020-04) 11 min a c
- : Diarycast - Blue Skies PV High (2020-04-22) 3 min a c
- : Metacast 2: Podcast Specs and Workflow (2020-04) 5 min a c
- : Diarycast - Lockdown Lawnmowing Sadly Allowed (2020-04-13) 3 min a c
- : Metacast 1: Blue Yeti, Shy Eurasian Footwear (2020-04) 4 min a c
- : Coronacast for March 2020 2 min a c
- : Sign-off for 2019, Hello 2020! 7 min a c
- : VIDEO OpenTRV Movie Mashup 2 min a c
- : Water Music: How Does Tap-water Temperature Sound in Time-lapse? 5 min a c
- : The Green Existence of Adam Hart-Davis 6 min a c
- : PV Sounds: How Does PV Grid-tie Generation Sound in Time-lapse? 3 min a c
- : Battery Sounds: How Does a Battery Sound in Time-lapse? 3 min a c
- : Rad Sounds II: Attempting a Higher-fi Home-heating Time-lapse 3 min a c
- : Greener Travel: Why Cut Car-bon Miles? 4 min a c
- : Rad Sounds: How Cool is your Home Heating in Time-lapse? 3 min a c
- : Aircon On, Windows Open! (2019-08) 3 min a c
- : About Our Greenish Home aka 16WW, with Bonus Bats and Sparrows 4 min a c
- : Solar Panels in My Garden 2 min a c
a = episode artwork, c = WebVTT captions/transcript
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Diary
Diary of some EOU HQ and notable and personal events/stats, for a future diarycast!
- : on a sunny bank holiday I note that the Dynamic Containment price (as shown on The Energy Current) is £7.81/MW/hr, which implies that my ~1kW.h/d of frequency response might be worth ~1p per day!
- :
I gave a Pint of Science talk [PDF] in Guildford tonight at The Star Inn (photo by Dr Caroline Shenton-Taylor). - : at Tottenham Court Road my baseball cap was blown onto the Central Line tracks!
- : it took about 8h on the phone over about a week (though 5h was over Sun/Mon) to return my savings at one UK bank to my main account with the UK bank that just bought them: absolutely shambolic failure of their anti-fraud process punishing the innocent. I was awarded compensation on three points from my upheld observations made on my first complaint.
- : reduced 'power' limit for heat pump to be 5A, thus the Enphase can support it entirely when not empty to minimise imports.
- : the cemetery is open again today.
- : for the last couple of days the cemetery next door has been closed to most people (eg me taking a walk) and guarded by police: Kingston Cemetery: Woman in hospital with life-changing injuries.
- : I spent ~5h over last 2d to do part of a transaction to transfer some savings back from my old bank to my account with its new owner. I have filed a couple of complaints that I hope will make someone in senior management weep. But I also wrote some interesting control code in a place that it should not live, based on inferences about key data that I can not get to, and it seems to work!
- : visited the Wimbledon Art Fair and may have spoken to most of the (180!) artists with their studios open: my brain is full!
- : managed the Kingston's Efficient Homes Show 2025 short talks by day, and went out for several beers in the evening.
- : filed a response to the government's
Boiler Upgrade Scheme and Certification requirements for clean heat schemes consultation
. - : TTK AGM tonight...
- :
the off-grid system powered the router overnight, possibly for the first time this year. - : sent in my slides for the 2025 University of Surrey PGR/ECR conference.
- : after my son took a bath last night and the other two took showers today, I thought that my hot bath today was doomed: in the end 0.7kWh of heat pump DHW top up went in after I drew my bath, saving a bit of diversion for the grid in due course!
- : mains voltage reported as 233.3V during 3kW kettle demand in evening (no PV, ~100W other demand, battery supplying ~1.3kW), 237.7V when the kettle finished.
- : total PV generation reported on the SunnyBoy is 60,738.2kWh as of Z, ie over 60MWh.
- : fifth Enphase ACB installed today, at around noon.
- : sunny morning, watching an exact apparent match of the dishwasher consuming 2.3kWh with the PV generation the same, with both the battery and grid connection idle...
- : for the first time in many months, I was able to do a full orbit of the sunny cemetery today, with the flooded path by the north (Bonner Hill Road) fence and the brambles overgrowing the path at the east boundary both under control.
- : today I went to Solar and Storage Live at Excel London, and learned that £1k/kWh is probably still a reasonable installed price for home AC-coupled storage, with the typical range in prices being maybe 40% with FoxESS at the budget end (~£200/kWh wholesale). And a ~450Wp mid range solar panel wholesales for £50–£100 so it really is the labour and other installation costs that matter! Oh and a big packaged battery system for about 1 month of winter consumption for us at 16WW towers (~300kWh) from Prime Batteries for ~EUR80k (~4t, ~9m^3)!
- : at just this time of year (and a mirror couple of weeks in the Autumn) the sun rises directly over the houses outside our bedroom window and blinds me while I set in bed unless I pull the curtains!
- : Enphase ACB, DHW cylinder, Thermino heat battery and the off-grid battery were all full by just after solar noon ( BST)!
- : did not quite fill up all the energy stores today: Enphase and DHW cylinder both were full, Thermino estimated <1kWh capacity left.
- :
a partial solar eclipse landed ~ to ~ here with blue/hazy skies, so obviously also the perfect time to run (possibly the first) 'intense' (65°C) dishwasher maintenance wash of the year while avoiding importing from the grid! GB grid solar generation seemed to dip ~16GW/~15% at ~, looking at Sheffield Solar. This also seems like a good day to stop taking vitamin D until autumn; I have been intermittent the last few days. - : assuming that I can resolve my current long-running dispute with Enphase about read-only local access to my data, eg battery SoC, I am contemplating adding 1 or 2 more ACB units to improve self-consumption outside winter.
- : we are due a pasteurisation cycle, so PV diversion priority has automagically been set to the DHW cylinder. And because the grid carbon intensity in the wee hours was too high to do it that way, PV diversion is being hoped for, and indeed is much preferred. Reader, it all worked: ~3kWh to the DHW cylinder and ~1.4kWh to the Thermino.
- : blue skies (though chilly outside); Enphase and Thermino (ie electric and heat batteries) both charging well before noon, and my laptop is being powered off-grid. ~5kWh each into the Enphase and Thermino by EOD. At ~ we turned off the space heating and the OpenTRV unit; the pipe-freeze protection means that the pump and compressor will still run at low settings when outside is cold (~≤6°C). The bathroom MHRV fan was also turned off to save ~2W.
- : 53 minutes of grid-response by the Eddi today (~27% of active)! By mid-evening for March so far our PV generation was almost identical to consumption (including diversion) at ~170kWh, though ~43kWh was still imported and ~26kWh exported. About one third of consumption (a bit under 4kWh/d) passed through the Enphase ACB.
- : we are contemplating turning heating off in the middle of next week when daily temperatures seem set to stay at or about 12°C.
- : last of my set of four favourite 'tulip' wine glasses died today — I noticed a big L-shaped crack as I was pouring red wine. Three of them died within a few months and the set was maybe at least a decade old...
- : I just manually scheduled my dishwasher run water-heating demand around a 30:1 (3366W peak down to 111W trough in 7 minutes) swing in PV generation — blue sky direct sun to hail and then slowly back — 'flexible demand' and 'self consumption' for the win ...
- : I am using up in porch Radbot
4oa couple of pairs of old AA alkaline cells of unknown remaining capacity, for recycling after, as a break from the usual parade of NiMHs. - : SVN repo version to 62008 before this comment committed!
- : we seem to be booking a full family holiday this year, woven around various other dates such as GCSE results and degree retake dates...
- : daytime outside temperatures in these sunny early days in March are high enough (over 15°C) to turn off the space heating entirely for the duration, except the circulation pump when the OpenTRV boiler controller calls for heat. In April turning that base unit off alongside space heating would save maybe ~20W. (I managed a little shirt-off sunbathing in the garden this afternoon, and I am giving the house an airing.)
- : a pasteurisation cycle ran overnight for the DHW tank, and then some diversion to the Thermino heat battery started -ish.
- : I accidentally forced the Ecotricity bill a day early, but in any case for this month it is ~£99 vs ~£20 more last February.
- : I saw inside an A&E (US: "emergency room") for the first time, at UCL, accompanying a friend there. Got to the front of the queue after ~5 minutes, triaged after another ~10 minutes, discharged ~90m from arrival.
- : external temperatures up to ~15°C in the afternoon; technically we barely need space heating, which is handy as I completely powered down the heat pump to help reconnecting the heat battery.
- : I posted a talk proposal for the NLUUG spring conference.
- : I filed a claim with Thames Water for a surface water drainage rebate (~£50/y) on the grounds that all our rain run-off goes to soakaways, eg as listed under Non-energy things done
: installed roof downpipe/downspout with 200l+ water butt for watering garden ... Run-off is to garden which should very slightly reduce strain on drains during a rain storm.
- : PV diversion to the DHW tank before noon...
- : the off-grid battery hit FULL today, and there was a smidge of diversion on-grid to the DHW tank.
- : unexpectedly giving a talk on my start-ups [PDF] tomorrow at the Hackathon17 that I am helping out with again; the hackathon is all weekend.
- : a bit of solar spill to grid before 1pm...
- : new glasses today, with a slight prescription change.
- : I have been delivered a new shiny toy - an Etekcity Lasergrip 1080 infrared thermometer!
- : according to the new pretty dashboard on AlDente Pro 1.30 my MBA's battery's peak capacity (after 272 cycles) is ~86% of FCS having dropped off a cliff from ~93% to ~88% on , so I am recalibrating in case that helps.
- : ARRRGH! — the Eddi stopped working properly yesterday evening apparently due to some latent old code causing undervoltage fault 47 and other weird behaviour and the live values I can see are not being properly stored in the myenergi database for later access, and the OpenTRV stats receiver seemed to have gone at least partly deaf though improved when power cycled and moved a few cm away from the outside wall and ~30cm from the Purrmetrix gateway (currently indicating that it is using 3G)...
- : Octopus declared "job done" today and I paid the balance of their fee. Another tentacle SPAMed me the next day offering me 10% off solar PV...
- : I attended a useful all-morning AI seminar for researchers in the engineering school at university, which taught me the current/new art terms for things I had had to work out myself in my GA (genetic algorithm) fiddling before university the first time ~40 years ago: "reward shaping"! Spent quite some time before, during and after the event comparing Octopus Daikin home heat-pump installation notes with a recent head of my department (AD)...
- : new fibre optics have just been laid today into the part of the estate due to be bulldozed, including close to me...
- :
to slightly lighten my footprint, on my personal Mastodon/Fediverse account I have set posts to evaporate (auto-delete) after a year if they have not been liked or boosted etc, which should trim storage requirements a little with minimal loss of value. - : daughter back to uni today, so she did not get to see out of a fixed window!
- : the window people did not show today (looks like the work did not get booked in on their side)...
- : had to use MailChimp today for the first time (historically I have been SPAMmed crazy through it) for Kingston Invents.
- : actually during my PhD supervision, one of my supervisors had his gas meter removed, so both he and I have switched from gas heating to heat pumps and 'defossilised' this winter!
- : reduced my review rating for the Enphase system from 4.5 to 2 because of the continuing failure to make stats available across the LAN as before which breaks lots of my integrations.
- : outside temperatures touched -2°C first this this morning making for some pretty frost on our windows in the morning sunshine, and an iced-up bathroom fan overnight. The new heat pump is working well, and at noon was being entirely powered by our PV, which I did not expect to happen in winter!
- : we used less electricity last month than the previous (warmer) December, so the heat pump seems to be doing its job.
More
You may be interested in nitty-gritty tech updates and daily learnings while keeping the Earth Notes site up and running.
Some documentation of my set-up and workflow is in episode "Metacast 2".
See also Podcast Industry Statistics, updated daily.
There are the first wisps of a SoundCloud.
I have some anecdotes.