My decarbonized life: the first cold month
(This article is part of a series on my personal transition to renewable energy. Previous articles are here, here and here)
Unusually, November was the first cold month of the winter in Madrid, so we didn’t need to turn the heating until the 6th. Until then, we just used the fireplace during the colder hours of the evening.
After a long, hot summer in the Spanish capital that continued well into autumn, we were finally faced with the challenge of turning on the heating and seeing how much truth there was in the promises of obtaining a reasonable energy balance compared to gas, which we have disconnected completely.
Heat pumps are central to the decarbonization and energy independence of Europe, but our experience during the first months we used ours, before we installed solar panels, at the end of last winter in March and April, had been quite worrying in terms of expenditure. With the heat pump just installed, still inexperienced in its use, and given that the installation of the solar panels in April coincided with the time when the heating was no longer needed, we lacked experience. Intuitively, and although the amortization of the cost was not what really concerned us, our feeling was that although we were very clear about the benefits of the solar panels and the battery in the medium term, at first sight, the heat…
