Electricity goes up 20% & carbon tax, reduce usage!

July 1st the "promised" 20% increase in power comes into effect. I *think* this is on top of our governments idea to give us a carbon tax. Either way it's time to reduce our reliance on our electricity usage.

*We have one tiny refrigerator only (as in no freezer in it) and 1 deep freeze chest style.
Out fridge uses very little power and we turn the freezer off by a timer every night. I can't reduce them much further other than doing away with them altogether which is possible. I could survive using a pot-in-pot style to keep a few things cool, I'd prefer not to at this stage.

*We have a tiny solar panel on our roof, in fact it was my Christmas gift last Christmas from Pooh. Of course Pooh bought a regulator and is so small these days, amazing. This panel charges two second hand small sealed gel batteries that we got from a mobility scooter man. Here they are in the cupboard, looking rather dodgy at this stage, but we are still in the "testing phase"!

*From these batteries we run a car CD player and radio. We have car speakers through the ceiling, the sound is awesome and if the main power goes out we can listen for community announcements during bush fire season.

*Also from these batteries we have some 12volt lights that are in the ceiling, neat little down lights so at night we don't require the mains power and of course when it goes out which it does regularly here we have very little interruption to our life.

*On top of this, we use a tiny inverter, you can get them cheaply from Dick Smith or car supply places. We charge our lap tops too. While studying, between the 3 of us, there was always a laptop charging. We just changed over to charging this way.

*We have the computer modem on other than that we have nothing else plugged into mains on stand by mode. We turn the TV on for a few shows then turn it off.