Documenting my journey (and mistakes) building a smarter home using Home Assistant, solar power, EV charging and energy optimisation.
Electric Vehicles
I've been driving our Peugeot e-308 GT for ten months and 10,000 miles. Here's what it's actually like to live with — the real-world range, what it costs to charge at home, driving to France, and the one frustration I didn't expect.
Smart Home
Our battery was full, solar was still generating, and we were exporting for nothing. So we built a Home Assistant automation to divert excess solar into heating our hot water tank instead.
Smart Home
We needed to stop Intelligent Octopus Go from draining our Powerwall during daytime EV charges — without interfering with Octopus's control. Here's how we built our first Home Assistant automation to solve it.
Smart Energy
We switched from E-On Next Drive to Octopus Energy in February 2026. What followed was weeks of missing readings, repeated calls, and a smart meter that refuses to communicate reliably. Here's the full timeline and what we've learned so far.
Electric Vehicles
After a year of connectivity issues and failed overnight charges with our PodPoint 3, we switched to a Hypervolt Pro 3.
Smart Energy
How we installed 7.6kW of solar panels and a Tesla Powerwall 3 on our all-electric home — the full cost, what went wrong with our installer, and early performance data from Suffolk.