Our Hyundai Ioniq plug-in hybrid electric car has surprised us and out performed our expectations once again.

Last month, we achieved 593 kilometres to the litre fuel economy. But now, because of the lock down and the fact that we haven’t driven any long trips, where we would usually drive out on the battery and return on the petrol engine, we have found that we achieved 655 km per litre in May. Quite unexpected, but very pleasing.

This exceptional fuel economy is of course due to the fact that we have only made short trips to the shops for the last coupe of months. We have been limited to the 150 km. district from Campbelltown to Moss Vale for our basic needs.

The other good news is that we got the solar panels back on our roof last month, so we are now recharging the car directly from the PV panels on the roof during the day and from the battery at night. These days, we only connect into the grid to sell our excess. We have micro inverters on each solar panel, so we generate 240 volts directly into the house/workshop micro grid, we use the power from the PV panels directly into whatever appliance is being used at the time. If we are not consuming enough, the excess is then directed automatically to the battery to top it up if necessary, and only then is any excess directed to the grid for sale.

Shortly after re-installing the new solar panels on the new carport/workshop roof, we got the electrician to wire in the new fast charger for the car. This doubles the speed that we can recharge the car, as we were previously forced to use the standard 10 amp, 3 pin, outside power point to charge the car for the past 5 months. Things are starting to happen now.

Next, we took delivery of two new water tanks to go on the new shed. These are 10,000 litre tanks, bringing the storage capacity for theses two sheds up to 32,000 litres. Enough capacity to supply a high pressure fire fighting pump for about 4 hours at full volume. I have to install wall and roof sprinklers on these two sheds sometime in the not too distant future, so that we will be prepared for the next catastrophic fire event.

Lastly, we finally finished the north end of the new gabion stone filled wall. I needed to increase the height of the wall where it terminated at the battery shed and the power pole where the Tesla ‘gateway’ and the electrical meter box are located. The gateway and meter box were destroyed in the recent fire, with all the plastic components melted and electronics ‘cooked’.

This new wall height extension should help to elevate this in the future?

We started on the south end, but haven’t achieved much so far. All the poles cemented into the ground and half of the wire frame completed. It’s keeping us busy.