Going greener at home

Jenny Watkinson

7 August 2026

A good enough thing you can afford today beats a perfect thing you can’t

As a remote-first company, our homes are also our offices for many of the folk at dxw. Heating, cooling and powering them are costs employees carry, and a footprint dxw carries with them.

We asked around internally to find out what people have actually done to go greener at home, what it cost, and what they wish they’d known beforehand. One of our team offered up their real numbers – we’ve changed their name to Lesley in this post.

While we hope it’s useful, what this post likely won’t give you is a perfect answer. Most of our homes weren’t built for the climate we’ve got now, let alone the one that’s coming. But if your boiler dies, a more efficient replacement still helps. And a good enough thing you can afford today beats a perfect thing you can’t. 

The free bit first

The UK grid runs on just under 50% renewable energy on average, but your supplier doesn’t have to sell you the average. Some offer green or renewable tariffs, and a few sell 100% renewable or offset electricity.

Switching costs nothing, takes about 10 minutes, and can lower your bill as well as your footprint. Most suppliers run referral schemes, so ask a colleague for a code before you sign up and you’ll both get something out of it.

After that, turn the heating down a touch, and get your loft insulation up to at least 300mm. Neither is glamorous, but both are cheap.

Battery, then panels

This can surprise people, so it’s worth explaining.

A battery is useful even with no solar at all. The UK uses more electricity during the day than at night, but wind, for example, doesn’t keep the same schedule. So overnight power tends to be cheaper and cleaner. Charge a battery overnight, run your house from it between 16:00 and 20:00, and you cut both your bill and your emissions. Plenty of tariffs pay you to do exactly this.

You can also sell power back at peak times, or hand some control of your battery to a service that optimises it for you and pays you for the privilege.

If you’re planning a sequence of improvements, we’d suggest: battery, then solar, then a greener hot water system, then heat pumps, then wall insulation and windows. Your situation might reorder that. Ours is not the only sensible list.

You can see what the grid is running on right now at energydashboard.co.uk, which is a good way to lose 20 minutes if you like a chart.

But isn’t that a bad thing?

We’ve just had another hottest recorded day. Most of us will need to adjust to cope with more extremes, and sometimes this will mean taking short term actions, with less ability to save and plan longer term. Air conditioning is starting to look sensible rather than indulgent, and people feel guilty about that.

But it’s not all bad. Many new systems and products are still better than those that have gone before.

Air conditioning uses electricity to move heat out of a room. Two part systems, with an indoor and an outdoor unit, work best, but a single unit with a vent hose does the job. You’ll mostly run it in the middle of a hot, sunny day, which is when the grid is fullest of solar. If you have your own panels, it’s your solar running it.

So the running cost is more likely to bother you than the carbon. And most modern units also dehumidify, work as a fan, and heat in winter. If you’re weighing up a heat pump, don’t overlook air to air systems for this reason.

What it actually cost one of us

Lesley lives in a 1850s mid terrace in Norwich, facing roughly south/north. Two and a half years ago they fitted 16 panels at 420W each, 8 on each roof slope, with a 5kW inverter, a 9.5kWh battery and a car charger. In March 2026 they added a second 9.5kWh battery and 3 air conditioning units in the south facing rooms.

The system cost £16,300. The second battery was £3,500, the air conditioning £8,000.

On an overnight tariff at 7p per kWh, charging the battery cheaply and running the house from it during the day, Lesley’s average cost per unit over 2 years has been 10p to 11p. Peak rate on that tariff is 30p.

The bills dropped by over £1,150 a year, but that undersells it, because Lesley also started charging an electric car at home in that time. Counting it the other way round: in 2025 to 2026 they used 8,307kWh, 2,400kWh of which went into the car. At 29p a unit that would have cost £2,409. They paid £200.

Over 2 years, that’s recovered somewhere between 15% and 23% of what the kit cost, depending on how you count. The south facing roof generated 3.75MWh last year and the north facing roof 2.27MWh. North facing panels work. Not as well, but they work.

On 24 June 2026, one this year’s hottest days, the 3 air conditioning units used 16kWh and cooled most of the house to 20°C. The panels made 38.92kWh the same day. Nothing came off the grid.

5 things nobody mentions

• Your export payments will be late. Your installer submits a form to the distribution network operator, and until that’s processed you give your surplus to the grid for free. Lesley waited nearly 4 months.
• It won’t work in a power cut, unless you specifically ask for it. Say so early if it matters to you.
• You’ll have to arrange your own scaffolding, so get 2 quotes. It goes up before the install and comes down whenever. While it’s there, clean the gutters.
• Ask for a balanced system, not a maximal one. Lesley has nearly 7kW of panels behind a 5kW inverter, and that’s correct. The last few kWh of anything only earn their keep on a handful of days a year. Ask whether the battery is modular, so you can add to it later.
• Know and be clear about your goal. Fastest payback, most carbon saved, or best value per pound are 3 different systems. Tell the salesperson which one you want. Don’t tell them your ceiling.

Two dates worth knowing

The hardware for many of these improvements is currently zero rated for VAT. As things stand that becomes 5% in April 2027, so costs go up. Other things may change at the same time, so check before you commit.

dxw and a lot of other employers offer salary sacrifice schemes that can spread the cost and reduce the total. The government’s Warm Homes Plan also includes low or zero interest loans for solar, though the detail is still being worked out.

Worth watching

Right now a battery or panels have to be installed by an electrician, which shuts out most renters. Plug in systems are coming, they’re modular, they start small, and you can take them with you when you move. Sodium battery chemistry should bring prices down this year, with less environmental impact than lithium. And vehicle to home charging, where your car becomes a very large house battery, is real but only supported by a handful of cars so far.

Start where you are

You don’t have to do all of this, and you probably can’t. Pick the thing that makes the most difference to you, do that one, and leave the rest for later.

If you’ve done something in your own home we’ve missed, we’d like to hear about it.