So far, not so good with the tea lights. I loved the idea of a people’s revolution; the end of the Big 6; everyone taking responsibility for self sufficiency and even making their own tea lights out of bacon fat with Margi Clarke leading the masses.

Unfortunately, after a thorough investigation which involved standing in a very cold utility room for far too long, I have concluded that the tea lights just don’t give out enough heat. Certainly not enough to keep my rubbish fridge freezer working.

Watch this video to see what happened. Basically, even with 2 mega tea lights (costing 40p) we still didn’t get the tiny room to above 12 degrees centigrade.

So last night we put the fan heater (1.5 KW) in there and set it to kick in if the temperature dropped below 16C. This morning, when I checked after 9 hours, the room was 16.1C and the heater had used .31KW of electricity. That cost us less than 4p.