It's January, and as I sit here in the office looking out of the window, the sky is grey, the drizzle is falling and every now and again the roof patters with the sound of a brief hail shower just to remind you that it's cold out there as well.
It all suggests that Great Britain isn't the best place in the world to promote solar energy. Which is unfortunate, since we at Venture have just had one hundred and seventy six, two-metre solar panels fitted to our roof.
However, all is not as it seems. Our Solar Panels have their own web-based control panel and it is telling me that we've offset 3.27 tons of carbon, planted 8.96 trees (I am assuming metaphorically) and saved over £600 in electricity costs! The project was only commissioned at the end of October, and what's more it's been grey and miserable ever since!
If I am honest, we spent a small fortune on these strange black panels, not to metaphorically plant trees or save polar bears with our reduction in carbon, but rather it was expense reduction that was the driving factor. You see, ever since we bought a FabriVU 340 and installed a huge calendar unit for sublimation, which basically means heating a huge drum of oil up to 200 degrees and keeping it there all day, our electricity bill has been going skywards at a dramatic rate with seemingly no signs of stopping.
So if the figures on my screen are to be believed - and they seem to be backed up by a reduction in this month's electricity bill - I can conclude that covering the roof in Photovoltaic Cells has actually been a canny investment. I'm remembering the great summer we had last year, and I'm already looking forward to March when the sun starts occasionally peeping out from the clouds.
We'll be reducing our expenses and our carbon footprint at the same time - that's a win-win in anyone's book.