Vi har funnet ut at det er lettere å snakke om tankesmien vår hvis den har et navn. Derfor har vi valgt et navn, og vi heter nå Grønn fase.
Grønn fase betyr at vi er på vei inn i en ny tid, en fase der vi i Norge skal basere vår industri og vårt næringsliv på grønn økonomi. Vi skal bli et foregangsland innen utslippsreduksjoner, og og ta viktige hensyn miljø og natur.
Grønn fase betyr også at vi er inne i en kreativ fase der nye ideer er kjempeviktig. Vi må tenke nytt og ikke være redd for å utfordre gammelt tankegods!
More fun with time-lapse photography
In my last blog post, I had just started getting to know my new Brinno TLC200 Pro time lapse camera. Since then I have made a number of videos under varying conditions, all of which have turned out really well. Here's a picture of the camera:
Once you own a time-lapse camera, you think of all kinds of uses for it. I have always wanted to see a day in the life of my cat. She is over 12 years old and relatively sedentary and she likes to sit in her window seat and sleep and then watch the birds at the bird feeder outside the window occasionally. So I set up the camera to document her from mid-morning until dusk.
Update Feb 5, 2020: I always wanted to see myself clearing snow using my Craftsman snow thrower and we got 7" today so I set up the camera outside with it's waetherproof housing.
These videos were all shot in 1080 P high-definition video, so you can view them full-screen and they look great. Stay tuned to my YouTube channel to see more videos as I put them up.
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| Brinno TLC pro |
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| Click image to see YouTube video |
I have been making wood bowls from freshly cut trees for the last few years. When an apple tree blew down in a storm recently I was able to harvest some beautiful wood and made some bowls from it. The rest of the tree will be harvested for firewood. I set up the camera to take images once per second and got this great video.
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| Click image to see YouTube video |
Update Feb 5, 2020: I always wanted to see myself clearing snow using my Craftsman snow thrower and we got 7" today so I set up the camera outside with it's waetherproof housing.
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| Click image to see YouTube video |
These videos were all shot in 1080 P high-definition video, so you can view them full-screen and they look great. Stay tuned to my YouTube channel to see more videos as I put them up.
Solar power backup - my dirty little secret
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| solar panels right before I cleared then in the morning |
When I tell people that I have a solar powered home they tend to assume that I have battery backup for power outages. I don't. I have a grid intertied system, so any excess power I generate gets fed into the grid for which I get a credit under net metering rules. In essence the grid is my storage, because I can use up that credit in the fall and winter. When the power fails my solar power system shuts down to prevent my power from back feeding into the grid and harming line workers (this is a federally mandated safety system).
By not having a battery I have to use a different strategy to survive the winter storm power outages that average 3 days each year here in rural Maine. Some outages have run over 7 days, while other are just a few hours. I need power to run my home based business, well pump, heating systems, refrigerator etc.
Since my solar power system is not designed to incorporate battery backup, I decided to install an automatic home backup generator that runs on propane. This generator starts up in 15 seconds and powers my whole property - house and workshop. Yes, I'm burning fossil fuel to generate power! But the cost performance trade-offs made sense at the time.
After every snow storm, the first thing I do is clear the solar panels and collectors - even if the power did not go out. If the power did go out, the generator turns on with in 15 seconds. I want to get as much free solar energy as possible. So I have a long snow rake that I use to remove all the snow - usually in the morning before the sun hits the panels.
There has been a change in the solar industry in the last year or so. They are now offering home battery backups - whether or not you have solar power. This is due the the plunging costs of large batteries like those use in electric vehicles. Enphase, the company that makes the microinverters that I use have introduced just such a system, and there are many others like the Tesla Powerwall. Click here for details about the Enphase battery system. And click here to read an informative blog post from Energy Sage about Tesla Powerwall cost realities. At some point I hope to install a system like this, but for now it is beyond my means.
Offshore vindkraftseminar i Trondheim
Torsdag 20.- og fredag 21. januar var en stor del av norsk vindkraftbransje samlet i Trondheim, på et seminar i regi av de to FME-senterne NORCOWE og NOWITECH. I og med at begge senterne var involvert, ble det et bredt program, med alt fra bladdesign via nettilknytning til meteorologiske modeller.
I tillegg til norske aktører var det enkelte representanter fra andre Europeiske land til stede. Naturlig nok herunder noen briter. Under de oppsummerende foredragene på fredagen fikk vi en ”se til Storbritannia”-presentasjon holt av Phil de Villiers, fra britiske Carbon-Trust. Og arbeidet de gjør der vitner om at de mener alvor. Her har norske myndigheter absolutt noe å lære, både hva ambisjoner og systematikk angår. For øvrig var det en klar holdning på seminaret om at norsk leverandørindustri ikke kunne vente på at et hjemmemarked skal bli etablert, den må kaste seg på det som skjer ute i Europa nå.
På alle offshore vindkrafttilstelninger i Norge er det et foredrag som er nesten obligatorisk: Sjur Bratland, Statoil - ” HyWind operational experience, new developments on access and future plans”.
Dette seminaret var i så måte inget unntak. HyWind sin pilotturbin har nå stått ute i omtrent et og et halvt år, og alle rapporter virker positive. Så vidt jeg kunne se på framtidsplanene Bratland presenterte denne gangen, var de noe framskyndet fra tilsvarende foredrag for et år siden. Noe som sikkert også er koblet til Helge Lunds kommentar fra i høst, om at inntjeningskravene til fornybarsegmentet til Statoil er like strenge som de til olje- og gassvirksomheten. First major boiler repair since I installed it in 2001
The solar augmented heating system I designed and built for my workshop back in 2001 has performed very well (details on my web site). Maintenance has been minimal as far as the equipment itself is concerned the only part that failed was a pressure tank in 2010 which was easy to replace. The boiler is only used to augment the stored solar heat in the 40 gallon storage tank so it rarely is running full blast. It just needs to add enough heat to bring the temperature up to 140F for my radiators. On a typical sunny day in winter the water in the storage tank is over 150F by the late afternoon. As that gets drawn down to about 110F the boiler makes up the difference.
A week or so ago I noticed that the exhaust blower for the Bosch Aquastar boiler was not running and my utility room was hot and smelled like propane fumes. The heat was due to the stalled motor that was getting really hot. The bearings had seized so it could not remove the hot exhaust.
The Aquastar boiler itself has only required minimal maintenance over the last 18 years - good German engineering. The blower motor has 22545 hours on it. I know this because I put an hour meter on it to log running hours. That's equivalent to 2.6 years of continuous operation!
Removing it and replacing it required just a few bolts and screws, and wiring the new motor in. The wiring in the control box was a total snake pit, but the motor only has 3 wires, so it was not too daunting for a skilled electrical engineer like me.
The new blower runs much quieter because the crud that had built up in the old one was making it run out of balance and it vibrated.
I enjoy repairing and maintaining the system that I designed and I hope that it will continue to work for many years. Click here or on the image below to see live performance of the system.
If I could afford it I would replace the solar collectors and storage tank with an air source heat pump and keep the boiler and radiators as a backup. Heat pumps are better bang for the buck these days. Solar collectors for building heating are no longer cost competitive both from a performance standpoint and on and return on investment.
Idling vehicles - bad for all concerned
At this time of year I occasionally notice vehicles left idling in parking lots, sometimes they are completely unattended. While this practice has been common in the winter in northern states for a long time, it is a really bad idea for a lot of reasons. From a sustainability standpoint reducing wasted gasoline and CO2 emissions is a no-brainer. Leaving vehicles idling is an old habit that is irrelevant to modern engines that do not need to be kept warm. By one estimate nearly 2% of the nations CO2 emissions come from vehicles that are not moving. According to a study by the Argonne National Laboratory in 2009 drivers actually averaged 16 minutes a day of idling.
An idling vehicle emits 20 times more pollution than when it is moving at 30 mph. These emissions are particularly problematic for children who are more sensitive to air pollution since their defense mechanisms are not yet fully developed. This is why many school zones have declared their parking areas "No Idling Zones". Here in Maine temperatures remain below freezing on average for most of the winter, here is a chart from my weather station spanning February 2013 through April 2020:
An idling vehicle emits 20 times more pollution than when it is moving at 30 mph. These emissions are particularly problematic for children who are more sensitive to air pollution since their defense mechanisms are not yet fully developed. This is why many school zones have declared their parking areas "No Idling Zones". Here in Maine temperatures remain below freezing on average for most of the winter, here is a chart from my weather station spanning February 2013 through April 2020:
While it is understandable to want to warm up a vehicle for a minute or so before you get in it, the vehicle itself does not require it. When an engine idles it is not running at its optimum operating temperature and condition, resulting in incomplete combustion of gasoline that can leave fuel residues in the engine which can shorten its life. Modern fuel injection vehicles can and should be driven after only warming up for a few seconds since that warms up the catalytic converter and other parts of the car more rapidly. Here is a helpful reference about vehicle idling and the issues surrounding it.
With the advent of hybrid vehicles, needless idling is being reduced because almost all hybrid vehicles shut off their gasoline engines when they are at a standstill. Vehicle manufacturers are also developing auto stop features for regular gasoline engines, and many vehicles in Europe now have that feature. My wife and I have owned hybrid vehicles since 2001 and are very familiar with engines that automatically stop when the vehicle stops, although people new to this feature find it disconcerting at first. The engine restarts instantly when you put it in gear or move your foot down on the accelerator. This is one of the schemes that hybrid vehicles use to reduce their carbon emissions and obtain low emission ratings.
My 2012 Chevy Volt has a remote start feature that allows me to warm up the vehicle for 10 minutes from over 100 feet away by clicking the keyfob. This wonderfully convenient feature allows me to step into a warm vehicle in the dead of winter. Since I leave the vehicle plugged in, it will use energy from the (240V Level II) charging station to warm the battery unless it is below 20°F in which case it will run the four-cylinder 1.4 L engine/generator for a while in order to generate enough waste heat to warm up the battery to a safe level. Electric vehicle batteries can be damaged if they draw power when they are below freezing, so the vehicle needs to protect itself in this instance. Sometimes in very cold weather if I am driving in fully electric mode, the engine will start and show a display on the dashboard that says: "Engine running due to temperature". GM engineers considered this an optimal trade-off to protect the very expensive battery bank.
You may believe that turning a car on and off repeatedly wears out the battery and wears out the starter, but it's not true. Today, nearly every passenger vehicle engine uses electronic ignition so you do not need to crank the engine for multiple seconds to start it like the old carburetor engines. You may not have noticed it but modern vehicles very rarely need to be jump started and keeping jumper cables in the trunk is a thing of the past.
To quote from the above-mentioned reference:
The city of Aspen, Colorado, launched a program called Idling Isn’t Cool, which targets people who let their cars idle to warm them up in cold weather or while running errands. Environmental health specialists walk through town and place small, laminated placards featuring an image of the earth sweating from heat on windshields of offenders. The placard reads, “Turning off your engine when you are not driving is one of the easiest things you can do to lessen your contribution to global warming.” It goes on to explain that 30 seconds of idling is ample time to get engine oil circulating. It also cites the city ordinance that makes it illegal to idle an engine for 5 minutes or more and provides a link to calculate personal carbon emissions, www.aspenglobalwarming.com/calculate.cfm.
The city of Aspen, Colorado, launched a program called Idling Isn’t Cool, which targets people who let their cars idle to warm them up in cold weather or while running errands. Environmental health specialists walk through town and place small, laminated placards featuring an image of the earth sweating from heat on windshields of offenders. The placard reads, “Turning off your engine when you are not driving is one of the easiest things you can do to lessen your contribution to global warming.” It goes on to explain that 30 seconds of idling is ample time to get engine oil circulating. It also cites the city ordinance that makes it illegal to idle an engine for 5 minutes or more and provides a link to calculate personal carbon emissions, www.aspenglobalwarming.com/calculate.cfm.
Not idling your vehicle is a simple behavior change similar to turning lights off when you leave a room. Both things will save you money and improve the quality of life on planet Earth for future generations.
Staying warm with interior storm windows
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| Small interior storm window installed |
Several years ago my friend Topher came up with a simple design for a double pane interior storm window that doubles or triples the insulation value of windows while also preventing all air movement through the window. Through the auspices of our group called the Midcoast Green Collaborative we set up workshops throughout the state to teach people how to make these very simple windows. Since then we estimate more than 10,000 of them have been deployed around the state and many more in the world at large.
They are constructed from a 1 x 2 wood frame with heat shrink plastic film affixed to an inner and outer surface to create a double pane window. Highly compressible weatherstrip foam tape is adhered to the outer edge so that when the window is inserted into the window frame a complete seal is created. Each trapped air layer has an approximate R-value of 1. If you assume a single pane window which has an R-value of 1, by inserting an interior storm window you are trapping 2 additional air pockets resulting in an R-value of 3. This dramatically reduces the heat loss through exterior windows. In most homes in northern cold climates these windows pay for themselves in the first heating season.
The cost to build these interior storm windows is approximately a $1.25 per square foot. This means that they can be constructed for a cost of $15-$20 per window. Generally they take two people 30 to 40 minutes each to build and do not require any significant skills or special tools.
If you live in a cold climate and want to reduce your heating bills these interior storm windows represent an extremely cost effective way to do that.
Resources:
Very detailed assembly instructions on my webpage
Midcoast Green Collaborative webpage
Basic two-page instruction sheets (pdf format)
Thermal study of a window with interior storms added
Instructions are also available in Charlie wings excellent book: "The Visual Handbook of Energy Conservation". Here is my review of the book.
Topher's website
Med kreativitet skal fremtiden bygges
Nå er vi klar for en ny runde med Grønn fases energipris. Budskapet spres nå til alle Norges universiteter og høyskoler og kreative studenter stikker hodene sine sammen for å komme opp med gode idéer til hvordan vi kan forsyne verden med miljøvennlig energi i fremtiden. Eller hvordan vi kan få den vi har til å strekke lenger? Eller hvordan vi kan gjøre dagens miljøsvin til vinnere i fremtiden? Hvem vet, jeg gleder meg i alle fall til å se forslagene vi får inn fremover. Fristen for å levere inn forslag og ha en sjanse til å vinne 50.000 kr er 1. mars!
Mer informasjon på www.sffe.no/energipris.
Kva kan vi eigentlig gjere?
Eg deltok på "Kunnskapsbyen forum" i går, der klimaproblematikken og dens løyningar sto på agendaen. Med "Kunnskapsbyen" meiner vi her Kjeller/Lillestrøm, ein stad med høg konsetrasjon av teknologibedrifter, særkilt innan energiteknologi. Det var difor mange teknologar til stades, og eg kan vel trygt seie at det prega møtet.
Eg regner meg sjølv i høgste grad for å være energiteknolog, og det som kom fram på møtet fall derfor i god jord, der vi fekk foredrag om rolla vindkraft, solceller og vatnkraft speler for å finne løysinger til klimaproblemet. Men sjølv om eg er teknolog, liker eg også banale spørsmål. Gjerne med tilsvarande banale svar.
På sjølve innkallinga til møtet vart følgjande svært banale og nære spørsmål stilt: "Kva kan vi i Lillestrømområdet gjere for å bidra til å løyse klimaproblemet?".
Spørsmålet er svært enkelt, og men vi fekk ikkje noko godt svar på spørsmålet på møtet. Eg vil difor gjerne besvare spørsmålet her.
1) Transport
Vi i Lillestrømområdet kan for å bidra til å løyse klimaproblemet tenkje meir på korleis vi forflytter oss og kor mykje vi forflytter oss. Vi kan bruke mindre bil og meir tog, buss, sykkel og føtter. Vi kan handle på den lokale butikken i staden for på kjøpesenteret. Vi kan bruke mindre fly og meir tog, meir videokonferanser, telefon og e-post. Vi kan prøve å unngå lange flyreiser, særskilt med jobben men også på fritida. Vi kan kjøpe oss elektrisk bil i staden for bensinbil.
Å tenkje på korleis vi bruker transport, er den enklaste måten vi i Lillestrømområdet kan bidra til å løyse klimaproblemet raskt!
2) Energibruk
Vi i Lillestrømområdet kan tenkje på korleis vi bruker energi både heime og på jobben. Vi kan bruke mindre straum, slik at vi får meir straum som kan eksporterast til utlandet og erstatte energiproduksjon frå kol. Ved å spare energi kan vi frigjere ny energi som gjer at vi kan sleppe å ta vanskelege diskusjonar og avgjerder om utbyggjing av meir vind- og vasskraft i vakker norsk natur. Vi kan senke innetemperaturen ein grad eller to, lukke dører til rom som ikkje er i bruk, skru av lys der det ikkje trengs, bruke sparepærer og bruke mindre enn 5 minutt på å dusje. For dei som byggjer nye hus eller bygningar, er det viktig å tenkje på energibruk, både i varme og kulde.
Vi treng ikkje å ta ut mobilladaren vår frå stikkontakten når den ikkje er i bruk. Mobilladaren bruker nesten ikkje straum i det heile, så dette er det eg vil kalle placebo-klimaredning.
3) Næringsliv
Vi i Lillestrømområdet har som sagt ei høg konsentrasjon av teknologibedrifter, og dette er sjølvsagt også viktig for å bidra til å løyse klimaproblematikken. Vi kan derfor jobbe for å byggje opp eit bærekraftig næringsliv i Noreg, med ein industri som ikkje er avhengig av produksjon av fossil energi. Mange av våre naboland har klart dette, så kvifor skal ikkje vi klare det? Vi kan jobbe for at det skal bli ein enkel og smertefri nedtrapping av produksjonen av olje og gass, vi kan jobbe for å skape gode alternativ!
Vi kan ikkje godta den paradoksale retorikken til politikarane, vi må forstå at det blir for dumt om Noreg i 2050 er ein "nullutsleppsnasjon", samstundes som vi pumper opp mange hundre millioner tonn karbon per år fra Nordområdene. Dersom dette er situasjonen i 2050, vil eg skamme meg over å være norsk, og eg vil føle at vi fra Lillestrømområdet har mislukkast med det vi så gjerne ville gjere i 2020.
Hugs at enkle spørsmål med enkle svar ofte kan være det som skal til for å løyse store problem! Eg ønskjer med dette alle oss som bur i Lillestrømområdet lukke til med å bidra til å løyse klimaproblemet.
Negawatts
Do you know what a Negawatt is? Negawatt power is a theoretical unit of power representing an amount of energy (measured in Watts) saved. It is basically the opposite of a Watt, or energy saved through energy efficiency. Say you replace a classic 100 W incandescent light bulb with a 10 W LED lamp, every time you turn it on you are producing 90 Negawatts. As Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute (who coined the term) has said "The cheapest Watt is the one that's never created." He considers the concept of conservation "a change in behavior based on the attitude 'Do Less to Use Less."
An easy way to create a Negawatt is to turn off the light when you leave the room, you would be surprised how quickly this can add up by simply changing your behavior which costs you nothing.
While this concept is not normally applied to solar energy produced, I sat down and looked at the numbers for my solar energy array to see how much energy I am saving. Below is a chart showing the actual energy produced by my solar array for the year of 2020.
An easy way to create a Negawatt is to turn off the light when you leave the room, you would be surprised how quickly this can add up by simply changing your behavior which costs you nothing.
While this concept is not normally applied to solar energy produced, I sat down and looked at the numbers for my solar energy array to see how much energy I am saving. Below is a chart showing the actual energy produced by my solar array for the year of 2020.
The gray line represents the average monthly estimated power which totals 5.45 MWh for the year. My 31 panel 5.7KW solar array produced more power than estimated which is typical for Enphase micro inverters, so I actually generated 5.7 MWh. In my mind these are also Negawatts. In terms of dollars, my utility charges 13.8 cents per kilowatt hour, so this means that I have saved $786.60 for the year on my electric bill. If I were still paying off the loan on my solar array at a low interest rate, this would represent almost half the annual loan payment. Since I paid off the loan thanks to an inheritance from my Dad, this enhances the "Negabucks" for me.
Of course there is less value in installing a solar array if you have not already significantly increased the efficiency of the electrical usage in your home. When we purchased our newly constructed home in 2001, the light fixtures all had 100 W incandescent lamps installed in them. The first thing we did was replace them with CFL's that used only around 13-15 W. I think we replaced around 12 lamps, and since then we replaced those with more efficient LED lamps at 7-9 W. (Here is a handy chart comparing light bulb types and costs). By reducing our load, we reduced the size of the expensive solar array significantly. By the way, we disposed of the old 100 W incandescent lights by shooting them with my pellet rifle!
Of course there is less value in installing a solar array if you have not already significantly increased the efficiency of the electrical usage in your home. When we purchased our newly constructed home in 2001, the light fixtures all had 100 W incandescent lamps installed in them. The first thing we did was replace them with CFL's that used only around 13-15 W. I think we replaced around 12 lamps, and since then we replaced those with more efficient LED lamps at 7-9 W. (Here is a handy chart comparing light bulb types and costs). By reducing our load, we reduced the size of the expensive solar array significantly. By the way, we disposed of the old 100 W incandescent lights by shooting them with my pellet rifle!
If we assume that each 100 W lamp is used an average of 4 hours/day, then it would use approximately 146 kWh/year, so all 12 lamps would use 1752 kWh/year. By replacing them with 7 W LED lamps they would use approximately 122 kWh/year - a Negawatt rating of over 1629 kWh/year. At our electric rates that adds up to a Negawatt savings of $224 per year. These kinds of numbers make the concept quite real and tangible.
Berkeley Study: Solar Adds $15,000+ to Average Home Value
This article is re-printed from the the January 2020 newsletter from Re-Vision Energy, a solar energy installer based in Portland Maine.
Many prior studies have suggested that solar adds to a home's value, but they have often been limited in time range and geographic scope. Now, a team of scientists from Berkeley Labs, in partnership with universities and appraisers, has found that solar unequivocally improves the value of a home, on average by an amount of $15,000.
The data is based on analysis of "almost 22,000 sales of homes, almost 4,000 of which contained PV systems in eight states from 2002 to 2013—producing the most authoritative estimates to date of price premiums for U.S. homes with PV systems."
Some key findings:
- There was no statistically significant difference in the solar premium between new and existing homes.
- While not conclusive, the study suggests that solar, regardless of size, adds a special appeal to home buyers (the 'green cachet'), meaning that smaller systems (2-4kw) may have a disproportionately high premium relative to their actual energy production.
- Solar value is "statistically similar to [market premium approaches] estimated using the income and cost approaches, methods familiar to appraisers." (http://emp.lbl.gov/news/berkeley-lab-illuminates) - meaning that appraisers should be able to integrate solar valuation into already understood methods of assessing other premium features of a home.
- The study did find that the premium for a PV system depreciated faster than the system's output - i.e. a 1 year old system might fetch a $6/watt premium whereas an 8 year old system might fetch a $3/watt premium (even though the system is producing almost 100% of the power in year 8 as it was in year 1). On the other hand, a PV system in year 8 would have by that time repaid nearly all of the original investment to its owner, so any premium is a great deal!
So the good news for solar customers?
- You can feel confident that your solar investment will pay for itself, either over the life of the system as you live in your home, or by fetching a premium price should you need to sell your home.
- Studies like this make banks increasingly comfortable with solar, meaning it should continue to get easier to use a home equity loan or home equity line of credit product to invest in solar.
For the data-hounds, there is more information available online:
| Report PDF | 2.17 MB |
| Full Report Fact Sheet PDF | 259.78 KB |
| New Homes Fact Sheet PDF | 236.39 KB |
This article is re-printed from the the January 2020 newsletter from Re-Vision Energy, a solar energy installer based in Portland Maine.
Crafting climate transitions from below
By Roger Andre Søraa, PhD candidate at Center for Technology and Society Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, NTNU.
The role of craftspeople in climate-friendly buildings
There are about 2.4 million private-residences in Norway. Altogether, Norwegian buildings account for approximately 40% of all land-energy usage. Building and renovating to more climate-friendly houses, for example passive-houses and low-energy houses, can greatly lower the national energy usage. Many interesting projects have been made and are underway, like Powerhouse Brattøra, shown below.
But who will do the actual building, and what is their role?
One thing is to state climate-friendlier houses as a political goal, another is to actually implement it in society. This requires an enrollment of many different actors, from architects, engineers and policy-makers – to craftspeople who will do the actual renovating or building of the houses. An important political goal has been to increase craftspeople’s knowledge and expertise as energy-advisors, particularly through the Low-Energy-Programand Enova.
This program aims to educate, register and list craftspeople (and others with similar expertise) as energy-advisors. Buildings- and house owners are then able to search and contact these advisors through the programs web-page. There are also other ways to call oneself a energy-advisor, as the title is not protected.
Our project aims to research the role of craftspeople as energy-advisors. What is their expertise? Are their voices heard, if so, in which way? How does the status of craftspeople affect the situation, and how is craft-professions represented in society? We are also discussing how Norway can strengthen its craft-education, by comparing with other countries.
This will primarily be done by interviewing and observing craftspeople at work as energy advisors. Most research on the topic is done top-down, going from policy-makers, but here we wish to take the opposite approach – as one cannot build a roof without walls. Our grounding is that craftspeople, who build both walls and roofs eventually, needs to be taken into account when discussing (and solving?) the building controversies of the future.
To read more about the project, please visit our homepage.
References
Ecocide
It is not hard to think of examples of ecocide. The rapid deforestation of South America, strip mines, mountaintop removal in the southeast of America and the list goes on. And it scales all the way down from these gigantic overpowering images of destroyed landscapes to the construction of new housing developments in which forests are bulldozed and paved. And scaling down even further, does one stop at using Roundup to control weeds in a suburban lawn? Where does one draw the line?
I have read a bit about the native American tribes that lived here in the northeastern US before the colonists arrived. The original Americans were able to live and thrive in harmony with nature in a climate that is quite unforgiving in the winter. There is an excellent book: “Reading The Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England” that describes how our forest today evolved with fascinating examples of unique terrain and how they formed. In one section, the author describes what the Maine forest looked like before colonists clear cut it for timber, ship masts, and to create pasture land for sheep and livestock. Apparently the trees grew tall and so widely spaced that you could run a horse at full gallop through the forest. The native Indians managed the forest actively by periodically burning out the underbrush in order to bring back the berries and maintain walkable terrain in the forest. One could easily misinterpret the deliberate burning of underbrush as ecocide until one explores the benefits to all concerned including flora and fauna. I can only imagine the careful deliberation as tribal elders decided when and where to begin a controlled burn and the centuries of history of this practice that helped to create an eminently livable environment.
Another perspective I have on humanity and the ecocide we are committing on a global scale is that eventually humanity will become multi-planetary - if we survive the destruction of our home planet. In the process of reaching out to colonize other worlds, we will first need to live in small closed environments in orbit and in small constructed colonies. By living in these closed environments we will be forced to be conscious of all of the inputs and outputs to the system and the processes within that sustain life. From the perspective of orbit, astronauts on the space station are constantly awed by the view they have of the earth and come to love our tiny blue marble. I am hoping that as we transition toward living on other planets that these experiences of living in small closed ecosystems will teach us valuable lessons about respect for ecosystems as we create them and terraform planets such as Mars in the long-term future.
reposted from my old blog post from 09/06/14
Rechargeable emergency LED lights
Recently I came across a new product that I have found to be helpful. This is an LED lamp that looks like an ordinary 60W equivalent lamp (9W actual) that contains an internal battery. The battery charges during normal usage - while the light is on. Then if the utility power fails the internal circuitry detects this and powers the lamp for up to 3 hours (if it is switched on). You can't test it by unplugging the light, it needs to be plugged in when the power fails. I found a 2-pack for under $20 on-line.
As I played around with them I learned a lot. First, they come with a socket and hook with a button switch. This allows them to be used for camping or location specific emergency lighting. The way they detect an outage is to sense the resistance in the electrical wiring of the house, so the switch just shorts the contacts to turn the lamp on.
You can also turn the lamp on by touching the bottom of the lamp with a damp cloth - or your fingers. (You can also do an "Uncle Fester" and put it in your mouth to light it by using your tongue to connect the contacts).
When powered from 120V, they produce 60W equivalent (850 Lumens) of bright warm light. On internal battery power the output drops to 40W equivalent (500 Lumens) which is quite bright and useful in any situation. The battery will last 3-4 hours and you can turn the lamp on and off after a power failure just like a normal light. If it is likely to be a long outage, you could conserve power buy using it sparingly.
I tried replacing lamps in my home with varied success. First, I installed 1 in my kitchen ceiling where I have 4 flood lights, it came on when I turned the lights off. I think this is because it sees the other 3 regular LED lights in the circuit and gets confused. Also it is useless with any remote controlled home automation switch because the internal relay will switch it off when the power fails. Same goes for room occupancy sensors that will turn off when the utility power fails and can't be turned on. So these are most useful when used in table and floor lamps or house lighting circuits with only 1 lamp. I'm also using them in my stairwells and hallways for safety.
If I still lived in California where earthquakes could knock out power I would use them widely as emergency lights. Here in Maine, we get outages often in winter storms and they can last hours to days which is why I have an automatic standby generator that can power the whole property for over a week running on propane. But the generator takes up to 15 seconds to start and these lamps will bridge that gap which I find compelling.
If you want to purchase some - just search on "Rechargeable Emergency LED Bulb" and you will find many affordable options.
IoT - Geeking out with live data to the web
For myself, I find it more useful to send information the other way. The first thing I did was to install temperature sensors to monitor the solar heating system I designed for my workshop:
The charts above are live on my website (updated every 10 minutes). Throughout this blog page you can click the images to see that web page with the live data. This allows me to closely monitor the performance of my heating system, and more importantly to share its successful operation with hundreds of people who view my website daily.
I also installed temperature sensors in the heat recovery ventilation system I installed in my workshop that clearly demonstrate how well it performs:
These gauges update in real time on my web page documenting its performance.
I deployed another ioBridge that monitors the solar domestic water heating system I installed for my home:
I was able to use this monitoring system to diagnose a failed piece of equipment last June. Here is my blog page about that little adventure.The monitoring equipment is mounted on the wall near each device, and any time anyone is looking at a webpage with this information on it the device lights up a number from 1 through 4 indicating which of the four sensors are being read and providing live data to that webpage.
It is quite encouraging for me to walk into my utility room and see numbers flashing on these units indicating live viewer(s). By the way, the folks at ioBridge consider to me to be a power user - deploying technology like this is not for the faint of heart or the technologically naïve.
But wait there's more! When I purchased my Chevy volt electric vehicle, I became very interested in monitoring how much power it uses to charge the battery. And I also wanted to know how much energy it needed to use to keep the battery warm in the dead of winter. It uses power from the charging station to heat the battery to keep it from being damaged by freezing. So yet another web page with charts:
The chart above correlates temperature dips and energy consumption from the charging station. Tall spikes are when I charge the vehicle, short (lower energy) spikes are for battery thermal management.
And yet more… after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, I geeked out and built a Geiger counter kit. And it occurred to me I could interface that to the web:
The surprise result from this experiment was that I could detect solar events such as Coronal Mass Ejections (high-energy radiation from sunspots) as shown in the chart above. My webpage compares charts from my Geiger counter with actual current solar radiation information for comparison.
Oh yes, there's more! I also have a weather station that feeds live data to the Weather Underground, there are several ways to access my data from the web including the Rapid Fire page below:
And yet more… after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, I geeked out and built a Geiger counter kit. And it occurred to me I could interface that to the web:
Oh yes, there's more! I also have a weather station that feeds live data to the Weather Underground, there are several ways to access my data from the web including the Rapid Fire page below:
My Weather Underground personal weather station page shows current and historical data in considerable detail along with an up-to-date WebCam image of my home or workshop. Years ago, I used historical information from my weather station to evaluate my site for a small wind turbine. (More about my recently upgraded weather station in this recent blog page).
The solar power system that I installed starting in 2009 came with its own web portal that monitors the energy output of every panel individually - this information is available to me privately. On my webpage I show the public information showing energy generated on a daily basis. I also show historical energy and cost information based on accurate records I have kept of site energy production and electrical bills.
One of the first live-to-web items I added to my webpage was images from two WebCams showing my home updated every minute:
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| Live image of my home |
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| live image of my workshop |
I monitor almost all of these pages on a daily basis and it gives me warm fuzzies to know that all of my systems are operating well and my solar systems are saving energy and money.
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