As green as it can be
So, what do you call a 1979 Corvette with a 365 horsepower motor? Okay, fuel efficient isn’t a term that would be used, but there is a LOT that can be learned by keeping older vehicles running — the embodied energy in a car is substantial, and the more that can be done to keep them going, the better. With reason.
Every year, for the past four years, whenever my Corvette needed a state inspection, I had them perform an emissions test as well. Not that it’s required — cars over 25 years of age are exempt in Texas — but just because it needs to be as green as it can be.
And the news — once again, it passed the high speed emissions test. It failed the low speed idle test by more than it has in the past, and I think I know why.
What good is this, you ask? As with the “Energy Star” program that has gradually forced consumers to buy more energy efficient appliances, I feel that letting lawmakers know that lower-polluting older cars are are possibility — consumers just need to be nudged in the right direction.
gmManage and outdoor humidity bug
There is a defect in the day-ahead forecasting with the gmManage command when the forecast period includes very high relative humidity (> 75%). This is an upper boundary condition I seldom experience (we’re in a Level 2 drought at the moment) and the weather forecasting logic appears to be getting confused. I don’t know what the cause is at this time, but I do know that it is over-estimating energy production and that may result in under-estimating required generation.
The gmManage command has under-voltage and under-SOC protections, so there is no risk of loss of power or system functionality. However, it may result in greater than expected generation at other than expected times. I’ll add a comment on the end of this post when the bug is fixed.
Renewable energy system monitoring — early news
About all I can say at this point is that we have entered discussions on a joint venture to offer 24/7 remote monitoring for Outback Power Systems customers.
The joint venture is presently called “Project X”. The target for beta testing of this new service is 4Q09, with a limited offering scheduled for 1Q10.
greenHouse Computes, LLC is obviously one of the parties. The others will be named as we get closer to a formalized deal.
No more hot laptop on my lap
|
I’ve had a laptop for about as long as I can remember. Once they became powerful enough that I could break away from sitting at the desktop computer, and work and surf the ‘net lounging around the house, I did. Except that along with faster and more computer computers, came hotter and hotter laptops, until my present HP Pavillion became so hot that I had to put something between the laptop and me. Now that I’m spending more time working at home, which means more time with my laptop on my lap, I finally got fed up and went to the Piano Electronics Store and picked up a Logitech Comfort Lapdesk. I checked out all the similar products and they were either too complicated, required a connection to the laptop to run (!), or really designed to be put on a hard surface other than my lap. All of which meant I wasn’t going to buy them. Then I found the Logitech Comfort Lapdesk. It has a smooth, hard surface for the laptop, with a padded surface underneath for the lap. The smooth surface insures that the cooling fans in my laptop are able to cool, without needing an additional fan and connections to USB ports. No extra fan means no extra power consumption and no extra noise. Definitely a winner. |
September greenZine goes out soon!
So, here’s the PDF for last month’s edition.
There’s Green, and then there’s just plain slow
The idea for the original greenStation came about when I was still working for that other company. It was a really simple idea — I wanted to cut my electric bill and I wanted to make sure I had a computer I could use when I was done.
A few months of tinkering around produced something that’s since been branded the greenServer — a very low power workstation with UMPH enough to be the firewall, gateway, web server, file server, mail server, and just about everything else for the house. And it does it without making a huge dent in my electric bill. Great stuff.
This past weekend, in response to the Mac OS X beta I’m fighting through for the greenMonitor software, I went looking for an Apple Mac Mini. Cheap enough for intermittent development work, Mac enough for Mac OS X development work.
That’s when I saw it — the claim that the Mac Mini is the lowest power desktop computer on the market. Which came as a surprise to me since I know how little power our systems consume.
After dropping $599 on one at my local Piano Store Electronics (the store with a giant piano out front), I took it home and plugged it into my Kill-A-Watt (see this post) and sure enough — about 15 or 16 watts. Shocked the heck out of me.
What happened next wasn’t that shocking — SLOW. Very, very slow. If I didn’t need one of them to port software and make money, I’d be taking it back to the store with the big piano and buying me a PC.
Energy efficient? Yes. Worth using? No. I’ve not been able to get the Kill-A-Watt much over 24 watts. Also not been able to get it to move out of its own way.
When too much trying to save is too much.
How much electricity is enough to make trying to save electricity a futile exercise?
During a recent review of US Patent 7,274,975 I again asked myself — at what point does trying to save electricity take more electricity than can be saved? Is having a computer system monitoring each and every load, making sure only the required loads are turned on, really the right decision? Not so much, I think. At least, not so much for a residential consumer.
I was chatting with a sales clerk at the Big Blue Box Store up the road about how to save electricity with compact fluorescent bulbs and I mentioned that leaving a security light “On” overnight can actually save energy. “Save energy?”, you say, “I thought turning things off saved energy!”
Many people are still using incandescent bulbs in their outdoor lighting because CFLs work poorly with light sensors in their fixtures. Here’s a perfect example of leaving a light ON saving electricity — with 12 hours per day, on average, of darkness, a CFL would only require a 50% reduction in power consumption to be cost effective. Since most CFLs deliver a 75% or more reduction in power, replacing an incandescent bulb on a light sensor would save 50% of the electricity, even if left on 24 hours a day.
But what if the customer installs all sorts of electronic devices and controls the lighting with computers? That brings us back to US Patent 7,274,975 — how much energy is going to be used by that electronic equipment and how much energy can be saved? Sometimes the lower-technology solution is the better one — making use of power strips for centralized wall-wart device charging is a much lower power solution than a computer that monitors individual branch circuits, 24/7. Sometimes low-tech is even better than high-tech.
Finally Filed. Now the software can ship again.
For 14 years I was reminded that before I ship a new software release, I need to review it for new patentable ideas. With the first Mac OS X beta just about ready to ship, I did that review and realized I’d added a feature that really needed patent protection.
No, not the earlier feature — the one that one be in the greenMonitor software for a few more months. A completely feature.
A quick Provisional Patent application write-up, a frantic call to the US Patent Office, and the patent application has been filed.
I love having my own company and making the important decisions, but I definitely miss having a huge Intellectual Property Law department standing behind me.
AIDS Walk Austin: People are a natural resource, too
So much of what I blog about is saving energy, conserving energy, making energy.
Right now I’m going to blog about a different kind of energy — human energy.
People are a very energy intensive resource. We’re born, our parents care for us for 18 long and hard years, then we go out on our own, work, and go about our lives.
But for some people, poverty, sickness, lack of education, and many other problems get in the way of society realizing the benefit of all the energy that went into raising, educating, feeding, clothing, and everything else that person. That’s part of why I’m personally involved in Austin Habitat for Humanity. For a few hours a month, typically a weekend or two each month for me, I get to help a person get into their own home — to more fully realize their potential and be a valuable and contributing member of society.
And that’s why I’ve decided to support AIDS Walk Austin this year. Susan French, a woman I’ve known for about a year now, is leading up a team and I’ve decided to walk with her team (this is an opportunity for people outside the Habitat community to come and see Julie sweat).
AIDS is no longer the death sentence it was twenty years ago. With early detection, and proper medical care, many people have been living with AIDS for more than a decade, giving back to society the energy society invested in them. Let’s conserve our most precious energy resource — human energy. And if you’ve benefited by reading my blog, I ask you to give. If you’ve saved $10 off your electric bill, give $10. If you’ve saved more, give that. Go to Susan’s team page right now, and support this worthwhile cause.
Back inventing again.
It’s been 5 1/2 months since I submitted my last invention disclosure with my former employer. Since then I’ve been busy with all the usual requirements of any new business — government paperwork, product plans, marketing, scrimping and saving to make ends meet while gainfully self-unemployed.
Now that so much of the “new business” work is taken care of, and my mind has more free time to ponder creative solutions to existing problems, I have time to do something I truly enjoyed with my former employer — writing invention disclosures.
I presently have what I think are four patentable ideas (my experience tells me that maybe 1 or 2 will be turned into US Patents — I have 10 US Patents already and I’ve had about 35 applications filed, the math comes out pretty simple), two of which I hope will be things that those of you here in Austin can touch and feel, while the other two will be integrated into the greenMonitor energy system management software we produce.
I can’t describe the inventions until the paperwork is filed with the US Patent Office, but I can tell you that they are in keeping with the last few years work — improving energy efficiency and making the electric grid a “smarter” place.
I’m not looking forward to paying my patent attorney money (one fringe benefit I truly miss — patents are EXPENSIVE), but it does feel really good to be writing up new ideas and working on submitting them to the patent office once again.