Electric Vehicle charging comes to the Borough

It's taken a long time, but soon Havant Borough Council owned car parks will have 48kW EV rapid chargers installed. The chargers will be a part of the Genie Point network:

https://www.cpsgenie.com/dis/

I believe these will charge a car to about 80% in 30 minutes, which is probably reasonable for a car park scenario. Ah it makes a change to post some local news and something positive!

Fully Charged Live at Silverstone

Roberts Fully Charged project is having a Live event at Silverstone racing circuit on the 9th and 10th June this year. You can register for tickets now. Apparently they have a lot of companies showing their electric cars, bikes, low carbon energy systems like solar energy, batteries and other stuff and there will be talks and other great things.



http://www.fullychargedshow.co.uk/fully-charged-live-event

Upgraded street lamps become EV charging points

A German company has developed street lighting technology that allows Electric Vehicles to be charged at adapted street lamps. When street lighting is upgraded to low energy LED technology, the cables that supply the lamps with power are effectively under used. This is where the EV charging technology comes in. Ubitricity can install the EV charging technology in any style of lamp post, retro or modern.

Once a street lamp is installed all an EV owner has to do is to sign up with Ubitricity, the owner then receives a special cable from Ubitricity which monitors electricity usage of the owner. The user is then debted the cost of the electricity. The cable has an inline small box with buttons and a display, so I presume that it is password protected to prevent possible mis-use. However I assume that if the cable were stolen, it could be reported and the account suspended until a new cable were supplied.

No additional load is put on the local electricity cables because they were originally designed to take a bigger load than the LED lighting puts on the system.

Robert L explains in this video how it works and interviews the local council that has installed the lamps as well as a representative of Ubitricity.



https://www.ubitricity.com/en

Designer 'Edison' light bulbs

Not sure what the legality is regarding the sale of high wattage designer filament bulbs.

But the fact is you can get low power LED versions I bought this one for £12 in IKEA.
1.8 watts as opposed to 40 or 60 watts for an incandescent filament lamp.

Now I am not sure where to put it!

Grenfell Tower fire and Daily Mail Green Target misinformation

The despicable Daily Mail today were pointing the finger at green energy targets for fueling the Grenfell Tower fire in London.

This of course is a political tactic from a political activist media company, it is designed to divert attention from real financial issues relating to the buildings upgrade.

Setting a green target does not imply that cheap flammable materials should be used as a cladding/insulation material in order to achieve that target. The alternative to insulation is cold damp rooms and high energy bills for the poor people living in the building.

Other newspapers (including the Express) have highlighted the fact that fire proof cladding would have only cost £5000 more for the WHOLE building. Yes the WHOLE building could have been made safer for an additional £5000.

For the cost of the Daily Mail editor (Paul Dacre) installing trendy bi-fold doors in his expensive privately owned home or installing a new bath room etc. the Grenfell building could have been made safer.

So the FACT is - 60 peoples lives were taken away so that the contractor and council could save £5000. Green targets were not responsible for that.

Please someone take the Daily Mail down in court, even social media can do better news reporting than that despicable company. It isn't amusing and we can no longer make excuses about the 'Daily Mail'.

The future is bright and it's electric

Robert Llewellyn takes a look at 2016 and the future.
Don't mention Brexit or Trump...
2017 will see a huge number of electric vehicles being launched, plus they will get closer to a 300 mile range.

Robert Llewellyn talks about Passivhaus (Low Energy Homes)

Something that this government and large developers say would be to expensive, which is a lie of course especially in the context of long term economics and damages caused by Anthropogenic Climate Change.

Renewable energy does the job

Robert highlights some facts:

Portugal is almost self-sufficient in renewable energy and manages a few days on renewables only.
UK manages without coal power stations for a number of hours.
Germany has so much capacity that electricity suppliers had to give money back to customers.

Robert does a better job of explaining it though...

Riversimple - now for something completely different

Interesting company rethinking car design and ownership:

Robert test drives the BMW i3 REx.

This car is electric with the addition of a small engine (647cc) that is used as a generator to charge the batteries and extend the range of the vehicle. There is no direct drive from the engine to the wheels and for most driving it can be operated as an electric vehicle.

Nissans electric van/taxi/minibus

Robert test drives the Nissan e NV200, he points out that maintenance costs are about a quarter of the cost of running a diesel van:

Tokar Street Eco House

I Visited Portsmouth City Councils 'eco home' this week in Tokar Street, Southsea. The house is a pre 1900 'two up two down' terrace house, typical in much of Portsmouth and built when insulation was non-existent.

Before a new tenant moved into the property the council decided to upgrade it to modern eco standards. For various periods this week the council have a few officers in the house and are welcoming visitors to have a look around.

So I took the opportunity to take a peek.
My brother shared a similar house when he was a student and there isn't a lot of room in those terraced homes. Without any modern extentions, you have two rooms on the ground floor and two up, with a tiny staircase between the two. Many have bathrooms and kitchens on the ground floor in extentions to the rear.
This house fitted that pattern, with core new eco additions: (information from a sheet handed out at the home):

Wall Insulation	Thick 70mm internal wall insulation on all external walls.
Floor Insulation	180mm of insulation held in place by netting between joists and 125mm insulation on concrete floors.
Loft Insulation	300mm insulation between floor joists, 70mm fitted to roof joists
Windows	A rated.
Photovoltaic panels	Produces about 1776kwh per year.
Condensing Boiler	About 91% efficient.
Heat recovery ventilation	Heat exchanger prevents warm air escaping and cold air getting in, whilst providing ventilation.

Southampton University will be monitoring the house when a new family move in and the energy saving results will be compared with other similar homes in the street that have not been modified.

The project is impressive and of course is about doing what you can with an existing building that is over 100 years old.

But if you were starting from scratch you wouldn't design new buildings like this. Sooooo.... why on Earth are we building fake Victorian/Georgian homes at the Berewood estate?

How behavioral science can help save energy

Really interesting TED talk video presented by Alex Laskey.
A proven way of reducing your energy bill is to know what your neighbour pays:

Ed Davey today attacks the press

Ed Davey today is attacking the press for their continuing misrepresentation of climate science for political purposes.

The draft of his talk has been sent to the media and the highlight is probably this paragraph:

"This is destructive and loudly clamouring scepticism born of vested interest, nimbyism, publicity seeking contraversialism or sheer blinkered, dogmatic, political bloody-mindedness..."

Yes indeed our national press are not interested in presenting news and facts, but instead are just mouth pieces of an extreme element of politics and business. Some of the more vocal supporters of the movement against our future and green prosperity are based in the US or on a wrecked privately owned Channel island.

The 'political bloody-mindedness' comment is very appropriate, since many of these press people and politicians are married to political ideology. They are not interested in a changing world and a future that is not theirs, but ours.

The damage being done is ignored in order to exploit short term goals that they believe is important in order to sustain their own power base. Political party activists go about blogging and commenting to keep the creeking political system going so that they can keep their position in society.

The political 'bloody-mindedness' is also rife across Hampshire, with councils deliberately blocking renewable energy projects and power hungry councillors getting themselves into multiple positions of responsibility, deliberately blocking solar farms and instead pushing through or promoting carbon intensive projects.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22745578
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/03/ed-davey-climate-change-secretary_n_3377023.html?1370254179&utm_hp_ref=uk

Ed Davey's speech:
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/edward-davey-speech-climate-change-acting-on-the-science

Berewood toy town takes shape

The Grainger/Bloor toy town is starting to take shape close to Waterlooville.

This alien project has been designed by  Architects in Winchester who base their designs on the fossil fuel burning past, the properties have fake chimneys and tiny windows.

The marketing hype states that the homes are inspired by small Hampshire towns.

What the marketing propaganda doesn't say is that in order to find one of these idealistic small Hampshire towns, you will have to take a trip in a time machine to visit Jane Austen in the 18th century.

Once upon a time Waterlooville looked like one of these towns from the past, that is until post war Britain needed to build thousands of houses in the area. The result is that the character of Waterlooville happens to be in the1950s, 1960s and later, not in the 18th century.

We do need to preserve buildings like Swiss Cottage, but we don't need fake historic buildings.

Swiss Cottage (1876)
more window real estate than
the 2013 Berewood homes

So Waterlooville has a toy/fantasy town being built on valuable farmland on the edges of the existing town and is disrespectful to the majority of the architecture in the area. When were Georgian buildings ever built using modern timber frame techniques?

But the fantasy nature of the buildings is just a part of the problem.

We need to reduce energy use and that means designing homes that capture as much energy from the environment as possible without the need for energy inputs from fossil fuels and grid connected renewable energy.

Yes we do need the grid and the large scale renewable energy projects to feed it. But low carbon life isn't about consumption for consumptions sake. The 'client' side of the system (homes and businesses) must be as efficient as possible, providing some energy from domestic renewable energy systems. The way forward is the use of elements of Passive solar design, a realist approach to property design that uses the natural energy around us to do as much of the work for us as possible.

It's time that the architectural and political ideology that is firmly rooted in the past, remains in the past, because the ageing pensioners that support it are not our future.


Some useful links:
http://www.selfbuild-central.co.uk/green-design-overview/saving-energy/energy-harvesting/passive-solar-design/
http://www.yougen.co.uk/blog-entry/2119/Heat+your+home+with+passive+solar+energy/
http://www.superhomes.org.uk/resources/passive-solar-design/
http://passivesolar.sustainablesources.com/
http://www.passivhaus.org.uk/
http://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/

Big Brother fridges

Most newspaper reporters get their facts wrong, some are obviously better than others, but it appears that the Daily Mail has gone into absolute fantasy mode with their latest story about 'big brother' fridges, the journalists claim the fridges will turn off from time to time, without your permission!

Oh, my god! An electrical appliance with a mind of its own, these fridges must be unique, no other popular appliance does that! Or do they? There must be a massive conspiracy between government, fridge manufacturers and energy companies, they are all scheming to ruin your food and control your fridge.

The headline goes:

"Big brother to switch off your fridge: Power giants to make millions - but you must pay for 'sinister' technology"

 So what exactly is this evil technology and how does it compare to other household technology?

Well, I have known about this tech for about 5 years or so, it is a British invention that is a world leader (yep, the Mail in the rush to blame the EU, is attacking a Brit engineering company and invention).

The Technology

Lets get something straight from the start, the technology DOES NOT send information about you or your energy use to the government or power companies and they CAN NOT control your fridge remotely.

So how the journalists come to the conclusion that it is 'Big Brother' technology is a mystery. The only reason for doing that is to spread propaganda against renewable energy and climate change measures.

The technology has been developed by a company called RLtec (now called Open Energi) and they teamed up with Indesit and and Npower in 2009 to trial the system in fridges and freezers. It ties in with the idea of a future smart grid technology that will enable energy to be used intelligently. Sainsburys already use the technology in their stores, so logically Sainsburys are a part of this big brother conspiracy that The Daily Mail has invented.

The technology is an automated version of what national grid managers do every day. Like the technicians managing supply and demand of electricity, the fridge technology will monitor the frequency of the mains supply, which is 50hz (actually old digital clocks monitored it to keep time - badly!), any deviation from this frequency means that either there is to much demand for electricity or there is to little demand (to many generators producing energy).

In the case when there is to much demand (to many kettles on at the same time), the circuit will switch off the fridge or freezer for a few seconds (or less). If you have tens of thousands of fridges all switching off for a few seconds, it will have no impact on the fridge perfomance but will reduce the load on the generators. Thus the frequency will return to 50hz again when balance is achieved!

The idea of course is to help integrate renewable energy into our grid system. It's actually a brilliant and non-intrusive idea (completely the opposite to the impression the Mail gives).

Other 'big brother' technology you use everyday:

1. Car - most vehicles today take control away from you at many levels. For example you don't control how much fuel goes into the engine, the car decides that based on what you desire it to do.
2. Lighting - many organisations install lighting that automatically turn off when someone isn't in the room, and of course lighting can turn on when someone is present.
3. TVs - some new TVs turn off when no one is watching them!
4. Thermostat - heaters, fridges, kettles all have thermostats that switch on and off electricity without your permission! I mean what right does a fridge have to turn it self off automatically? Must be the government trying to control our lives.

The reality is many appliances turn off internally or reduce the active circuitry without you knowing it, so the question is, why the fuss about a fridge?
The answer is of course extreme politics and the 'no evidence needed' political ideology of modern times. Rumour, black propaganda, misrepresentation and lies, count for more than actual reality.

Big Brother

In the book 1984, Winston Smith had a job in a government organisation where he was required to lie about reality and in particular about the past. The government 'snooped' on individiuals and lied about it's enemies.
Of course no one could accuse Daily Mail journalists of lying or snooping on individuals could they?

Updates

It appears that the Telegraph are running the same story with the same people interviewed. My suspicion is that a lobby group (that is against renewable energy) has made a press release in an attempt to undermine renewable energy policy.

29/04/13: found a Daily Mail article about the same technology published in 2009. The tone is completely different and the article received no comments. I think the article is still technically incorrect in that it refers to a signal from the energy company, which probably refers to the detection in frequency change, it also incorrectly implies that lose control of your electricity.

Update: 17/06/14
It appears Open Energi are now focusing on commercial refridgeration and that does include monitoring of the companies energy use, the participating company obviously being a willing participant. From the latest info available it appears the technology is not available in domestic fridges, although the initial trial did use domestic fridges. If the technology were installed in domestic fridges, then the monitoring part of the technology probably wouldn't be included because of the enormous cost of monitoring individual appliances. Open Energi's web site shows technology that is designed to monitor numerous devices owned by a specific organisation - such as Tescos and Sainsburys - that sort of scale would justify the expense of monitoring.

My first LED lamp

Since some of my CFL energy saving lamps are beginning to fail, decided to try a 6 Watt LED lamp, priced £9.99.

The equivalent wattage to an incandescent lamp is 31W, which is on the low side, so will be using it in a small room. You can buy 40W equivalents for about £13 to £15.


The stats on the package says it will last about 25 years and can cope with 50,000 on/off switch cycles. Doing a few rough calculations then I would say that in a typical room where a lamp will be switched on and off a few times each night, then 20+ years is probably a reasonable life time.

The thing is, it seems a bit outdated to compare the power consumption of LED lamps with incandescent bulbs. At some point no one will have experience of using incandescent lamps, so the comparison should in theory fade into history as a quirk that was required during the transition to low carbon energy.

Update: Have installed it in my small kitchen and I am pleasantly surprised. The light is a bit 'whiter', but certainly fine for the kitchen. Also tried it in the light fitting that I use all the time in the living room and I could not tell the difference between it and the CFL I normally use, other than the fact it was a bit dimmer. It looked just as warm behind the glass frosted lamp shade.

Based on that test, I will now be getting a 40W equivalent (or near that) LED lamp/bulb for the living room.

How to become a bad salesman - write an article for The News

Bought The Portsmouth News this week and had a casual browse until I reached 'The Peoples Champion' page, written by a Richard Thomson. Across the page were the words 'Be wary of the boasts of solar panel salesman...'.
Ah, sounds interesting I thought, there are some cowboys out there that deliberately paint a distorted picture of solar panels. Looks like this is going to be an in depth article giving good advice.

The question asked by the home owner writing to the newspaper was whether a pushy salesman is correct in stating that the home owner could save over a £1,000 a year.

Instead of answering the question, the reporter then made his own 'bad salesman' pitch with statements that in total were just as distorted as the one the home owner was worried about.

Points made (in bold) were:

They produce clean energy
Something correct. Well almost. They don't actually produce energy, they convert one form of energy (photons/electromagnetic radiation) to another (electrons moving in a cable). A coal fired power station does produce energy, the coal has unrealised potential energy that was stored by plants from sunlight millions of years ago and it is released as heat energy by the power station (inefficiently as it turns out).

They are superficially attractive
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Many things are often superficially attractive. An Aunt Sally I think.

They are remarkably inefficient
By what standard?
A coal fired power station is approximately 30% efficient. Solar PV panels range from 15% to 30%.
The big difference, apart from having hugely different carbon footprints, is that with the application of science solar panels have the potential to be much more efficient, but you can't squeeze more electricity out of a coal fired power station, science says that most of the embedded energy in coal never gets realised.

The electricity can't be stored
Yes it can. Electric cars have batteries that store energy, we have large pumped energy storage systems in the UK that store energy from the grid and a local company in Hampshire is developing a very promising energy storage system, specifically designed to work cheaply with renewable energy.

What you can sell back is largely dependent on the weather.
 It isn't relevant to the overall system performance. The home owner only has to be concerned about the performance over a number of years and the return they get both in energy and finances. It is up to the grid operators and energy companies to worry about variability and how to deal with it, whether that is via storage, better grid tech etc.

They work best in direct sunlight, don't work at night etc.
Yes indeed, but does stating the obvious actually help here?
Variability isn't the issue, the issues are cutting CO2 emissions, reducing energy bills and pay back.

You'll probably be at work in the summer when you make savings
 Does this matter?
The energy produced is sold to the energy company, in fact the company the person is working at would probably be using some of it. The home owner benefits, so this is another Aunt Sally. The result is nothing.

Feed in tariffs have changed
This is about as close the reporter gets to answering the question!
But fails to do any supporting analysis. The reality is that photovoltaic panel prices have tumbled and are predicted to continue to fall.

The capital costs take over 15 years to recover
But you don't pay for the electricity generated by the panels!
It's always a silly argument that puts emphasis on initial costs rather then ongoing costs.
So 'capital' costs of solar PV are currently high but rapidly reducing, but for a fuel like gas you have to pay every day for as long as gas is available and gas prices will likely fluctuate as we are victim of overseas disturbances and politics. Pay a known fixed price today, or gamble on the future?
Really the issue is CO2 emissions, gas emissions are about 500gCO2 per kwh whilst solar panels are about 50gCO2 per kwh.

What have we learnt here?
Well Mr Thomson didn't appear to answer the question he was asked but instead appears to have ranted a personal opinion in a newspaper. The whole point of renewable energy is to cut carbon emissions and to actually get people used to the fact that the only secure energy we have is from the Sun and Moon (tidal energy) which are variable (obviously).

Another point of course is that much of the time the solar panels are effectively reducing the load a house has on the main grid. eg. when the Sun is out, the grid will 'see' the home with a the panels as using less electricity. It's no different to someone switching on the kettle or turning on the a heater, it changes the load on the grid. but with solar panels it's like turning things off rather than on. In both cases, the grid has to cope.

The article was only available in the print version of the newspaper.

Duvet and blanket combo

In these chilly times it can be difficult keeping warm in bed, especially if you don't have central heating. An efficient and cheap trick I discovered in the last few years is the discovery of the duvet/blanket combo.

What I do is spread an old blanket (probably circa 1950s/1960s) over the top of the duvet so that the blanket drapes over the sides of the bed and duvet. This creates an additional layer, but more importantly helps weigh down the duvet so it doesn't move around so much and helps to fill gaps between the duvet and mattress that may develop when you move around.
Because the blanket is a more flexible material, when the duvet shifts to one side, the blanket fills any gaps that might let cold air in. It is important that the blanket drapes over the sides of the bed.

The result is that I am usually cozy warm in the morning, instead of waking up with a cold back or bum because the duvet is half hanging off the bed!

A really cheap and efficient solution to a modern problem, assuming you can still get your hands on a blanket!

Winter energy consumption

Unsurprisingly, although also disappointingly, my electricity consumption was up on the previous year this winter. However it was still lower than earlier years.

But no need for heating now spring is here, so hopefully in the coming 9 months I can bring the yearly average back down.