GeekPi

Back in late May 2009 I gave my ‘official’ call to action against my steadily increasing energy utility bills by a minimum of 50%. I used to dread getting my monthly electricity bill, but now I look forward to it. I got my utility bill latest in my inbox yesterday . . .

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The Cold Hard Truth

Very chilly winter nights are now grasping the Seattle area, with the low temperatures now dipping into the single digits. Some months ago, I pledged to keep my maximum, monthly energy bill to below $100 but seeing as November was at $98.28, and the temperatures have plummeted since then, I highly doubt December is going to stay below my goal.

So far I’ve seen a 30% drop in my energy consumption over last year, which is noteworthy, but the cold weather heat loss throughout my house has been running the heat pump to its limits. I knew this when I put it in, as I sized the unit (the smallest LG makes) for a home that was well insulated. I’m waiting until after the New Year to put up any form of insulation in my crawlspace, and had to resort to firing up a key baseboard heaters to keep the house comfortable. This, combined with the heat pump de-thawing cycling has raised my daily energy consumption to as high as 60 kWh.

The Trouble Areas

To get an idea of where I need to focus on beefing up insulation around the house, I employed my work’s Fluke Ti25 IR imager. The results were very educational. After doing blower door tests this summer, I know the house is sufficiently airtight, but I wasn’t quite sure where it is the leakiest in terms of thermal loss. This is what I discovered and what I need to work on improving. [Read more →]

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There’s been a lot on my plate as of late, but I thought you may enjoy this initial rendering of my next solar project/expansion of the office’s 10kw PV array.

An integrated green screen & 2.8kw PV awning system that’ll shade the building’s south face during the hot summer sun. Even more interesting is that we’ll be using Silicon Energy’s Washington State panel, and an Outback inverter – making us one of the first setups eligible for the WA state $0.54 kWh production credit. Also, a kind of fun idea, we’re looking into using hops as the ‘green’ part of the green screen. That way we can benefit from the sun’s energy on the face of the wall, helping to heat the building during the winter. During the summer, the growing vine will shade the building (when the exterior South face typically exceeds 180 degrees). I’m curious if we’d have enough hops to offer a limited, solar micro-brew. [Read more →]

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Back in May, I declared an end to oppressive electric bills, never wanting to see another > $100 bill. Since then a lot has happened, and a lot more is about to be done to help reach the goal.

To give an idea of what I’m up against, I have a fairly typical 1970’s wood framed home. It’s a smaller 960 sq/ft and has only water and electric utilities. No natural gas  or sewer is available. Other than the occasional use of our wood burning fireplace, the main heat is provided by grossly inefficient baseboard electric. Even though the house has newer, double paned windows, it typically feels drafty and cold in the winter. That is likely attributed to the insulation, or lack thereof. The attic area has 6-9 inches of loose fiberglass, the walls have R-11 and the unconditioned, vented crawlspace has nothing. A lot of my heat is lost through the floor. [Read more →]

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Being that I work in the Seattle/Redmond area, I have a number of friends who either work close to, or within Microsoft. Over the past few days, I’ve heard some interesting details on the clandestine ‘Pink’ phone – including from people who work within the mobile division. I’ll be interesting to see which one of these are solid, but all my sources quite well versed in the project. [Read more →]

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Today’s geek lexicon expansion lesson:

PHOTOGAFFE

-verb

• DESCRIPTION:

Using a mobile phone camera in a discreet manner to take non-socially acceptable pictures, including private property where photography is not allowed, or of an attractive person without his or her knowledge.

• USED IN A SENTENCE:

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So the lastest scientific instrument (aka. cool toy) to arrive at the GeekPi headquarters is a Fluke Ti25 thermal imager. As the cost of equipment continues to drop, and they’re used more energy auditing, expect to start seeing more of these in the future.

What Does It Do?

So what is a thermal imager? Think of it like the vision ‘The Predator’ had. This thing sees heat radiating off of surfaces. It operates purely off of that. What is interesting is that off of certain surfaces, it’ll see reflected heat. Example: if you look directly into a plate of glass, you’ll see yourself. The camera has a combined, ’standard’ visible light digital camera too. What is kind of neat is that it’ll combine or Picture-in-Picture the two images to give a better idea of exactly what you’re looking at. The resolutions aren’t mind boggling, with 640×480 for the regular camera, and 160×120 for the thermal imager – but taking massive, detailed pictures aren’t what this thing it about. Oh, and take a look in the gallery of the most impressive stock power supply I’ve ever seen. This thing has every adapter known to man.

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In my last post, I described the weakness of LED lighting in the home and for general illumination – this product is what I see as an excellent implementation of the light emitting diode technology; low power consumption and rugged capabilities. Mid last year, the company SunNight Solar (www.sunnightsolar.com) sent me one of their first production solar flashlights to review (#276, to be exact). I’ve been living with and playing with the flashlight for a year now, and I can honestly say, this thing is a winner.

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LED! LED! LED!

When it comes to lighting technology, that’s what I hear on an almost daily basis. The thing is though, most of these writers know next to nothing about lighting, and are taking all of their facts from a press release; which of course always puts the product in a positive light (pun intended).

The call for the LED is a noble, but misdirected mantra of the industry and public at large – at least with today’s technology. It’s a fairly well known fact that in most applications, regular Edison style incandescent (aka, ‘regular’ light bulbs) are a pretty big energy waster. Then came the big old fluorescent tubes that most offices have. And then came the compact fluorescent light (CFL), which twisted the bulb and make the light controlling ballast all in one unit. And one of the more recent technologies that shows promise is the Light Emitting Diode (LED). The thing is though, don’t get caught up in the hype and marketing! LED’s are not that efficient.

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Today’s geek lexicon expansion lesson:

Twitterpated

-adj.

• DESCRIPTION:

A feeling of intense infatuation with Twitter that causes an individual to spend large portions of time posting, updating, retweeting, surfing and checking Twitter on their computer or mobile device. One who is obsessed with the social networking site Twitter.

• USED IN A SENTENCE:

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