Another Quick Thought on Solar

There are some exciting successes in the world of solar recently.  But those successes, at least the ones that I consider successful, are not occurring in North America or Europe.  They are happening in Africa.  Solar Aid just announced that it had sold its one millionth solar light in Africa.  Quite impressive and I think that their business model / aid model is a sensible one.

What is noteworthy about this success?

• It took time and a lot of effort to educate people: the standard lighting option for many folks in Africa is a kerosene lamp.  This is reasonably cheap upfront, but then has on-going marginal costs in terms of fuel, time (getting fuel) and health (fumes).  A fair amount of work had to go into convincing people to make a relatively large investment for a solar light, but then face no marginal costs.
• Adoption can come quickly: Solar Aid is using a standard distribution approach, paying merchants, etc. to sell their goods.  Their goal is to get life-improving solar powered devices to as wide a range of people as quickly as possible, so this make sense.  Once people understand that solar is cheaper (the education work has been done), they will make the right choice and adopt quickly.  1 million is impressive, but I'm guessing that there will be a flood of solar in Africa in the next couple of years.
• Adoption is happening because it is the best option:  This is good and bad.  Bad from the standpoint that solar is still relatively expensive (do the math as a US-based electricity customer and there is no way you beat your local utility without subsidies).  We have better options here in the US and its too bad that they do not in Africa.  But, it is awesome that they are getting better options that should have positive benefits from a human health and welfare perspective (strong parallels to mobile phone technology?).  I continue to be a believer that technology has the potential to help the planet's billion poorest people, many of whom live in Africa.  Technology, along with a vision and drive to make people's lives better (which I think can come from both a profit perspective, or as in the case of Solar Aid, from an altruistic perspective).
• It remains to be seen how long the solar lights/batteries actually last: my guess is that there will be a substantial amount of variation in quality of these cheap lights (they need to be - very price sensitive application).  Hopefully, there are not bad apple manufacturers that pollute the market with crappy lights and thus dampen customer adoption.  Overall, I remain optimistic.

The Road as Solar System

I ran across (on Reddit, I think) the concept of embedding solar cells in the road.  There is currently an Indiegogo campaign for Solar Roadways.  Interesting concept but seemingly just out of touch with reality.  Their super low funding level seems to validate my view of the lack of public enthusiasm for the idea.  That and the payback for the supporters is essentially just feeling good about themselves.

Their lack of reality comes in to the notion of just how much money per mile their approach would cost.  Its inconceivably high.  This is a great concept for:

• Walking areas around parks and museums that want some evening / nighttime lighting effects
• Parking lot surfaces for high end / super eco-friendly locations
• Rooftop bar surfaces
• (more if I can think of them)

Its great to want to change the world, but even better to have a good sense of how to build out your product and expertise and scale.  Our roads will not be lined with solar panels anytime soon, but there are undoubtedly applications where these would be sought-after.  Start there - get some marquis clients that are willing to take a chance.  The Louvre, the Met, etc.

Home Generation Systems

I would really like to have backup power at my house, but I'm not currently willing to pay $10k to install a propane fueled generator that would then require $4/gal propane to run it.  It turns out that gets pretty expensive pretty quickly.  What to do instead?

Alternatives to the Grid

Off the top of my head, I think the following could be alternatives:

• Backup generator
• Large-scale battery storage system
• Solar system
• Wind system
• Combined wind/solar system
• A big hole (Potential energy conversion system)

Let's explore each in turn.

Backup Generator

I'm pretty lazy and would just want my house to work in the event of a short-term grid collapse.  I'd be looking for a whole-house backup generator.  For my 400 amp service, I'm probably looking at $10k in capital costs (based on my initial discussions and research) and then more for on-going maintenance to ensure it actually comes on when I want it to.  It'd be more compelling if it were a combined heat and power (CHP) application, but that is not easily integrated into my house.  Some believe backup generators to be a bad idea.  I tend to agree.  Expensive and might not actually be there when you need it to be.  I'd prefer a simpler solution.

Large-scale Battery Storage System

I'm not an expert here, but it appears that large-ish scale batteries are costing on the order of $600/kWh of storage.  I use around 2,000 kWh during a non-summer month.  I'd be looking for something to last me at least two days.  So for that (on average) we are talking about:

2,000 (kWh/month) / 730 (hours/average month) * 48 hours = 131.5 kWh

So for that size battery, it would cost (just for the battery):

$600/kWh * 131.5 kWh = $78,900

Wowsers.  That's a big hurdle for something that will be used quite infrequently.  No.  Not going to work.  And that is before any of the balance of plant costs (e.g., electrical connections, installation, maintenance).  

Some have suggested that battery costs are going to decline steeply in the coming years down to $200/kWh and there have been sitings of Volt battery packs as low as $144/kWh.  The latter sounds like some dumping and the former sounds optimistic given that Tesla's retail price for their larger battery pack is $517/kWh.  But even at 1/4 the cost, the above battery system is still expensive at almost $20,000.  Maybe some start to see that as reasonable, but I'm not sure that I do.

Solar system / Wind / Combined Wind/Solar

I'm combining all of these because they share the same weaknesses.  You just don't know for sure if they will be there when you need them.  These won't really work unless you combine them with a battery system.  The advantage of the combination would be that you can reduce the size of the battery by the amount of "guaranteed" output from your combined wind/solar system in addition to offsetting your power usage under normal operating conditions.  The downside is that the cost per kWh of residential scale solar and wind is quite high.  Well above the 10¢ or 11¢ that I'm currently paying Dominion.  I think that this would work if I lived in the middle of nowhere and didn't want to pay to connect to the grid in the first place, but I'm already there.

Potential Energy Conversion System

I'm talking about something here that I have no idea about, pretty much just making things up.  Bear with me, they are good ideas :)  First off, I'm not talking about installing a new section of road in front of your house and harvesting energy of the passing cars.  Though, if you could get away with it and have a reasonably busy road in front of your house, it might be a great idea.  I'm thinking about two ideas: car ramp and a suspended (very heavy) weight.

Car Ramps

The idea is reasonably simple.  I think there is a good chance the power could go off tonight, so when I get home, I park my car in a very specific spot in the driveway.  I then raise the vehicle.  In the event that the power goes out, the vehicle starts to descend, its potential energy being converted into electrical energy powering the house.  This is the concept in graphical form:

Let's do the math to see what we've got here:

6,078 lbs * 6 ft = 36,468 ft-lb * 3.76616097 × 10-7 kilowatt hours/ft-lb = 14 Wh

The problem here is that I'm short by a factor of 10,000.  So despite me wanting it to work, its just not going to.  There just isn't much here unless we can dramatically increase the weight or the distance.  My car isn't going to get any heavier (thank goodness - an Expedition is super heavy as it is).

Big Hole - Gravity Power Module

As shown here, I could, with just a six meter diameter hole, have ~ 9 MWh of energy at my house.  Presumably this could scale down measurably, given that I would only need about 1/8 of a MWh (1/72nd the amount of power).  So maybe only a 1 meter whole would do the trick.  But we'd still have to drill down 500 meters.  That is a long ways, but we could double the area of the hole to half the depth.  I'm sure it would work if the concept was developed enough for commercial adoption, but its not going to be cheap in the short-run.

Conclusion

At this point, there really doesn't seem to be any cost-competitive back-up systems to the grid.  This may be a compliment to the engineering that has gone into central station power-based systems, but I think that it is the current reality.  However, how might the environment change, if only on the margin over the coming years?  Might be interesting to think about.

Residential Thermal Solar: This already makes sense and yet people aren't using it (widely) to offset energy usage otherwise.  Natural gas and power are too cheap.  This will be a much bigger deal when (if) gas and power get substantially more expensive.

Residential PV Solar: This will absolutely explode when the unsubsidized cost per kWh of solar is roughly equal (and has the prospective chance of being lower with future fuel cost increases) to the local power company.  Many will jump at the chance.   A few changes will make it even more compelling.  When we cross the threshold of 5% to 10% of residences have solar systems, the real estate community will figure out a way for them to get recognized in the sale price of the house.  Changes to the residential rate structure may make this point in time bleed out 50 years or so (we get charged a variable price for many fixed costs - as people drop off the grid or reduce their variable consumption with no change in the fixed costs - the structure will have to change - see the pain that is predicted in California in the next couple of years).  I'd still rather have a solar stirling engine in the front yard.  Talk about yard art.

Electric Vehicles: If I already have an 85 kWh battery pack in the form of my car, maybe my backup system is my car(s).  Two of them would more than cover my two day costs.  Still doesn't address the (electrical) cost of starting motors, but there are likely capacitor-based solutions to this.

Wide-Spread CHP: If I could have a mini-turbine in my furnace where the exhaust was being used to heat my air as well as my hot water, and do it at a reasonable price, I would.  Freewatt looked like a system that could have fit my needs, if the company hadn't gone away.  Somebody else will do it.  If it costs 50% of the current projected costs ($25k), I might be willing to pay the 200% premium over a normal furnace.  Not a whole-house backup circuit, but it'd run the furnaces and refrigerators and some lights.  That'd (probably) be enough.

The Future of Automobiles

[DRAFT]
I have been following with some interest the shenanigans in New Jersey and their automobile dealer franchise laws.  This article on Wired briefly touches on it and then goes further to discuss just how disruptive electric cars could be from a service standpoint.  They argue that it could be a big deal.  And I agree that it could matter to some degree.  But what could really shake things up in the auto industry?  Here are my thoughts.

Potential Disruptors

• Elimination of dealer franchise protection
• Electrification of vehicles
• Modularization of vehicle electronics
• Modularization of the vehicle platform
• Integration into whole home electrical systems

Your Very Own Tricorder?

So I know the Scio (ski - o) is not a tricorder, but wow, we seem to be getting close!  I so want one despite having no earthly reason to have one.  I'm pretty sure that I could come up with reasons.  And they will be good ones.  The future of gadgetry is looking mighty fine.

That said, I still want something much like this that can peer into my body and tell me what in the world is going on.  This has to exist at some point in the not too distant future.  I envision a 3D hand-held ultrasonic probe that connects to your iPhone or iPad and maps out all of the goodies in your body, including tendons and food stuffs in your intestine.  Not sure how much I want to be buzzing it around my head, but pretty much everywhere else would be great.

Here are some of the things where I think that this data could be useful in clarifying:

• Body fat (both overall composition, but local compositions as well, being able to distinguish bad and good kinds of fat).
• Tendon inflammation.  After my 30 mile bike ride, are my hamstrings really inflamed or am I just being a wimp?
• Muscle mass: am I gaining where I'm working?  How is my muscle balance (compared to some sort of idea?) across my body?
• What is going on in my knees?  Should I work them less hard or do I just need some sort of adjustment of the cartilage?
• How much poopage is in my gut?  Is it too much / too little for healthy digestion?
• Any plaque hanging around in my arteries?

What else?

Jet Fuel from Thin Air

That's what they say here about a new process to combine some hot gases (heated by solar activity) into kerosene that could be used to power airplanes.  While the stated efficiency is terrible (1.7%), it is an intriguing thought about our non-fossil fuel future.  Perhaps Saudi Arabia will still be the world's producer of oil (or refined products), but because of their vast desert and great solar resources rather than the endowment in the ground?  Perhaps, but at an estimated square kilometer for enough kerosene to take a 787 across the US, you are going to have some seriously intensive land use.  I will probably not be self-supplying my own gasoline from a solar plant in my front yard (though I love the idea).

Backyard Wi-Fi, Finally

So I had posted a while back about my efforts to get Wifi in my backyard.  They were not successful and decided that I should give it a go one more time.  I did some stuff write, but more wrong.

At the start I had thought that I should move my AirPort Extreme from my study to the external mount under my eve and connect it to the large outdoor antenna.  I bought some small wires to replace the internal antennas on the AirPort that had external antenna connections on it.  It was a bit of a messy process, but I have pictures below.  I followed the directions on the MacWireless website, even though I didn't buy the antenna connectors from them (Amazon had them for $5 or so).

The first step, removal of the rubber pad on the bottom didn't go so well.

This is the plastic plate below the rubber pad - its easy to remove the five screws and move on to the next step.

Removing the guts of the wireless router wasn't straightforward.  It didn't want to come out and had to be wedged out with a screw driver.  I was a bit hesitant to do so but it wasn't too hard.

 

I drilled a small hole in the side (1/4") to allow the new antenna cables come out

Shown, with two external antennas hooked up.

Rubber pad reinstalled and (close to) good as new!

So at this point, I realized that I didn't have a 1 Gbps switch to put in the place of the AirPort and decided that it might be better if I just left the normal house network alone and added a new wireless access point to the back yard.  It seemed to make sense, but in retrospect may not have been the right answer.  A 1 Gbps 5 port switch isn't much more than a low end wireless router.  So why not just have a separate network in the back?

So the first and really only glitch is that the low end wireless routers (even those with external antennas) have fixed antennas.  Not those easily screwed off.  With that knowledge, I decided that an online purchase might not be the best idea and headed out to MicroCenter (on my way to a BBQ) knowing that I could at least look at the device before I bought it.  Bad idea.  The sales folks knew nothing.  And none of the wireless routers were out for display.  The only ones for which I could be sure that they had detachable antennas were the Amped Wireless models.  I ended up spending $75 on an AP300 - about $50 more than I had originally intended to be laying down.

The installation of the AP300 started out well enough, but I ran into one very odd and unmentioned (based on my searching) quirk about the device: you can't connect it into a normal ethernet wire, or it will not work (I think it anticipates getting power - POE - and won't work).  This caused a bit of problems until I figured that out.  I ended up putting a female/female ethernet connector in the box on the house so that I could use the special 4 wire cable instead of trying to wire one correctly myself.

After all of the above, it's now working all the way back to the far side of the pool.  I tested it with my Google Nexus 7 streaming video.  That device has the worst wifi performance of any device I have, so if it works, then its all good.

The one quirk is that our iPhones are super flakey now.  My MacBook Air works just fine (can keep a VPN connection forever, good speeds when surfing), but the iPhones just freak out.  Not sure what is going on here, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that both the TimeMachine and the AirPort Extreme are broadcasting the same SSID.  I am going to change the one is the stereo cabinet and see if that clears things up.

My network now looks like the following:

Friendly Neighborhood Surveillance

I've been thinking about this for some time and decided that I really should write about it.  Its a little big brother-ish, but potentially in a distributed way.

Here's the genesis of my idea:  I live on a reasonably small road that twists and turns, but my house is on a reasonably straight portion of that road.  As a result, cars often go whizzing by at speeds far in excess of the posted 35 mph limit.  I'd like to dissuade people from doing so.

Proposed system: A simple box likely consisting of an off-the-shelf point and shoot camera, a low power laser, a tuned (i.e., focused on detecting the reflection of the laser) photo sensor and a raspberry pi or an arduino.  The system works best if it is connected to the internet full time, perhaps through a focused wifi antenna back to the house.

The laser pulses multiple times a second and determines of there is a car in the camera field of view.  If there is, the speed/direction of the car is measured from the difference in the location of the car over time.  Probably just use an average of a couple of readings when the car is in the optimal location.

When the system determines that the car is in the optimal location for a license plate reading, the camera snaps a picture, focused on the license plate area.  The picture and the speed/direction information along with the time-stamped photograph would be sent to the cloud for processing.  The key would be to pull the state and license plate number from the picture.  Better would also be to pull the make and model (more data has to be worth more money).

At first the raw pictures could be posted publicly on a website where citizens could just focus on shaming speeders or allowing parents to check in on their kids speeding habits (really anybody could check on anybody if they knew the license plate information).

My understanding is that the courts have made it clear that this is not private information - police cars routinely drive down the road with picture scanners looking for cars with outstanding parking tickets on them.  The same could be accomplished by just sitting in your front yard with a camera - the device is just making it much easier to do systematically.

One Step Beyond:   Charge for access to the processed data.  This could serve private investigators (PIs).  They could subscribe to the site for $10/month and get access to locations of a certain number of license plates.  For a premium service, they'd be able to set up a geo-fence around a location and get a text on any hits in real time (location and direction).  Eventually, home-owners could get a small payment for hosting the devices based on the revenues from the subscriptions.  Yes, I'm guessing the NSA would harvest this information with or without permission (but I'm sure that the company would rather get paid for it).

The value of subscription clearly goes up as the number of people providing data goes up.  Business owners on busy streets could post these on their signs.  Homeowners everywhere that are annoyed with speedy neighbors could provide their data to the police as justification for increased speeding patrols.  As a bonus add-on, you could create an iPhone app and let people take geo-coded pictures in parking lots to record the location of vehicles.  I don't know if it would be worth too much (and mall / shopping center owners would like become sensitive to it), but you could pay per data point.

I have a great spot near the road that has power.  If I get motivated, I may just try to hack this system together.

The State of Residential Wind Turbines

So my post yesterday about solar shingles got me thinking about roof-mounted wind turbines and what it might look like for me to install one on my house.  So, I decided to do a little bit of research on the topic today.  If you are interested in the topic, you should probably check out Bergey's Wind School first before you read more below.  If you really want to get into it, don't read anything below.  Rather go to Home Power Magazine and start your research there.  There is plenty of information on the internet to decide if you should learn more - which is to say you won't be able to conclude that you should or shouldn't buy a turbine without ultimately talking to the manufacturer, or better, talking to the installation company.  The balance of system and electrical integration costs are likely to be non-trival and need to be considered - its not just the per kW cost of the turbine!

Horizontal Turbines

These are the ones you think of when somebody says windmill or wind turbine.  The blades spin around a horizontally mounted axis, like an aircraft propeller.  Standard fare that has been around for some time and is reasonably mature (I think) in its design and engineering.  Typically, these guys use permanent magnet motors and have no gearing.  Simple is better with respect to reliability.  Some are shrouded like the TAM Energy / Honeywell turbine.

Vertical Turbines

These are not really that new, but not often used in utility scale machines.  However, from what I can tell, there does seem to be a fair bit of interest in using them in roof-mounted applications.  Unfortunately (though unsurprisingly), these appear to suffer from the same issues as the horizontal turbines with respect to average wind speed.  See below in Take-Aways.

Mounting

Roof Mounted

Two different types of roofs are dealt with - flat (common for commercial buildings) and peaked (common for residential).    Both mounting systems look quite reasonable and well-engineered, but what I can't find any information about acoustic coupling with the building.  Bergey cautions against roof mounting for this reason, but I don't know really how good or bad it can be.  TAM Energy suggests (and includes in the sale of their turbines) a "roof box" that is added on top of the original roof.  Perhaps this provides some amount of decoupling between the turbine and the roof?

Pole Mounted

I think that this is most typical of all wind turbine applications.  There are two options here: guy-wired setup and a self-standing pole.  The latter is more expensive, but doesn't require as much flexibility with your space.

Take-Aways

There is probably nothing here for me.  Bergey recommends not pursuing if you have less than 1 acre and 6+ mph average wind speeds.  I have neither.  Just shy of 1 acre in the suburbia surrounding DC.  The 30 meter (above the surface) wind speed map provided by the government suggests that I have between 4 and 4.5 mph average wind speed.  Though I do pay more than 10¢ per kWh for my electricity, its not much more.  My payback period is probably quite high and would be a riskier proposition than just continuing to purchase from the utility.  A vertical turbine manufacturer, Urwind, suggests that at 4.5 mph average wind speed, their product would produce very little output. 

Low speed performance turbine will have to improve substantially, I'm guessing, before it will make sense for me to go down this route.  This is not impossible.  One of the big achievements of utility-scale wind turbines over the last decade has been to raise capacity factors from the high 20% range to the low 40's.  And that is after choosing the best wind sites, previously.  The same could potentially change here, though the pace of change is likely to be slower given the relatively small market size for residential wind turbines.

Though the above sites suggest that measuring wind speeds at your residence for a year is likely to be overkill (expensive and can be modeled well), I think it would be interesting to measure over the course of the year.  Then, I'd cross the wind-speed duration curve with the power output curve of various wind turbines to see what opportunity to offset electricity usage that I'd have.

I think that I'd be most inclined to go with the TAM Energy / Honeywell roof-mounted turbine if I was going to do anything.  They start producing power at relatively low wind speeds - 2 mph.  I have space on my roof, so I'd spring for 2 - which would cost me $30,000.  They claim that I'd be offsetting about 2000 kWh per year for each turbine.  For me that equates to roughly (10.1¢/kWh * 4,000 kWh) = $404/year savings.  That means I'd need 75 years to pay off the investment.  The design lifetime of the device is only 20 years.  This won't really work - even if the output was double the projected output for an average site.  So much for my investment in wind power, at least for now.

To make it work, I would need to see a 7 year payback.  If the performance of the turbine can't be improved, there is really just one way to make this work: reduce the cost of the two turbines by ~90% to $2,828.  Not likely to happen any time soon.  Probably sub-scale for the balance of plant portion, too.  Which means, I think that the turbines need to improve before this all goes around.

Further Research

I have by no means exhausted the research areas for this topic.  If the turbine technology improves meaningfully, I think each of the following areas would require more thought and study:

• What are local zoning laws (if any) that need to be complied with?  Is it any different than installing an antenna on your roof?
• What is reasonable to assume the acoustic signature is for a roof-mounted turbine?
• How much should it cost to install?
• What are the additional components required to integrate into one's home electrical system?
• How would Dominion (my local utility) deal with my power costs?  How much would be truly offset?

Next up: Residential solar.  Like I have noted before, I'd really like to have a solar-driven stirling engine.  Or rather, a solar/propane CHP system.

Shingle Me Timbers

So the future is not quite now, but I think that this is a big step.  Dow Chemical is jumping into the renewable energy fray with a solar shingle, named PowerHouse.  Its a great idea.  Not cheap, but a great start.  Their marketing wisely doesn't focus on people who would install from scratch, but on those that would be replacing their shingles anyway.

Unfortunately, I live in Virginia and would not qualify for incentives, so I chose the next best place, Washington DC.  The website estimates that I could save a substantial amount of money in electricity costs (over 25 years) and raise the value of my house (presumably due to the decreased energy requirements).  Though my house is not this large, here is the view that they provide:

Unfortunately, what I took for links in the paragraph are not links.  Of course, I could talk to an expert, but I have the following complaints about the provided information:

• How is the asphalt roof of -$20k value?  Misleading comparison - costs only on the left, benefits only shown on the right.
• I'd like to dig into their assumptions and know what the pre-incentive cost is rather than just the post-incentive.
• How do they conclude my house value goes up by this amount?
• What is the $120k of energy savings based on?  What is their forecast of residential power prices?  Do they factor in DC RECs?

Perhaps the information is not shown because they are making some heroic assumptions that embarrass them.  That said, by not putting supporting information, that is pretty much the only conclusion a skeptical guy like myself can come to.

Before you dismiss this post as just a solar hater, please factor in the following about my views:

• I'm a fan of solar and innovative ways to create electricity.  If I could buy a solar stirling engine (claimed to be 1/2 the cost of PV) and put it into my front yard, I would.
• I have also investigated installing a series of nine roof-mounted wind turbines on my roof.  A relatively modest investment of $15k could largely offset my grid usage.  I'm very concerned about noise under high wind conditions.
• If organic flow batteries ever take off, the first two options will look much more interesting to me.
• However, I am a true believer in price.  We are wasting our money on subsidies.  See Marginal Revolution for a recent summary of different economists take on climate change.  My views are squarely with Bjorn Lomborg.  Stop the subsidies, ramp up the R&D.  We will soon have products that are cheaper than fossil fuels and will adopt them without market distortions.

Loss of Power

I am not an expert in the analysis of potential blackout conditions as discussed in this WSJ article.  However, I find the conclusion that by taking out only four transformers (probably actually four substations) in the eastern interconnect one could cause an 18 month blackout to be extraordinarily unrealistic.

Yes, we have some issues.  Some of them:

• It takes a long time to build high voltage transformers
• We don't have a lot of transformer building capacity in the U.S.
• We have relatively lax physical security for our substations
• We have an interdependent physical transmission network.  Losing key interconnection points will cause pain.

With respect to the last point, it should be noted that this is a good thing.  The interdependency exists because its more efficient to trade power across systems.  This is due to non-coincident electrical loads and generation outages.  This saves US electrical consumers (literally) billions of dollars a year.

What I find to be unlikely is that we can't respond to a major event like this.  Our response would be a pain, but I think that we could avoid life-altering outcomes.  We have several different ways in which we can respond (in order of escalating severity):

• Run more expensive, but more proximate electrical generation facilities.  We already have market mechanisms to deal with this and a relatively robust reserve margin to cover unexpected system conditions.
• Ask for voluntary reduction in power usage by both residential customers as well by commercial and industrial.  In the summer, this can take the form of raising the temperature in our houses another 5º.  Or not turning on the big screen TV until 7 or 8pm (after the evening peak load usage).
• Pay industrial and commercial customers to reduce their load (off of historical baselines).  There are structures (e.g., demand response) that have been effective at modifying behavior.
• Dramatically increase power rates above a certain monthly kWh usage.  This is already done to a lesser extent in the retail rate structures in many states.
• Mandate a reduction in usage.  For example, outlaw air conditioning usage, perhaps on alternate days of the week.  Impose large fines on people using air conditioning when they should not be.
• Characterize critical and non-critical buildings and usage for power.  Cut power to non-critical ones.

I could be wrong.  It wouldn't be pretty, but this would hardly bring us to our knees.

GPS Altitude Issues

I was planning on writing a rant about GPS and altitude problems.  I still will, but it will be tempered, from the start, by some quick internet searching on how to fix the problem.

My issue is that when I wear my Garmin ForeRunner 405 running or biking on an "out and back," it will often show very different elevations on the route.  Super frustrating.  I understand some of the technical side of it.  You can read here if you are interest as to why GPS is more accurate on the lat/long than the elevation, but its not necessarily an easy discussion.  GPS is reasonably complicated mathematically, but the theory is straightforward.

It turns out that there are technical solutions to this very technical problem.  Sites like Strava, for instance, do this correction in the background unless you ask them not to.  There is a fantastic post in their help area describing in detail what they do.  If you don't use Strava, all is not lost.

There are programs out there (such as GPS Visualizer) that will use the 2D representation and then map it to the "DEM (digital elevation model) database" to get the third dimension (or really, the elevation is what we care about).  Unfortunately, as described in the Strava post, the best DEMs only have 10M accuracy (which seems mind-bogglingly bad to me).

While there are solutions, it still seems as if Strava and others are not taking advantage of all of the data that could be brought to bear on the problem of determining surface elevation and thus I still feel justified in complaining that Garmin doesn't correct altitude errors when I import my data.  It would seem to me that there are portions of the surface of this earth that are well travelled by GPS-wearing folks like myself, that we ought to have accurate enough readings (from thousands of receivers) to detect a repaving of a trail or road.  Think the Washington and Old Dominion trail in northern Virginia.

Less on the fitness side and more on the house side, I'd like a 3" accuracy model of my lot.  I think that would be fantastic for modeling drainage and hardscaping/landscaping projects in the future.  Perhaps that model doesn't need to integrate with the rest of the earth, it would be kinda cool if it did.

3D Painting (with ultrasound)

This is perhaps not what you are expecting, but I'll start with a vignette about what made me think of this to begin with:

I routinely work out at the gym.  Usually, this involves a combination of lifting weights, cardio and stretching.  In my stretching, I'm usually doing some foam rolling to do that whole "myofascial release" thing.  Unfortunately, my aging body doesn't always cooperate with whatever mix of activities I've recently subjected it to.  I have one on-going issue and one new one.

The ongoing issue is in my shoulders.  They apparently loose.  Not morally, but in the sense that they are not quite firmly in the socket so there is more motion than would otherwise be ideal.  I was told by a doctor that its likely genetic and the only real solution for it is surgery (with a reasonably long recovery cycle).  And as a result of being loose, they hurt if I do too much chest or shoulder lifting.  

The new problem is my left leg.  Its not quite my knee, but behind my knee.  As in, I can barely do child's pose without it hurting badly.

As I laid there on the mat this morning, I thought to myself, "Why can't I just map my ligaments with a 3D probe and figure out if there is some tendonitis and then do the right therapy from there?"  I can't, because as far as I know, nobody has tried to put something together to do this.

So here is a proposal:

• A USB-powered wand-like device similar to that of the BodyMetrix Personal Ultrasound Body Composition tool.
• iPad or Android tablet as key interface
• Priced at USD 200
• Provides a 2D image to the user in real time
• More importantly, builds a 3D model of the body tissue while the user moves it around slowly (auditory feedback indicating ideal speed)
• Potentially use two wands, though this does get a bit tricky for the operator
• Exportable 3D model to other programs.
• Tracking/automatic measurement on various body parts:
• Body fat (like the BodyMetrix).  This is typically take based on body measurements at various points in the body (lower back, thigh)
• Muscle size
• Tendon / ligament size
• Belly
• UI will be key: this tool would need to have a fantastic approach to capturing the information and then making it meaningful to the user.

Ideally, I could have done this first when I was the model of good health. Then, when I'm in pain in some part of my body, scan it and compare the current results / sizing of everything and determine if everything is all right or I'm just being a wimp.  While the latter is likely, I'd rather not be pushing myself when I shouldn't be.  As I get older, pain seems to be a less reliable indicator of when I should stop.

Is this really that hard?  Ultrasounds are used beyond the womb.  See here and here and here and here, some of it getting into cool stuff like finding blockages in arteries or mapping blood flow using the Dopler shift from the moving fluid.  It all seems focused on 2D mapping and snapshots.  Why not go for the 3D that people can understand.  Frankly, when I went to my wife's ultrasound appointments, I only saw random black and white noisiness.  Nothing that looked like a baby.  The technician saw much more, but still had to manually measure the femur and a few other spots to accurately determine the size of the baby.  All of that seems ripe for automation and no need for a technician.  Put the woman in the room with a tub of gel and a wand and tell here to move it around until the system tells her she's done.

Fun side project.  Swallow a penny - and watch it go down through the system :)  OK, maybe this is a little gross.  But instead of a penny, use something else that isn't so gross.  And let people track it through their digestive cycle.  I don't know why that seems cool to me, but it does.  You know you've heard that story of a kid swallowing a GI Joe hand . . .

BTW: I fully understand that we have a set of people working at the FDA that can barely put their pants on in the morning.  This project would be "for entertainment only" and would be designed for pets.  Or something like that.  It seems like it would be the death of this idea if it had to be approved.

Am I missing something?  Does this already exist?  Let me know in the comments!

When Will Wearables Explode?

Not thinking in the literal sense, but in something more than the industry hype sense.  I hope that the hype has peaked and we are moving into the period of hard work where people make products attractive and usable for the masses, not just the early adopters.

Here are some ill-informed views on when I think that wearables will really take off:

• When "energy harvesting" is built-in from the start.  While I am generally not too annoyed that I have to charge my fitbit once per week, I'd rather I didn't have to.  It seems somewhat ironic, as well, that a device that is capturing my motion data, is not using that motion to its benefit.  How cool would it be if I never had to charge my fitbit (as long as I used it)?
• Data transmission is standardized.  Good example: I have a fitbit and a Garmin ForeRunner 450.  Both require proprietary USB adapters to connect to my computer.  Hopefully, devices will coalesce around using low power BlueTooth or some single suitable technology.  Better than this, it'd be great if the devices didn't use near-field technology at all, but instead connected to Wifi and take the computer out of the equation.
• More complete monitoring.  Steps are a good first step.  But not nearly enough for a compelling fitness / wellness view.  
• How about:
• 3D movement, interpreted, so that you don't have to log what activity you were doing.  Premium systems could include multiple sensors for a better read (wrist, hip & ankle).
• Heart rate (and better yet actual ECG signal)
• Blood oxygen levels
• Respiratory rate
• Perspiration levels
• Blood pressure
• GPS location, even if only through your phone
• Some of this should be real-time, but where that gets hard, at least make near real time (like Azoi could be used right after getting off the treadmill).
• Some better understanding of how people want to change themselves (or remain the same).  
• For instance, is it important to you to:
• Train for a particular event
• Just get "better"
• Remain at your current high fitness level
• Provide real feedback tailored to such.  I'm afraid that this will remain in the "paid extra" category, but I don't think that it will take off until a subscription is not required.  I'd be much more willing to buy a premium version of the product up front that has this built into the cost rather than a subscription and think that many others share my aversion.  It boggles my mind that this isn't being done already with fitbit.
• Capture "uncapturable" information and integrate it into your product.  
• AskMeEvery is a great example of how this could be done:
• Wearable user works out
• Wearable system asks user how fatigued they are after the workout (via email, if necessary)
• Wearable system determines that its pretty much the same workout as they had done three days ago
• Wearable system alerts user that they are making progress: their reported fatigue is only 8 out of 10 instead of the 10 out of 10 they reported three days ago
• To be fair, fitbit and others are doing this with food.  But it comes in the "paid extra" category and still isn't easy enough to do reliably.
• Generally decrease the uncapturable information in the system.  A few thoughts:
• Build a kitchen scale with wifi that can be used in conjunction with a phone app.  Have people weigh their food.  (Seems like this could already exist and I'm just unawares).  It has to be much more accurate that taking a picture or just estimating.  And easier.  I had 18oz of lasagna.  Done.
• [Other ideas to be added as they (hopefully) come to me.]

A Former FiOS Fan

I was pretty excited about getting FiOS.  That was about a year ago, this is now.  They've started throttling NetFlix.  I'm done with them unless they publicly apologize and change.

Let me get this straight.  They are holding out for NetFlix to pay them to pass along network traffic that their (Verizon's) customers are demanding.  For which Verizon's customers already paid dearly to get access to the internet.  Now these same customers are just trying to use it.  Seriously.  Just treat your customers like dirt.  Good for you - but I'm out.

[Update 2014-03-06]  I didn't expect my FCC complaint to do anything.  At all.  But via email, I got this letter today:

March 06, 2014
Verizon Customer Advocacy
290 West Mount Pleasant Avenue
Dispatch Floor 2, DRC
Livingston, NJ 07039

Dear Mr. Bulkeley:
Verizon is in receipt of the complaint filed with the FCC regarding your broadband service. Verizon is committed to providing quality customer service and appreciates the opportunity to review your concerns.
I sincerely apologize for the trouble and inconvenience you have experienced. Verizon will be in contact with you regarding this matter. I attempted to contact you on the telephone number provided on the complaint and was unable to leave a voicemail for you.
Should you have any questions prior to Verizon contacting you back , please feel free to call my office at the number listed below.


Thank you again for taking the time to express your concerns. We will address your concerns as quickly as possible.

Sincerely
Ms. Thomas
Customer Advocacy

We'll see if anything comes of it.  Presumably not.

What is the hype about sapphire lens covers?

I am a reasonably disgruntled iPhone 5 photographer.  I, like many others, will use the camera often.  But for me, its always with a tinge of regret that I didn't plan ahead and have one of my better cameras with me.  Even a 10 MP four year old Olympus Stylus 1030SW is better than my iPhone if only because the optics are not fixed.

So with that as a background, it really bothers me when one of the supposed benefits of the iPhone 5, its Sapphire lens cover is crap.  I don't care how high on the hardness scale this stuff is supposed to be, it scratches and leaves behind crappy artifacts, such as in the picture below.  There are no fewer than six visible problems currently.  It is particularly notable on a ski trip.

Perhaps this is a problem of not only knowing how to protect some part of your device, but being OK with the failure mode.  I'd say that this is a big fail for Apple.

Insight from Fitbit?

So, I decided that I was going to do something with my fitbit data.  I had to learn something from looking at close to a year's worth of data, right?  I hope.  My first thought was from my scale, it seemed that my body fat routinely increased when my weight was going down.  This didn't make intuitive sense, and it might not actually be true.  Time to test it with data!

My first attempt to do something useful was in Excel.  I quickly grew tired of the stupidity of scatter plots in Excel.  It was because I generated this plot:

Given that I had some issues with my labeling, I will be clear: the x-axis is weight (in pounds) and the y-axis is body fat (in %).  The black lines connect data points in time sequence.  You will note that there seem to be some clusters of data where the points are just a little bit too nicely spaced from one to the next, almost forming a solid line of light blue boxes.  This is due to fitbit cheating.

Biggest complaint so far is the fitbit is inconsistent about representing missing data points.  For blood pressure, they show up as "0/0".  For weight, they come as interpolated data points.  I basically have to algorithmically filter them out or I'm not going to have a very believable relationship between weight and fat.  I gave up trying after doing some conditional statements.  I decided that R would be a better tool.

To be able to use R, I was going to have to export the data I wanted to a csv.  I decided to find an online R platform and did find one that uses my favorite plotting package (ggplot2).  I am a big fan of R-serve, which I use at work all of the time, but didn't find any servers online that let people mess around on it.

Unfortunately, it didn't like the forward slashes in the excel csv export.  I foolishly decided to use TextWrangler's grep'ing capability to find and replace the dates.  I say foolishly, because I thought that I remembered how to use it, but didn't really.  I had to refer to some find and replace strings I had pulled together for work.  Ultimately, the date find took the form of:

(?P\<month>\d)/(?P\<day>\d)/(?P<year>\d),

and the date replace looked like:

20\P<year>-0\P<month>-0\P<day>,

I got there, anyways.  It then did make it quick to replace the slash in the blood pressure column.  I wanted to replace "0/0" with "0,0".  And I replaced the "Blood Pressure" with "Systolic" and "Diastolic".  This was a simpler find string, that I made too complicated, perhaps:

,(?P<systolic>\d+)/(?P<diastolic>\d+),

 and the replacement:

,\P<systolic>,\P<diastolic>,

The only problem was that I had 352 rows of data and it made only 351 replacements.  I hate searching out the one problem child.  One trick is to throw the csv into excel and look for column shifting (I've created a new column with this replacement).  It should be pretty quick given that excel will generally automatically recognize the comma as the column separator.  And if it doesn't - "Text to Columns . . ." works in a jiffy.  It turns out that one row has a non-interger reading for the diastolic, so it didn't match my grep.  Rather than fix the pattern, I made an ad hoc change to the csv.

And . . . it wouldn't upload.  So, back to the desktop version of R.  So here is my best effort so far (using ggplot2):

The plot also includes a linear regression of the data and the standard error band around the estimate.  Despite my initial theory, it looks like my body fat readings are reasonably well correlated with my weight, but only reasonably well.  Its a 20% adjusted R², but the p-value for the model is 4.1e-8.

The code to generate this is right here:
codehere::codehere
It occurred to me that I should really first be interested in how my weight evolved over time.  This is what fitbit.com provides:

I think it hides too much of the variability.  Here's my plot:

The code to generate this plot is simpler:
ss
Clearly, my goal weight is 160 pounds. I'm a bit closer than the last data point here, down to 163.5 pounds.  But what is driving my weight gain & loss?  Is it potentially related to my activity level?  Let's see.

Let's at least start with what my calorie burn looks like.  First, just day by day (are there any trends) and then by day of week.  Here we go:

and the daily average (violin plots with the mean represented as a green dot):

By far, it looks like Saturday is my busiest day, in terms of activity.  But the distribution of Saturday overlaps the other days of the week from lazy to super active.  I guess I have my slow weekend days, as well.  Another view is very derivative and slightly easier to create - that is a monthly view:

I really don't know why January looks so high (this is only the tail end of January 2013), perhaps its just the small number of data points.  It does look like after summer I slowed a bit down and picked it up a bit through November, getting lazier in December again.

And the code to generate the above:
codehere::codehere

Not surprisingly, there is a strong relationship between steps and calories burned.  I think that it'd be reasonable for some dispersion due to other activities that I log (e.g., lifting, biking).  It looks like the outlier day of less than 5,000 steps, was one where I rode 50 miles on my bike.  So I guess it could make sense.

This simple relationship has an adjusted R² of 49%, roughly meaning that about half of the variability in calorie burn is explained by steps.  What really happens by fitbit is a bit more complicated.  I believe that their calculations incorporate the amount of time that you are active - in various states.  The better model would look like the following:

This model (its construction shown in the code below) has a 90% adjusted R² with and an F-stat for the model of over 825.  I think that indicates significance.  Interestingly, the time sedentary is not a (very) significant variable, but the model thinks that the intercept is.  Which probably makes sense, indicating that there is just a baseline number of calories that somebody of my (roughly constant) weight would burn.  The true model that they use is one of both body mass and activity.  They report Activity Calories burned and the above model against that has a 98% R², so I think that indicates a match.

codehere::codehere

Now let's get to a more interesting question/hypothesis.  My guess would be that the more active I am over a period of time, the more likely I am to lose weight.  Seem reasonable?  Let's check it out.  First we need to think about the variables available to us and whether they'd reasonably be expected to show a relationship.  I think that the answer is no, given that all of the observations are for an individual day (no trending).  Keep in mind that the best we are going to be able to do is capture the outflow or burning of calories.  I haven't tracked my food intake over any meaningful period of time.  And fitbit doesn't provide that in the dataset anyway.

So, I will have to do some transformations first, but I'll save that code until after the graph.  So let's look at a weekly time period (average activity calories in a week) versus the weight change over the course of that week in the form of weight(date)-weight(date, seven days later.  With that defined, I can look at the visuals:

While at first glance, this doesn't seem super good.  Its mostly a cloud; don't let the fit line and the standard error band trick you.  If there was something there, it would be in the direction that I think that it should be.  That is to say, as my activity increases, my weight decreases.  The model's adjusted R² is only 3%.  This isn't to say that there couldn't be a different date range that we should be looking over, but I would be concerned that we are finding a spurious relationship.  Even if we did find something, I think that it would be worth doing an in-sample/out-of-sample test for significance.

Before I forget, here is the code:
codehere::codehere

So I'm out of reasonable questions to answer with this data.  How about some random questions:

• Do steps correlate with Floors climbed?  (i.e., when I'm active, am I active in both ways)
• How long do I sleep when I track my sleep?  I have been super inconsistent in tracking it, even though I use my fitbit as an alarm clock on weekday mornings.  How does the fitbit data compare to the AskMeEvery data that I've been collecting for the last two weeks?

Let's tackle these.  For the first, here is the graphic:

With a 35% R2, I think its safe to say that there is some correlation, but its really not definitive.  See the data point at about 17,000 steps - that would be one floor climbed that day.  It can happen.  I guess.  150 floors seems like a lot.  but I also took ~17,000 steps that day.  So there is something there.

And now for sleep.  Here's what I've gotten from AskMeEvery:

So I sleep a lot on weekends.  I try to get 7.5 during the week, it happens, though 7 is much more likely.  How did the fitbit data compare?

Given the limited data from AskMeEvery, I think these are essentially equivalent.  What it does indicate, I think, is that on a night that I think that I get 7.5 hours, I'm really getting ~6.  The rest of the time is getting to sleep and restlessness during the day.

Finally, the code for the last two fitbit graphs:

codehere::codehere

Reflection on the data and FitBit

I have looked around on the web about what people think or have learned by using their FitBit.  It can be summed up as:

• I didn't realize how sedentary I am/was
• I walk more because I'm wearing a FitBit
• I like getting badges

Aside from general behavior changing on the margin, I'm unimpressed with what I see out there.  I think my original review holds up fairly well.  I think the following two changes should be made (at a minimum):

• Add the alarm alerting you that you've been sedentary too long.  Let the user choose this, but provide links or other guidance on the website about what might be a useful interval.  I addressed this in more detail in my initial review.
• Add the option that goes beyond their "Step Goal Milestones" that alert you when you've hit "75%, 100% or 125% of your daily goal."  These are fine notifications, but what if you just get to 70% of your goal.  You never really know that.  I'd prefer time-based notifications that put your day into perspective, allowing the user the time(s) of the day that they'd like to receive them (for me, 8am and noon would be most useful).  I want to be motivated beyond just a fixed goal, which I'm sure most users have never changed from the day they set up their FitBit.  The message I want is like the following:
• You've taken X steps so far today.  This is at the Yth percentile of the last week and Zth percentile of the last month.  Only A steps until your goal!

To keep its users engaged, I think FitBit really needs to do more.  I'm not super convinced the solution is my first anniversary email:

Maybe it'd be more interesting to tell me where I fit in the distribution of all FitBit wearers.  Answer questions like the following:

• I've worn my consistently over the last year.  Have I worn it more than 90% of their customer group?  Shouldn't that make me feel good?
• For people my age (weight/sex/zip code), where am I in terms activity over the last 12 months? Weight gain / loss?  Body fat gain / loss?
• Talk some about the FitBit community - in aggregate, how many pounds lost, miles travelled, steps taken?
• [I will add more as I think of them]

Other thoughts out there?

Protection!

I am renting out a room in my house and went downstairs to check on the smoke detector.  When I did, I found that there was no smoke detector.  I did some quick research on Amazon and found that I would probably spend about $40 for a combination carbon monoxide detector.  I thought for a bit and broke down and bought a nest Protect.  It came today.

While it was more complicated to install than your average everyday smoke detector / carbon monoxide detector, it wasn't very hard.  It does, however, require a mobile device to which you can connect to it via wifi.  Given that I already had a nest Thermostat (and a nest account), there was little to do during the setup process except for name the device (choose the room) and enter my Wifi network's password.  The folks at nest thoughtfully included the first batch of six AAA batteries; I'm hopeful that they last for some meaningful amount of time.  If things go well with this one, I will consider adding more to other levels of the house.  Or, it might be better to wait until they add thermometers to communicate with my nests.

Four screws (provided) later and I was good to go.  Now, my phone will get an alert when the house is on fire!

Frozen Nest

I've just had a reasonably bad experience with my nest.  I guess I had recently agreed for the nest to manage our heat based on the auto-away setting.  When I got home last night from work, the house was crazy cold (60º upstairs), despite the fact that the boys were home all day.  They were home, but by and large just sitting in front of their computers, not doing much of anything involving motion, which the nest would have picked up on indicating that they were home.

The reason that I'm unhappy with this nest experience is two-fold:

• The low temperature tonight is forecasted to be in the single digits and I'm concerned about pipes freezing.  I wanted to keep my house reasonably toasty to minimize the potential for burst pipes and expensive clean-up.
• The nest was never able to bring the house up to temperature.  When I went to bed, the nest was up to 65º - not comfortable - and the furnace has been running non-stop.

What this points to is the following:

• The auto-away feature should have an additional limit: this should be the amount of time that you are willing to wait for the house to get back up to the target temperature.  This should take into account your house's modeled behavior and the current and forecasted temperatures.  I should be able to say that I never want it to take more than 1 hour to get to temperature.  The nest would then ensure that it could get the house up to that temperature (and if somewhat extreme temperatures were forecasted, it would take that into account, dynamically setting the low temperature mark).

Let's get on it nest!  Or other software providers, now that the API is supposedly available.

Nest - Data-free Badness

I have two Nests installed in my house for my upstairs and downstairs HVAC systems for some time now (since 2012-02-26), but I haven't written about it since I made my first post with my initial thoughts after installation.  I thought I'd share my current thoughts on the product.

What's Awesome (in no particular order):

• Super easy installation.  Best in class instructions.  Covered more in my original post.
• Ability to control my thermostat remotely via an iPhone app.  Cool stuff.  My kids (who live on the upper level) and I have a bit of a war with setting the temperature during the summer, but I always win.
• Auto-Away: it learns when you are not around and automatically cuts back on your energy usage.
• Monthly reports: Nest will email you a short summary of your energy usage and 
• Beautiful design: it looks good and its easy to use.

What's (still) Not Awesome

• I still can't get my data.  It turns out that I could have if I was willing to go through some gymnastics (see Gregory Booma's blog post - he provides a script to import the data into R, one of my favorite tools).  Unfortunately, Gregory has updated this as of 2013-12-03 saying that due to Nest introducing their API, the functionality described in his post is not available any longer.  I'm inclined to sign up as a developer, but would rather have intermittent access to all of my historical data, I don't want to have to set up a server to capture my data.  This was a $250 thermostat.  I think that they could give me the ability to download a CSV every so often.
• Given that I can't look at my data myself, the app and website still seem very underdeveloped.  You just can't look at much.  10 days of history is it.  That is pitiful.  See the graphic below.  Its crazy how much more my system ran last night (almost non-stop) when the temperature fell to 10ºF.  Sadly, that's a lot of propane.
• But what was running?  Was it just the fan running (I have the fan on the 15 minutes an hour schedule for greater comfort), or was the furnace chugging away burning propane?  Really guys, you couldn't figure out a way to represent this on the same graph?
• Why are graphics covered up to the point I have no idea what they are?
• Why can't I see a sparkline of the temperature in the house?  The humidity?  This seems stupidly obvious that I'd want to be able to see the history here.
• I can't connect the Nest to supplemental temperature sensors.  I'd love to have between six and 12 wifi (or Z-wave) sensors reporting to the Nest and be able to set up rules such as:
• Run heating (cooling) if any of the sensors gets below (above) a defined set point.
• Warning if the temperature gradient is higher than a defined level (e.g., 10ºF).  Help me trouble shooting by showing me the variation of all of the sensor over time.  I'd love to be able to tweak my registers in a way that limits variation and increases comfort.
• Allow me to activate register boosters (my term): basically, registers with supplemental fans to increase airflow to particular rooms or sections of the house.