But for Those Pesky Humans

Stephan Heck and Matt Rogers explore how the world could change given some of the known technology that has been developed and argue for a bright future.  They write about this in their relatively new book, Resource Revolution.  I hope that they are right.  I think that they are right.  I'm an optimist, too.  I'll need to read their book.

In this New York Times review, the author of the review points out very possible unintended consequences of the efficiency improvements that will come if we allow electric / autonomous / carpool systems to develop and improve to the point that they are ubiquitous.  We could just opt for more.  Its a good point, but misses the larger point.

As prices decrease (and technology helps drive down prices), we tend to consume more.  More efficient cars have allowed people living in the exurbs to still commute to the office at a reasonable total cost.  What might be a more compelling line of argument might be whether the goods that we'd be consuming in the future are more or less subject to the same resource intensity as in the past.  As more and more of goods that we consume are low cost to "manufacture" or duplicate (video games, on-line entertainment more generally), our resource intensiveness per unit of GDP should be expected to decline.  To be fair, the author is focusing on physical goods where real resources are consumed.  But if we could cut the number of required cars in this country by half by increasing utilization to 10% from 5%, that would be a substantial reduction in the use of real resources.  If we could cut automotive deaths from 33k to 1k per year, that would result in a substantial reduction in the use of real resources.  Will these be sufficient to offset our increased consumption?  Good question to debate, maybe.

Personally, I think that we are saturated in our interest in spending time in cars (or at least I am).  I can't imagine increasing my time spend in cars just because I don't have to drive.  It will be quite a bit more valuable to me if I don't have to spend the time/energy to drive, yes.  Bigger house, nope.  Mine is too big already.  That may not be true for others, though.  Really, the big problem with housing will come when the cost of renovations is dramatically reduced.  3D mapping and engineering technologies could make this happen (maybe?).  Our existing housing stock is huge compared to new housing built each year.

Too much of a stream of consciousness post, apologies.

Any Room for Us Humans?

My son made me sit down and watch the below video entitled, Humans Need Not Apply.  I'm not sure I agree 100% with his conclusions, but I think generally, he is on target.  I passed this link along to Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution and he included in his recent assorted links.

Enjoy the video first, and if you care to, check out my thoughts below.

For me, the question is more of not if, but when.  When does this really matter?  Here are my initial questions/thoughts (with some structure):

• What are the reasons that this won't happen?
• Luddites?
• How will regulatory structures evolve to support or thwart the use of robots in various rolls?
• "Hand made"
• What will frighten people when they see it in action?
• How significant would it be if just one sector (transportation) were fully automated?
• Will we start consuming more?
• Does this lead to more or less energy consumption?
• Can we afford to spend more of our income on expensive renewable energy as a result?
• Who gains the most?  Who loses the most?
• Professions, in particular
• Wealth distribution implications?
• What government structures facilitate or thwart this outcome?
• Do third world countries fall that much further behind?
• Does this further increase the immigration pressures?
• Can software really be written by 'bots?
• We can barely get OOP done right and its been 30 years . . .
• How does this disrupt the economies of scale in manufacturing?
• Shouldn't it be just as cheap to locate flexible assembly robots closer to customers and minimize your supply chain length?
• What are non-scale driven activities (or modestly scale driven)?
• How can I be a meaningful part of making this happen?
• How will we spend our money differently in such a robot-dominated world?
• Will "live" be at an even higher premium?
• Is creativity really just an illusion?
• If so, why isn't more pseudo-creative work being generated by computers / expert systems already?
• Music can be done, but can lyrics, as well?
• The human voice?
• In what ways will we seek out collective experiences in the future that are different from now?
• Will this lead to more or fewer people on the planet?
• Is this future an anathema to freedom?
• What are the next set of questions that we should be asking as a species?
• Is exploration (of earth, then space) a sufficient focusing force?
• Does health science provide enough upside to continue to develop improvements in the treatment of disease and elongation of life?

Dash!

I can still remember carpooling in the mid-90's and hearing ads for the world's largest bookstore on the radio.  Amazon has come a long way since then, and my life is better for it.  I am a big fan of Prime and "Subscribe and Save," but I'm looking forward to more.

If you are not aware, Amazon has introduced online grocery services, Prime Fresh.  Sadly, it's available "only in the Southern California and Northern California, CA Metro areas".  Those of us on the east coast are out of luck, at least for now.

Now, they go one step further and introduce the Dash.  This would have a special place in my kitchen if Amazon can ever make northern Virginia work for their grocery services.  I'm looking forward to additional retail innovations that Amazon brings forth (and am also lamenting the fact that competitors to Amazon are not spurring on the innovation).

3D Gets Real?

Amazon has opened a store front for 3D objects.  I'm sure that this is just an experiment on Amazon's part, but it appears to be a legitimate attempt to understand (and profit from) interest in items created on-demand from 3D printers.  This could be a game changer for retail for certain types of objects.

You can see from the above picture, they are focusing on relatively non-important items.  That said, this could be a good start for a more wide-ranging retail catalogue.  One could imagine a point in the future at which you could choose between waiting 2 weeks for a part to be made using traditional means or paying somewhat more for a 3D printed version of the part.  IMHO, this gets way more interesting when you are able to move to mixed materials (not just plastic, but plastic, metal and potentially wood).  You are not going to 3D print wood, so perhaps there is some CNC milling that could go along with this and then some simple assembly (even done by robots).

As my middle child always says, "The future is going to be awesome!"

The Ultimate Gadget: Your Brain

On my way back from my bike ride this afternoon, I started listening to this Radio Lab show on NPR.  It was intriguing enough that I looked it up online when I got home and finished the episode.  It is a fascinating discussion of language and what it means to think.

Basically, experiments have shown that people's ability to think about complex topics (in some cases no more complex than the biscuit is in the corner to the left of the blue wall) is tied to language.  Language is thought to be a power connecting force in our brains.  Simple concepts like color can be linked to spatial concepts like "A is to the left of B".  Those connections don't exist from birth and only seem to develop in people who have language and actually, even people who only have reasonably complex language.  This concept fascinates me.

When I conveyed the basic concepts of the show to my son, his first question was the same one I had: what is the best language?  This question was not posed in the show (granted they only had one hour), but I think is very interesting.  It may be the case that all languages that are spoken by a reasonably large number of people are sufficiently developed to allow for complex thought, but can we test on the margin which is better?  And if so, doesn't humanity have a reason to want to all speak that language?

I think that there is an equally intriguing set of follow up questions:

• How can we make our language more complex to make our brains capable of thinking about even more complex concepts and topics?
• Is there a natural limit?  
• Can language be guided and crafted to make this happen?  How?
• Have there already been efforts in the past to make this happen?  Have they been successful?
• Are there ways of thinking or thought exercises that one can do to better connect various parts of their brains (and presumably have higher "horsepower" than before?

The Right Product: UPS

I have reasonably poor reliability at my house, in terms of how frequently the power cycles.  For my important electronics, I have a set (3) of full-sized CyberPower units that work well for my boys' computers upstairs, my computer downstairs and the LAN/AV equipment.  I have a Motorola Vonage box that sits in the garage so that it can be tied into the house's phone lines.  The problem comes when the power trips and the cable boxes go off-line.  What happens is that the Motorola box connects to the LAN first and disrupts (somehow, don't ask me) the ability for the FiOS cable boxes to get their proper IP addresses.  So the cable boxes just cycle until I unplug the Motorola box, reset the router, wait until all the cable boxes connect, then plug back in the Motorola box.  Annoying that this is an issue in the first place, but easily solved if the Vonage box never went offline to begin with (router stays online with my existing UPS setup).

Why is this the cheapest UPS that I can find - $39.95 on Amazon?

What I want is an inexpensive (~$20, half the above price) single outlet UPS that can support a small draw for a couple of hours or even less time.  Why doesn't this already exist?  I can't be the only one wanting something like this.

Perhaps this should be a Kickstarter campaign?

The Right Product: Motorcycle Bluetooth

I have recently been in the market for a bluetooth motorcycle intercom.  The first one I bought was a UClear HBC 100.  It was terrible.  We (my son and I) never got it to work for more than the left ear.  This was after he went to a CycleGear store and they went through about 4 pairs of ear buds (he doesn't have space to mount the helmet speakers).  The build quality of the gear seemed OK, but nothing special.  The instructions were confusing and it was difficult to get it to do what seemed like it should be easy.  Ultimately, we returned it and got our money back.

After waiting a while, and just using earbuds with my iPhone, I decided that I would spring for the Sena SMH10.  What a difference!

SMH10 - Just the Right Product

Everything about it was different.  The build quality seemed much better, which is tough to explain.  It wasn't heavier, but felt more substantial.  And the user experience was so much better.  I followed the instructions and was up and running within minutes.  It works fantastically and is exactly what I was looking for.

It is amazing how different the user experience is with a product that does exactly what you expect (and purports to do).

Solar Already Won?

I forget from where, but I read this article on the Guardian yesterday.  I kept thinking about it, so decided that it would probably be worth posting about.  The article is patently absurd.  Solar has not won yet.  Not at all.  Nor have regulators and customers come fully to grips with the impacts that significant solar deployment on residences and businesses are.

The biggest unaddressed area is that of consistent power delivery.  It's what is known as "reliability" in the industry.  Your house has whatever power it needs (barring storms or some other extraordinary event), whenever you want it.  Solar doesn't work that way.  Despite the positive economics the author cites for per kWh costs, the roof-top solar customers are taking advantage of the fact that whenever the sun isn't shining (or bright enough) to cover the electricity needs, they just draw from the grid.  Reliability is not cheap, but is bundled with your power.

In my opinion, the biggest problem is the way we pay for power (at least in most of the US, I can't speak knowledgeably about Australia).  We should be paying high fixed costs to be customers of the electricity network.  The cost of the wires (distribution and transmission) and transformers and substations is substantial and doesn't vary in the short-run.  Then, we should pay a relatively low variable costs that matches what the cost to produce and deliver the power is (here, delivery would only factor in line losses).  Why don't we pay for electricity this way?

I think that the major reason we don't do it this way is that the current approach tends to incent lower consumption on the part of customers.  That is to say that if people knew they had to pay $100 per month to be connected to the network and then only 4¢/kWh, then they would be less sensitive to leaving the lights on or lowering the AC temperature.  So given that most of us pay a very small fixed component ($10?) and something on the order of 10¢+/kWh, we use less.  Conservation rules! (I guess)

Maybe not all Wearables Make Sense

Or perhaps this post should be titled, Wearables for the Masochistic.  I don't see myself ever wanting to wear one of the new wristbands that will give you a mild electrical shock you when you don't do enough exercise, as this MailOnline article describes.  It is called Pavlok and it looks much like a FitBit Flex.

Certainly, there is going to be a raft of creativity applied to wearables over the next months and years.  Let's hope that results in useful, meaningful advances rather than more like this.

Wearables are Here to Stay (at Work)

So I rarely look at anything on Google+.  But as I was finishing up making a bunch of blog postings this morning, I happened to look at what is there.  I noted that Google is really pushing their Glass product through a gazillion posts.  One of their posts stuck out to me and I had to watch the YouTube video associated with it.

I've argued with my son about whether Google Glass will survive.  Andrew is quite convinced that it will not.  I think that it will and it will come through to general society after people are used to using them and seeing them in a work environment.  The video that I watched only served to harden my opinion on the matter.

This is the video:



The company, Wearable Intelligence, is planning on giving things a go in healthcare and the oil & gas production industry. Both, I believe are ripe for material productivity enhancements and I can see after some well publicized cost cutting, many other companies will be very interested in their use.

And this is how it will begin.  People will get used to wearing these things at work or seeing them on other people who they are working with (or shopping at their store, etc.).  It will be hard to escape them at some point.  Then, I think it will become more commonplace to see normal people wearing them and doing so for good reasons (usefulness in their daily lives).

But then again, perhaps we will always think of these items as the bluetooth earpiece that clowns will leave in their ear despite not being on a phone call, but still brandishing the large blue light.  I still think that Glass or something like it, will be with us for a long time (and not just in specialty applications).

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.