Covid 19

I'm in mandatory forced isolation for 14 days since returning from the U.S. I'm in a very low end hotel in the middle of Sydney that's pretending to be high end. It has on all fronts, less features than any cheap hotel I've ever stayed at.

The news and actions of our extremely wealthy country are mind bogglingly insane, and is trying to fix a minor problem by locking down the entire country, instead of just people at risk. ie: people over 60, and travelers. The last time I checked, Australia literally had no deaths below the age of 60. It had one at 60-70, and all the rest were older. Sure saving lives is great...but a wealthy country can save more lives with better health and fitness education and action. Look it up.

But that's all irrelevant. As usual, the bigger picture is nowhere to be seen here in .au. We're killing a mosquito with a jackhammer while standing in the middle of the road with our back to oncoming traffic under the guise of saving lives to malaria.

Good job humans.

The actions and expense to tackle these three problems is pretty much the inverse of this graphic.

Ooof. Clowns.

The land of wealthy yobbos.

https://newclimate.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/CCPI-2020-Results_Web_Version.pdf

Page 17. Good job Australia, you're measurably the worst. 'Gratz everyone who keeps voting Liberal (not to be confused with the literal meaning of liberals used elsewhere...The liberals in Australia are hard-right) because [money excuses here].

The rankings do not continue to the next page. That's it. Australia is the worst. Again.

Australia is the ONLY country in the overall-performance-indicator chart to have NO VISIBLE POLICY metric showing (Page 9). Tony Abbott (Liberal party) scrapped the Climate Commission in 2017.

"...Experts note that the new government is an increasingly regressive force in negotiations..."

"...the newly elected government has continued to worsen performance at both national and international levels..."

While the U.S is doing everything in its power to be as bad or worse, I feel it needs a minor exemption these last few years due to the absolute quantifiable insanity of the Trump factor.

"...with the U.S acting as a destructive player in international negotiations at all levels..."
The behaviour of both countries is exactly the kind of thing that irrational anti immigrant bigots, and objective observers would expect to see out of China or North Korea. When both extremes perceive the same disgust...one has to be embarrassed.

4KW Solar installation

I had a 4 kiloWatt/hr solar system installed. 16 x 250W cells. The front of the house faces NE, so I had the panels split across the NE and NW face to optimise the day's collection. I got as many as I could on the NW face which was 7 cells. The remaining 9 are installed on the larger NE face. The strings are independently isolated, plugged into a 5kW inverter on the SE face of the house (always out of the sun). The inverter accommodates 2 strings. I didn't have the cash for microInverters, or tilt-kits. Given that I'm not facing ENE or WNW, it should be fine anyhow. Our roofs tilt is ~30' which is a nice average between a steep winter angle, and a really shallow summer angle. Here are some shots.

Installer guys...

9 panels on the NE front face of the house. Plenty of room for more.

7 panels on the NW face.

Inverter installed close to the mains power meter box on the SE face of the house.

System has been up for ~2.5hrs since the install was completed. Nice day, lots of patchy clouds, maybe 70% clear sky. Generated 8kW in a couple hours, many daylight hours left. (you can see it's 1pm in the shot). Really nice. Sitting on 4.3kW in full sun with two strings at non-optimal angles. Really pleased.

Invisible wallet killer

I had a great result and achieved my lowest average kwH electricity use in my last bill. 5.3 is way, way below the average for 2 adults, even for conscientious users. We're in the range of 3-4 times less power used.

You'll notice the big dip after summer. Skev moved out at the end of December, and Jana moved in. We had a really hot summer so I did run the air-con pretty hard. However after that, lifestyles show a big result.

Back when Skev was working, we were averaging ~6+ kwH, however during this bill snapshot Skev was taking an extended break from work. Between 14-18hrs / day he used his PC. He's an online machine. The problem is, he's got an older monitor, and slightly older power supply. His system draws ~450 watts when fairly idle, and 550+ when gaming. For those not in the know, that's fairly normal for 3-5yr old computer devices, and on a par with running a small washing machine. By comparison, my 1+yr old monitor (LCD vs LED) draws 1/10th that of his monitor at only ~22watts, and I've paid extra for 80plus certified power supplies for some time now.

Given what I'd learned in 2008, his use is not really abnormal for any household. If anything, all he really did was offset on-demand-but-off-devices two fold which I'd worked out as ~200 watts back then.

So Jana's daily routine closely mimics mine. Work most days. Heavy online user at home. Mostly efficient, or portable devices.

The story here is that not Trav was bad. It's that lifestyle itself plays a DRAMATIC role in your participation in Global Climate control and the cost of your power bill. The options against Trav's use were abundant. Use the PC less (poor solution), or swap out older electronics. Of course, there are issues with simply dumping working electronics, and driving various levels of consumerism simply by upgrading, however the components could have been relegated to a lesser-used service in our house such as a secondary monitor or to one of my ...uhh...several old test machines which aren't used that often etc.

Moral of the story: Make some effort. Review your habits occasionally. Lower your bills. Learn Kung Fu.

Exponential function

I keep forgetting to link this video. Caught it a year or two back. Presents in laymans terms what you learned in highschool, but forgot to apply later...

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6A1FD147A45EF50D

edit: On the same topic; Wow, in the Age Newspaper today State Parliament proved they're failing to even look at our own growth statistics by proposing an irrelevant tiny expansion to the city boundaries. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/green-land-cut-back-as-melbourne-grows-much-bigger-20100729-10wvi.html?autostart=1

I've seen these before!!

So I'm in Big-W looking at the electrical stuff to track down an all purpose DC-output gizmo for various devices, and I stumble into this!! How completely awesome! Seems like I was making these over 2 years ago though :)

More Climate Denialist stuff

Sim sent me a great compilation of direct quotes from the world leaders in climate science, business, and the likes. It's kinda past the point where this can be "discussed" any longer, we're 20 years behind where we should be on the attack front.

http://logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm

The other great, in fact AWESOME resource, is of course ye olde how to talk to global warming sceptic articles page. He's got a master page, with topics more easily categorised now also.

Don't forget to do something about it at home.

1.21 Gigawatts !!

About 18 months ago I went through the house and documented every 240volt device. I dug around on the net to find power consumption values for these items in their POWER-OFF or idle state. It accumulated to the 200 watt range. That's insane. 200W, 24/7, with everything in the house TURNED OFF. Design at its worst.

So I made these:


It's a $6 inline switch, wired into a 2 meter extension cord. I made 5 of these, and put them at the major device hubs around the house. Each PC Desk, the TV corner, etc. Each switch has a piece of velcro on the back, and is placed in a subtle but reachable location at each hub. It's connected to the quad-adapter, or whatever you've got back there. So I flick the switch (which is easily reached), and that whole corner shuts down, really off, not just idle-mode. One switch fully turns off the entire group of devices: The TV, VCR, DVD, Stereo is one block for instance.

I should note, that even if a device LOOKS OFF, it may not be the case. The washing machine has a low voltage touch panel that is always active, despite no lights. There is a 240v to 6volt transformer running 24/7 behind the scenes. This sucker needs to be turned off at the wall. Phone chargers, plug packs etc, these are all the same deal.

We ditched our LED clocks (mains power, traditionally found as bedside clocks) for LED battery clocks. There's now 3 battery powered clocks in the house. Each of a different type. 1 LCD, 1 desktop analogue, 1 wall analogue. Each uses 1xAA battery; 2500mAH rechargeable NiMHD. I know from the past, that the analogue desktop clock lasts 2 YEARS on this battery. Interestingly, rechargeable batteries have an inherant voltage decay over time in the range of 1 to 6 months to fall significantly below 1.3 volts. So this makes the power consumption on these battery devices even more impressive. They run by magic. The Wall clock is still running on the same battery after a year. The bedside LED is still going...who knows when that will run out.


This quarters useage. Awesome!! $140.aud bill for 3 months, 2 adults ,3 bedroom / 2 bathroom home. Previously the cost for this duration was in the range of ~$200-$320.

I had a bit of a dig around. The average single / double occupant household seems to use in the realm of 18 to 24 KwH per day. So the figures you see here are awesome. (I'm at ~6.9KwH / day)



I've been using the switches for close to 18months, and they're clearly working. In conjunction with turning devices like the microwave and washing machine off, the only thing that runs 24/7 is our refridgerator. There aren't even any compact flurescent bulbs in the house, which would see a drop in daily consumption even further.

edit: a couple average use indicators. Strangely I couldn't find local ones.
http://www.washingtonelectric.coop/pages/understand.htm Some smalltime power company in the States.

http://pinchthatpenny.savingadvice.com/2007/10/02/average-daily-electricty-usage_30740/ A penny pincher, single occupant, who's using in the realm of 3 times more than I am. Makes me feel good, plus there's heaps more I can do to further reduce use.

edit: Some answers to global climate change sceptics. I'm a little tired of their (sceptics) rubbish stories quite frankly. http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-talk-to-global-warming-sceptic.html