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<p>Rancid - exactly what I was saying to a mate: once you jam the aircon down to 23C, anything feels like its too fucking hot. Almost like drug addiction, and that is the wife's problem coming home from work - leaves an air conditioned office and hops in a hot car which she blasts the A/C into, then gets home into a hot garage. Walks in the door in work clothes, doesn't even take time to acclimatise or change into casual clothes, and she's setting things to "Arctic" while the rest of us are sitting there with a glass of cold water wondering what the fuck is going on.</p>
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<p>40 degrees sucks, but today when we got home it was tolerable and FUCKING POOL IN THE BACK YARD! She napped on the couch, turned up the AC and then had a cup of tea to "wake up" - again, female logic.</p>
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<p>Blinds and closed curtains for that west room? Does Aussie construction have insulation in the attic/crawl space above the living space? Might be worth doing a check and seeing if it would make financial sense to blow in some more, and see if that helps lower the house temp. </p>
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<p>We have batts (glasswool or fibreglass if you like) across the whole ceiling space. The only weak points are where the light mountings are around the kitchen, which have internal transformers. I had the blow-in recycled paper stuff in the last house, and while it was spectacular the first couple of years, long-term it was poo - air pressure or drafts and it all blows away or settles. The ceiling space is quite high, has a solar-power extractor fan to keep it below Ninth Level of Hell hot, and the sarking (against the corrugated steel roof) is top notch according to every tradie who has been up there.</p>
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<p>The problem with the west room is it only has venetian timber blinds on the inside. I'd get external blinds but that is another fight. Maybe heavy curtains in winter to help keep a better buffer zone, but here in Oz, the best idea is always to keep the heat as far from the house as you can manage.</p> -
<p>Look, to be fair, I have already made her change a couple of habits like running the dishwasher and washing machine during the day, and understanding that delaying one by 3 hours and one by 5 hours just works. Baby steps. She's a city girl, never really been disconnected like sometimes happened out on the farm I suppose. I think she has some complex from when she grew up in a small house, and how she went without things, and doesn't feel like she should now.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When that first electricity bill comes in, it won't be full solar, because we've only had it three weeks and will be halfway through a billing cycle - plus the meters don't change over until next week (lazy fucking wholesaler) so the full effect won't hit this summer.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But when that first bill for the March-June period hits, and we're using fuck all because we don't need the air con, or run the pool pump as much, she might begin to understand the extra changes we need to take the power bill reduction from 90% to 100%, or even 110% when we start selling power back to the grid.</p> -
If you're going to just use aircon all the time then a pool is pretty much pointless. I never had aircon when living in Brisbane, but always had a pool. That was the essential way of keeping cool back then. I remember a mate had aircon in one room and that was amazing. Everyone has it now.
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<p>You can add me to the hating air con list. The only times I like are when I first get into the office because I've been walking and when I get back from lunch - other than that I hate it. Thankfully I live in a place with no air con, the last place we had air con all over the place and one of the flatmates would blast it and then lie under a blanket on the couch.</p>
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<p>Wind down a window or get a fan I say.</p>
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<p>TBF I like heat, aside from when I'm walking because I sweat too much I'll happily be hot while others are complaining around me.</p>
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<p>The worst thing about air con when you have contacts is that it dries your eyes out.</p>
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<p>Funny how in NZ the aircon machine is a heat pump.</p> -
Totally agree with the eyes thing. Whenever I went into a shopping centre as a kid my eyes got farked up. <br><br>
I also dig the heat but probably more so because I experienced extreme cold for a very long time. In a past life I once pushed a pram for 2 km (mostly uphill), while dragging my other son behind me in a sled in minus 20 with the snow pelting in farking sideways. <br><br>
I'll take extreme heat any day. -
<p>OK, so this week is where I start to set up the website. I've decided to go with my own domain name, as it is pretty cheap - up to $100 per annum to get a named site hosted with my ISP (200MB of space or so) and then I own all the content. Plus I get a database, which is my jam.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But the thing is, I'm not 100% sure what the best name should be. Obviously using powerwall.com will just get my arse sued by Tesla (and it isn't available, even though the website doesn't exist).</p> -
Probably doesn't help, but I'm pretty sure that theexpresidents.com is available.
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<p>Check this shit out - the engineer from the installation company said that they'd once had a customer detect very faint PV from moonlight. I thought that maybe it happened to panels with a higher pitch, facing the rising moon or something when its big and fat and orange.</p>
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<p>But lo and behold, its pretty clear here tonight, with a bit over half a moon about 60 degrees above the horizon, and this is what I see on the graph - note the gradual decrease in generation from 1830-1915, then a couple of little bumps as the sky gets darker and the moon gains in brightness.</p>
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<p>[attachment=1977:moonlight.png]</p>
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<p>My first thought was "bullshit - this is some kind of circuit feedback that the inverter is picking up". But I'll keep an eye on it as the moon gets fuller.</p>
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<p>It isn't a lot of course (like 60 watts) but maybe the light-sensitivity of modern solar panels is just good enough to convert some of this shit into energy. You'd think with the base current required to generate power, it wouldn't actually contribute.</p>
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<p>More news as it comes to hand.</p> -
<p>Thats actually pretty cool.</p>
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<p>It'll be one of those weird things where in 30 years programable towers that track will actually track the full moon as the cells will be sensitive enough to draw useful power.</p>
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<p>The other thing I read yesterday was combining this with intelligent appliances & cell phone apps. So you are at work & have an app that tells you when your cells are charging a lot - IE the sun suddenly came out, and you then go into the app linked to your dishwasher & turn it on.</p>
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<p>I guess the next step is to take the person out of it, So your solar unit talks directly to your appliances. The person just loads the washing machine & hits a button that says "whenever you guys think its a good time" and then gets an SMS a bit later saying "washing has been done dumbass". I'm guiessing Nest already have that down they are just waiting for people to be cool with it.</p> -
Was that an article about Enphase in the US? I saw it and was intrigued, but more so by their plug n play battery system.<br><br>
The buzz word is "IoT" or "Internet Of Things" which involves smart houses ( think Enphase have one in Melbourne) or individual devices that can report on about performance, errors, and events like the one you mentioned I.e. "Sun's out fuck head! I'm going nuclear!"<br><br>
I'm going to have a word to the inverter manufacturer about their product doing something similar, though on a less intelligent basis in terms of battery management.<br><br>
E.g. if you hit a draw over "X" kW, then don't even bother going for the panels/battery. Just hit the grid, because if target have the battery intact for the overnight use, and know that it needs more than I can provide. And so on. <br><br>
Smarter circuits in the home will also help here as in future, maybe you just don't bother stringing the A/C into the system you run the rest of the house on. -
<p>On the topic of electric things in general:</p>
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<p>Electric Motorcyle: <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/au/'>http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/au/</a> - I think I need to get my licence. And a spare $20K... </p>
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<p>Electric Bike: <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.stealthelectricbikes.com/'>http://www.stealthelectricbikes.com/</a> - up to 80km/h! Bastard to push at 35kg once depleted, but hell it would do a decent job commuting. </p> -
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<p>We had an electric bike store open across the road from my office about a month ago.</p>
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<p>I look directly at the shop and I don't think I've seen a single customer yet</p>
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<p>Glad you were looking... you wouldn't hear them aye :whistle:</p> -
<p>Oh and the new meter that was put in on Wednesday shows the direction of power in or out.</p>
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<p>Presently its 2 kilowatts received, and 20 (!!!) sent out into the world.</p>
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<p>Shame I'm shifting providers soon, because I'm not able to get paid for any of that unless I'm under a certain setup. Only a month until I can move to the new guys who are doing the power selling for up to $1 per kWh.</p> -
<p>Still, got about 80% back in the battery after it lay dormant most of the day. House was using grid up until we went out in the afternoon, then the sun came out so that was good.</p>
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<p>Just got to accept these kinds of weather patterns will kick one in the groin, and hope to make it up on other days. Power selling apparatus comes online once I change providers in mid-March so until then its about sitting tight.</p>
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<p>Meter reads 36 kWh exported, 17kWh imported.</p>
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<p>And I just had a massive back n forth with some pro-nuclear bloke on twitter. Someone else joined in and started to pick a fight. I'm not even anti-nuke - think it is great if we can get it going safely, but all methods have to be tried (except coal - coal can fuck right off).</p>
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<p>But this guy wasn't just pro-nuke: he was pro-nuke to the exclusion of EVERYTHING ELSE BECAUSE I HAS JPGs N SHIT! I've attached one that was just subjective crap. His other stuff was at least evidence-based.</p>
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<p>[attachment=1979:nuke.png]</p> -
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<p>Shit day yesterday - no evening breeze so the air con had to go on. Then today its cloudy, so not ideal for a recharge with the wife baking. <strong>Asked her about that gas oven we might want to get, met with a firm no</strong>.</p>
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<p>A bit of false economy to get rid of your high energy appliances for another energy in any case. You have a product to give you cheap energy yet are trying to limit the things that are built to use it.</p>
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<p>For me you have got a system to support higher energy use not a system to limit what you used to do.</p>
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<p>I would find that very frustrating if I was her.</p>
Solar Power and Storage - a nerd's view