The most existing things, in no particular order:
Infrastructure updates - 'real'
- Turning the supporting construction of the first version of the solar collector into support for new wall heating loops - renovating the old kitchen: German article om the rebirth of the collector.
- Now we finally have what every green-minded home owner is expected to: A photovoltaic generator, plus smart metering infrastructure: Latest blog posting on data.
Infrastructure updates - 'virtual'
- We migrated three bank accounts, and I learned what I never wanted to know about different ways to setup debit orders. My favorite: an anonymous form on the vendor's website. Security = knowing your client account
- Our village has changed its zip code. I learned what I never wanted to know about how organizations store addresses. Goodie: Opening 'support tickets' turned interactions with big platforms into something human.
Work and Life
- One year ago we joked about it, now we do it: Planning heat pump systems the way we did IT projects - remote-only: Series of German blog posting on a project In The North
- Self-sufficiency, 'green life', and skin in the game: Harvesting 'salad' from the meadow for months: Blog posting on edible plants in the garden
Heat pumps
Heat pump usage in different countries and history of heat pumps
- Swedish Ground Source Heat Pump Case Study (2010), by GNS Science (New Zealand based consultancy)
- History of heat pumps - Swiss contributions and interntional milestones, by Martin Zogg, Process and Energy Engineering
Unusual heat sources
- Aquifer at Oslo Airport
- (Former) Cisterns - a paper documenting research done in Iowa in 1993. I have also summarized the paper in this blog post.
Sizing heat pumps - I am trying to learn the terminology of standards commonly applied in English-speaking countries:
Power grid and availability
- March 20 (2015) Solar Eclipse - a challenge for European Transmission System Operators: Announcement by ENTSO-E, Analysis by US-based company, success story. Electricity production in Germany (select week 12 of 2015) - the dip in March 20 is visible.
- Squirrels a major issue for the power infrastructure of the US: Squirrel Power!
- #DarkNL - outage in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada in January 2014.
Power generation
Hydro power plants
In Sweden the world's largest pumped hydro storage plant might be built:
- See bottom of page 30 of
this research paper:
Besides the official estimations there are some discussions [28b] about building pumping capacity between the lakes Vänern and Vättern in Southern Sweden. The difference in altitude is 44 meters between these lakes.? - ... and the
last page of this presentation:
Possible future? Mariestads Kraftverks AB & others 50 km tunnel between the lakes Vänern & Vättern Cost: 250 billion SEK. Installed capacity: 50000 MW .
Free long-term weather data
Inputdaten für eigene Simulationen.
Germany and Austria.
- FTP server of the German weather service. Extensive and detailed datan, e.g. ambient air temperatures, for some locations since 1950!
- Annals by ZAMG - Austrian national weather service. Daily averages since 1994 as CSV files (only if you pick the link for German readers. The EN version still links to data in the older HTML format that requires you to run a browser in compatibility mode.
World
- Climate data for the last decades. The navigation is something you need to get used to (Pick: Cities, Climate, Climate Robot...). Therefore I start with Ice Days for Vienna. It is a bit weird that available data seem to depend on the choice of the language (less data for Vienna in English).
Extreme Weather
The winter 1962/63 was the coldest since 250 years in Europe (German article:
Winter 1962/63 in Europa. Englisch article:
Winter of 1962–63 in the United Kingdom).
More data from a talk / slides
avaiable at the website of the Royal Meteorological Society:
The bitter winter of 1962/63 - this winter was unusually mild in Canada and
Greenland (p.17)
Could such a winter ever happen again? "The 1963 winter is well within the population of other cold winters that have been experienced in this country ... It is not necessary therefore to seek some very special cause in order to explain it." – H.C. Shellard , Meteorological Magazine , 1968 (p.21 of PDF)
Different heating systems
Statistics for Austria: Heating 2003 to 2012 by fuels used and heating system (in Austria). Less than 15% of (primary) heating systems are stoves, and they have been on a decline in the last decade.
Units, heat values, energy costs
Tools for converting units
- www.unitconversion.org - per topic.
- www.unitconverters.net - everything at one glance.
Heat values
- Heizwerte von festen, flüssigen und gasförmigen Brennstoffen auf Wikipedia.
- Heat values of different varieties of wood, per cord.
- Energy Content in Common Energy Sources (engineeringtoolbox.com)
Properties of water (for comparing the energy stored in a water / ice tank)
- Interesting properties of water as per Wikipedia: Specific heat, density.
- Thermal properties of water (engineeringtoolbox.com)
Costs of energy - international
- Photovoltaic systems are more expensive in the US than in Germany (2014), despite prices have dropped.
- Comparion of costs of kWh electrical energy worldwide. Costs seem to be much lower in the US and in Canada than in German. This article about the details of a typical US electrical bill implies that there are delivery fees on top of energy fees. On the other hand, the value for Germany seems to include anything.
Monitoring, Control, IT
Metering and monitoring electrical power consumption
- Smart meters with data loggers and/or various interface for attaching
loggers - to be installed behind the official smart meter:
- EMU Professional, different types available with different interfaces such as M-Bus, Modbus TCP and RTU, HTTP, included logger.
- Specification of the EMU meter's Modbus RTU interface.
- EM Series by B-Control / TQ-Systems (The SMA Smart Meter is an OEM meter of that type): EM210 has a web server for online monitoring and stores log files, EM300 supports real-time logging via Modbus RTU, Modbus TCP and a simple HTTP interface (but does not store log files, and uses the web server for configuration only).
- Parsing an online monitoring website is perhaps the most universal 'real-time protocol' in case not other interfaces are available. E.g. by using Powershell, I tested with the local website of a Fronius Symo inverter and their web portal www.solarweb.com. One option: Start an InternetExplorer.Application comobject and identify the html containing the interesting value per its ID (getElementById).
Manuals of data loggers by Technische Alternative Gmbh (for control units UVR1611, UVR16x2)
- C.M.I - Control and Monitoring Interface
- BL-NET Bootloader
- Logging with CMI and BL-NET on the same CAN bus in parallel is not supported.
CAN Bus
- Bus topology. Note that UVR1611 is automatically terminated by default.
Heating with computers
Computers installed in private homes provide their computing power to cloud services - while heating those homes.
- Paper presented at the conference Hotcloud 2011: The Data Furnace: Heating Up with Cloud Computing.
- A prototype based on a similar idea, in need of crowdfunding, 2015: Project Exergy wants to build a home computer that also heats your house.
Basics (Physics) - Mechanics, Electrodynamics
The Feynman Lectures of Physics
Personal website of Elke Stangl, Zagersdorf, Austria, c/o punktwissen.
elkement [at] subversiv [dot] at. Contact and Legal Notice
Last change: Updated dead link to Austrian statistics on fuels and heating systems.