[LINK] Free Sydney Smart Home

[Richard Chirgwin]

Jan Whitaker wrote:
> At 04:54 PM 11/02/2010, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
>   
>> The idea is supposed to be "a detailed picture of energy and water use".
>> Well: I know where the electricity goes (computers; fridge; lights;
>> sometimes the TV). Ditto gas (clothes dryer, winter heaters). I know
>> whether the water goes (showers; toilet flushing; washing machine; the
>> sink; the bathroom basin - in roughly descending order). So why is (say)
>> a home Website going to do anything other than itself become an energy sink?
>>     
>
> Maybe the point is to have a printout to show wasteful teenagers and 
> charge them for their long showers, leaving the fridge door open, 
> leaving the lights on in their rooms when they aren't there..... can 
> you guys think of any more?
>
> Jan
>   
I guess we had a decent education from our month in the mountains (the 
blue ones, west of Sydney, dead bushwalkers, Charles Darwin, constant 
rain, you know the place I mean...).

We were on pure solar and tank water the entire time. Some points...

People got a real surprise at how quickly a full tank could end up 1/3 
full (and we're not talking a little tank here, I suppose 20 k litres). 
I had the teenage sons tapping the side of the tank any time it wasn't 
raining; by the end of the month, long showers were dead and gone. Even 
though you only needed a couple of hours' rain (a large roof catchment) 
to fill it again ...

Solar became challenging. Dec-Jan in Wentworth Falls was wet as often as 
not; so you learned that batteries drain fast and charge slow! We had to 
run the generator on about five days (but the batteries were serving 
five cottages - the main house plus four holiday renters). Discipline 
with the lights became second nature (even though none of the lights 
were more than 11W fluoros).

Doing some intensive computing work, I got a genuine shock at how much a 
MacBook Pro could suck from the batteries. I left a long calculation 
running overnight, and woke to find about 20% of the storage dissipated 
as heat. Luckily it was a sunny couple of days to follow ... My lesson, 
should I "go solar", will be to get too much battery storage.

But as to a computer running the thing? OK, I'll go with Ivan that 
people need to learn what uses how much (although without aircon or 
flat-screen, my home is pretty simple to figure), but once you know 
what's going on, the system becomes a redundant user of power.

RC
>
>
> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
> blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
> business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
>
> Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
> sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
> ~Madeline L'Engle, writer
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