Running Hot and Cold

Energy is very much in the news these days.  Despite only a 1.5% increase in the cost of energy on the world markets many of the energy providers in the UK have raised their prices to consumers by an average of 9%.  Understandably many of those consumers are not very happy.  Neither was Parliament, which is why it summoned the heads of the six big energy providers to explain their rationale for raising prices so high.

Only one of the six turned up, perhaps to try and prove they're not running a cartel over here.  Or maybe he just didn't get the email.  All have offered reasons for the unaccounted for 7.5% which includes Government imposed green taxes, although nobody has explained why those taxes hadn't been felt in the price before this hike.  Given the rate that energy prices have risen over the last few years it seems unlikely that the big six have been absorbing these taxes, especially as they seem to trot them out as an excuse every winter anyway.  The other reason provided is based on the wholesale prices they are charged by their suppliers.  Which might seem plausible until you realise that each of the big six are owned by the six suppliers that they each buy from.  They are their own suppliers.

There is a real suspicion that the big six might be skewing the prices by letting their parent companies charge whatever they want and then just passing the extra costs onto the consumer.  There's been a lot of hot air generated over this topic over the last few weeks, which appears to be a bit of a waste given that we are experiencing unseasonably warm weather.  Perhaps it would have been better left until the cold snap.

There is, predictably, a lot of advice on how consumers can reduce their energy bills in their homes from well meaning know-all's who hate to see a drop of energy wasted.  But enough about me.  The single best advice provided, by a Minister no less, was to put another woolly pullover on when the temperature drops.  Given the availability of cheap clothing these days, that's not an unreasonable idea.  In essence it's taking the problem of heating the house away and replacing it with the problem of heating the person.

There is, however, another way of looking at this problem, and it comes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a place I had the pleasure of visiting the other week.  Actually the visitors' centre was a little disappointing but at least the tee shirts were inspired.  One stated that what happens in the black hole, stays in the black hole.  Another asserted that if it ain't broke then an engineer will take it apart and fix it.  But apart from commissioning cool tee shirt designs the bright guys and gals at MIT have been tackling the energy problem from the personal perspective.

You see, we aren't actually that good at judging the temperature.  There's obviously some well developed systems that have evolved over the millennia that keeps our core at the correct temperature most of the time, but it seems that it can be a bit flaky generally.  Which is why people can find themselves walking into hypothermia some times, heatstroke others.  One of the observations the researchers from MIT have made is that generally we tend to wear clothes based on our opinion of what the temperature should be.  I've observed this, noting that as soon as October arrives some people start wearing heavy coats and scarves, regardless of the actual temperature outside.  Me, I wear tee shirts until someone observes my arms have turned blue, then I roll the sleeves down.

The MIT researchers have developed a prototype electronic device that somehow interferes with our perception of temperature and sends signals through our nervous system that modifies how we perceive it.  It's early days yet and the prototype looks like an eighties calculator strapped to a wrist, but they think that they can develop a workable device that will allow everybody to tolerate lower temperatures without harming their bodies.  That will allow us all to turn our thermostats down a notch or two.

After that, throw in a woolly pullover and we can defer putting the heating on until mid January.  Then listen to the howls of anguish from the big six as we stubbornly choose not to use their energy.  And if that isn't enough, layer up even further with tee shirts as well, but make sure they're not too cool.

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The Half Life of Dedicated eReaders

The term half life is drawn from physics and refers to the time it takes for the energy in a radioactive substance to naturally deplete to half.  Generally the first half is relatively rapid with the second half taking an exponentially longer time.  In physics, it is the first half that matters as that is the  most energetic period.  The second half matters to those left to cope with the radioactive residue.

It can be used analogously in other ways too.    Some of the older readers, if they cast their minds back far enough, will remember Video Cassette Recorders, VCRs, introduced in the 1970s and lasting until DVDs and Hard Drive recorders usurped them in the new Millennium, devices rapidly being usurped by the growing Clouds.  There are plenty of VCRs still kicking around and plenty of legacy films and home movies to go with them, but no new material has been produced for them in years.  Some users will hang on to their devices until they grind to a halt, but most of us moved on years ago.  The half life was probably about twenty years, maybe more, and in hindsight will appear to have been rather a long period for modern technology such as dedicated eReaders, for example the Amazon Kindle.

Regular readers will know that I've been a user of the Amazon Kindle for quite some time, possibly I was one of the earliest adopters this side of the pond.  It's a fine device and I've read dozens of books on it.  However I've recently become the owner of a Google Nexus 7, the seven inch tablet released a few months ago.  Naturally I downloaded the Amazon Kindle App as that provided me with access to all of the books I've bought.

Having just spent nearly two weeks on holiday in Spain, with me reading four or five books on the Nexus 7 and with my other half reading a similar number of books on my Kindle it occurred to me that the Kindle and other dedicated eReaders still have an advantage over the tablets computers such as the Nexus 7.  Namely, their ability to be read in full daylight.  I did manage to read the Nexus on the beach but it was reasonably difficult at times whereas the Kindle managed superbly.  However, like most people, I don't read on beaches, or outside come to that, very often, so the advantage is marginal.

Now compare the added utility of using the Nexus, as I did, to access my emails, surf the net, view photographs and even draft this blog and it is clear that the cost differential doesn't add up to much at all.  Plus, if there isn't someone at Apple, Amazon, Google, Asus or one of the other major manufacturers of tablets working on a way to make them more readable in direct sunlight then I'll eat my recently purchased and now, thanks to the British weather, effectively redundant straw hat.

This coming winter is clearly looking like the year tablets come of age - I doubt Apple's dominance will be broken but the emergence of devices like the Nexus 7 such as the new Amazon Kindle Fire and the B&N Nook which  is strongly tipped to be launched in the UK before the Christmas season will create a new swathe of tablet users.  It's possible that e-ink eReaders such as the basic Kindle and the Kobo Touch will still sell well but my guess is that they will sell lower numbers than last year.  e-Ink devices have had their half life and although they will still sell in niche numbers and will continue to be used for the odd hot holiday for many years to come my guess is that it is true tablets that will rule the roost for the next couple of years.

I'm not making any forecasts about the half life of tablets, however - they appear to be here to stay at the moment but I guess we all thought that about the e-Ink Kindle a couple of years ago.  But I may make a video about the rise and fall of e-Ink, available on either VHS or Betamax, available from all good video shops soon.

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Blue Sky Thinking - Part Two

OK, so now we've got all the electricity we need to run our houses at minimal cost, what next?

Well, electrical efficiency will still be needed to be a major consideration, if only to help minimise the amount of power each household needs to buy off the grid.  If you look around your house right now it's probable that you've got dozens of electrical devices, and many of these probably didn't exist ten years ago.

For example, how about your large screen TV set, your Sky box, hard drive recorder, iPad or Android tablet, Kindle, iPod dock, wireless printer, X Box, Wii, other gaming consoles?  And that's just touching on your leisure devices.  There are dozens of devices ranging from washing machines through to stoves and standard lamps dotted around the average household.  Add to that list all the fixed electrics such as your lighting circuit.  So, what's my point?

Well, you may recall from my last Blue Sky Thinking post I mentioned that during the evolutionary process most devices go through various phases including ones where they are essentially ugly and disjointed but starting to converge.  I think it's fair to say that domestic devices are having 'Form' put on a higher agenda than in years gone by, possibly thanks to the likes of Apple who have always driven the aesthetic agenda.  But our devices are disjointed and essentially stand-alone.  This is where my wish list starts to kick in.

For starters, I think that all electronic devices should be able to be monitored and, where appropriate, controlled remotely through independent devices such as the iPad or other tablets.  As an absolute minimum we shouild be able to determine the running time of any given device and know its power consumption.  At a very basic level this would allow you to anticipate a device failure, so limiting the opportunity to be left high and dry by a failed device at the only time you ever really need it to work.

So, in my utopian world, you'd know when any device was running, when it stopped and how much power it consumed.  This is fairly standard data collated in industry, so we're not necessarily talking about major development work here.  The trick part is getting an open standard agreed so you don't have, say, Sony's proprietary system running on their equipment and Apple's take on the process running on theirs. 

I also see that data as the starting point.  How about being able to programme your hard drive recorders from your iPad, perhaps when away from home?  A good start would be the ability to have a common programming interface - sure, let the device makers determine their own look and feel when hooked up to your TV if we must, but let the consumer choose one interface product to run on their tablet that allows them to programme different makes of hard drive recorder in a common way - no need to relearn a different interface when you change devices or have different makes in various parts of the house.

And what about being able to identify which lights are still on and doors still unlocked before you blow the virtual candle out as you turn in at night?  Checking on the status of the washing machine when at the shops? 

None of this is difficult technologically, the biggest struggle is in deciding how it is implemented.  Nobody wants anyone to achieve total market dominance, hence my point above about open standards.  If this was tackled then in a generation we could have all but a minority of legacy devices controllable remotely and being monitored to check their health.

It's got to be worth thinking about.

I can be followed onTwitter - @RayASullivan

email me on raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

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Blue Sky Thinking - Part One

I have a view is that most major technology evolutions, or even revolutions, are initially a little ugly in hindsight, functionally over ambitious and destined to be hi-jacked by others in the same field who don't have the same emotional investment.  I think we also see a progressive merging of technologies over time and eventually get to a state where the end product is more than the sum  of its parts.
With that thought in mind I'm going to discuss some of the daft ideas I have for a brave new future - I'm expecting some rolled eyes and critical comments, bring them on!

For today, I'm going to look at the issue of power - electrical power.  We all know that the country is heading for an energy crunch and we've seen how vulnerable we are due our dependancy on gas from abroad.  Now there's been a lot of development in roof mounted solar panels in recent years and a scheme, about to be canned next April by the Government, has encouraged people to have solar panels fitted to their house roofs.  The scheme allows power generated in this way to be used by the household with the panels, with anything not used being sold back to the national grid at four times the cost of buying units.  The householder pays for the purchase and installation.  Some commentators say the payback period is twenty-five years, others claim  just four.  The crux of the issue to me is two-fold, regardless of the payback period.  First, the scheme only works because of an unrealistic subsidy (which is going to cease soon) and second, the finished panels are aesthetically awful.

Now my view is that the core idea has a lot of merit - look at any street in your city, town or village and think about how many square metres of roofing there is.  The current scheme of plonking a few ugly panels almost at random is only scratching at the surface of the potential (if the electricians don't mind the pun).  Here's my view on how the scheme should run:

First, there should be development of tiling materials that are individual solar panels but mimic the look, feel and weatherproofing capabilities of current (sorry, electricians) ceramic tiles.  I can foresee ceramic tiles manufactured using traditional methods being treated post manufacture in a suitable voltaic material, preferably one that looks natural from the ground.  In time, I would expect the tiles to be manufactured with the voltaic capabilities in one manufacturing step.

An obvious objection to be raised here is that the average electrician probably doesn't have the life disregarding temperament of the average roofer; the average roofer probably shouldn't be let anywhere near an electrical generating device with the potential to burn down a house if not installed and maintained correctly.  This implies a re-skilling process is needed, especially as I would consider such an installation would need certifying on install and on periodic maintenance.

I also don't think the roof should be installed by the householder, nor paid for by them.  In my blue sky world the initial target for the roofing material would be new build houses, with the roof installation paid for, and owned by, the energy companies.  The owners of the houses would own and be responsible for everything up to and including the soffits, but the roof would never belong to them.  Their responsibilty would be limited to not doing anything that could compromise the roofing and ensuring appropriate access for maintenance.

The benefit for the householder for relinquishing the ownership of the roof is that any power generated would be allocated to their house before anything else.  Any surplus would belong to the energy company owning the roof.  Additionally, any power drawn in excess of the instantaneous generation would be paid for at the normal rates.  Which means the houses should be self sufficient in energy terms during the day, even in the winter, but would incur energy costs out of daylight hours.  At least that's a starting point.  As we're discussing new build at this point they would be designed to optimise the electricity generated to minimise their need to buy power back.

Over time there could be a retrospective programme to address the existing housing stock.  Couple this with energy storage schemes, the amount of energy needed to be generated in the long term by power stations could be a fraction of the present amount.

In the next blue sky blog, I'll be moving inside the house, briefly.

I can be followed onTwitter - @RayASullivan

email me on raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Visit my books on Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Smashwords (for access to all other formats and access to Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Sony and many other good ebookstores.

Now on WH Smith!