LinuxPyro's response is really excellent. I think, though, that -- if you have a grid connection -- cost/benefit engineering demands that your aux solar setup (or whatever alternative power source you select) run at 100% capacity in order to recoup the costs properly. So, unless you're actually off the grid, it's better to undersize your system. AFAIK, most utilities don't let you "run your meter backward" but rather buy your excess energy at wholesale market prices because the energy still needs to be transported. Take in to consideration that your electric bill will probably double over the life of the investment, and then re-spreadsheet from there. It seems to me that relatively small incremental alternative energy measures taken now have very large effects in the long run -- sorta like long-term investing in the market.
Good or bad, the hams are making the noise because really they're the only seriously represented group that uses the HF spectrum (well, the best-represented, anyway). The noise, however, affects a lot of other frequency users.
On the brighter side, Motorola and others are working on variants that don't use the medium-level transmission lines to cover most of the last mile, but only use the power lines at the very last stage (after the transformer) to carry the signal in to the house itself. Looks like it may work without screwing up the airwaves.
Here's hoping.
Yea, but in a strange technological twist, my mum (who lives in the burbs of Melbourne) hasn't written a physical cheque for anything for years -- they have been WAY ahead of us in the consumer on-line and electronic banking area all along (only two real banks in the country, though...)
umm... bpl requires repeaters like dsl, doesn't it? power companies might think about it (if they can get around the huge amount of rf noise generated) because they can use it to automatically read your meter, son. really, though, the remote farmer is just as likely to get bpl as he is dsl.
Intrepid VMWare users have been putting virtual machines on thumb drives for some time now. The only reason they haven't put VMWare itself on the thumb drive is that VMWare scrawls all over the dang registry while it's being installed. I guess this is a way around that. I think I'll stick with my VMWare thumb drive and VMWare cd. I love VMWare - I even have the teeshirt!
I just built a system around a dual-core Pentium D 3ghz chip for a bud. A few months ago I built a system around the 3.4 GHz HT chip. The CPU fan on the dual-core machine runs about twice as fast and is REALLY noisy! This is on an intel board, and their hardware monitor software says everything is fine. I gotta say, though, he's happy with the speed.
An alarm that can detect when something ISN'T functioning properly (such as a 'fridge or freezer, or computer room A/C circuit) might be a more solid justification for the investment.
Seems to me you could make a transducer pretty easily, though; get some small ferrite cores and thread 'em up. You'd need to calibrate them against whatever A-D device you're using (PIC's a good choice).
Anyway, this is bitchin'.
The raw data becomes interesting when you can compare it at a circuit level to similar circuits in other similar structures. "Am I paying more than average to run my 'fridge?" "How does running ceiling fans affect A/C power consumption in a house of this size?"
Slashdot Mirror
LinuxPyro's response is really excellent. I think, though, that -- if you have a grid connection -- cost/benefit engineering demands that your aux solar setup (or whatever alternative power source you select) run at 100% capacity in order to recoup the costs properly. So, unless you're actually off the grid, it's better to undersize your system. AFAIK, most utilities don't let you "run your meter backward" but rather buy your excess energy at wholesale market prices because the energy still needs to be transported. Take in to consideration that your electric bill will probably double over the life of the investment, and then re-spreadsheet from there. It seems to me that relatively small incremental alternative energy measures taken now have very large effects in the long run -- sorta like long-term investing in the market.
Good or bad, the hams are making the noise because really they're the only seriously represented group that uses the HF spectrum (well, the best-represented, anyway). The noise, however, affects a lot of other frequency users.
On the brighter side, Motorola and others are working on variants that don't use the medium-level transmission lines to cover most of the last mile, but only use the power lines at the very last stage (after the transformer) to carry the signal in to the house itself. Looks like it may work without screwing up the airwaves. Here's hoping.
Yea, but in a strange technological twist, my mum (who lives in the burbs of Melbourne) hasn't written a physical cheque for anything for years -- they have been WAY ahead of us in the consumer on-line and electronic banking area all along (only two real banks in the country, though...)
umm... bpl requires repeaters like dsl, doesn't it? power companies might think about it (if they can get around the huge amount of rf noise generated) because they can use it to automatically read your meter, son. really, though, the remote farmer is just as likely to get bpl as he is dsl.
Intrepid VMWare users have been putting virtual machines on thumb drives for some time now. The only reason they haven't put VMWare itself on the thumb drive is that VMWare scrawls all over the dang registry while it's being installed. I guess this is a way around that. I think I'll stick with my VMWare thumb drive and VMWare cd. I love VMWare - I even have the teeshirt!
I just built a system around a dual-core Pentium D 3ghz chip for a bud. A few months ago I built a system around the 3.4 GHz HT chip. The CPU fan on the dual-core machine runs about twice as fast and is REALLY noisy! This is on an intel board, and their hardware monitor software says everything is fine. I gotta say, though, he's happy with the speed.
An alarm that can detect when something ISN'T functioning properly (such as a 'fridge or freezer, or computer room A/C circuit) might be a more solid justification for the investment. Seems to me you could make a transducer pretty easily, though; get some small ferrite cores and thread 'em up. You'd need to calibrate them against whatever A-D device you're using (PIC's a good choice). Anyway, this is bitchin'. The raw data becomes interesting when you can compare it at a circuit level to similar circuits in other similar structures. "Am I paying more than average to run my 'fridge?" "How does running ceiling fans affect A/C power consumption in a house of this size?"