The idea is to come at the tools that we are developing from the angle of working towards sustainable energy in a way that adds up (to use David MacKay's words).
I've been trying to come back to this question again and again recently: is this or that development, this visualisation etc giving me the information I need to progress further towards my goal of sustainable energy in my own life? What is the information, what are the tools that I need to make the right decisions that will make sure my actions add up?
So within the electricity section to start with, what is the procedure for using the energy monitor to optimise electricity use? I found the exercise of making a list of all the appliances in our house and calculating the effect of changes using the energy monitor to cross check the model to be really a very useful exercise in identifying actions and getting an good idea of their effects. Its something that I had done in a rough way mentally for a while but never actually taken the time to write down and do the calculations on the whole house.
Earlier this year I started learning about how to calculate heat demand in buildings and the saving potential of insulation, draught proofing and glazing, I read a great book by Pat Borer and Cindy Harris on the subject called the Whole House Book and have read through and through the SAP manual several times. As others have expressed, there is a need for open source software for doing this kind of thing, primarily because it would be really beneficial from a learning and understanding how things work persective to be able to get at and understand the calculations, how do they relate to physics first principles like heat conduction and so on.
So the idea is to try and tie all these threads together and detail where and how they fit into the picture of working towards sustainable energy in a way that adds up as they are all tools that aim to help us to make the right decisions and then make sure that the actions are having the desired results, performing as expected.
Il just put this up as a notification of intent and interest for now, If you think any of the above is important, if your doing working on any of it already, it would be great to hear from you. I have talked to a few people who are interested and already doing work in the open source heating modelling direction, maybe we can form some groups around these topics to discuss further..? Im open to ideas.
New documentation section on sustainable energy
Submitted by TrystanLea on Tue, 26/06/2012 - 23:13Hello all
I've just started a new section of documentation on which I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
Here's the main starting page
http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/sustainable-energy
at the moment there is a little bit there on the energy stack generator that I mentioned on the blog a while back and also a new case study page on doing an electricity audit: http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/sustainable-energy/electricity-audit-and-savings-case-study
The idea is to come at the tools that we are developing from the angle of working towards sustainable energy in a way that adds up (to use David MacKay's words).
I've been trying to come back to this question again and again recently: is this or that development, this visualisation etc giving me the information I need to progress further towards my goal of sustainable energy in my own life? What is the information, what are the tools that I need to make the right decisions that will make sure my actions add up?
So within the electricity section to start with, what is the procedure for using the energy monitor to optimise electricity use? I found the exercise of making a list of all the appliances in our house and calculating the effect of changes using the energy monitor to cross check the model to be really a very useful exercise in identifying actions and getting an good idea of their effects. Its something that I had done in a rough way mentally for a while but never actually taken the time to write down and do the calculations on the whole house.
Earlier this year I started learning about how to calculate heat demand in buildings and the saving potential of insulation, draught proofing and glazing, I read a great book by Pat Borer and Cindy Harris on the subject called the Whole House Book and have read through and through the SAP manual several times. As others have expressed, there is a need for open source software for doing this kind of thing, primarily because it would be really beneficial from a learning and understanding how things work persective to be able to get at and understand the calculations, how do they relate to physics first principles like heat conduction and so on.
Then there is monitoring the performance of the heating systems themselves, such as heatpumps: http://openenergymonitor.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/heat-pump-monitoring.html
So the idea is to try and tie all these threads together and detail where and how they fit into the picture of working towards sustainable energy in a way that adds up as they are all tools that aim to help us to make the right decisions and then make sure that the actions are having the desired results, performing as expected.
Il just put this up as a notification of intent and interest for now, If you think any of the above is important, if your doing working on any of it already, it would be great to hear from you. I have talked to a few people who are interested and already doing work in the open source heating modelling direction, maybe we can form some groups around these topics to discuss further..? Im open to ideas.
Trystan