Posts by Mister F

Watt the f... Dim smart meters caught simply making up readings

We have smart meters here in NZ. At first I saw no real benefit - a week after the event my electricity supplier would send me a detailed histogram noting the exact time I used the max consumption. Completely useless info for me at that stage. But recently I switched to a new supplier, Flick. Instead of charging a flat retail rate per kWH, they charge consumers the wholesale spot rate + a levy of 3 kiwi cents kWH (pre Brexit that would be about 1p).

An app on your phone lets you check current spot prices and CO2 in realtime. I've only been with them a couple of months but there are obvious patterns to how the prices move in general. With no real effort and no drop in total use we are saving an average of 18% per month on our electricity. It is also giving me a better handle on CO2 emissions. It is easy to avoid using power at times when there are unusually higher emissions (close to 85% of power here is from hydro, geothermal and wind, so you can easily dodge higher fossil fuel generation).

The greatest extent of my effort has been thinking things like I might hold off starting washing machine 30 mins because it is 6pm on a weeknight (when prices are high) or setting the timer to run at 7am on a Sunday (the cheapest time I've seen it). It's easy to envisage a future where some appliances like fridges and water heaters do this automatically, and you have a smallish battery pack to automatically shift load from human operators. You'd get the savings with zero effort. As a consumer and techie I'd consider that useful smarts.

PICTURE-TASTIC: Microsoft woos devs to HoloLens virtuo-goggs

Re: Hmm...

Put on Hololens, look out window, see sun and perfect blue sky even though it is after midnight in England. Wear it outside and the gang of kids rushing at you with knives appear as the models of Victoria's Secret racing to deliver you a beer. You die happy. Maybe this thing has potential?

I was a bit sceptical when first rolled out, but today's demo was pretty impressive. MS must have spent a lot preparing for this - more than the iOS and Android apps on Windows which both look buggy and unrehearsed.

I'm on the wait list for a hands on demo - whatever slots were available were filled within a minute.

Site-saving workers evacuated from Japanese reactor disaster

re: NZ 100% renewable? Not!

@Martin Gregorie No, it's not 100% renewable, but I never said it was. The bulk is renewable and we don't have any nuclear to worry about at times like these. Considering NZ is at over 70% renewable now, and it is predicted to raise to 83% over the next couple of decades, we're in a pretty good position to completely avoid the need for nuclear power here -- even if the natural gas runs out.

Back to the main topic, as another commentator said the men dealing with the situation now are truly heroic and I hope they can grab control of this situation soon.

Fukushima is a triumph of will, not for the nuclear industry

I am thankful we rely on renewable not nuclear power here in New Zealand. Cleaning up an earthquake is one thing, but the way the situation in Japan keeps getting worse it is like a never-ending nightmare. The Japanese are proving their resolve, tackling the chain reaction of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters all at once.

You have to respect the workers still willing to return to the plants battling to cool them off. Let's hope this is over sooner rather than later, not least for their sake.