Archive for December 2008

The future isn’t electric curtains

London, 22nd December 2008

There’s a lot of unrealistic talk about ‘automated homes’.  It just isn’t likely that we’ll all decide to automate our homes, particularly if it involves spending lots of money.  What’s more likely is that it will take years and we won’t notice most of it.

Let’s look at the car.  There are up to 200 sensors in a modern car.  Some are no doubt obvious to you.  Like parking sensors.  Some may be less obvious.  There are acceleration sensors that trigger airbags in a collision.  Not many people know that there is a crankshaft sensor on a 1992 Chevvy Cavalier, let alone where it is.

It’s taken 125 years to get the BMW 7 series Driver Assistance Package. Blind-spot detection uses radar sensors and gives audible alerts when objects approach in blind spots, and a triangular warning light also appears in the rearview mirror. A lane departure warning will vibrate the steering wheel if you cross a road marking without signaling. And with the new High Beam Assist, the 7 Series switches automatically between low and high beams.

Anyway, back to homes.  Which aren’t like cars because the replacement cycle is a lot longer.  I don’t think control will come first.  Sensors will come first and they will proliferate in everyday objects doing particular tasks.  Over time more of these sensors will report centrally and be combined into things that the homeowner will value.  In the meantime, there will be a devoted cadre who like to open the curtains while they lie in bed, call the oven to turn it on ten minutes before they get home, and let the fridge do the shopping for them.

Lightweight Medical joins Onzo

London, 22nd December 2008

Lightweight Medical, the Glasgow-based product development company, and Onzo, have decided to pool their resources in a single company. As a result all the Lightweight Medical team has joined Onzo.

Onzo was founded in February 2007 as a collaboration between Lightweight Medical, the ground-breaking sustainable design practice, Joel Hagan, who became Chief Executive, and More Associates, a design, communications and branding consultancy specializing in sustainable technology. Lightweight Medical has been the design inspiration behind Onzo, researching, developing and designing its products and supporting service system. Both companies have now resolved that their future potential and ability to take advantage of the global market can best be realized if they work together as a single entity.

All Lightweight Medical’s directors have joined Onzo in key positions. The Founder Directors, Neil Tierney and Neil Farish, are Onzo’s Research and Development Director and Sales Director respectively, while Design Director Ryder Meggitt, founder of Element Zero Six, will once again partner Brian McGuigan, who heads Onzo’s product design department, and Rory Wilkinson becomes Onzo’s Head of Technical Operations.

Lightweight Medical was founded in 2003 and employed 15 people. The team specialises in strategy, research and design, operating in the fields of technology, innovation and sustainability. It is expert in turning complex, technologies into usable, useful and compelling consumer products, involving the end user at all stages of development, from technology specification to manufacturing liaison and product packaging. This unique approach has been recognised by leading business and design awards including:
• 2008 International Red Dot Product Design Award
• 2007 International iF Product Design Award
• 2007 UK Design Week Industrial Design Award
• 2006 Scottish Creative Entrepreneurs of the year
• 2004 UK Shell Entrepreneurs of the Year

Element Zero Six is Lightweight Medical’s consultancy arm.

Recovering energy

London, 15th December 2008

While most people have a good understanding of energy savings through buying more efficient appliances and insulating their home, there are further options.  A step up from trying to prevent energy leaking from your house is to recover heat energy from air and water that flows out of the house by design.

All houses are designed (and indeed required) to have adequate ventilation to ensure a supply of fresh air and to prevent the build up of moisture. Unfortunately, this ventilation system (implemented in modern houses through trickle vents at the windows and extractors in bathrooms) takes warm air out of the house and sucks in cold air from outside.

If designing a new energy efficient house, it is possible to ensure that the inflow of fresh, but cold, air and the outflow of warm air end up in a single controlled location, rather than small vents all over the house. If this can be achieved, then such a house can use a heat exchanger, which uses the warm air leaving to heat the cold air coming in, recovering significant energy in the process. However, solutions like this are almost impossible to fit to an existing house, and are therefore out of reach of almost everybody.

When it comes to water, there is an even more obvious heat loss. Hot water used in the bath, shower, washing machine and dishwasher are all used for cleaning, and then sent straight down the drain while still hot: literally flushing energy down the drain.

At a technical level, recovery of this heat is moderately simple. A heat exchanger can be built by running the hot waste water through a large vertical metal pipe (where it clings to the outer wall and transmits its heat). Incoming water is then preheated by coiling the inlet pipe around this warm outlet pipe.

A limitation of this system is that it does not usually recover heat when you need it; heat recover from pulling the plug out of the bath would still be lost, as there is not a matching inflow of water unless you happen to turn on the washing machine at the same time. The scenario where this system works extremely well, and recovery of the order of two thirds of the heat is possible, is where this heat exchanger is fitted to a shower. Here, hot water runs down the drain continuously at the same time as there is a demand for more hot water. Heating the water from the shower using the heat from the water running out of the shower is highly efficient.

Commercial systems working on this principle are available, and widely implemented in countries such as Canada. They are particularly easy to fit in houses built with basements, where the heat exchanger can be fitted below the level of a shower very easily. British house design tends to make this harder, but such a system can be fitted when renovating the room below the bathroom.

Energy recovery can work well, but is much more realistic when designed into an energy efficient house.

Onzo at HomeCamp

London, 8th December 2008

“The icon on my phone changes from a smiley face to a gravestone so I know I’ve got to go up to the loft with the body bags”. This isn’t the confession of a serial killer. Andy Stanford-Clark is explaining how his mousetraps Twitter him when they catch a mouse. In the corner a group are huddled excitedly around a water meter that one of them has made; a plastic pipe wired to a hacker-friendly circuit board called an Arduino.

Yes, I’m at HomeCamp: “an unconference about using technology to monitor and automate the home for greener resource use and to save costs”. It was a fantastically inspiring day full of thought provoking conversations that ranged from hacks to behaviour change, shifting the peak to MQTT. All things we love at Onzo.

We talked about graphing energy and what’s next with Dale Lane. The appropriately named Usman Haque explained recent developments on Pachube, the site he started for data fans. James Govenor shouted alot, then bought beer for everyone. There were a whole host of other motivated and interesting people doing cool stuff to save energy. It was a great day and a great introduction to a community we’re proud to be part of. Thanks to Dale and Chris for making it happen – can’t wait for the next one.

We’re going to be releasing stuff shortly – get in touch if you’re interested in getting your hacker hands on some early kit so you can start playing with some data from Onzo.

Gotta go – my plant’s just texted me that it needs watering…

Behind the Speech

London, 5th December 2008

This week’s Queen’s Speech, setting out the government’s legislative plans for the next parliamentary session, was delivered on Wednesday. It is no real surprise there were no proposals on energy in the Speech. Two major pieces of legislation, the Energy Bill and the Climate Change Bill, came into force only days before. The first mandates the roll-out of smart meters by 2020, with a two year preparation period, and the second enshrines in law the target of an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2050. If this target is to be taken seriously, the reduction of output from the home is essential – domestic emissions account for more than a third of the total – and our products and services have the potential to play a vital part in the process. Moreover, their importance should not be downplayed because of the projected smart meter roll-out. They will be invaluable tools for understanding and managing energy use for many years before that process is completed, and of course we are already working on our broader smart grid solution.

Winter Warmer

London, 5th December 2008

Now that the weather has turned chilly, here are some ways to keep warm this winter without increasing your energy costs

Keep moving.  Tidy up the garden.  Tidy up the house.  Buy an exercise video/DVD/Blu-ray.  We’re all in favour of saving people money and reduce their energy use and we would recommend anything that does so.  Sex, it seems, fits the bill perfectly.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7755315.stm

Personal insulation is just like home insulation.  So put on extra layers.  Don’t wear plunging necklines.  Wear tights under your trousers; who’s to know?  Put a tie on or a cravat or a scarf or all three.  The fashion for the shaved head as a solution to balding isn’t helping: most heat is lost through the head.  Grow what hair you have and comb it over.  Or wear a hat.  Go with the flow on facial hair and grow a beard.

Do what the animals do.  Build a nest – a well insulated home.  Huddle together like penguins.  Curl up into a ball and reduce your surface area.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/mammals/explore/thermal.shtml

If else fails, go to a well heated public building like a library and hang out there – though not perhaps for sex or huddling!

For an entirely more sensible list of suggestions:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/humber/content/articles/2004/11/25/winter_advice_for_elderly_feature.shtml

Reducing energy loss

London, 3rd December 2008

One of the biggest consumers of energy in the home is heating. Whether using gas, electricity, oil or wood, battling with nature to create a comfortable environment requires a lot of energy.

It is therefore obvious that making sure the energy input into making your house warm stays there, and the solution to this is insulation.
The best way to look at insulation is to consider that you are wrapping your home. Insulation in the loft is a simple starting point, and it is worth noting that recommended amounts of loft insulation are significantly more than most people may have.

After the roof come the walls. Here, the only major action that can be taken is cavity wall insulation – for houses that were built with a gap between the two leaves of the external walls (which is most houses built since the 1920s). Houses with solid walls can add insulation on the inside (or even on the outside), but this can be expensive and installation may be very disruptive.

The best known (and with the best known salesmen!) are the windows. Double glazing will make a huge difference, but it has to be double glazing that works well. Cheaper sealed units, fitted to most houses, tend to fail after 10-15 years, which usually leads to misting up between the panes. Older double glazing systems will also be less efficient in preventing energy leaking through the frame and therefore in preventing drafts.

The British Fenestration Rating Council manages an ‘A – G’ rating system for windows very similar to that for domestic appliances. Given that for most people the size and location of windows is fixed, a better-rated window is the best choice. Both windows and suppliers who have been rated can be researched on their website (www.bfrc.org).

The final place to look for energy disappearing is the hot water system, and particularly the hot water tank. If you have a hot water tank (and not all people do) and it is not insulated, it only costs a few pounds to buy a jacket for it. As an added extra, the main hot water pipes leaving the tank (and between tank and boiler) can also be insulated very easily – if they are accessible – saving further heat loss.

Reducing energy loss is one of the biggest changes people can make to limiting their consumption, and should be high on the list of priorities.