Grey and Early

The title describes my morning so far. The boys were up before 7am. Alex was doing a word search on the landing at 6:30
Yesterday was reasonably productive. The RenSMART account model is getting closer. I have now built the interfaces wind and solar profiles for the UK. They were sketched out using server side Javascript, now they are implemented in Java for better performance.
I may do a bit more work on it now rather than watch CBBC

Linux Zoo

Spent yesterday working on the Energy Monitoring service that RenSMART will offer and Powis-Hughes office. I have been looking at the Sheeva Plug for a while now as a possible data logger. On Wednesday I received one. It looks pretty unassuming, which is what you want for a box that is to be tucked away and forgotten about.
I spent hours trying to get Java installed and running and the Data Logger software working. Finally succeeded only to find that the Current Cost smart meter interface does not have a working driver for Ubuntu (or Windows XP for that matter) so the working day ended on a rather disappointing note.
Came home and built Lego with Alex and Theo for a bit. We are building a space station. If only the real world was as easy as Lego :-).
Today I'm back on the RenSMART web site, improving the financial model for Wind and Solar PV. The task is to try and get it running smoothly enough to offer multiple bespoke financial projections to RenSMART visitors for comparison and a number of predefined scenarios to get them up and running quickly. Hopefully, visitors will want to save their information, for which they will require to become members.

(Why Linux Zoo as a Title. Sheeva runs Ubuntu Linux. Each version is named after a different animal. I tried quite a few versions to get the Sheeva working)

The First Entry

Well, this is the first entry in my new blog. I thought I ought to start one so I can look back and see what I have done with my time.
As of Monday I am working full time on a new venture RenSMART. A a cost comparison web service for renewable energy systems in the UK. The project did not start well as I immediately came down with a cough and cold. The first cough I have had in years.
Now it's Wednesday and I'm back on track. The first tasks I have decided to focus on are an energy use service for measuring the energy used on a site minute by minute and the RenSMART financial model that estimates projected revenue from any renewable energy system installed in the UK.
I decided to work on the energy monitoring service as my initial investigation into the financial model showed that the amount of energy a site uses and when it is used is the biggest factor in predicting profitability. Although a site with a given renewable energy system may generate more energy that it uses, if the energy is generated at a time when the site does not require it, the revenue generated is at the export to grid tariff rate. If the time energy is generated matches the requirements of the site, the revenue generated is the saving of the electricity that does not get imported from the grid. The export rate is set at about 5p per kWh whereas the import rate is about 12 to 14p. You can see that energy that matches site requirements is worth 7 to 9p more than energy that is exported. By monitoring energy use, we can build an average profile for a site and better estimate the revenue generated.
The RenSMART financial model takes this profile, renewable system information and estimates for renewable energy available and gives a 20 year projection of estimated returns (25 years for Solar PV as the technology lasts longer)
And there we have it, my first post, and a long one at that.