When I started this blog, I chose a system that was flexible enough to do most of what I wanted, yet constrained enough not to tempt me to tweak the site instead of writing.
Several of you have reported some difficulties with comments. Some do not know that you can
Read MoreAlgal Biodiesel Virtuous Cycles
I am reading more and more about how close algal biodiesel is, perhaps a year or two away. I will reserve my judgment on ship dates, but note that there are claims that algae can produce oils suitable for making biodiesel out of without genetic engineering. I am not as concerned with genetic modifications as some are, but do acknowledge that the presence of such modifications would concern others and throw
Read MoreService enabling Telecommunications – lessons for Buildings and Grid
Peter Carbone, Vice President of SOA for Nortel, gave a nice high level talk at the OASIS conference on the challenges facing a company learning to dance in the world of SOA and mash-ups. Nortel, of course, grew up with rigid account control and vertical integration in a regulated environment. As markets for building systems are still characterized by rigid account control and vertical integration, and the power grid is still vertically integrated, regulated, and almost complete account control, there are some useful lessons.
Infrastructure convergence was the enabling and driving change for telecommunications. Provisioning telecommunications was long the most difficult task. Over the last decade, the diverse communication infrastructure ...
Read MoreHome Automation: Bad choices and poor experiences
in Basics, Smart Grid
My hydronic system failed this summer. It was time. Spare parts for the boiler, still more efficient than most on the market, are no longer available. It supported a hot water heater, and two zones in my old house. I am splitting out the water heater, moving to a tankless system. While the boilers haven’t gotten better, the price for a boiler almost as good has gone way down; the incentive to put everything on one boiler is gone.
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