Home Grid
I am lagging behind
by Hoshiko on May.14, 2009, under Home Grid
I’ve followed in your footsteps Kari and enrolled in the energy at home project now, but i can see than I am not the biggest producer of electricity here
Way to go, Kari!

My portal at "Energy at home"
I think I will need to buy some more solar panels to catch up with a couple of you guys. Jim has his separate panels mounted on the shed in the garden that is not part of my contribution. But I like this “competition” - how can we get more to join? H.
I got a set of Jitter Plugz today!
by Susan on May.08, 2009, under Home Grid
Hi you guys!
I got a set of these plugz today.

One of my new Plugz
Today I brought the receiver plugz to work and got i working:
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
It is amazing that you can take the energy with you in this way. My solar panel at home is now virtually connected to this little IKEA monster of mine. He Loves it, my Ghost is now resting on top of my office monitor, glowing of new energy.
CU fellow jitterzzzz!
xxx
PS. Sorry for the poor quality of the imagery, I do need to buy a new phone!
Green energy for my Green tea!
by Eric on Apr.21, 2009, under Home Grid, Renewable Energy
I’m really satisfied with the new home grid system we got the other day. Now with the new Smart Appliance base from Braun I can choose to only enable boiling when my Solar Panel has provided enough energy for a cup of tea. In the Virtual Wire panel as seen in the video I can connect the two and let the Solar Panel output control the boiling of water. The base lights up to show me when enough energy is accumulated. The statistics shows that it takes roughly four hours on overcast days. But that no problem as long as my tea now is green2.
I shot this video to show how I did the connection. While in there you can see how detailed the metering panel has become. For a statistics fanatic like me, I love that stuff!
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Here is a picture of the Braun kettle as well:
Testing the new Energy Dashboard
by Eric on Apr.17, 2009, under Home Grid
First glimpse of the newly installed energy dashboard. I’ll be back with a sharper version soon.
Interfacing my home grid
by Eric on Apr.14, 2009, under Home Grid
Tinkering a bit more with my home grid I wrote about yesterday I found the mobile interface to the new PV node valuable. By either navigating to the device or just touching the socket in which it is plugged, my NFC phone opens the device GUI. It gives the current panel output as Watts in real time. I immediately found it necessary to adjust the angle of my panel to see if it captured any more energy, but it was obviously too cloudy to make any difference. I am, however, pleased to see that the panel is infact producing quite a bit, even when it is overcast. I’ll be checking the prognosis more frequently with this tool in my hands.
First solar cells installed to my home grid
by Eric on Apr.13, 2009, under Home Grid, Renewable Energy
I had the opportunity to install a solar panel at home this easter. The usual downside of doing that is that you need a battery or a big and costly inverter to send it to the grid. Fortunately I got enrolled in a small scale smart grid roll out with my local utility. This enables me to add any generator such as a PV panel, a wind trubine, a fuel cell, or a dynamo, directly to my electrical sockets at home. If I generate electricity the utility give credits per Wh generated that I can accumulate to consume in other devices. I haven’t tested it all yet, but it feels really good already.
DIY electricity fail
by Jim on Apr.13, 2009, under Home Grid
I’m not so sure the best man was hired to make this connection, he seems to have been just a bit short on grout to cover it up properly.




