From the “better late than never” department:
Yay! Google finally announced an API for their PowerMeter site. So there’s hope that homegrown monitoring devices can hook up to some PowerMeter love… will be interesting to look over the API and see what all we can do.
Xcel finally announced their Solar*Rewards program for Minnesota today! $2.25 per installed DC watt – add that to $2/watt from the state and a 30% federal tax credit, if you live in Minnesota you should definitely look into solar if you have the site and the means… it’s a perfect storm of incentives. I’m on it! 
So I insulated the walls on the 11th of this month (and piled more in the attic, too). Xcel was nice enough to give me daily meter readings for most days during February, so I made a graph of usage vs. daily temperature. Read the rest of this entry »
The Arduino is now connected to a photoreceiver that I got at Ax-Man for $0.95, picking up IR pulses every watt-hour of usage! Read the rest of this entry »
We retrofitted the exterior walls with cellulose insulation this week. It wasn’t too cheap, but I get some money back from Xcel utilities for doing so, and the materials half of the cost qualifies for a 30% tax credit, which all helps. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been interested in doing power monitoring on the house for a while, the TED 5000 unit seems neat and the Brultech ECM1240 monitor also seems pretty good. Both are around $200, but both have drawbacks. The TED only monitors mains, and while the Brultech can monitor around 5 branch circuits, it lacks the simplicity of a built-in webserver like the TED. Most of the software developed by the company, at least, is Windows- oriented. But I’ve found some neat other projects that might be fun. Read the rest of this entry »
Really wanted to try out Hulu Desktop on my Mythbox, so I can get the Daily Show on the big screen in a convenient/legit fashion.
Knew 64-bit flash was still dicey on linux (Helloooo Adobe? 1998 called, they want their software back!) so did:
# yum localinstall huludesktop-i386.rpm
and it pulled in some 32-bit libs, I installed flash, and it should be groovy right? No. I run it and it says sorry you don’t have flash. I strace the thing and see it finding flash just fine but also see:
open("/lib/tls/i686/sse2/libXt.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/lib/tls/i686/sse2", 0xfff02f3c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/tls/i686/libXt.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/lib/tls/i686", 0xfff02f3c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/tls/sse2/libXt.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/lib/tls/sse2", 0xfff02f3c) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/tls/libXt.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
Hmmmm ok so we’ll just …
# yum install libXt.i586
Yay it works. Booo Hulu for getting it wrong in a way less savvy users would never sort out. I’ll just enter a bug in their Bugzil…. oh never mind.
Grrrr nonfree software.
The guys from Westwood Renewables came out yesterday to do the actual site assessment, and thought it would be a pretty standard install; the electrical panel is fairly full, might need to move some breakers, there is minimal shading that needs to be assessed, etc – but nothing looks like too big a deal. Nice timing, too – that evening I got an email from the state saying that the 2010 solar rebate applications would finally be available at Noon on Monday. Keeping fingers crossed that it’s still a good $/watt rebate… and wondering when Xcel will announce their rebates, too – can’t do this (financially) without those rebates! Hope I get the contract soon and can get the application in pronto.
I’d been looking for a WiFi thermostat that was affordable for a while; most seem to be vaporware or very expensive – but the CT30 from the Radio Thermostat Company of America looks like it may just fit the bill. Read the rest of this entry »
Electric Usage
Despite the bass-ackwards Microsoft Hohm presentation (Months left to right, years right to left?!) if you squint real hard you can see we are making a decent dent in our electricity usage. Read the rest of this entry »
