Michaeljon Miller : Environment

IEEE Spectrum article on Green Energy

mikemill — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:49:53 GMT

In November, IEEE Spectrum ran an article titled Biofuels Aren’t Really Green. The short version is that pushing an all-biofuel solution to our current energy problems is intractable. There’s simple not enough water or space on Earth to grow all the biomass necessary. Before you jump to the conclusion that this is just another “sky is falling” attempt to scare everyone, read the article and try the model yourself. The model allows you to decide how prosperous various parts of the globe will be, over what timeframe, and to what level.

We really only have a few choices here and they start with energy management and conservation. We must reduce our consumption while helping other countries come par with our lifestyle. It’s only fair, and it’s only a start.

Holiday Lights Low Concern For Northwest Power Producers

mikemill — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:39:37 GMT

This morning, KPLU aired a piece on the power consumption of holiday lights. The BPA says that holiday lights count for less than 1/2 of 1% of energy consumed by BPA customers. That’s really not that much. But, we can do better. According to the folks over at ENERGY STAR, compliant lights use 75% less energy than traditional lights (and, my personal opinion – they’re easier to install because you can string many, many more in serial).

Granted, there are also several other great benefits too: the run cooler, they last longer, you can shake them up a bit more while installing them, and they might even be a bit brighter.

We installed LEDs this year for the first time (I wanted to make sure the old ones had sufficiently worn out before I dealt with the disposal issues). I won’t go back. Now, it’s time to work out a Hohm plug-in for the energy modeler that can calculate my savings.

Sitting in deployment – Microsoft Hohm goes live

mikemill — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:20:33 GMT

Other than a few minor DNS hiccups, Microsoft Hohm went live this morning. The team’s been sitting in a conference room on campus since about 5:30 this morning watching things spin up. We’re triaging other issues, but so far there have been no show-stopper bugs and no reason for any of the dev team to stay late tonight.

Way to go Hohm team. Considering this is the first major web application that most of the team has shipped, things went extremely well. More later.

Announcing Microsoft Hohm

mikemill — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:55:39 GMT

So, I haven’t been blogging much over the last year or so. But, there’s a reason. I couldn’t really talk much about what I’ve been working on. Turns out, starting today, I can. This morning we announced Microsoft Hohm. Once again I’m playing the role of architect of a Microsoft start-up. This one has been loads of fun because I’ve been getting a chance to play with a ton of new technology, have had an opportunity to do a mini-degree in Electrical Engineering, and learned more about energy production and consumption than I thought I’d even want to know.

We have a few final things to work out over the next few days, so go to our home page, add your email address, and watch this space for more about what we learn.

By the way, my home falls below the “efficient” home in my area, mainly because of all of the work I’ve done on it over the last few years. Where does yours fall?

Why are thermostats like a VCR?

mikemill — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:35:26 GMT

Actually, I don’t have an answer. For some reason thermostats still seem to follow a 1980s user paradigm. There are days where a simple T-50 (you know, the round thermostat) model would work tremendously better. I needed to change my thermostat settings, first to deal with the newer insulation and windows, and second to deal with out of town situations. Both changes require setting the “program” for multiple days.

My thermostat is powered by the 24VAC provided by the HVAC system and doesn’t use a battery backup. That’s pretty typical. But, it means that there isn’t an “armchair” programming mode, and that means I need to stand in front of the device running through an arcane sequence of key presses. Sure, after three or four cycles, assuming I want every day to be just like every other day (and I don’t, weekends are clearly different, but so are a few of the week days), my fingers get into a groove and I can just press Next Day, Program, Copy, Save. However, those buttons are in a criss cross pattern – a big X – and it’s unnatural feeling to press them given their placement. And if that groove gets interrupted, all bets are off.

There are days where I’m convinced I’m going to walk by the thermostat and see it flashing 12:00 at me in warm LED red. Really. I’m convinced of it. For those of you too young to remember VCRs, before DVD, before TiVo, before DVR, they were devices capable of recording your favorite TV shows as long as your either had a Ph.D in VCR programming or were sitting in front of the TV and pressed the Record button right when you were ready.

It wasn’t a pretty picture. And because it wasn’t a pretty picture, nobody could ever figure out how to set the clocks, so they always flashed 12:00. (And if you can’t figure out how to set the clock, you certainly can’t tell it to record Sunday’s football game.)

Yeah, I know, I can buy a remotely controlled thermostat, or one of those “armchair” models that lets me take the thing off the wall and program it from the comfort of my favorite chair (in better light, with a martini in hand). But, the remote control versions are really expensive or have some weird requirement to install software on my PC or take a “programming remote control” over to that same armchair. If the experience wasn’t so horrible the armchair model wouldn’t be bad, but it just moves the discomfort from the hallway to the chair. I would still need to do the criss cross thing.

I want to make my house comfortable, I want to save money, and I want to save the planet by using less energy. My thermostat has a big sticker on the box that says it’ll do that for me. I don’t believe it right now.

Temperature inversion

mikemill — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:18:25 GMT

Well, turns out doing a bunch of home “tightening” has some interesting effects on the climate in the house (and helped locate a few external leaks that were missed). My house is what’s called a tri-level. That is you enter on the main floor which has all the common living spaces, and can go up or down a half-flight of stairs to the bedrooms / office area or to the media room. Well, the rooms that used to be cold (defying logic and physics) were the upstairs (warm air is supposed to rise, right?) are now the warm rooms, and vice versa. So now the office and bedrooms upstairs are almost uncomfortably warm when the downstairs rooms are at a comfy 68°F. Turns out that the thermostat in our house is located near the stairs, but on the main floor. So, the main floor follows all the rules and seems cold when you walk down to it.

Sounds like it’s time to revisit the air return ducts (one at the top of the stairs and one downstairs in the media room) to see if they can be tweaked to move the right air at the right time. Or, time to figure out how to tweak the thermostat so it does the right thing. And no, my house is too small to have multiple zones (trust me, it’s small for the area, and small in general).

By the way, those external leaks were places where the old cable TV lines were pulled into rooms, but the siding wasn’t replaced during remodels we’ve been doing. There was an actual paper-moving draft in my kitchen a few days ago coming from between two upper cabinets. Yup, there was a hole on the outside wall right behind that. I still don’t know where the path is, but plugging the source helped.

It’s getting warmer in Bellevue?

mikemill — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:02:41 GMT

I’ve been paying attention to two different things about my house for the last year or so (while I’ve gone dark). The first is that it’s unusually cold in parts of the house, the house is showing its age, and the single-pane windows always seem to be wet. The second is that it costs me an arm and a leg to keep the house warm or cool depending on the time of the year.

So, last week I had a crew out to do an insulation check. Turns out that there really wasn’t any. The walls, except where we had remodeled, were empty (and cold to the touch), and the ceiling above the bedroom area had something like an R8. Oh yeah, and none of the knee walls – those vertical walls between living space and cold space, like in the attic – had insulation. None. Just drywall and paint between.

Step one was to fix that problem because it’s the least expensive, there’s an energy rebate available from my local energy provider (PSE), it’s quick, and it has immediate benefit. Yeah, immediate. The first night after having the new insulation blown into the attic and stuffed through little holes in the outside walls was uncomfortably warm.

The next step was to remove all those single-pane, aluminum framed windows with something that is energy efficient. We noticed that the rooms where we had already done windows – the living room, kitchen, and other main-floor spaces – had a very different feel to them already. No drafts, no damp windows, no uncomfortable spots.

Side benefit – the new windows are exactly the same size as the old windows, but the egress size was more than doubled, that means that in case of an emergency where we need to get out of the house ASAP we can easily do so without squeezing out of the old opening. Oh, and if we open the windows upstairs there’s a breeze now. Ah, fresh air.

I’m looking forward to seeing a few of my energy bills this winter to see what the bottom line looks like. I suspect that this will be a long term investment (about $12k worth) that will take a few years to pay back, but the impact on my family’s comfort and the environment is well worth it.

Call me a greenie cheapskate if you want. But this is one of those cases where spending (a lot of) money is well worth it.