Home Battery revisited

 After a full year of operation, time for a checkup.

The App that displays data has been updating and improving.

My spreadsheet says the battery is saving me about £840/year. That means the return on my investment is around 20%. This was much better than I expected! Since batteries last around 10 years, this investment was successful.

The system is ~80% efficient.

Purple line - battery charge. Green - battery. Blue - Grid input. Orange - electricity used.

Books 2014

I don't read as much as I used to, but here are the best:

The Particle at the End of the Universe - Sean Carroll
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Particle-End-Universe-Discovery/dp/1780742320
An account of the confirmation of the Higg's Boson by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2012. Carroll makes a crucial and often ignored point about Science when he quotes:

 "My hope for what the LHC will find is 'none of the above'. I honestly think it's going to be a surprise, because I think nature is smarter than we are [...] and we're going to have a hell of a fun time trying to figure it all out".

As it turned out, the theorists were correct. But sometimes they are not, and unlike politicians, economists,  priests, quacks, frauds and the rest they aren't looking for confirmation of what they already believe. They want to be wrong.

Why Nations Fail - Acemoglu and Robinson
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/1846684307
The basic thesis here is a simple one. Trying to avoid the conventional Left vs Right axis, the authors coin two terms with less emotional loading, 'extractive' and 'inclusive'. Successful polities they propose are those in which citizens believe that if they work hard they can make money and use it to better themselves. They are 'included'. Extractive regimes by contrast offer no incentives aside from basic survival to most workers.
One example taken is Nogales, a town on the USA/Mexican border. Another is the two Koreas.

The Book of Barely Imagined Beings - Caspar Henderson
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Barely-Imagined-Beings-21st-century/dp/1847082440
Inspired by Borges' famous bestiary, equally extraordinary but nevertheless real creatures become a springboard to all kinds of subjects.

Bird Sense - Tim Birkhead
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bird-Sense-What-Its-Like/dp/140883054X
What is it like to be a bird? Each sense is considered including one humans don't have, being able to detect the Earth's magnetic field.

The Signal and the Noise - Nate Silver
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Signal-Noise-Art-Science-Prediction/dp/0141975652 
Having tried various predicting money making schemes - poker, baseball, the stock market - the author found fame by being getting every State right in the 2012 US election. He covers these and other subjects in which we often try to fool others but only succeed in fooling ourselves.

Solar Panels

Installed three weeks ago.

The UK has referral websites that promise three quotes. The two I tried were both poor - one got me a single reply with a sales visit but no quote, the second also a single reply with an on the spot quote from the salesman. Neither referral site contacted me again. Based on that experience, you're on your own.

I went for my only quote which matched what I was expecting. Installation took half a day with the only problem being that the original plan for 15 panels had to be amended to 13 as the roof was inches too short. That gave me a capacity of 3.4 Kw.
The panels are connected to an Inverter in the loft that converts from DC to AC and that joins the mains supply next to the existing meter under the stairs. A new meter records the panel output.
Right now (computer on) I'm using 0.6Kw. The panels generate 0.2Kw through thick cloud, 1Kw with thin and a maximum of 2.6Kw with a blue sky.
[added: maximum midwinter is 1.9Kw]
So where are the savings? The Government pays a subsidy for 20 years for every KWh produced, plus a lower rate for each KWh exported to the Grid. And, of course, the electric bill goes down. Estimates suggest a 12% return, ie the system will have paid for itself in around eight years.

One thing I looked into was batteries, but they are not cost effective yet. Like panels the technology is improving, and in a few years it might be worth adding them.

Science based websites

Contrary to what Google Search often indicates, there are plenty of good science based websites and blogs. They aren't however dedicated to making money by selling you snake oil and blue sky, so they don't try to get themselves onto that all important first page. Here's a few:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/

Blog for veggies

http://rawfoodsos.com/

Vaccines, fallacies etc

http://www.skepticalraptor.com/

Various nonsenses exposed

http://www.hoaxorfact.com/

Quackwatch

http://www.quackwatch.com/index.html

What's the harm in pseudoscience?

http://whatstheharm.net/

Alliance for Natural Health

http://www.anh-usa.org/

Mostly chemistry

http://blog.everydayscientist.com/

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

Upbeat stories about how technology can save the planet

http://www.smartplanet.com/

Being careful with links

You come across a webpage with something useful you want to share so you Post, Tweet or Blog about it on your Social Media of choice. Everyone does this, it's what the Internet is all about.

Yes, but... There always seems to be a "but" doesn't there.

We all want lots of people to visit our webpages - to read good advice, buy our stuff, whatever. To do that they have to find them, and that means Search Engines.
One parameter that Search Engines go by is Links. If lots of people are linking that means they found what they wanted so most likely other people will find that link useful too. Of course they might be saying "I just found this horrible webpage" but let's ignore that one.

So let's suppose you are a conartist, a quack, a fraud, whatever - you are offering something that isn't legit. Your website looks good, you put in all the right phrases like "morphic resonance", "quantum orbs" and "100% natural organic", now you want more traffic. Here's one way - add some pages that aren't nonsense, just general good advice like "eat more vegetables". You don't have to research this stuff yourself you just use someone else's work, with pictures and a video if possible, and maybe put "Source" at the bottom. Like this:
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/
I'm using MSN as a template example. Look carefully and you'll see that the articles come from news agencies or are writeups of information from elsewhere. MSN staff are reporters not scientists, which is fine and good because that's their job. Nevertheless it's always sensible to check the Source out as reporters can slant stories, oversimplify them or simply make errors.

So, I want to find news about Vegetables, I do my Google Search, find what looks to be (and actually is) a rational article and post a link to it. What's the harm in that?

The article was on the quacks-r-us.org website. By linking to it I just helped Dr Evil PhD(Arkham) with his evil plan to stop people vaccinating their kids and buy his homeopathic bottles of magic water instead. OMG. I just killed someone's child!
Now I'm not going to be fooled by Dr Evil and nor (I hope) are you, but those links help more gullible people than us find him. Please don't do it - use reputable Sources for your good advice.