I want to change my house over to a “Smart house”, or is that “Smarter”? I am spurred on by my employers “Smarter Planet” initiative. If indeed we are running short of most of the resources that we use to take for granted then I believe it is incumbent on each of us to make some difference in the situation. For my home there are 2 major items to consider, Electricity & Water
Electricity
First and foremost my home needs to be energy efficient, it should get maximum benefit out of the energy it consumes, and where possible, use alternative, on site, sources.
A list of the things I am thinking of are;-
- Fully Insulated – My place of residence has a climate from 0 C in the depths of winter to 45 C in the hottest of summer – good quality insulation is mandatory
- Double glazing of windows – a lot of heat comes and goes via the windows yet this is still not part of the building standards, I have listed it separately as it will be an exercise on its own.
- Solar for heating – both hot water & the Pool – as much “free” energy, once the installation is paid for that is, as possible. Western Sydney’s climate is ideal for Solar heating.
- Skylights – I have a number of places that do not get good quality natural light (my home office for one), I should be able to reduce my lighting bill somewhat if I can introduce a bit more natural light into some of the dark corners of the home.
- Smart Grid – I would have to wait till the electricity provider, locally, start down this path before I can make any progress on this item.
- Power monitoring – I think this is the real key to it all, knowing what energy is being used by which devices can assist in doing the cost/benefit of replacing energy inefficient devices. But it does go a bit further, only by monitoring what appliances & systems are using electricity at any time can you have the information needed to make good educated decisions (obliviously!), and then when smart grid/bidding systems appear you can be far more precise in your demands on the grid or on site generation systems. I read this article on building a home power monitoring system, and I like the concept.
Some other things to consider
- Solar Electricity panels on the roof – the Australian Government is giving rebates on these – a 1 kW panel would cost about 10.5-12k, with an 8k rebate leaves about 2-3k of net cost, and at 12cents per KWH gives about a 10% rate of return
- Blockout Shutters – designed to reduce down to almost zero the radiant heat via windows, may be an alternative to the double glazed windows.
- Wind generator – it would be interesting to know if I get sufficient wind, on average, to get some value out of one of these devices. I remember Dr Max Whisson had what looked like a great invention – part of which is a windmill that turns well in the lightest breeze
Water
Oddly enough I am less understanding of plumbing that I am of electricity – probably has something to do with my training as an Electrical Engineer.
Capturing and re-using as much as possible, In particular
- Grey water recycling – taking the water from, say, washing & showering and reusing it. I never ever water my garden, so I may have far more than I actually need – some temporary storage prior to reuse would need to be built into the system. I could even use the excess for augmented cooling in summer, depending on the quality.
- A water tank – my parents use to have a farm and I am very well aware of the do’s & don’t's of tank water so getting that as a partial replacement of what I take from Sydney Water should be easily doable (subject to building regulations I presume).
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As I progress through this what appears to be a multi-year project, dear reader I will update what I have found and what works and does not work, for me, being an IT guy I have a couple of ideas that may be able to help to really tune down the consumption and tune up the “efficiency” of my place of residence.
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First things first – I think I will need to do a bit of analysis on my usage of Electricity & Water and see what my current consumption profile really looks like, so it’s off to the electricity supply company to see if they can assist – something a bit more granular than every 3 month’s I think is needed.
Thanks for reading.
