NSWsphere – my thoughts

Hello There

Last Friday (September 4th 2009) I attended NSW Sphere hosted by Penny Sharpe MLC, This was about “Government 2.0″.

First and foremost a thank you for Penny, her staff & all the contributors on the day & beforehand.

If you follow the link above to the agenda you will see the main themes of the day. Government services is not, necessarily where you would anticipate innovation and leading edge use of technology. This is just not the case – at least in the situations I saw on the day.

A couple of highlights

• Mylee Joseph – showing how the NSW State Library is assisting librarians across NSW via eLearning
• Lynda Summers & “the Squawk” – assisting rural communities
• And, my favourite -Paul McLeay MP, Member for Heathcote on how he is directly asking his constituency on how he should distribute the NSW stimulus grants for his electorate.

The day was spent around the interface between government and the citizens – about how government could make it’s information available for others to consume, to this point the NSW Premier Mr Nathan Rees announced Apps 4 NSW a competition to create applications that uses the data that the NSW government makes available.

All good stuff, as the presentations are made available from the link at the top of the page I encourage the reader to take a look at them, there will also be a wiki where the draft will be made available.

However I do believe that something was missing.

For the data to be made available it is necessary for all the data to be organised so it can be presented. The day did not address the issue about the internal IT systems within each government department and how once the information is captured how it is used WITHIN the department.

Here is an example – my daughter was fortunate enough to be accepted into a selective high school. I have provided the same information to the department of education 5 times

• When I enrolled my daughter in Primary School
• When I applied to sit for the Selective High School test
• When I enrolled my daughter in Selective High School – the selective schools unit information form
• When I enrolled my daughter in Selective High School – the high school enrollment form
• When I enrolled my daughter in Selective High School – the “backup” card that is used if the computer system is down.

You will note that the last 3 of these I did at the same time – and it was the same information – is this not shared between the high school my daughter attends and the selective high schools unit ?

So, dear reader, my premise is that until the IT systems within Government are in some order so that information is asked for once, and shared as needed we are always going to have a situation where any applications being developed will have to reach and retrieve data from many disparate sources.

Every Government, if they are even semi serious about making their data available to the public via applications that Apps 4 NSW is trying to generate then they will need to look inwards and ensure they have their data organised internally as well. I suspect that to be able to do that there will need to be some significant investment in the internal IT systems.

Unfortunately the “opening” of an IT system is never going to attract much by way of press coverage and therefore is not going to get the attention it deserves.

Government 2.0, to me is about all the IT of a government, not just the IT around the government / citizen interface.

Thanks for reading.

Towards a smarter country

Hi,

Before I start a reminder that this blog is MY OWN OPINION and does not reflect that of my employer, IBM

Lets start with a Video – props to “smarterplanetanz“

Last week, on June 10th, the IBM General Manager for Australia & New Zealand, Mr Glen Boreham addressed the National press club, his subject was “To a smarter economy”.

You can download and read his speech here if you wish too.

The Point of this particular blog post is that I truly believe that Australia, and any other country for that matter, has an opportunity to move itself to the next level of efficiency. Regardless of your belief that economic stimulus is good or bad, if you accept that this money is being spent, then it should be spent on improving the efficiency of the country.

I firmly belive that;-

• Given the opportunity, people will make intelligent informed decisions about what they do & how they consume our scarce resources.

• Greater “intelligence” needs to be embedded into all systems so that we can get the information to people to make those decisions.

• Australia, though the current investments in Infrastructure has an opportunity, if focused on the whole picture, to embed intelligence into many of its core societal systems, road, water, electricity, health care etc.

• Interconnecting this intelligence so that a complete view is obtained will help make Australia a “smarter”, more efficient, and productive country.

Mr Prime Minister, & your ministry, to all the Premiers & all their cabinet’s, to every elected official, “Shovel ready” is not what we are looking for here, we are looking for “intelligence ready” smarter infrastructure projects – projects that are ready to not only be built, but to have sufficient intelligence built in so that our society can know and measure the value that investment actually generates in our economy.

All the issues that our society faces will only start to be solved once we have enough information to know what the real problem is – now is the time to start generating this information.

So this is the last point, a Smarter Australia needs to be bold and provide all this information, in the appropriate form, for citizens to access. As an example, I can not find out, on line, immediately, how much power is being generated, and how much is being consumed, someone must know (hopefully) why wouldn’t this be made available to everyone who wants it ?

A smarter county can only be an open, sharing, country, as we move forward and start making decisions about Infrastructure projects, we need to add intelligence, then make this information available, in an appropriate form, to everyone.

Thanks for reading (and watching).

Smart House – Some action & inaction

Well it has been a while and thanks to Caspian Smith of IBM for push on my blog via Twitter.

What I have done recently

Well what I have done is replace my Freezer & Fridge with a new one – by my calculations I am going from about 1400-1500 KWh’s per year to  just less than 500KWh (according to the sticker), and looking at the figures before & after on my “smart meter” this seems about right.

By the numbers, I save 900 KWh’s per year at 19 cents per KWh = $170 per year in power savings – I paid just under $1,200 for the device – that’s a 7-8 years break even (or about 14% rate of return) a small and simple start on the path to energy efficiency.

Look at the age of your appliances, are they old ? are they efficient ? can you afford to replace then with smaller &/or newer more efficient ones ?

What I have not done recently !

What I have not been able to achieve is for someone to actually give me a quote for Solar hot water, which in a way you can understand, however it is still frustrating – according to what I have read – there is a 70% increase in the demand because of the Federal & NSW state governments rebates – which, depending on the system you get can reduce, say a $3-4000 system to as low as $800 – 1,600 out of pocket.

What really frustrates me about this is that one of the places which has failed is advertising there services, why advertise if your not going to get around to giving a quote ? Don’t you want the business ?

The other activity is Solar Electricity – the system is changing at the end of the Financial year, the subsidy reduces slightly ($8,000 to $7,500) but is not means tested, which puts me eligible which I am not right now. SO I need to wait – probably go for both at the same time – sweeten the deal for the eventual supplier.

Update on usage

So what has been my usage over the past few months since I installed the “smart meter” ? It has been increasing as it gets colder – which is obvious, however I did some analysis and there is a 60% correlation between the Maximum temperature of the day and the energy used. (see chart)

Energy Consumption (blue) vs Max Daily Temp (Red)

Useful, well yes because if we are going to be able to bid for usage of electricty we do need to be able to predict usage based on a number of factors, and the tempreture is going to be one of those.

Thanks for reading

Smart House, Getting a better idea of where the energy goes

So, dear reader I have bought what is being called in my house “the device”, available at Jaycar Electronics for $200, it has 3 parts, a sensor that you place in the meter box (you may need an electrician to do so) and this broadcasts via wireless to the console – pictured above, and a USB to serial adaptor.

You can download software from the site (the picture above also has a URL), and use this, via a USB port/Windows PC,  to track your power consumption, pretty nice.

The reason I wanted this was so that I could see in as low a level of detail as possible, exactly where my power was being consumed. In discussions with the local power distribution company, they said they were not going to provide “smart metering” or even the ability for me to see what I am consuming at any time, before 2015, when the NSW government has mandated it occur. I, obviously, cannot wait till then.

I did discover a few things.

Fluoro lights are not efficient

Should I have known this already ?

I have 3 Fluorescent lights – 2 in the Kitchen & 1 in the bathroom that my family want to keep on all day and all night, they draw considerable amounts of power each, 70-80 watts each, which at the current rate of 19.1 cents per KWh means that they cost between $117-133 each per year – that’s $350-400 for all three.

I have gone and changed all my other lights over to power saving globes, I always thought that the “11W” mark on the fluoro tube meant that is what it consumed, apparently not – the choke and ballast of these light fittings also burn the energy up very rapidly.

So I have to add something to the list – replace these lights with something that consumes far less energy. LED lights, (that’s Light Emitting Diode) like the ones used in the solar garden lights you can get – except there are a lot of them clustered together, you can get them in the same fitting as the long fluoro bulb, though you must  get an electrician to modify the fitting to accommodate them.

They do cost $100 each, and consume about 1/8th the power of the fluoro, last about 5 years, so it will pay itself back in a year if my calculations are correct.

I should replace the fridge & chest freezer

I have a very old, very small fridge that is constantly icing up, and therefore constantly on, it consumes about 850-900 KWh per year (thats $170 worth). Add on top of that I have a chest freezer that does about half that again. A newer, much bigger frost free fridge/freezer will consume less and need less attention. So add that to the list of things to do. It has been “on the list” for a while now – I just proved to myself that it needs to be near the top.

So I have taken the first tangible steps to a smarter house – knowing how much electricity I consume at any given moment, it has been a $200 well spent.

Thanks for reading

Smart House, Update 1 My Consumption & Hot Water solution

The first step in seeing what efficiencies I can get out of creating a “smarter” house, is knowing what I am currently consuming

I have gone back a few years – prompted by receiving my quarterly bill and here is the consumption.

It is interesting the variation over the year – not sure why – our winters are not that cold vs hot summers so goes to show that some of the impact heating is having on my bill.

Work to date

So tomorrow I have an inspection from my electricity supplier to get a firm quote on the installation of solar hot water service.

I spend about $40 per quarter on hot water right now – it is offered as “off peak” , however the stated direction of the NSW state government, as advised to me by the supplier is over the next few years to remove the off peak discount – essentially increasing my hot water cost to 90-100 per quarter.

So how much will it cost.

It will cost about $5,749 to supply and install, and I receive the following government incentives.

1. NSW State Govt RECS (renewable energy Certificates) of $1075 – this will come off the price I pay
2. A NSW State Government rebate of $600 sent via a cheque post install
3. A Federal government rebate of $1,600 sent via a cheque
4. A $50 discount at point of sale from my Electricity supplier

Total rebates etc. of $3,325, leaving $2,424 net for me to pay.

If I reduce my hot water bill down to, say $20 p.a. then this is a return on investment of about 6% at current electricity rates, and after removal of the off peak discounts this increases to an approx. 16.5% ROI

So it makes sense, though highly subsidised by governments, State and Federal.

What’s next;-

• Finalise the Solar Hot Water
• Investigate Solar Electricity
• Investigate how to continually meter the house.

Thanks for reading

A Smart(er) House – the beginning

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.