Am always keen to understand how we can get the most out of the energy available to us. A couple of exercises in using the right kind of energy this week. One with our house solar, the other from a start-up I met at this weeks IoT London meet up who are developing a new kind of smart plug. And a couple of links to interesting things this week - some python code to generate trees using L-systems and a TED talk on the digital coup taking place.
First up the solar. This was installed in Dec 2018 and has probably been cleaned a couple of times. Am never sure what difference cleaning the panels make but since the windows and van were covered in London Saharan Dust I thought I would do a little experimentation to look at the difference over 2 sunny days this week. Climbing out the velux window to climb on to the flat roof above always causes some worries in the household. I also need to work out a better way to get water onto the roof - a reminder to self to drop a hose pipe down from the roof next time.
Here are a couple of before and after photos:
Looking at the data from 2 days of generation - both of which had cloudless sunny skies all day - show a little difference, 0.3kWh.
I also chanced upon a start-up called Wind Fall Energy at the IoT London meet-up (one of our current students, Vineeth, had mentioned this startup to me a month or so ago). They have an interesting take on the smart plug - they make one that works when the grid carbon is at its lowest for the day. I have mine plugged in to my Vespa in the garage which is handy since I typically plug this in to recharge when i get home from work - typically at peak grid time - so this delayed charging works well. A screenshot from first night time charge below.
Last up, a couple of links. First, we (myself, Andy, Valerio) are in the final phases of getting a book out the door on the Metaverse - I wrote a chapter on AI in which I am referencing the use of L-Systems in the game No Man’s Sky. I needed to get permisions to use an image of trees generated by L-Systems from a paper published in 1996. As an alternative I thought it would be nice to generate my own images and share the code example as part of the book - Python script to generate L-System trees on Google Colab
Second, stumbled across this TED talk by Carol Cadwalladr “This is what a digital coup looks like” - haven’t watched a TED talk for years - but this is the kind of talk that I would like to hear.
Endnote: graphs of the 2 days of solar.
