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Subsidies on fossil energy...

There's been a lot of complaints lately, especially from within liberal circles, about subsidies on renewable energy. The term 'leftist hobbies' was coined in the Netherlands, and it seems to have fallen into popular use. That's unfortunate because not everything can be expressed in money. How much is a clean environment worth? Or a low CO2-level in the atmosphere? Or an icecap? What's independence from unreliable or even unfriendly countries worth?

It's doubly unfortunate that, in fact, the worldwide subsidies for the renewable sector are dwarfed () by the subsidies for the fossil sector. Research reveals that the fossil sector gets about twelve times as much money as the renewable sector.

What to do? Increase the subsidies on renewable energy by twelve times? Better not. I am liberal enough to see the many disadvantages of keeping an army of civil servants unnecessarily at work. I hope we're sensible enough to (quickly) reduce the fossil subsidies to zero to that both energy sources can compete on even terms. Unfortunately the fossil sector has many old vested interests who will not let go of these sources of funding easily.

Only time will tell if we're able to make sensible decisions about this. Unfortunately the (probable) coming Dutch right-wing cabinet doesn't give much hope in this area...

Translation is in progress

Full disclosure: the Plugwise set with which I monitor our solar panels and which is the subject of this review was given to me for free. Plugwise has imposed no limitation of any kind about what I could or couldn't write about their products and services.Verder heb ik ook geen enkele binding met Plugwise, behalve dat ik klant bij ze ben. Ik heb geprobeerd mijn objectiviteit niet te laten aantasten door het feit dat de set kosteloos was - en volgens mij ben ik daar goed in geslaagd. Ik laat wat ik doe voor zichzelf spreken: ik heb korte tijd geleden op eigen kosten een tweede Home Basic Pakket bij Plugwise besteld, zó tevreden ben ik er over. Als het product ook een tweede keer niet goed had gewerkt, had ik het ook gewoon weer teruggestuurd.

Meten is weten

Van veel zonnestroominstallaties wordt de opbrengst niet gemeten, en dat is zonde. Juist vanwege de grote voordelen van zonnestroompanelen (geen bewegende delen, geen geluid, geen uitstoot) kun je aan de buitenkant van een installatie niet zien of hij goed functioneert of niet. Vooral in 'vroeger tijden', toen vooral de betrouwbaarheid van sommige typen omvormers nog wat te wensen over liet, hadden veel mensen zonder het te weten een niet of slecht functionerende zonnestroominstallatie op het dak liggen. Maar ook anno 2010 kan een stekkertje loslaten, een contact door corrosie verslechteren of een omvormer simpelweg defect raken. Zonde van de gemiste opbrengst natuurlijk.

Het vreemde is dat opbrengstmonitoring een beetje een ondergeschoven kindje lijkt te zijn bij zowel fabrikanten van omvormers als leveranciers en installateurs van zonnestroominstallaties. Een afleesapparaat wordt slechts zelden standaard meegeleverd en moet dan apart aangeschaft worden tegen een vaak forse meerprijs. Ook zijn er omvormers die helemaal geen mogelijkheid hebben om de opgewekte energie te meten. Bij weer andere omvormers kan een datakabel voor de computer besteld worden, maar dan moet een computer 24x7 ingeschakeld zijn om de opbrengst te kunnen meten, dit is natuurlijk niet de bedoeling. Zelfs een zuinige laptop van 20W verbruikt dan op jaarbasis bijna 200kWh ofwel de opbrengst van één groot zonnestroompaneel.

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Google Sketchup

A short while back a colleague asked me for advice how to best install solar panels on his roof. He was afraid that the shadow cast by a dormer would decrease the output of the panels. At first I couldn't convince him that it wouldn't be a problem, but suddenly I had an idea.

A while ago I was experimenting with Google Sketchup (), a fun free application to create 3D drawings in a simple way. It's possible to draw a simplified house literally in seconds. The program also offers the option of projecting shadows for every day of the year and every time of day. This makes it very easy to see if solar panels (or a solar hot water system) suffers from shade from parts of the house, trees or other buildings. Although a simulation like this can't calculate any performance loss due to shading in kWh or MJ, but it can give a very good overview of locations on a building where it would definitely not be a good idea to install solar panels.

I'll try to give some tips in this article how to construct simplified buildings and quickly determine if solar panels in certain locations on those building suffer from shade effects. This will not be a complete Sketchup course, if only for the fact that I'm just a basic-level user myself.

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As regular visitors of this website will know I married my girlfriend on June 25th, 2010. During the preparations we were thinking about our transport needs from to the city hall, the party location and a few photo locations. Doing this by bicycle would have been the true sustainable choice but the distances involved and our clothing made this impractical. So, it would have to be a car. Because this was to be the day of our lives this could of course not be just any car.

After thinking about it for a while I set my sights on a Tesla Roadster, a electric high performance sports car. But how to get ones hands on one? I've made quite a few test drives in electric vehicles in recent times, and that allowed me to build a nice network. But even in this network I could not find a Roadster to hire for a day. Even the sustainable transport department at work couldn't get me a Roadster for a reasonable price.

The solution came, as happens often, by accident. A colleague at work e-mailed me a link to a movie () featuring the Roadster, and in that movie the company Remotion was named - which is now called The New Motion (). I gathered my courage and sent them an e-mail in which I told them who I was, what I did (a.o. this website), that I was getting married and that I was looking for a sustainable (or at least as sustainable as possible) wedding car. The e-mail I received back from Alef Arendsen (who can be seen in the movie) exceeded all my expectations. The company extended all cooperation and allowed me to use the Roadster at no cost (!) as our wedding car, and employees even delivered and retrieved the car. I couldn't believe my luck!

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