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Category Archives: Nieuws
Small 120Wp extension of our solar installation
The 120Wp panel on the roof of our shed
For more than a year a perfectly fine 120Wp panel was languishing in our shed. That was unfortunate but there just wasn’t any more room on the roof of our house. Our shed was basically a ruin and it didn’t have an electricity connection anyway.
Last year I renovated the shed and since last week it is connected to our house’s electrical grid. That meant that there was absolutely no excuse to not install the panel on the shed – and today I did exactly that.
On smart meters, privacy and security
I wrote about smart meters before and made my point that in it’s current form I don’t like it very much.
Summarised my opinion is this: I am convinced that a clear presentation of their energy consumption can actually encourage people to reduce their energy consumption, but it is not necessary at all for the consumption data to leave th house. The smart meter can also help match a growing percentage of decentralised electricity production to demand (e.g. starting the washer when energy supply is high) but at this moment I can’t see how this can be done without a – for me – unacceptable level of privacy degradation.
Time and time the security of the measuring data proves to be inadequate, and that both meters and databases are ‘hackable’. The ability of switching electricity, natural gas and drinking water remotely further increase the consequences of a successful hacking attempt. Not only in individual cases, but imagine what would happen if some one managed to rapidly switch on and off a whole quarter or even a city…
There many people who would call these fears (I’d say cautions) exaggerated. The companies that install and operate these meters do everything they can to make them as safe and secury as possible, right? Right?
Well, it appears they can’t, or at least don’t.
The following video shows a presentation by two German students who had a smart meter installed and discovered that it’s security was appalling:
The presentation has a length of about one hour, and although especially the beginning isn’t very comfortable to watch, it’s worth your time if you’re interested in the matter. After a while the presenters become more fluent and there are even some very funny moments.
Here are a few of the things the students found out:
- The communication between the meter and the measuring company was horribly insecure – it wasn’t even encrypted. The measuring data could easily be extracted at every point of the connection.
- The meter identifies itself with a unique number – again unencrypted. This allowed the students to generate fake consumption data which was readily accepted by the system (leading to funny images such as these).
- Not only could the students falsify the data generated by their own meter, by spoofing the meter’s unique address they could do so for other meters.
- The measuring data is extremely detailed, the electricity consumption is measured every two seconds. From this data the students managed to determine which movie was watched on the television. From this data much more information can be distilled – information which is worth gold to advertisers.
Although very interesting, it’s not the specific lapses in security that interest me – it’s the fact that the measuring company ensured their clients that the system was safe and secure, while it clearly wasn’t. I don’t really know a solution for this problem, maybe an independent certification body? But even if it is “certain” (there’s no such thing as 100% certainty) is transmitted securely the question remains what the measuring or energy company does with the data. If the data is worth enough money it will be tempting to sell the data to the highest bidder, with or without the consent of the customers. Even if customers have the choice a price difference will arise between plans which allow and don’t allow to share the data. That’ll put a price on privacy, and I’m firmly against that.
“Large” natural gas field found
Aardgas
In the Dutch media today was the news that “NAM finds large natural gas field in Friesland“. According to the article it’s the largest natural gas field found in the Netherlands in seventeen years time, four billion cubic metres in size.
But how big is that really? According to the NAM in all of the Netherlands 53,3 billion cubic metres of natural gas was produced in 2009. I would expect that number to have risen a bit in the past two years but I can’t find any information on that. So let’s keep it at 53,3 billion cubic metres per year.
This means that the natural gas in the newly discovered field is worth less than a month (27 days) of current production. The fact that it’s seventeen years ago that a field of this size has been found clearly shows that we’re (literally) burning though our natural gas supply at a very brisk rate.
This all makes it seem logical for our government to make preparations for the import of natural gas from Russie through pipelines and from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in liquid form by ship. It’s absolutely no coincidence that queen Beatrix is currently there on a state visit.
The big question, of course, is if we’re prepared to make ourselves dependent on countries of questionable long-term stability for a substance on which our economy has depended for decades? With large scale trade we’d be supporting regimes which are at best not very democratic (Russia) and at worst simply undemocratic (Qatar). Each cubic metre of natural gas we burn to heat badly insulated houses or generate electricity to power inefficient appliances we increase that support. The more we become dependent on countries like that for something essential like energy the more difficult it will become to criticise things like a lack of democracy or human rights in these countries.
It’s something to think about…
(And this is all without the decreasing influence we’ll have on the price, the fact that burning natural gas puts CO2 in the atmosphere and the fact that a seemingly stably supply of natural gas would make it easier to keep postponing real investments in sustainably sources like sun and wind.)
Goodbye 2011 – welcome 2012
2011
The year 2011 is nearly at its end and that means that it’s time to look back. The year didn’t start very well when two of our Soladin 600 inverters were recalled by Mastervolt. The inverters were gone for three weeks and during that time we missed 12kWh of solar electricity which is about one percent of our yearly yield.
In the beginning of May I had the privilege of being allowed to drive a brand new Nissan Leaf for week. That was an awesome experience, of which you can find the report here (in Dutch only, I’m afraid).
Just like Dutch consumer organisation Consumentenbond in 2010 the magazine Geld & Recht (‘Money & Law’) published a very negative article with many incorrect facts on saving energy and producing renewable energy. And just like the Consumentenbond this magazine also wouldn’t change its point of view. Regrettable.
On June 25th, 2011 this website was five years old. For several reasons I had to cancel a planned ‘birthday party’ but I did celebrate it in a small way that night. If I look back I can still remember like it was yesterday when I installed our first solar panels on our rental apartment and started this website that same evening.
Of course we participated in the yearly Solar Days in 2011, and our open door day drew seven visitors throughout the day, which made for a fun and interesting afternoon.