I still get very excited watching this video… I can hardly wait until it’s September/October 2013.

The Turkish Saitem team has put two nice ‘mood videos’ online of their first two racing days. Day one:

Day two:

I will of course keep an eye on this team’s video channel as I expect more videos to come up.

Dear Jeroen

I’ve been following your website for years and I’m always curious what you’re going to think of next.

Now that the cost of solar panels have dropped to a low level I have reached the point that I’m going to buy them. I’m collecting all necessary information and I’m nearly sure what I’m going to buy. Fortunately I have an easy roof, it’s a flat roof facing south. I’m considering a 1500 Watt installation. I’m still debating how to connect it to the grid. On the internet I read that it’s only allowed to connect a maximum size of 600 watts to the grid, but I can’t find any explanation of even confirmation that this is correct. Could you please explain the story  behind this? For 1500 watts I would have to install a new electrical circuit and that’s not easy. I would have to cross two floors.

Good luck and kind regards,

Henk Scheltens
Zwolle

Dear Henk,

Figure 1, normal situation

Fortunately it is allowed to connect more than 600Wp to a circuit, otherwise installing large solar installations would get very complicated and expensive. The point it that on an existing circuit, to which other loads can be connected, you can only install a solar inverter which produces a maximum of 500 Watts. Because it is possible (and common practice) to install solar panels which can produce more power than the inverter can produce in AC power the maximum has been set to 600Wp of solar panels.

If you want to install a larger installation you will need to have a circuit available to which no other device can be connected, so which cannot have any wall sockets on it. This usually means that a new cable will have to be laid from the electricity meter to the inverter location.

Figure 2, short circuit or large load, the fuse switches off the load

The reason for this 500W limitation is electrical safety. In the Netherlands a normal home electrical circuit can carry a maximum current of 16A, and this means that the maximum fuse ‘size’ is 16A. This means that on a single circuit a maximum of 3680W can be used (230V * 16A). Figure one shows the normal situation with a normal electric load consuming 2300W. If a load, or multiple loads together, consume more than 16A or 3680W the fuse will disconnect that circuit, which is the situation shown in figure two.

Figure 3, unsafe situation, there is 26A flowing through a cable where only 16A is allowed to flow

The situation becomes different, and potentially dangerous, when we consider figure three. It shows a circuit with 2300Wp solar system producing 10A and a large load trying to consume more than 3680W. Under normal circumstances (no solar installation present) this wouldn’t be possible as the fuse would disconnect the circuit. In this case, however, because the solar installation supplies 10A the fuse will not disconnect as it only ‘sees’ a current of 16A. The part of the circuit between the solar installation and the load will carry 26A, significantly more than it’s certified for. The wire will heat up and fire is a distinct possibility.

The same effect could happen not with a single large load (which shouldn’t be possible anyway) but with several larger loads connected to various wall sockets on that circuit, like for instance a vacuum cleaner, a kettle and a hair dryer.

Another situation in which things might go wrong is when a device on the circuit short circuits – and not 100% circuit but to an electrical resistance of, for instance, 8,8 ohm. At the normal grid voltage of 230V this should cause a current of 26A to flow. Just like when a large load is connected, under normal circumstances the fuse would disconnect, but with a solar installation producing 2300W a dangerous situation could occur.

The Dutch Normalisation Institute (Nederlands Normalisatie Instituut, NEN), which drafts the regulations for electrical installations put the margin on 2,25A. This means that although the maximum current on a given circuit should not exceed 16A all wires and other hardware used should safely be able to carry 18,25A. A current of 2,25A would mean a maximum inverter output of 517W at 230V, which they rounded to 500W.

In my opinion, the risk that this exact situation occurs is very small. Usually an inverter is installed on a circuit (attic, shed) where you wouldn’t easily accidentally connect too many loads, and the chance of just the right level of short circuit occurring that overloads the cable but doesn’t trigger the fuse seem fairly remote, too. And all this has to happen at the moment the solar panels are producing much power, as well.

But a real risk you’re running in this situation is that if, for whatever reason, your house should burn down, finding an installation fault such as these might give the insurance company a reason to not pay the damages, if they’re looking for a reason. Even if you can eventually demonstrate that this part of the house’s electrical installation had nothing to do with the fire I can easily imagine the cost of the lawsuit exceeding most normal people’s means. The bank will likely be unwilling to await the proceedings and be quick to demand the mortgage back.

In short, with an installation of 1500Wp, like you’re planning, I would strongly recommend installing an extra circuit and laying a cable to the inverter’s location. It will cost some time, effort and money but it’ll be much safer and it could potentially keep you out of a lot of trouble.

Good luck with purchasing and installing your solar panels and if you need any help please let me know.

Kind regards,

Jeroen Haringman

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.

A happy coincidence had fellow blogger Niels Thijssen offering an aluminium console which I could buy for very little money. The mounting holes didn’t match up as well as I hoped they would, but fifteen minutes with a metal drill fixed that easily.

Installing the panel was easy to do. I have easy acces to the shed’s roof with a ladder and I used free old bricks from a stack some one left not far from my house to ballast the console.

The Sun-250G inverter connected via a Plugwise plug

The panel’s brand is Solarex and it was designed to charge a battery in an autonomous solar installation. This means the panel supplies a low voltage (around 17V) and that made finding a fitting inverter not easy. Nearly all grid tie solar inverters are designed for solar panels that deliver a higher voltage.

After having searched for quite a while I ended up at sun-solar.nl who could supply me with a Sun-250G inverter. This inverter is available in two versions; one for low voltage panels such as my Solarex, and one for high voltage panels. The low voltage version was well-matched to this panel.

The inverter is significantly oversized for the panel because, as the name suggests, it can handle 250W while the panel can only produce 120W. This will have a small negative effect on the conversion efficiency but that can’t be helped I’m afraid. If I ever come across an identical 120Wp panel that could slot into this little system perfectly, but I don’t count on that happening.

The new panel in Plugwise

The inverter is connected to the grid via a Plugwise plug so that I can monitor the solar panel’s production. I don’t really dare to predict how much this panel will produce per year, but I estimate it’ll be somewhere between 70 and 100 kWh.

The panel is positioned nicely (it’s facing south-south-east) but I just can’t tell how the oversized inverted is going to perform. We will have to see.

Anyway, our installation grew today by 120Wp to a total size of 2245Wp. It will increase our yearly solar electricity surplus but thanks to our energy provider Greenchoice we’ll get some extra money for this, taking an extra bite from our natural gas bill.

Opel Ampera electric car

Today at work suddenly an Opel Ampera electric car appeared, and it was available for short test drives. Of course I didn’t need to be told twice and I was allowed to make the first test drive with this interesting car.

The Opel Ampera is the first electric car by Opel. According to the factory specifications it should be able to travel 80 km in full-electric mode on its 16kWh lithium-ion battery. By comparison: the Nissan Leaf (which I was allowed to test for a  week last year) can travel 160km on its 24kWh battery. Many people suffer from ‘range anxiety’ and the Ampera could cure this with a so-called ‘range extender’. This is a 1,4 litre petrol engine which, when the battery gets depleted below a certain point, starts up and keeps the battery charged. The petrol engine is not connected to the wheels, it’s purely a generator. This makes it possible to make short journeys (e.g. commuting) on electricity, while longer distances can be travelled on the petrol engine. The Ampera can be charged from any wall socket or at a charging pole which have been shooting up out of the ground everywhere for the past year.

Design

Design?

I have no feeling for the design of cars. According to many people my view on cars is ‘weird’ because I consider it machines that can take you from A to B when public transport can’t easily do so – and nothing more than that.

Many of my colleagues, however, were distinctly positive about the Ampera’s design. Of course, I can tell Opel made something special here. A much-heard remark today was “finally an electric car which doesn’t look as dull as the Prius”.

When looking at the photo above here the car might seem somewhat short and squat but in reality it’s quite a large car with its 450cm length. It’s also no lightweight at a 1700kg curb weight – as much as a Volkswagen Transporter T4.

Behind the wheel

Behind the wheel

Sitting behind the wheel the two displays stand out. The display behind the wheel shows shows information about the range on battery and petrol tank, the current energy consumption of the car, the odometer, the position of the gear lever, etc. The centre console display (which is a touch screen) operates the air conditioning, the radio/CD-player and the satnav system. When reversing this display shows the image from the backup camera. The keys on the centre console are all touch keys without a tangible switch moment. I don’t really like that because that means you have to look at the keys whilst driving and that is distracting. The same applies to the touch screen. The operation is quite intuitive, but the amount of information on both screens can be overwhelming at first. Of course the car is an automatic drive, so aside from switching between forward and reverse drive, no shifting is not necessary.

The seat is comfortable, with a typically German firmness. The seat can be moved forward and backwards over quite a large distance, so people of nearly any size should find a comfortable position in this car.

In the back seat

Not much leg space...

Things aren’t so rosy on the second row. The photo to the left shows the front seat very close to its middle position (it can move forward and backwards quite a bit from this position) and I was actually stuck between the back of the back seat and the front seat. My legs aren’t particularly long so tall people will be very cramped in the back.

This situation will also make it difficult to install a child seat which has the child facing backwards without moving the front seat forwards.

...and not much head space either.

If the leg room in the back seat is nothing to write home about, neither is the head room. The roof line slopes towards the rear quite severely and people in the rear seats of anything more than average length will not be comfortable. With my 1m88 I had to bend my head forward or to the side – absolutely not comfortable for anything but a short journey.

Fortunately only two people at a time can be subjected to this torture because the back seat seats only two. The battery is Tshaped and positioned under the centre console and the rear seat, making the centre position unavailable to sit on.

Getting in and out of the rear seat is not very comfortable, too, owing to the sloped roof line. All this makes the rear seat suitable for children and small people.

Driving

Let’s get back behind the steering wheel then, it’s much more fun there. The car key can stay in your pocket and the Ampera starts with a button. The car’s startup music and animation are just bit less exaggerated than the Leaf’s but I still don’t like it. I remember from my week with the Leaf that you get used to it quickly but I still wonder why manufacturers things these kinds of things are necessary.

As is usual with electric cars it remains silent after the annoying start-up music has died down, except maybe for the soft hum of the ventilation system. After having put the car in ‘D’ and after having released the brake the car creeps forward. As soon as the accelerator  is pressed the car hums away silently on its electric motor. The acceleration is brisk because the electric motor has much torque at low rpm. According to the factory specifications the Ampera should be able to do 0-100km/h in just over nine seconds. I didn’t get to test that in the short test drive I made but I believe it.

I didn’t drive for much more than a kilometre, and only at relatively low speeds. That means I can’t say much about how the car drives but from what I’ve seen there’s not much wrong with it. Because the battery is positioned very low in the car the car is very stable in corners.

I hope to be able to make a longer test drive in the Ampera at a later point in time, which will allow me to make better founded comments on several aspects of the car. For now I think this is a very nice car, technically very advanced, the first of its kind and it’s a car that might make electric cars acceptable for more people. That would make it a nice intermediate step between a purely fossil car and a purely electric car.

It was a great experience getting to know the car.

Or can you?

De Leaf aan de snellader

A Dutch family from The Hague did what most people would consider ‘impossible’; they rented a Nissan Leaf in the summer of 2011 and just drove it to Italy and back. on their very readable (Dutch) website they describe exactly how they did it and by the looks of things they had an awesome holiday.

By making smart use of fast chargers along the route, but also by charging during the night at hotels and campings they drove from the Netherlands to Italy in a few days. The (Dutch) daily reports paint a picture of a very interesting journey with lots of nice human contacts along the route.

The statistics paint their own unique picture of this holiday in numbers.

The conclusion is very clear, contrary to what most people think (people who, for the most part, will have never driven an electric car) it’s perfectly possible to go on a foreign holiday with an electric car – without having to give up any holiday pleasure. Quite contrary, even, judging by the photos. Of course, it’s different – if you’re used to racing from the Netherlands to Italy in two days time then this different pace of travel may not appeal to you. But if you’re some one who lets your holiday start right after closing the front door behind you, and not right after you’ve arrived at your destination, crazy from travel stress, then this seems a relaxed and fun way to travel.

The website made me very enthousiastic. I hope to do something like this someday.

If the website suddenly is ‘gone’ or displays all kind of weird error messagesm please know that in the background I’ll we working feverishly to solve the problem(s).

If everything goes as planned the migration will go unnoticed. It will allow me to implement several upgrades and changes in the coming days.

-edit-

The migration was completely successful, thanks to a large part to my hosting provider Zylon.net.

A small number of comments (I think three or four) was lost because I chose a somewhat unfortunate time for making the backup.

-edit2-

The first version of the new look of this website is now online. In the coming days and weeks I’ll be tweaking it to make it look exactly like I want it to. If you spot something that doesn’t work or looks wrong, please let me know and I’ll try to fix it.

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.

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.)