We had a new electricity meter installed when we moved into our house,  giving me a nice baseline figure of 0. After three and a half years, we had used 7,133 kWh of electricity, or on average 2040 kWh a year.

In the last year we generated 2,510 kWh of electricity from a 2.5 kWp due West facing solar PV array on a 26 degree pitch roof. Our consumption from the grid dropped to 1,060 kWh.

In summary, half of the electricity used is from the panels and half from the grid. Two fifths of generated electricity is used while three-fifths is exported and overall, we generated more electricity than we consumed.

So, if you have space on your roof and it faces anywhere between East to South to West, buy yourself some PV panels and slash your electricity bills. This website is very useful at calculating the expected amount of daylight in a year. I found the estimate to be slightly pessimistic.

My manor is ill. Before and after.

Instead of observing the crisp packets in the grass, the flowers are now prominent.  Also, by some stroke of luck, karma returned the favour by presenting me with a reasonably new Nokia C1-01 lacking a battery, SIM card, memory card or any form of identification. Happy days.

Where there's muck there's brass

What is interesting is that the poll breaks down the average salary expectation for each political party. In order;

• Conservatives feel they should be getting paid an eye watering £96,740.
• Liberal Democrats think they are worth £78,361 a year.
• Labour MPs expect £77,322.

MPs are currently paid a very generous £65,738; almost double the average salary.

I contacted the only Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, via Twitter to see what she thought she should be paid. She said:

“Absolutely not one of [the] MPs who think our wages should rise – fully support pay freeze & long campaigned for independent body to set wages.”

Not all politicians are the same, not all of them are self-serving and greedy. Beware who you vote for!

The Christmas lights are illuminating the shady depths of the tree while the a pump circulates energy in the lifeless pond outside. The FM radio fills the quiet house with the sound of brass and bells as my computer and phone recharge their batteries.

For technical accuracy, there is a light on, a small web server, ADSL router and energy monitoring equipment running.

… and still 149 watts of excess electricity from my domestic solar PV array is being exported to the grid! Good times.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/oct/18/deficit-debt-government-borrowing-data

Remember this.

Remember kids. Piracy is not theft. It’s piracy.

The port configuration of the game or application conflicts with an already assigned game & application. Assigning this game or application is not possible.

Even if you have no Games or Applications assigned, the router itself is forwarding port 80 from the WAN to itself. A pretty silly feature if you ask me. To get around it is very simple. You need to use the configuration wizard to set the configuration mode to ‘ADSL (Expert)’  and then restart the router. Note you will need to know all of the configuration settings to connect to your ISP. After the restart, you will be able to forward port 80 to one of your LAN devices (such as your Raspberry Pi running Apache!).

Back in January I rebuked the Raspberry Pi Foundation for wanting to boost UK IT skills but not providing manufacturing jobs here. Instead choosing to mass produce Raspberry Pis in China. I am very pleased to hear that some are now being made in Wales!

So it’s game on. Buy all the Pis you like for teaching kids, running XBMC, hosting your own Friendica account, whatever you like!

Note that Made in UK Raspberry Pis are only available from Element14/Premier Farnell.

The planning process has been going on for years and I cannot find much evidence of anything exciting happening any time soon. Regardless, it has been interesting having people ask me about my opinions on renewable energy rather than the other way around!

I thoroughly recommend that anyone who is interested arms themselves with knowledge before they enter into a debate about whether these turbines should or should not be built. Professor David Mackay wrote a superb book called Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air. He demonstrates that if we want to continue using as much energy as we do now then we have to accept some significant changes. Fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas) will run out one day.

The three turbines are projected to generate 16.5GWh of electricity a year. That’s equivalent to over 8,500 domestic solar PV installations (generating 2,000kWh a year each). I reckon the whole of Ipswich uses in the order of 195GWh a year; 130,000 residents using on average 1,500kWh a year. That’s less than 10% of the required energy!

We need these turbines. We really need three times as many. We need towering pylons reaching out to offshore wind farms. We need lots of homes covered in solar PV panels. Dare I say we will then still need to get energy from a waste incinerator, from Sizewell and from fracking gas under the Suffolk countryside. Even with all that we will still need to import some gas and oil from other countries, making political deals with shady characters in the Middle East and Russia.

Most importantly, we need to use less energy. I recommend getting an energy monitor to better understand your usage. You will see which appliances are using most energy and decide whether they can be replaced.

I say let us embrace the turbines. As people drive along the A14 they will see the great white blades serenely cutting through the sky. They will become a monument to the progressive minds of Ipswich, using new technology to power our digital society, reducing pollution and leading the way to a brighter, cleaner future for our children.

If you disagree then what is your proposal for generating this 19.5GWh of electricity as cheaply? I don’t think there is value in a debate unless you can suggest an alternative.

I’d love to hear your comments. Lets discuss this and see if we can work out a plan to please everyone.