Open source, procurement, and gov tech.
The power industry has begun its long-anticipated shift towards demand-based pricing of electricity. Dominion Power, my electric company here in Virginia, has two basic rates: winter and summer. Although the math is a bit complicated, electricity costs about 50% more in the summer than in the winter, averaging 12¢ per kilowatt hour. (One can also pay for sustainably …
Continue reading “Dynamic electrical pricing demands dynamic price data.”
I’ve been wondering what the inputs and outputs are of my home energy usage. For some months now, I’ve used a CurrentCost Envi to track my house’s energy usage, so I know the numbers in kilowatt hours: 8,166 kWh in the past 12 months, an average of 680 kWh/month, with a low of 454 kWh …
Continue reading “Calculating my home’s energy inputs and outputs.”
Washington Post: Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft joining security company once known as BlackwaterGood Lord, I'm glad that Bush is no longer president. A Computer Scientist in a Business School: An ingenious application of crowdsourcingAfter discovering that product sales increase when reviews are well-written, Zappos has been using Amazon's Mechanical Turk to copyedit reviews …
Even with all of the great tools out there, it’s surprisingly difficult to just figure out if it’s worth the money to install solar panels on your home. Between calculations of latitude, historical cloud cover rates, degree days, and PV effectiveness, it’s just plain confusing. Which is why I’m so pleased to see RoofRay, a …
Dominion has gotten the OK from the State Corporation Commission to raise electrical rates by 18%, effective immediately. The SCC agreed with Dominion’s assertion that they were simply trying to cover the increased costs of fuel, and I don’t know of any reason to doubt that’s so. (Dominion had to ask permission because they’re regulated …