As far as the potential applications, Clanet waxes futuristic. “I can imagine [designing] a car. The faster it goes, the more it deforms and the less friction it has with surrounding air, so it can go even faster. It would be a fantastic car.”

Previously, I posted that I played a very small part in receiving data from one of the satellites (Pollux) that formed part of the Atmospheric Neutral Density Expirement on STS-127. Henk, PA3GUO did a nice video about it as well.

Today, the postman delivered an ANDE-2 mission patch which flew on STS-127 (which I also happened to see on the launchpad last June), how cool is that!

So rather than tackling that today, I first installed a 190 Litre Single Water Saver Kit that I got from ecostore.ie. It is 1/4 full already with todays showers. After that I moved my battery bank to its new home (with help from EI8JA). This is also going to require some rewiring to get the Inverter output back to the garage to hook back into the house wiring (where it moved from).

PV Panels are hooked up again, and the bank is being charged, but no AC available back in the house yet. Oh, lucky me, I’m “off” tomorrow,  I wonder what I will be doing?

Today over a 12 hour period between approximately 08:00-20:00, my rrdtool graph says the system produced an average of 148 watts. 148 x 12 gives 1776kw, or approximately 28.5 cents of electricty (including vat). If we have about 7000 more days of sunshine like today  (unlikely) then the system will have “paid for itself”.  While it doesn’t seem like a whole lot, it is currently averaging about 1/6 of the ESB bill (over 30 days).

That is the first part done. Next I intend to replace my power hungry dell dimension desktop (approx. 125 watts, 24/7 or approx. 48 cents per day ) with a more efficient machine (approx 20 watts or approx. 8 cents per day). To do this I have purchased an Intel Pine Trail base D510MO a 40GB SSD drive, 4GB of ram and a DC powered case (I already have a DC supply in the shack, plus I can experiment with it in the car as well).

Thus far the machine seems to be able to do most of the tasks I need it to do, time will tell though as I need to get 6 RS-232 ports operational on it to control all the items I have running.

As an aside, we recently replaced the old washing machine (at least 10 years) with a super duper A rated new one.  Initial testing seems to suggest that it is no more efficient than the old one. My suspicion is that I tested the old one (which I no longer have) in late Autumn, where it would have the benefit of taking hot water from the cylinder (Central Heating). The new one doesn’t have a Hot water input, so has to heat the water itself.

I have been catching up on episodes lately. Richard has a new noise-gate (the lack of one never bothered me before) and they are reducing the length again. Personally I think about 1 hour is enough, but that is just me. Keep up the good work guys.