Has it really been a year since I last posted? I guess I've been busy!
This past year has been spent doing comprehensive home energy audits, a job I couldn't love more. Every home has serious energy efficiency issues - air leaks, poor insulation, old heating/cooling systems. The amount of wasted energy is stunning and disheartening.
Here are some of the highlights of the past year:
Continued success with my own home's geothermal heat pump
I use the Earthlinked system, from ECR Technologies, to heat and cool my home. This ground source heat pump bypasses the complexity of a normal ground source heat pump and uses direct exchange of heat using refrigerant lines buried in the ground. Normal GSHP systems run anti-freeze through plastic ground loops to exchange heat with the earth. This requires additional pumping, which uses more electricity. Moreover, plastic is a poor heat exchange medium.
Because the Earthlinked system runs the refrigerant directly into the ground, there is no intermediate transfer and therefore none of the efficiency robbing heat exchangers, plastic pipes and pumps.
Even better, because the system is simpler than most, its cost tends to be lower than others. So, not only do you pay less to operate it, you pay less up front for installation. Overall, this is a fantastic system
The All Temperature Heat Pump by Hallowell
Recently, I learned that Hallowell is selling their heat pump technology on the mass market. This air source heat pump has truly amazing performance.
Designed in Maine, for cold climates, the Acadia has multiple compressors, allowing it to pump out near its rated heat at 0F. Additionally, it puts out hot air, unlike conventional air-to-air heat pumps. The air coming out of a Hallowell is about 120F, so it feels toasty too.
While it's much more expensive than a conventional heat pump, the year round operational costs are much lower. Plus, in most areas, it's less expensive than a GSHP, because the installation doesn't require drilling wells or tearing up your yard. So, while it isn't as efficient as a GSHP, it gives the benefit of cold climate heating at a much lower cost. This is a truly excellent technology.
There's so much more. It's really an exciting (and frightening) time to be doing sustainable building.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Monday, March 26, 2007
Energy Testing & Consulting
Ok, life's been busy. Evelyn has set up her company, New Hope Hypnotherapy, and I've been working on my website for ETC Creations, aka Energy Testing and Consulting.
If you've been following me, you know that my current life mission is to help others fix their homes to be efficient, safe and comfortable. My company, ETC Creations, is providing a variety of services which take a holistic view of the home as a system.
This starts with a home energy audit, where I analyze the home, the historical utility bills, the homeowner's usage and their comments. This can also include a blower door test, duct leakage test and an infrared inspection.
Once the home has been inspected, I review my findings with the
homeowner and we determine what steps to take that will make the most positive impact on their happiness with their home. This might be a simple as caulking air leaks around windows and adding weatherstripping to doors. Or, it might included detailed suggestions for replacement heating/cooling systems, window replacement and even construction techniques for renovations.
One of the primary things I'm doing is working on education. Both of homeowners and builders and architects. There's so much old knowledge that's passed on from generation to generation of builder that's hindering sustainable building practice. By educating them, I hope to break this pattern of inefficient construction techniques.
The wall is a great starting point for this. Almost every builder make their walls as shown in the above diagram. Actually, they'll usually use even more wood. But from a structural standpoint, building in such a fashion is incredibly wasteful. It wastes lumber, perhaps as much as 30%, and it wastes energy, through thermal bridging and air leaks.
Simple steps can make huge differences. Moving to 2x6 construction, 24" on center reduces the lumber used and simplifies construction. Optimal value engineering gets rid of unnecessary lumber and puts the studs where they need to be for structural purpose. Add simple things like caulking between any doubled-up studs to prevent moisture/air movement through the wall and you can save 20-40% of the energy lost through a wall.
The little things matter greatly.
If you've been following me, you know that my current life mission is to help others fix their homes to be efficient, safe and comfortable. My company, ETC Creations, is providing a variety of services which take a holistic view of the home as a system.
This starts with a home energy audit, where I analyze the home, the historical utility bills, the homeowner's usage and their comments. This can also include a blower door test, duct leakage test and an infrared inspection.Once the home has been inspected, I review my findings with the
homeowner and we determine what steps to take that will make the most positive impact on their happiness with their home. This might be a simple as caulking air leaks around windows and adding weatherstripping to doors. Or, it might included detailed suggestions for replacement heating/cooling systems, window replacement and even construction techniques for renovations.One of the primary things I'm doing is working on education. Both of homeowners and builders and architects. There's so much old knowledge that's passed on from generation to generation of builder that's hindering sustainable building practice. By educating them, I hope to break this pattern of inefficient construction techniques.
The wall is a great starting point for this. Almost every builder make their walls as shown in the above diagram. Actually, they'll usually use even more wood. But from a structural standpoint, building in such a fashion is incredibly wasteful. It wastes lumber, perhaps as much as 30%, and it wastes energy, through thermal bridging and air leaks.
Simple steps can make huge differences. Moving to 2x6 construction, 24" on center reduces the lumber used and simplifies construction. Optimal value engineering gets rid of unnecessary lumber and puts the studs where they need to be for structural purpose. Add simple things like caulking between any doubled-up studs to prevent moisture/air movement through the wall and you can save 20-40% of the energy lost through a wall.
The little things matter greatly.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Everyday Energy Saving
Did you ever wonder what you can do on a daily basis to reduce your energy usage (and hence, your carbon footprint)?
Experience has taught me to analyze before implementing. Ignoring this leads to wasted time and money. On the other hand, it's all to easy to fall victim to paralysis by analysis. So how would I go about deciding what actions are most time and cost effective without over-analyzing?
Experience has taught me to analyze before implementing. Ignoring this leads to wasted time and money. On the other hand, it's all to easy to fall victim to paralysis by analysis. So how would I go about deciding what actions are most time and cost effective without over-analyzing?
Quick Energy Analysis
- Review your bills! How do you spend your money?
- Look at what others have done. Chances are, your needs are similar.
- Pick low hanging fruit. Do cheap and easy improvements first.
- Benchmark - how do your energy uses compare with others?
Where Does the Energy Go?
Analyzing your Utility Bills
One of the first questions people ask me is what is normal energy usage? Typically, this is followed by saying "I spent xxx dollars on electricity last month, is this too much"?
First, go to the Energy Star website and run the Home Energy Yardstick. This will give you a general overview of how your home compares to national averages, normalized for your area's climate and home size.
Your electric bill can tell you quite a bit, but you have to know what to look for. In my area, PECO shows a graph on the bill that plots monthly energy usage over the year. Likely, usage will increase from April through July and August, then decline through October. It will then increase again through January and February and decrease through April.
As you can guess, this variation corresponds to the changing seasons. In Summer, air conditioning can significantly impact bills. In Winter, heating dominates and lighting increases because of the shorter days.
Closer examination reveals your baseline energy usage. By looking at the shoulder months, April and October, you can determine your home's typical energy usage in the absence of air conditioning and space heating. These months likely show the lowest consumption. This tells you how much you use on other items like lighting, refrigerator, water heating, cooking and cleaning. Unfortunately, since they are all bunched together, you'll need other analysis methods to determine what fraction of your bill comes from each source.
Major Household Energy Consumers (not necessarily in order)
Detailed Example - Shaving Summer Bills
When you review your electric bill, look for big changes. For example, in my home, I found that summer usage tripled the baseline usage! I knew our air conditioner was old, but we didn't use it that much. So I thought about what else we used during the summer that we didn't any other time of year. AHA! The swimming pool. Sure enough, the pool pump, running 8-12 hours per day, all summer long, consuming an outrageous amount of electricity. Replacing the pump with a properly sized, high efficiency model, saved approximately 15% of the total utility bill for the summer. The pump, which cost a few hundred dollars, will pay for itself in just a few years.
That still left a large increase due to air conditioning. Because I had been looking to replace both the heating and cooling systems, I decided to install a geothermal heat pump. This would greatly reduce heating oil usage in winter as well as electricity during the summer. This expensive upgrade reduced my summer electric bills another 10-15%. Together with the pool pump, the resulting summer electric usage has averaged about 25-30% less than it did before.
These examples demonstrate the opposite ends of the remediation expense spectrum. The pool pump was an inexpensive and easy improvement. The geothermal system was costly and disruptive. However, both were worthwhile for me personally as they very significantly reduce my household's energy usage.
In doing your own analysis, you have to look at why you're making the changes. Is saving money the primary goal? Or is that an added benefit of reducing your carbon footprint? You also have to evaluate the solution as it relates to your entire house, renovations, payments, etc. For example, replacing my air conditioner with a geothermal heat pump cost me about $18,000.
Initially, that seems outrageous, however, when I priced out a high efficiency air conditioner, that would have cost $8,000-$10,000 in my area. So the incremental cost of the geothermal system was $8,000-$10,000. This still may seem too big a pill to swallow, however, it also allowed me to displace the use of an oil based system to heat most of my home. At current utility rates, this saves me $1,000-$2,000 per year.
Moreover, switching to electric based heat qualified me for a winter electricity discount. This was so significant that I calculated that the discount was like getting 100 gallons of free oil every month!
Adding up the savings led me to conclude that this expensive upgrade was in fact a no-brainer. The system will pay for itself in under ten years, saves a huge amount of energy, and keeps my house comfortable year round.
Had I been building a new house, it would have been even more of a no-brainer. The incremental cost in your monthly mortgage payments is typically less than the money saved due to energy savings.
(to be continued)
Analyzing your Utility Bills
One of the first questions people ask me is what is normal energy usage? Typically, this is followed by saying "I spent xxx dollars on electricity last month, is this too much"?
First, go to the Energy Star website and run the Home Energy Yardstick. This will give you a general overview of how your home compares to national averages, normalized for your area's climate and home size.
Your electric bill can tell you quite a bit, but you have to know what to look for. In my area, PECO shows a graph on the bill that plots monthly energy usage over the year. Likely, usage will increase from April through July and August, then decline through October. It will then increase again through January and February and decrease through April.
As you can guess, this variation corresponds to the changing seasons. In Summer, air conditioning can significantly impact bills. In Winter, heating dominates and lighting increases because of the shorter days.
Closer examination reveals your baseline energy usage. By looking at the shoulder months, April and October, you can determine your home's typical energy usage in the absence of air conditioning and space heating. These months likely show the lowest consumption. This tells you how much you use on other items like lighting, refrigerator, water heating, cooking and cleaning. Unfortunately, since they are all bunched together, you'll need other analysis methods to determine what fraction of your bill comes from each source.
Major Household Energy Consumers (not necessarily in order)
- Heating
- Lighting
- Refrigerators / Freezers
- TV / Computers / Electronics
- Cooling
- Water Heating
- Pools / Spas
- Cooking / appliances
Picking the Low Hanging Fruit
- If you're planning on replacing any of your appliances, do your homework! Go to the Energy Star website. Learn about your appliance and buy a replacement that is well rated. This particularly applies to high-consumption appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, dishwashers and clothes washers. If you use a dehumidifier, make sure you get a rated model as well as the new ones are quiet and very efficient.
- Replace high use light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs and fixtures. To get an idea of the impact this can have, if you replace two, 100 watt bulbs, like you might use outside your house, you can save 150 watts. Outside lights often run 10-12 hours per day, so those savings multiply to 1.5kw hours, every day of the year. This is likely 2%-5% of your entire electric usage! Imagine how much you'd save if you replaced more bulbs. Lighting is a huge consumer of energy in our country and with minimal expense or effort, you can make a difference.
- Seal your windows and doors - Improving the weatherstripping around your windows and doors can make your home more comfortable by stopping drafts. It can also save considerably amounts of energy. Cold or hot air entering your home through these cracks can waste as much energy as an entire wall. In fact, it is estimated that as much as 20-30% of a home heating/cooling bill goes toward conditioning this leaked air.
- Turn off computers - When idling, running a screen saver, a computer will draw a few hundred watts. When run 24-hours a day, this adds up to about 10% of your electric bill! Worse, many homes have several computers constantly wasting electricity. Use the hibernation feature to automatically put your computers into an energy saving mode after 10-20 minutes of non-use. Do not run programs like SETI round the clock. I made this mistake and had five computers running 24/7. My electric bill doubled for those months.
Detailed Example - Shaving Summer Bills
When you review your electric bill, look for big changes. For example, in my home, I found that summer usage tripled the baseline usage! I knew our air conditioner was old, but we didn't use it that much. So I thought about what else we used during the summer that we didn't any other time of year. AHA! The swimming pool. Sure enough, the pool pump, running 8-12 hours per day, all summer long, consuming an outrageous amount of electricity. Replacing the pump with a properly sized, high efficiency model, saved approximately 15% of the total utility bill for the summer. The pump, which cost a few hundred dollars, will pay for itself in just a few years.
That still left a large increase due to air conditioning. Because I had been looking to replace both the heating and cooling systems, I decided to install a geothermal heat pump. This would greatly reduce heating oil usage in winter as well as electricity during the summer. This expensive upgrade reduced my summer electric bills another 10-15%. Together with the pool pump, the resulting summer electric usage has averaged about 25-30% less than it did before.
These examples demonstrate the opposite ends of the remediation expense spectrum. The pool pump was an inexpensive and easy improvement. The geothermal system was costly and disruptive. However, both were worthwhile for me personally as they very significantly reduce my household's energy usage.
In doing your own analysis, you have to look at why you're making the changes. Is saving money the primary goal? Or is that an added benefit of reducing your carbon footprint? You also have to evaluate the solution as it relates to your entire house, renovations, payments, etc. For example, replacing my air conditioner with a geothermal heat pump cost me about $18,000.
Initially, that seems outrageous, however, when I priced out a high efficiency air conditioner, that would have cost $8,000-$10,000 in my area. So the incremental cost of the geothermal system was $8,000-$10,000. This still may seem too big a pill to swallow, however, it also allowed me to displace the use of an oil based system to heat most of my home. At current utility rates, this saves me $1,000-$2,000 per year.
Moreover, switching to electric based heat qualified me for a winter electricity discount. This was so significant that I calculated that the discount was like getting 100 gallons of free oil every month!
Adding up the savings led me to conclude that this expensive upgrade was in fact a no-brainer. The system will pay for itself in under ten years, saves a huge amount of energy, and keeps my house comfortable year round.
Had I been building a new house, it would have been even more of a no-brainer. The incremental cost in your monthly mortgage payments is typically less than the money saved due to energy savings.
(to be continued)
Solebury Mountain Observatory
Solebury Mountain Observatory
Just a post to my main website
Also, support sustainability and have some fun!
Just a post to my main website
Also, support sustainability and have some fun!
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Google Synchronizer
No, I don't mean Google Sync for Firefox. While that is a worthy addition to my browser tools, answering one of my main complaints for years, it's not what this is about. Nor do I mean GDrive, which is described as an on-line drive share
This is much bigger....
If you have tried Google Spreadsheets, you may have shared my experience. I thought "hey, this is great, now those spreadsheets that I access from several computers will be handy all the time, whether or not I have Excel installed"! But on trying it out, I found some issues. Granted, this is an early beta, but I believe the snags will persist unless Google adds a much needed feature - desktop file synchronization.
Here's what goes wrong:
You upload your Excel file to Google Spreadsheets and go about editing it on-line. You make some edits, save them, and access it from another machine. Great you think.
A little later, you go to access the file and find that it's not accessible. Network's down or somesuch. You now panic and return to your local copy which is by now several edits out of date. You curse and re-enter your edits, promising that your local copy will be your "real" copy and that the on-line copies will only be there for convenience. You never update the on-line copies and return to your original method of local-only editing.
How to make it really work:
Google is really close. With GMail, they made a killer app that totally replaced local email programs for me. In order to do the same for Google Spreadsheets, and future apps of this ilk, wha they need to do is make the user experience transparent. We are creatures of habit. If I've been editing an Excel file on one machine for years, chances are, I'm going to keep doing so.
However, I want the convenience of accessing my spreadsheet anywhere. Currently, I must manually upload the spreadsheet any time I make an edit locally and download it back if I edit it on-line. This is a horribly inefficient and dangerous operation, much better suited for an automated system of synchronization.
Enter Google Synchronizer. GSync, as I'll call it, is an OS patch that intercepts file i/o requests and does a very fast check to see if a given file is tagged as having an on-line shadow. If it does, GSync activates a synchronizer program that brings the files into proper sync, allowing local edits. This could be Spreadsheets, word processing documents, money manager files, images, whatever.
Clearly, this is a non-trivial application. It involves numerous file formats, file locking, multiple simultaneous editing, etc. However, it is one of those apps that once people use it, they will wonder how they lived without it.
In order to be successful, it has to be implemeneted so as to have minimal impact on the user experience. File checks cannot add measureable OS overhead. There shouldn't be more than a check in the file header (like the archive, r/o etc. bits).
Likewise, once GSync has determined a file needs to sync, it cannot take forever checking an on-line database. What if your connection is down or bogged? People don't like to wait! As such, the file must load up and display as normal. A background thread can check for on-line version(s) and report to the main app when it can. If no connection is available, it will just warn the user of that fact and choose a course of action. They could "edit anyway", knowing that the file might be newer on-line. Or "view only", if they just wanted to browse the file for some info. Or, "try again", just in case they forgot to activate their connection or there was some moentary glitch.
File synchronization should transfer the minimum amount of information required to get the job done. If a megabyte spreadsheet is modified, chances are, only a limited number of cells were actually edited. GSync would only send a change log to the on-line handler to incorporate the changes. This would also facilitate multi-user editing of the file as it would make synchronization nearly trivial on the server side.
Some files could be considerably more difficult. For example, if you were editing a sync'd image in Photoshop, all the pixels would be changing. However, one could still pass the change log on to the server and have the server make the appropriate changes to the on-line file. The downside is that the server then has to handle the burden of millions of users' data manipulation. There will need to be some arbitration process which will decide whether it makes more sense to just re-upload the modified file or integrate the changes on the server side.
Note in the above example, I used Photoshop as the sample app, not Picasa. The key to GSync's success is to allow people to use their old familiar apps as well as Google supplied apps to edit their files. This requires integration with third party software.
While initially this will be a big problem, third parties will soon learn the power of supporting this functionality. Google produces useful, but limited, applications. Picasa is not going to replace Photoshop for hard core image editors. It's a very useful tool, but limited. Files anywhere is such a powerful feature, that once users get a taste of it, they'll demand it in all their apps. Supporting an open GSync standard will allow interoperability, reduce R&D time, and give vendors a step up on their competition.
GSync is the next evolution of the personal computing phenomenon.
This is much bigger....
If you have tried Google Spreadsheets, you may have shared my experience. I thought "hey, this is great, now those spreadsheets that I access from several computers will be handy all the time, whether or not I have Excel installed"! But on trying it out, I found some issues. Granted, this is an early beta, but I believe the snags will persist unless Google adds a much needed feature - desktop file synchronization.
Here's what goes wrong:
You upload your Excel file to Google Spreadsheets and go about editing it on-line. You make some edits, save them, and access it from another machine. Great you think.
A little later, you go to access the file and find that it's not accessible. Network's down or somesuch. You now panic and return to your local copy which is by now several edits out of date. You curse and re-enter your edits, promising that your local copy will be your "real" copy and that the on-line copies will only be there for convenience. You never update the on-line copies and return to your original method of local-only editing.
How to make it really work:
Google is really close. With GMail, they made a killer app that totally replaced local email programs for me. In order to do the same for Google Spreadsheets, and future apps of this ilk, wha they need to do is make the user experience transparent. We are creatures of habit. If I've been editing an Excel file on one machine for years, chances are, I'm going to keep doing so.
However, I want the convenience of accessing my spreadsheet anywhere. Currently, I must manually upload the spreadsheet any time I make an edit locally and download it back if I edit it on-line. This is a horribly inefficient and dangerous operation, much better suited for an automated system of synchronization.
Enter Google Synchronizer. GSync, as I'll call it, is an OS patch that intercepts file i/o requests and does a very fast check to see if a given file is tagged as having an on-line shadow. If it does, GSync activates a synchronizer program that brings the files into proper sync, allowing local edits. This could be Spreadsheets, word processing documents, money manager files, images, whatever.
Clearly, this is a non-trivial application. It involves numerous file formats, file locking, multiple simultaneous editing, etc. However, it is one of those apps that once people use it, they will wonder how they lived without it.
In order to be successful, it has to be implemeneted so as to have minimal impact on the user experience. File checks cannot add measureable OS overhead. There shouldn't be more than a check in the file header (like the archive, r/o etc. bits).
Likewise, once GSync has determined a file needs to sync, it cannot take forever checking an on-line database. What if your connection is down or bogged? People don't like to wait! As such, the file must load up and display as normal. A background thread can check for on-line version(s) and report to the main app when it can. If no connection is available, it will just warn the user of that fact and choose a course of action. They could "edit anyway", knowing that the file might be newer on-line. Or "view only", if they just wanted to browse the file for some info. Or, "try again", just in case they forgot to activate their connection or there was some moentary glitch.
File synchronization should transfer the minimum amount of information required to get the job done. If a megabyte spreadsheet is modified, chances are, only a limited number of cells were actually edited. GSync would only send a change log to the on-line handler to incorporate the changes. This would also facilitate multi-user editing of the file as it would make synchronization nearly trivial on the server side.
Some files could be considerably more difficult. For example, if you were editing a sync'd image in Photoshop, all the pixels would be changing. However, one could still pass the change log on to the server and have the server make the appropriate changes to the on-line file. The downside is that the server then has to handle the burden of millions of users' data manipulation. There will need to be some arbitration process which will decide whether it makes more sense to just re-upload the modified file or integrate the changes on the server side.
Note in the above example, I used Photoshop as the sample app, not Picasa. The key to GSync's success is to allow people to use their old familiar apps as well as Google supplied apps to edit their files. This requires integration with third party software.
While initially this will be a big problem, third parties will soon learn the power of supporting this functionality. Google produces useful, but limited, applications. Picasa is not going to replace Photoshop for hard core image editors. It's a very useful tool, but limited. Files anywhere is such a powerful feature, that once users get a taste of it, they'll demand it in all their apps. Supporting an open GSync standard will allow interoperability, reduce R&D time, and give vendors a step up on their competition.
GSync is the next evolution of the personal computing phenomenon.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Massive Multiplayer Games Become the New Reality
Increasingly, I've been reading about the merging of the "real world" with online realities. Interestingly, there are people who make a real living designing avatars and homes or trading real-estate. People are also selling rights to simple entertainment systems in these worlds. Not to mention the real, virtual relationships. .
As these online worlds evolve, will they become fully immersive? That is, will people be able to satisfy all their mental/emotional needs in a virtual world? How about paying the bills? Will one be able to get a virtual job that enables them to support this lifestyle? Will the richness of these environments become truly compelling? Will something akin to the Matrix be the new reality?
I can envision a world in which some people live rich lives virtually. Where they go to work by entering a VR and having interactions with co-workers. Much of their social interaction could be achieved likewise. However, I don't see a substitute for physical contact. There's nothing like the sensations of a real, passionate kiss. The feel of your lover's breath or their scent. The caress of fingers on skin.
My prediction is that online worlds will become immersive to the point that one could satisfy virtually all of their non-corporal needs. For many folks, this will be enough, and they will essentially disappear into The Matrix. However, I believe that, while people may initiate and grow relationships in the VR, they will return to the physical world for their more base needs. Check back with me in a decade or two to see where this goes...
As these online worlds evolve, will they become fully immersive? That is, will people be able to satisfy all their mental/emotional needs in a virtual world? How about paying the bills? Will one be able to get a virtual job that enables them to support this lifestyle? Will the richness of these environments become truly compelling? Will something akin to the Matrix be the new reality?
I can envision a world in which some people live rich lives virtually. Where they go to work by entering a VR and having interactions with co-workers. Much of their social interaction could be achieved likewise. However, I don't see a substitute for physical contact. There's nothing like the sensations of a real, passionate kiss. The feel of your lover's breath or their scent. The caress of fingers on skin.
My prediction is that online worlds will become immersive to the point that one could satisfy virtually all of their non-corporal needs. For many folks, this will be enough, and they will essentially disappear into The Matrix. However, I believe that, while people may initiate and grow relationships in the VR, they will return to the physical world for their more base needs. Check back with me in a decade or two to see where this goes...
Thursday, March 23, 2006
'Huge Oil Field Discovered in Mexico'
The BBC recently reported that a huge new oil field was found in Mexico. This deep-water field is believed to contain roughly 10 billion barrels of oil.
Upon reading this, I wondered how this might affect world oil supplies, as this sounded like a great find!
But taken in light of the world oil consumption, currently some 120 million barrels per day, 10 billion barrels really doesn't seem like much. That's a mere 83 days of world consumption. Sure, that's a lot of oil, but in the scheme of things, it won't make any difference.
Two important tidbits can be extracted from this information. First, This is considered a huge oil find, with all the associated hoopla, and yet, by itself, it won't alter predictions for peak-oil. Second, this is a deep-water find, that some think supports the abiotic oil theory.
In a very small nutshell, the abiotic oil theory proposes that oil stores are contained inside the earth and seep up to form the pockets of oil that we've been drilling for the last century. This is in direct contrast to the popular fossil fuel theory that indicates that oil is the product of decayed remains of carbon based lifeforms. The abiotic theory is important because, if true, it could indicate that the quantity of oil in the Earth is vastly greater than that already extracted. I haven't decided for myself whether I buy this theory. The one thing that makes me take it seriously is that Tommy Gold (recently deceased) was a major proponent of this theory. See this Wired article for more info.
Upon reading this, I wondered how this might affect world oil supplies, as this sounded like a great find!
But taken in light of the world oil consumption, currently some 120 million barrels per day, 10 billion barrels really doesn't seem like much. That's a mere 83 days of world consumption. Sure, that's a lot of oil, but in the scheme of things, it won't make any difference.
Two important tidbits can be extracted from this information. First, This is considered a huge oil find, with all the associated hoopla, and yet, by itself, it won't alter predictions for peak-oil. Second, this is a deep-water find, that some think supports the abiotic oil theory.
In a very small nutshell, the abiotic oil theory proposes that oil stores are contained inside the earth and seep up to form the pockets of oil that we've been drilling for the last century. This is in direct contrast to the popular fossil fuel theory that indicates that oil is the product of decayed remains of carbon based lifeforms. The abiotic theory is important because, if true, it could indicate that the quantity of oil in the Earth is vastly greater than that already extracted. I haven't decided for myself whether I buy this theory. The one thing that makes me take it seriously is that Tommy Gold (recently deceased) was a major proponent of this theory. See this Wired article for more info.
Monday, March 20, 2006
More Patent Insanity
Man, how I hate corporate lawyers and the patent office! Have you seen Michael Crichton's article in The Times?
It seems that every week, some insane/inane patent is brought to light. How is it that the patent office ever allowed business process patents? I won't go on to restate Chrichton's article, read it for yourself.
When I had my company, people were often suggesting that we patent our processes and scientific techniques, but I would rebuff those efforts as most of what we did was obvious or had prior art. Sadly, had we tried, we probably could have obtained patents, as did one of our competitors who somehow managed to receive a patent on 3-dimensional reconstruction.
I'm all for companies protecting their novel inventions. But the number of process and software patents granted has grown tremendously. If you start reading some of those patents and can get past the legal mumbo-jumbo, you learn just how inane they are. The Amazon One Click Shopping patent is a classic example.
The problem lies at the core of the patent system. If the patent office had more critical criteria for permitting patents, including peer review, we'd see a precipitous drop in stupid patents. Without that, we're doomed. Technology companies are valued largely on their intellectual property. So it behooves them to amass as large a portfolio of patents as is possible. Additionally, companies have to use patents defensively - patent everything possible in order to avoid being sued by competitors for violating their patents and increase the barriers to entry into their markets. It's a downward death spiral which has led to a sort of patent arms race.
Now, the system is so heavily entrenched, that there's little we can do. There has been a backlash against stupid software patents, and we can only hope that it slows the tide. But I don't have much hope. Businesses simply have too much power.
It seems that every week, some insane/inane patent is brought to light. How is it that the patent office ever allowed business process patents? I won't go on to restate Chrichton's article, read it for yourself.
When I had my company, people were often suggesting that we patent our processes and scientific techniques, but I would rebuff those efforts as most of what we did was obvious or had prior art. Sadly, had we tried, we probably could have obtained patents, as did one of our competitors who somehow managed to receive a patent on 3-dimensional reconstruction.
I'm all for companies protecting their novel inventions. But the number of process and software patents granted has grown tremendously. If you start reading some of those patents and can get past the legal mumbo-jumbo, you learn just how inane they are. The Amazon One Click Shopping patent is a classic example.
The problem lies at the core of the patent system. If the patent office had more critical criteria for permitting patents, including peer review, we'd see a precipitous drop in stupid patents. Without that, we're doomed. Technology companies are valued largely on their intellectual property. So it behooves them to amass as large a portfolio of patents as is possible. Additionally, companies have to use patents defensively - patent everything possible in order to avoid being sued by competitors for violating their patents and increase the barriers to entry into their markets. It's a downward death spiral which has led to a sort of patent arms race.
Now, the system is so heavily entrenched, that there's little we can do. There has been a backlash against stupid software patents, and we can only hope that it slows the tide. But I don't have much hope. Businesses simply have too much power.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)