The great pause - Pondering empowerment post Corona virus lockdown

During this pause in the human experiment of infinite growth on a finite planet, we all have time to ponder.  Questions like, how should we empower society as we emerge from the corona virus lockdown and what sort of benefits might we expect and hope for from this empowerment?

Something to hope for or just an interesting picture?
Airspeeder motorsport - a mixture of science fiction and gaming

Let's take a moment to further explore empowerment of individuals, how might we do this and what results might we expect.  There are already some pretty well understood candidates (and logically it seems many have self reinforcing aspects for the goal at hand), here are some good examples:

• UBI providing individual freedom and hence more room for creativity
• Free Education to degree level, hence encouraging and satisfying a thirst for knowledge
• Government using and encouraging Open Source and Open Data
• Prioritise walking and cycling, hence improving health, fitness, mobility, community connections and happiness

Plus, what if we combine these with wise long term environmental and economic goals (doughnut economics style):

• Encourage and support regenerative agriculture
• Strive towards a 100% renewable electricity supply
• Electrifying rail and road transportation (apart from maybe some aspects of emergency services)
• Restoring the health of our rivers and our oceans 

With this new world fully embraced, what might this look like over time:

• A healthy environment in balance with human society?
• Increased local capabilities and resilience?
• Increased time for important stuff like friends and family?
• High levels of innovation and hence productivity?
• Increased focus on digital tourism and digital sports events (e.g. where digital experience is the product, think visually realistic and physically active esports, think virtual spectator mixed with photo realistic virtual experiences extrapolated to tourism and new high tech sporting areas)?
  
• Increased reverence for nature and the outdoors (where international tourism for pure physical outdoor experiences becomes a premium highly sought after product)?
• Increasingly complex and interconnected local society (more holistic)?
• A more equal society?
• Increasing richness in art and culture?
• Increased general interest in wondering about life, the universe and our place in it?
• People are energized and alive with tangible opportunities to participate and thrive in society?
• A society that treats Earth as our valued and cherished home, but increasingly looks beyond our home planet for the future?

I'll leave you to ponder these questions or to create your own list of thoughts and ideas.  Either way, I'm sure you will continue to make good use of your very own and very valuable corona-induced dilated time bubble.

SolarNode plugin system

A long time ago SolarNode development switched from a traditional style Java application to a modular OSGi based one. One of the reasons for the switch was the premise of allowing users to easily download and use SolarNode modules without having to restart the SolarNode application. In OSGi installing, starting, stopping, and uninstalling modules (called bundles in OSGi) is fairly trivial. What SolarNode has lacked, however, was any friendly UI to allow users to browse the available modules and install the ones they want.

Finally that is about to change. The first step to enabling this feature was the deployment of a SolarNetwork-hosted software repository. There are a few open source packages out there, I ended up using Apache Archiva. Now SolarNetwork has a Maven-compatible online software repository to host its own modules, and the build infrastructure has been updated to easily publish modules as they are developed.

Browsing the SolarNetwork Repository

The next step was to make use of the OSGi Bundle Repository (OBR) developed as part of Apache Felix. OBR provides a way to resolve OSGi bundles along with their dependencies. Unfortunately, Archiva does not publish OBR metadata so I turned to another Apache project, Karaf Cave. Cave can act as a OBR proxy to a Maven repository, in which case it scans the Maven repository and generates OBR metadata files from which the OBR resource URLs point back to the artifacts in the Maven repository.

The final step was to develop some SolarNode bundles to enable configuring OBR URLs and a UI to allow users to browse the available software and install or remove individual modules. You can see the result of this work in the following demonstration:

This is a big step forward both in terms of ease of use for users and the SolarNode software development process!

Context for Distributed Generation Energy Management in NZ

When you look at the rest of the world, there are a lot of solar PV installations happening out there. I’m not talking about hobbyists and niche deployments but industrial MW scale energy plants. Admittedly, it follows a boom and bust cycle that’s driven by the whims of governments who support renewable portfolios....sometimes. Looks like Australia is in for another spin on the merry-go-round with the results of the most recent election.

Powerful and renewable: Solar Energy
(PHOTO: courtesy Nasa)

Oh well. With solar, it’s always a bad idea to espouse “shortermism.”  However, when you look at the higher-quality, super durable gear - IEC 61701 certified monocrystalline modules, AS/NZS 4777 certified grid-connect inverters, AS/NZS 1170 rated roof mounting - there’s a lot of long-term value there. Everyone is talking about solar PV grid-connect at the moment, but really that’s only one aspect of energy management that companies need to think about. Other aspects are: how and when you use energy, how to intelligently conserve power, what the weather is going to be like, how much solar will deliver as a percentage of total consumption, and all the inter-related data that comes from the dynamic interaction of these daily trends. Not in abstract generalities, but for your business specifically.

While in NZ there is ample renewable power - world-leading levels in fact! - it shouldn’t stop our engineering community from developing the tools that let companies manage those energy and financial flows themselves.  Given that there’s a large contingent of “small to medium sized enterprises” in NZ (SMEs if you want to talk in biz jargon), shouldn’t there be a set of services that hand over the energy management reins to the SME’s COO? That is, not a technologist but a business focused person. Yes: the solar hardware is available today, and skilled installers are doing some great work in NZ.  In fact, there’s actually a very compelling business case to be made for quality grid-connect systems PV in NZ. But what about the business tools that let an SME manage, measure and report how their specific energy flows - and cash flows - are going. Are those tools available?

You may ask: “Why do we need them - isn’t the power bill good enough?”  Well, it’s true that the data is available each month, but what about acting on that data - as it happens? For example: say your target SME is a distributor with a large warehouse roof. Their hours of operation are standard daytime hours, which is when they use the majority of their power, lights, forklifts, computers. It would make sense for the solar energy hitting that vast roof to offset the power bills as much as possible.  With some smarts on maximizing locally-generated energy, turning things off, maximizing loads during sunny hours, you could provide empirical calculations on energy use for immediate reporting and financial forecasts.  Studies show that people who have a simple visualization of their energy use save between 5% and 15% on their power bill.  Add in intelligent solar PV self-consumption and we’re talking about active, web-based, holistic energy management.

Commercial Solar PV in New Zealand is happening, but perhaps not as fast or as broadly as you’d think, for a nation with so much sun.  This is because there’s no real assurance that the investment is going to be worth it.  And so far, not many examples of companies that have taken the step.  We see lots of smart-grid, smart-home promises for the future.  But when those solutions are coming from the labs of electricity retailers....that’s like buying Hen Management Services from Mr. Fox isn’t it? I mean, c’mon - how can we really get this in gear?

But things are changing, I’m thinking it might be more of a chicken-and-egg situation.  If there were an easy-to-implement, solid cloud-based software made available to SMEs, along with some case studies of the benefits, there would be a lot more takers of quality solar PV equipment to offset local consumption.  An SME wouldn’t have to invent something themselves, they wouldn’t have to take a risk as an early adopter.  Instead, they could quickly implement an existing proven system and tweak it for their business.  Business people - not technicians - could review the case studies of comparable firms and say “yep, this energy profile is very like ours - and hey, look at their results. We could do that.” The big picture result would be that, as a group, NZ SMEs could start using more locally-generated power. That means the local multiplier effect starts to kick in, and that leads to more local wealth. Real wealth, not the “wealth” of short-termers.  Plus, there’s the good practice of using more renewable energy in your local community. Cool! Why not collaborate here in NZ as engineers to provide those solutions for SMEs to act on their energy use - and start building some really advanced, site-specific solutions today?

One reason I say this is that there are a lot of solid technical options that are emerging to manage energy flows. Take a look at the JF2 LATA switch.  This is a reliable, affordable industrial CANbus switch that gives you switching as well as state information about each circuit.  Packaged in neat DIN rail compatible units, you can daisy-chain these devices across kilometers of warehouse, using standard CAT5 wiring.  Not only does it save AC wiring costs - because you can avoid AC runs to the switch - but it gives you intricate, durable remote control over a multitude of circuits. Control you can implement from secure cloud-based software.  And guess what? LATA is open source and made in New Zealand.

Configuring a SolarNetwork hardware compnent

But this is just the start. Here at Greenstage, we are building out that software framework, using an enterprise base, and Open Source licenses.  We talk to lots of different pieces of hardware (the LATA is just one example), in a very logical, repeatable and modular fashion - employing open standards wherever we can. Meanwhile, as computing becomes ubiquitous, powerful and inexpensive, the ability to automate the collection of energy information and provide actionable steps to enterprises is now available.  The need for energy - renewable energy especially - is only increasing as electric vehicles become available, while both petrol and grid power prices keep rising consistently over the long term. Can you see it? I believe that collectively, we can prime the pump by identifying SME’s requirements, and providing holistic solutions tailored to their business needs.  We can start doing this by building out a NZ-based toolkit that gives them actionable options on their energy information.

OK enough talking: who wants to join us on the journey?  Lets make this happen!

SolarQuery web service API

I've recently been working on improving the interface for external applications that interact with and access data from the SolarNetwork.  Here is a quick update on where things are at.

SolarQuery is the SolarNetwork application that exposes web services for querying the data collected by SolarNodes. SolarQuery is what enables data visualizations like Consumption Monitor and Generation Monitor. This API is still being developed, but we've created a API Sampler page that demonstrates the latest API.

The sampler also demonstrates the SolarNetworkWS authorization scheme used by the web API. This scheme is modeled after Amazon's AWS scheme used by RESTful services like S3 and uses the HMAC-SHA1 hash scheme to authenticate and sign each request. Owners of SolarNodes can log into the SolarUser application to manage their nodes and create security tokens:

These tokens are then used by the SolarQuery web API, and the API Sampler page shows how to properly sign each request using the tokens (it uses the open-source crypto-js library to handle the HMAC encoding). The sampler also provides API method templates to quickly test different methods, and will show the results of the method call directly in the page:

After the web service API is expanded and has sufficiently stabilized, we'll create more complete documentation on the API.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Enjoy!

d3 gauge

Recently I implemented a "gauge" style chart for displaying live power output of a PV installation. d3 is a fantastic JavaScript visualization framework, and is great for animating live data feeds.

See a "live" example at bl.ocks.org/3202712.

This component and many others are being rolled out to enhance a number of distributed generation and monitoring solutions throughout New Zealand and the Pacific.

Greenstage Commercial Solutions

At Greenstage we continue to innovate and enhance the Open Source capabilities of the SolarNetwork while also delivering high quality commercial solutions to the world.

If you need commercial solutions or SolarNetwork support, please don't hesitate to contact us.  If you are an Open Source developer interested in distributed energy solutions, please join us on SourceForge!

Dyno Progress

For a while now we had the plan to build a dynamometer out of two Siemens made Ford Ranger AC motors. While no calibrated results could be made (through measuring the torque directly) the contraption would be very useful for comparative analysis of motor control regimes and settings.

The first steps (October last year) involved working out how to couple the two together. The motor shaft is hollow to allow a further shaft to run directly through the motor. The output end of the shaft has a helical gear directly machined into it, for a now unavailable planetary gear set. Others have suggested directly welding to the shaft, some have success using taper-lock devices directly on the gear.

In our situation, because of its non-critical nature (a failure is not likely to put anyone in a compromised situation), we decided to go with another untested route – developing a bush that works somewhat like an inside out double ended collet holder. Made of brass it may not be as strong as the rest of the equipment, but simple to make on the lathe, and not likely to damage the motors for future applications.

As previously mentioned Stephen designed and organised an adaptor plate for bolting the motors together. The motors are now coupled, and spinning just about as freely as individually so must be fairly close to aligned.

Due to the weight of the combined motors (over 130kg) we wanted to be able to wheel them around. We started to think about building a trolley but instead opted for far cheaper and easier option - a 200kg rated handcart.
Next came the job of hooking up the motor encoder and temperature sensors. Reportedly there isn't a plug available for the encoder connector on the motor, so a new arrangement is required. 

We made a stainless piece that reduces the hole to suit the M23 servo-motor style encoder connector used on standard Siemens motors.

 I don't think that the plastic connectors that the motors are delivered with were originally part of the plan. The tapped hole for the closest cover bolt breaks through into the hole for the connector. Worse still, an o-ring seal sits beyond where the bolt hole breaks through, which means the o-ring is damaged every time the fitting is removed or put back in. Not a clever design, but we will run with it for the mean time.

Minimal Debian install on a Vortex86

For our SolarNode installations (part of the SolarNetwork) we use a minicomputer with a Vortex86.  This is a system on chip (SoC) x86 compatible CPU which has all the bells and whistles on one piece of silicon.

JrMX with Vortex86 inside

We had until recently been installing a standard Ubuntu distribution which was working very nicely.  Problem was this distribution was full of many unneeded software modules.

Over the break I finally got around to sorting out a bare bones installation that only contains what we need (no GUI required!).  Not only does this increase performance and reduce disk space requirements, but it enhances security by keeping deployed software to a minimum (less software equals less security updates).

Here is the process we have used to build a bare bones SD boot image with the latest native WiFi support (no ndiswrapper here) on a Norhtec JrMX.  Read on... 

First up: Find yourself an Ubuntu or Debian based PC to prepare your bootable SD card.  Make sure you have unetbootin or similar installed (usefull for creating a bootable SD or USB stick from an iso).

# sudo apt-get install unetbootin

Use unetbootin to create a bootable SD card (I used a 4GB) using this Debian squeeze mini iso.

Now boot the JrMX (with network cable connected) from the freshly made bootable SD card and complete the installation process (could take a while with lots of downloading).

Once finished, there will likely be some additional packages you will want to install e.g. ssh-server, ntp, wicd, wicd-curses etc.

# apt-get install ssh-server

# apt-get install ntp

# apt-get install wicd

# apt-get install wicd-curses

FYI: We use wicd-curses to configure WiFi from command line (instead of the NetworkManager GUI or similar).

Now, get Ready for the Kernel upgrade and WiFi driver install...

Squirt the stuff (Kernel and WiFi Driver) across to the JrMX from your desktop (connected using network cable at this point in time).
e.g.

$ scp linux-image-2.6.34.10-vortex86-sg_1.2_i386.zip  philipc@10.1.1.11:
$ scp RTL8188_8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.6.0.20110401.zip philipc@10.1.1.11:

Now, on the JrMX box (ssh in or login using physical keyboard and monitor), install the new kernel and the kernel headers:

# unzip linux-image-2.6.34.10-vortex86-sg_1.2_i386.zip
# dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.34.10-vortex86-sg_1.2_i386.deb
# dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.34.10-vortex86-sg_1.2_i386.deb

Now Install RTL8188SU Linux driver (for WiFi), but first we need to sort out the missing build link to the header source files:

# rmdir -–ignore-fail-on-non-empty /lib/modules/2.6.34.10-vortex86-sg/build

# ln -sf /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.34.10-vortex86-sg /lib/modules/2.6.34.10-vortex86-sg/build

Download and unzip the latest RTL8188SU driver (which is actually the same as RTL8192SU driver).  The one I specifically used is here, or you can get it from the realtek site. 

#unzip RTL8188_8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.6.0.20110401.zip

Note: This works great, but readme instructions from the older rtl8188_8192.zip (this one is from the robosavvy site) are much more informative.  Follow the readme instructions which are summarised below ('make' and 'make install' basically)...

Note: You will also need the following to build the drivers (if you want, remove with apt-get remove at the end):

# apt-get install build-essential

Extract, build and install WiFi drvier from unzipped source dir:

# cd rtl8712_8188_8191_8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.6.0.20110401/driver
# tar -xzf rtl8712_8188_8191_8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.6.0.20110401.tar.gz
# cd rtl8712_8188_8191_8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.6.0.20110401
# make
  ...
  Building modules, stage 2.
  MODPOST 1 modules
  CC      /home/solar/rtl8712_8188_8191_8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.6.0.20110401/driver/rtl8712_8188_8191_8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.6.0.20110401/8712u.mod.o
  LD [M]  /home/solar/rtl8712_8188_8191_8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.6.0.20110401/driver/rtl8712_8188_8191_8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.6.0.20110401/8712u.ko
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.34.10-vortex86-sg'

# make install
install -p -m 644 8712u.ko  /lib/modules/2.6.34.10-vortex86-sg/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/
/sbin/depmod -a 2.6.34.10-vortex86-sg

# shutdown -r now

NOW LETS GET THAT WiFi GOING!

Check a few things:

# ifconfig wlan0 up
# iwlist wlan0 scan
# iwconfig

Configure the WiFi connection (use wicd-curses, it's like NetworkManager, but a command line tool! Just follow your nose...)

#wicd-curses

Yea Ha!!!! It all works :)

You may want to turn off a few other things as well, but this is a great starting point for a minimal install.

Enjoy!

Note: Please make sure you see Matt's update on this post as well.

Just an Opinion?

Back in 2008 I started blogging about Greenstage and I briefly explained why here.

Well, the world is changing fast and some of the drivers for Greenstage are becoming ever more intense and clarity around these drivers and their relatedness is increasing.

We live in a very special time in history. Cheap and abundant energy (in the form of fossil fuels) have enabled a massive expansion of our economies and humanity's capabilities. Some of my personal favorites include achievements like NASA's Space Shuttle, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Large Hadron Collider and Genome sequencing, not to mention the rich tapestry of arts and culture the world over. As fellow humans, irrespective of which country we were born in, we can feel proud of all humanity's achievements.

Inside the Large Hadron Collider

Things are changing fast and to maintain and extend this level of capability, humanity needs to make some adjustments. Peak oil is either already here, or not far away. There are environmental changes resulting from the consumption of non-renewable resources and the release of previously stored carbon into the earth's atmosphere.  Combine this with debt-stretched economies and the resulting economic slowdown, it's clear our current behavior is making the world a starker place for future generations.

Understanding that society's massive growth for the last 100 years has largely been fuelled by abundant and cheap energy, with oil literally squirting out of the ground, is fundamental to understanding the consequences of this energy crunch. Things are going to change whether we like it or not. Our current business as usual approach is unsustainable and becoming ever harder to achieve due to oil and debt fuelled growth coming to an end.  Our choice in the matter, is whether to be proactive about change, or to simply suffer the consequences and be forced into whatever change results.

Energy crunch

What to do?

Be positive, be proactive and change what we need to change! Simple as that. Most successful people and businesses have a long term plan, are passionate about what they do and work towards achieving their goals. Nothing new here.

What's missing in my opinion is leaders with a long term plan that fits with the reality of the situation. Spending billions of dollars on motorways to be used by fossil fuel powered vehicles does not make much sense.

We want a society that maintains and continues to extend the overall capabilities of the human race, but at the same time one that is not over reaching the bounds of the environment.  One that lives within it's means and leaves something for future generations.

I'm all for being proactive!  Lets use this period of transition effectively, leverage the still relatively cheap fossil fuel based energy and infrastructure we currently have to make an effective and speedy transition while we have the opportunity. We need to transition our society to another form of energy that is abundant and cheap and we need to do it quickly.

The solutions are available. Renewable energy from technologies such as wind, hydro and photovoltaic can literally be pulled out of the air (almost as easy as oil squirting out of the ground!).

In the short to medium term long distance transportation will be more expensive, communities will be closer and more connected and locally produced goods will come to the fore. With closer communities, people have additional chances to enjoy each other's company and pursue the challenges they and their communities really benefit from. Hence, there are opportunities for increased fulfilment and satisfaction (read more here).

There are so many positive opportunities out of this. As just one example, a whole new market is emerging for the boat building industry.

No Rena oil spill disaster here!

OK, so what specifically can we do? Look to strengthen your local community and become more self sufficient, look to reduce your fossil fuel consumption, ideally be prepared to stop using fossil fuels at some point in the not too distant future (pricing challenges could force this within the next 5-10 years). And of course, look to encourage and elect local council and government leaders that will steer our communities and our countries in the right direction.

The GS750V is another example of emerging opportunities.  Not only does this embrace the new energy paradigm, but it embraces community-led technology through the development and use of Tumanako open source components.

This is an important project with a message. It's been a long hard road and we have had a number of delays, but we finally have everything in place. We have commercial relationships and supply lines for all the products and components, including equipment and stock to complete the MK1 goal. Stay tuned for updates as we complete the race pack and vehicle preparation for our debut at the track. We're making changes and we're not holding back!

Greenstage is passionate about supporting communities and encouraging the right sort of change. Change creates opportunity and opportunity is exciting.

What changes are you making?

SEANZ Conference

The SEANZ annual conference is coming up next week in Auckland on the 4th and 5th of November. SEANZ exists to develop and grow small scale renewables and the distributed generation industry- the future of electricity generation!

At 10:40am on Friday the 5th, I will be speaking about EVs, distributed generation and the Smart Grid with an emphasis on progress and business opportunities that will only be made possible with Open Source technology. Check out the agenda here.

Tumanako

A long term stated goal of Greenstage has been to promote and develop open source technology. I thought this would play out significantly in the future, once we had the GS750V completed and racing. The immediate issues with our inverter are preventing the completion of the GS750V, interestingly they have also created an opportunity to bring our long term plans forward and hence solve our current problems. All in one go! On the Wednesday just gone we hosted an international launch party for a number of open source EV projects. The event was a gathering of very capable people showing much enthusiasm for the projects and EV technology in general. These projects are collectively being developed under the Tumanako banner (Tu manako is Māori for hope & togetherness) and so far aspects of Tumanako have received commitment for technical and financial support from 5 different entities (and I expect more to follow): EV Drive - Bob Simpson Metric Mind Corporation - Victor Tichonov Disruptive Enterprises - Alex Smith Lynx Innovation - Kevin Huljich Greenstage - Team Greenstage As well as the open source technical design and development I am very aware of the importance of fostering and developing commercial manufacturing, testing, packaging and sales aspects of the resulting products. Without this the projects will become just another wad of information that only a small subset of people can make use of. The commercial entities supporting and bringing these open source products to market will provide consumers and OEM's with the opportunity to leverage these products with confidence. Combined with the long term technical benefits of open source development, this synergistic commercial manufacturing has the very real opportunity to create a strong and attractively priced set of products. To learn more about the Tumanako projects, visit our Tumanako Launch wiki page where you can see some of the presentations and photos from the evening. The Tumanako projects are being hosted on SourceForge and changes will be visible as development progresses. We already have a formidable team and this team will only grow and get stronger as the projects progress. If you have an interest in the outcome of these projects, or you would like to get involved, please let us know. Let the fun begin!