Another year passed by: Energy consumption in a passive house

In the first year of living in the new house I kind of read the energy meters more or less weekly, then it turned into bi-weekly to monthly activity. The past year I looked at the meters mostly during the Winter months and almost forgot to read them out last weekend when another year had passed. When you look at the energy consumption, there are surprising numbers:

	2012	2011	2010	2009
Household (kWh)	2597	2605	2473	2244
Heating/Ventilation/Water (kWh)	2713	2713	2858	2782

Even though the past year was a leap year (and had a leap second!!!) the consumption was the same. I had hoped to have a smaller number, but we had some very chilly weeks in February. Household consumption has also stayed constant with most consumers now in place. Most of it should come from cooking, laundry and my home office with computer, monitor, phones, etc.

Our house does not have a smart meter where you can track consumption online and real-time. However, I talked with some "owners" and the bottom line is that after the first few weeks they barely make use of it. It is similar to reading our old-fashioned meters more frequently in the beginning to learn and look for exceptions. Then leaning back once everything seems to run smoothly. Any similarities to a well-tuned database system and regular workloads...?

Energy consumption for another year in our passive house

A third year of keeping the tab of our energy consumption has passed. Luckily, even with changing weather and sometimes frosty days, the kilowatt hours that we used over the past 12 months stayed almost the same. I had reported about the previous year last July. So how what do the energy meters say this year?

• Household consumption: 2605 kWh (2010: 2473 kWh, 2009: 2244 kWh)
• Heating/ventilation/water: 2713 kWh (2010: 2858 kWh, 2009:  2782 kWh)

As you can see, we used slightly more electric energy in our household, but slightly less for heating and ventilation. Our kids are growing and we need to cook more, they stay up longer (needing electric light in the Winter), they started listening to music, etc. (yeah, blame the kids). On the other hand, my home office requires more electricity, but I travel more often which keeps a balance.

Let's see where we stand next year. I would be happy with small changes only as we have seen this year. What is your consumption?

Smaller, but way faster and cheaper: IBM sets new TPC-C record

I am traveling right now, but wanted to point you to a new TPC-C benchmark result. IBM set a new record running DB2 9.7 on a POWER7-based system. The IBM system is more than 35% faster than the so-far top Oracle result, providing 41% better price/performance and 35% better energy efficiency per transaction. This should set an end to the misleading and silly Oracle advertisements (I hope, but am not sure).

Another year gone by: Energy consumption in our passive house

We had a long and cold Winter in Germany and also several upgrades to our electrical equipment in our passive house. So I was curious how our energy consumption would be for the last 12 months compared to the year before. This morning was the time to read out our two energy meters (still old fashioned and not smart):

• Household consumption: 2473 kWh (previous year 2244 kWh)
• Heating/ventilation/water: 2858 kWh (previous year 2782 kWh)

As mentioned, the Winter was long and cold and thus the small increase for heating makes sense. It would have been even bigger if we would not have "cheated" when we bought (and used) a table-top fireplace. That small fireplace has a nice flame, burns Ethanol and, of course, produces some heat. It's stronger than some candles and only needs about 0.15 l of Ethanol an hour.

For the increased household consumption one big factor is my work: I traveled less over the past 12 months and worked more and longer at home, started using a 2nd screen, and am now using an automatic coffee/espresso maker to keep the spirits high. Now add in some kids asking for more TV and computer time, some more washing cycles, and extended cooking, then the increase for the household is surprisingly small.

Shock or Joy? Power Meters and the core of everything: Data

In many countries the end of year also is the time when power meters, or utility meters in general, are read out. When we lived in California the meters were manually read once a month and the monthly bill reflected the previous month's usage - with all its ups and downs. The feedback was more or less immediate which was good, but the amount to pay also significantly alternated between highs in Winter and Summer and lows in Spring and Fall.

In Germany, the meters are typically read once a year and the monthly amount is based on the averaged out estimate for the next year. You can plan ahead for the upcoming months in terms of payments, but for most people there is no direct feedback on their consumption. Our power meters will be read out over the next few days and I am happily expecting the annual statement sometime in January.

In some regions the Utilities have started deploying Smart Meters. In California, PG&E is changing to them, in Germany households are expected to move to them over time, too. I am still waiting for mine.

Why I am interested in it? First, direct feedback is valuable to improve or optimize consumption - monthly data is better than annual, daily or even immediate input better than monthly. Second, it is interesting to see what kind of data could be made available and in what format. My format of choice would be XML because of its flexibility and tooling support. Third, based on finer granularity, better pricing could be available (avoid the peak hours and save). Fourth, based on the data, you or a third-party company could analyze your consumption, compare with peer groups and look into finding ways to improve your monthly bill. Some companies already offer energy optimization services to enterprises and take a share of the savings.

Last, it would be fun to store XML-based energy data in DB2 pureXML and manage and analyze it myself.

What is at the core of all this is the data. Without its availability (in a usable format), there is no insight, no improvement (greener planet), no founding of new companies.

Which payment is greener: Cash or Credit?

The other day I was reading about the energy consumed and CO2 produced for each Google search. Energy efficiency is a hot topic and a lot of numbers (and hot air) are produced. Energy efficient data centers, green computing/green IT, household energy consumption, and much more is what is discussed in the news, IBM's theme is the Smarter Planet.

I am certainly interested in adding CO2 and energy metrics to database benchmarks like TPC-C, TPC-H, and also TPoX. But I am much more interested in the fundamental questions of daily life: Cash or credit (or in the US still check)? Not just only which is faster at the checkout, but what is greener? How much total energy is necessary to pay with cash and how much for paying with a card, including the post-processing?

About Tecology, Lamp Mounts, and Empty Spots

Recently I wrote about Smart Meters and on Saturday I could see one in action - unfortunately not in my house. Over, at the other house, the owner had already detected one unneeded consumer he hadn't really thought of. The reaction to that finding was to plug it off.

The ON/OFF is a very natural way of thinking, especially for Computer Scientists. Many automated things around our homes and offices use that principle to control electrical consumers. Infrared sensors switch lights on and off, timers control when and for how long things are turned on, lawns are watered from x to y, and so on.

What is needed is a more adapted approach where we are moving away from the ON/OFF for many of the simple things. In many cases we already have technology for ecological use ("tecology"?), but don't apply it (for many reasons). To give an example: The CPU clock speed is reduced in our computers when we don't need that much CPU power to reduce energy consumption - you are probably using that feature on a daily basis. Similarly, we have sensors and controllers to adjust light output to automatically keep rooms at constant brightness with a mix of natural and artificial light. Does your home or your office have such a feature? Probably not. And you would not have it at home even if it would be affordable. The reason is that it is way more complex and time consuming to install a new ceiling lamp than to install or upgrade new hardware such as hard disks or CPU modules.

I am still waiting for an universal lamp mount where I can plug a lamp and thereafter the wires are connected and the lamp itself is safely mounted. That also explains why one year after moving into our new home many lamps are still missing...