Renewable Electricity Generation and the future of electricity

When the future of electricity is discussed, quite a number of thoughts come into mind. Let’s look at a few of such ideas. 

Electricity will be wireless! 

Wouldn’t it be delightful to see no wires in the house even with an uninterrupted supply of electricity? Will the future see wireless supply of electricity? Apparently, it will, according to industry experts. Last year, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted a wireless electricity experiment successfully. This dream has never been far-fetched, and with the success of wireless electricity experiments, this dream will soon come true. So, it is not very far that we will see electrical appliances charging themselves off air! 

Consumers will have complete control!

Industry experts believe that in future, your power supply will not be dependent on the electricity department but on you. You will have complete control on how you want the power supply to reach your place. You may not be required to pay the mandatory amount when you are vacationing around the world, shutting off the house. Experts see a variety of control options for consumers in the future. Now, whether this future is in the next ten years, or twenty, or a fifty years is not known, but what is known is that the future will see the consumers in control of what they use. 

Electrical energy will be clean!

Do you know that the remains of electricity production emit enormous amounts of carbon dioxide in the air? The future of electricity is perceived as green and clean. Given the concern for the environment, the electricity in future will make use of renewable sources of energy, leading to a clean environment. Currently, electricity is produced mostly by consuming fuels that are on the verge of being extinct. 

All things will be electric! 

OK, we have already seen electric cars and electric shavers, what else will the future see? May be, electric shoes! Combs, toothbrushes, watches, glasses, even clothes may become electrical gadgets. If these sound far-fetched ideas, visit the futuristic shops at Akihabara in Japan for a glimpse of the future. 

There will be no outages!

More than anything, consumers look forward to seeing a future with absolutely no power outages. Alternate power solutions promise to take us into a future that has no power interruptions. With increased dependency on power for everything, consumers need to have an uninterrupted supply of power. 

Renewable energy and energy management

Renewable energy is getting cheaper !!!! really or is it just that our rate per unit from our utlity is getting more expensive? In any event the gap is closing and Solar Power Generation is now more of a reality than ever before.
PV Technology has improved, Inverters have improved and batteries??? Well thats the weak link at the moment.

This is why we should opt for grid tied solutions wherever possible, we generate power during the day time, feed it onto the Grid which becomes our battery and then draw off the grid during the night. So if the net result turned out to ZERO then we have designed our PV solution properly. If we generate too much during the day and we do not get reimbursed then we have over specified the system, if we are using the Grid during daylight hours then we have under catered.

So with the right information, proper planning and good quality products we should get as close to Zero as is possible and stay there for 20 to 30 years.

There is a culture that says that Solar energy is DC and under 24 volts so whay should we have to carry an electrical qualification? Is this a DIY product?

The simple answer is NO. This technology deserves the best attention to design philosophy , installation and quality of product. It is not cheap, so dont try to make it cheap, buy the best you can afford and enjoy a real investment rather than a half baked and ultimately ineffective solution.

Home Automation and LED Dimming

Flicker, the perceptible modulation of light output when a light source runs on AC power, has been known to cause physiological responses including headaches and in some cases seizures. Flicker is sometimes an issue with LED light sources, and when dimmed, flicker can be induced or made worse. Because most dimmers were designed for use with incandescent sources, LED lighting products face incompatibility issues, particularly with phase-cut dimmers. This incompatibility is both difficult to predict and there are no standard methods for measuring flicker in LED sources.

Lighting Control and LED dimming

NEMA (national electrical manufacturers association) and several other interested lighting control  associations have been working together to have a performance standard accepted and published for solid state dimming controls. They have also been pushing for a standard SSL 6-20104 which gives guidance to LED manufacturers. These guidance standards are directly related to the dimming of LED Solid state lamps. These standards are still in the development stage as is LED technology and will require several amendments to ensure total consistency between dimming devices and LED lamps.

Interestingly current UL standards UL 14725 specify an LED lamp as an "electronic ballast"and the main concern covered in this standard is the "in-rush" current which is generated at the start up of many LED lamps. High in-rush currents have the ability to damage the lamps as well as switch contacts, this results in a hazardous electrical installation where the switch is seen to be the means of disconnect. 

Home Automation & LED Dimming

Dimming of LED lamps is made more difficult due to the fact that any given lamp can be manufactured to  a particular arrangement of electronic and electrical specs, current, voltage, amperage and control signals, that vary considerably from any other manufacturers specifications.   So one of the lamps may be dimmed by a particular dimmer but the other, not.
Manufacturing a dimmer to match or suite a particular brand of lamp is ludicrous to say the least and not something that I feel should be pursued  Perhaps an in line controller or Puck that would allow all dimmers to dim all lamps, now thats a good way to go. I feel somewhat let down when I look at the cost of a decent LED lamp as well as the cost of a Puck , may as well stay with a standard 35w incandescent IRC lamp?

HOme Automation and LED dimming

Most LED lamp designs can be characterized by a diode-capacitor power supply feeding a constant current source. The diodes rectify the applied AC voltage, allowing it to charge the storage capacitor, whilst the LED elements draw constant current from the power supply that is related to the desired brightness.
In LEd loads the applied voltage and resulting current flow are not related by a simple linear relationship ie current flows from the applied voltage to the load only when the magnitude of the applied voltage exceeds the storage voltage on the power supply capacitor. The stored voltage on the power supply capacitor, in turn, depends on the current drawn by the LED elements themselves, which is a function of the LED brightness. The dimmer unit has to respond to these minute and plentiful, wave form shifts, hence the flickering of the lamp and an unstable dimming circuit.

LED Dimming

Although there is occasional compatibility between an LED lamp and an incandescent dimmer, more often than not there are problems with handshake and performance. The Incandescent dimmer will be inconsistent when dimming an LED. An incandescent lamp is simple in design and is ultimately a simple resistive load enclosed in a vacuum, this resistive load has a linear response to the dimmer as one adjusts the phase angle so the lamp burns more or less bright due to an altered wave form.
An LED lamp is far more complex in design with any number of technical and electronic differences between manufacturers, making it impossible to design a dimmer that can perform across the board.
LED technology is CONSTANT CURRENT technology, mess with the constant current and we have flickering or fluttering issues. This equates to a non linear relationship between the dimmer and Lamp.
Another factor creating confusion is that we may successfully dim one lamp whilst on the test bench and then have a totally different result when we connect to three, four or more lamps on the same bench.
My tip for the day , don't mess with Ohms law