Disqus - Latest Comments for cocreatr

Re: Eight Areas of Electricity Innovation to Watch in 2017

CoCreatr — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 19:09:32 -0000

What plainview2 said. As a customer, I do not need the security risks of by the minute metering or remote load management. I do need the time of day rate signal and in-house load management based on my value for money. Rates go up, my system of choice drops the load of all but the essential devices. What if we all can do this?

Re: Want to fight climate change? Here are the 7 critical life changes you should make

CoCreatr — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:00:12 -0000

Good actions to take , been there, done that, mostly. Thank you for years of inspiration to assess total cost of ownership before buying. That is simply purchase price (reflects embedded energy) plus operation cost (reflects lifetime energy consumption). Surprise: If you replace a pre-1998 fridge with a modern inverter unit, the new one pays for itself in seven years (reaches break even). Did that then, efficiency gains paid me back and paid the environment forward.

Re: Germany on track to get 33% of its electricity from renewables this year (193 billion kilowatt-hours!)

CoCreatr — Sat, 06 Feb 2016 02:23:16 -0000

Some comments seem to indicate mastery like this: https://yourlogicalfallacyi...

Re: Germany on track to get 33% of its electricity from renewables this year (193 billion kilowatt-hours!)

CoCreatr — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 04:10:04 -0000

To @Rennyrij and the fire-fighters: solar installations normally have an access path for inspection and maintenance. But yes, we can see a few installations covering
almost all available surface. Or not being accessible from either side to avoid wind-blown smoke. How about supporting your local politicians to pass
better building codes?

Re: Germany on track to get 33% of its electricity from renewables this year (193 billion kilowatt-hours!)

CoCreatr — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 04:07:00 -0000

The economics are by now much in favor of renewables, so much that large institutions divest from fossil fuels and the Rocky Mountain Institute publishes about the economies of the next wave, battery storage. http://www.rmi.org/electric...

Re: The 'No Shampoo Experiment,' six months later

CoCreatr — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 03:52:23 -0000

Been using borax as a sham poo and body wash, citric acid as a rinse, for years, about three times a week. Like the results. I keep them pre-mixed in two dispensers near the shower. Baking soda is worth a try.

Re: Our deal with the devil

CoCreatr — Sun, 16 Aug 2015 07:24:27 -0000

Yes. They call it digital sharecropping. Google at your own discretion.

Re: About change, defaults and disruption

CoCreatr — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 20:03:30 -0000

Yes, Anne, thank you. Bolt-on strategic innovation without anchoring in culture is hit or miss. A fertile field for consultants to sow and harvest. Another cause for lack of succesful innovation can be lack of a sensible process. How to raise the innovation success rate? Over a weekend I read, no, studied, "What Customers Want" by Anthony W. Ulwick. For a quick intro, I recommend the Strategyn website and the whitepaper.

Re: Klout And Kred Are AntiSocial. Opt Out With Me.

CoCreatr — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 08:34:27 -0000

When I first found my listing on Klout few years ago, it had associated me with the people I least intended to follow, among them a stalker. Opted out in a hurry. Hope it stays put.

Re: 141 MPG Renault Plug-in Hybrid For 2014?

CoCreatr — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 06:10:06 -0000

Sounds great. Thanks for sharing. What does 141MPG mean? Based on one tank of fuel and one full battery charge? This sounds is like gauging mpg on a downhill course. By such figures, a pure EV would have infinite MPG, no?

Re: Do You Sound Like You Are Amazing?

CoCreatr — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 08:02:47 -0000

To me, Zappos sounds beyond amazing, shoes, and customer service,. They are a certified democratic workplace, to boot.

Bottom of list at http://worldblu.com/awardee...

Re: My number one resource for getting things for free

CoCreatr — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 21:39:57 -0000

Thank you, very helpful. Been enjoying #tokyofreecycle for years, except for the occasional dud who claims a piece and fails to show up. However, just now it stopped working for me. The new group format #NEO: Not even once. http://uservoice.com/a/ixXG-

Re: Don’t expect that hybrid minivan anytime soon

CoCreatr — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 09:03:20 -0000

First, let me correct the mis-translation. According to a native Japanese speaker I trust, the text near the Estima Hybrid says something like "Sophistication is Part of its Style". Second, in Japan, Toyota already offers another hybrid minivan, the Alphard. Guess they do not see enough interest from people in the U.S. to invest into adding a hybrid minivan to their lineup of 8 so far http://www.toyota.com/hybrid/
This article is a step towards fixing hat, so thank you.

In Japan, they offer 15 hybrids, some of them lookalikes for competing dealer networks http://toyota.jp/carlineup/...

Re: Five marketing and business lessons from Japan

CoCreatr — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 18:56:11 -0000

"Civil" indeed. Decided to live in Japan two months into a six-months assignment. Been living here for 26 years, get along without much speaking the language. Honored that Matthew E. May shared my story among dozens of others in his newest book, The Laws of Subtraction.

Re: The consciousness doc, apparently, is in

CoCreatr — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:03:27 -0000

The truth shall upset us free. :-)
Thank you for bold sharing.
Looking forward to more belief system shifting.

Re: Personal Futures

CoCreatr — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:19:40 -0000

Thank you, Venessa, for this fine focusing future forecasting piece. Yes, we develop our greatest assets: ourselves. Few others could do it for us, and even if they would, we know best where our intuition puts our personal true North. Keep writing for this fine publication.

Re: Enterprise 2.0: The Choices We Haven't Made Yet

CoCreatr — Thu, 02 May 2013 09:21:43 -0000

Thank you for inspiring fresh ideas. Here is one organization that helps other organizations get clear about their choices. Meet Traci Fenton and working examples of organizational democracy at http://worldblu.com

Re: How to Save on your Power Bill (and Give Less Money to Tepco)

CoCreatr — Thu, 02 May 2013 09:01:44 -0000

Thank you, mostly right on the money. A few updates. Cheaper night electricity needs no rewiring, TEPCO just installs a dual rate meter with clock that does the trick. Whether you gain with it depends on usage pattern, as daytime rates go up a little. We start the dishwasher after 23:00 and finish heating the shower room before 7:00, so it saves some. Main benefit is for households that enjoy daytime solar power, as it offsets own consumption before feeding the grid.

LED lighting is getting way cheaper, whether a swap has a payback depends on usage pattern. In a 24h shop, switching from already efficient fluorescent lighting to LED may have a payback within a few months. Similar breakeven at home if you switch at from inefficient incandescents to LED where they are used a few hours every day, like a porch light or living room. Waste of money, though if you upgrade the lamp in the bathroom, it is not on for long enough to accumulate savings.

Right with the air conditioners. Also freezer, agree. With some models it also helps to pull it off the wall twice a year and remove dust from the heat exchanger coils. If you have a pre 1998 or so model that clicks and hums when it starts, and if you intend to live with the next fridge some 7 years, trash the old one, the new inverter model uses half the energy and pays back its hefty price in said 7 years. Faster if utilities raise electricity prices.

Re: The Begrudging Death of the Social Media Superstar

CoCreatr — Wed, 01 May 2013 07:16:45 -0000

Thank you. Well observed. Working yourself out of a job is what great professionals do, like medical doctors.

Or, applied to a company vision and mission, a great one is when the organization reaches that, it will not be needed any more.

Re: How Battery Storage Will Change The Household Energy Market

CoCreatr — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:41:39 -0000

Yes, economics inform 90% of our decisions. Please help me get what the authors mean by "Battery, levelized cost of $400.00 per kWh". That means the investment for a 10kWh capacity bank is some $4000, right? Seven years at 10 kWh/day x 2500 cycles (at what % discharge of capacity?) means the battery depreciation would add ~ 16c / kWh storage cost. I find that optimistic.

My own prior eyeballpark of just the cost of energy, using cost of battery, 1000 cycles at half capacity, and charger/discharger losses came near $4 per kWh used. That is 16 to 30 times cost of utility electricity. Trend: battery falling, utility rising, so they may eventually meet and reverse the game. Until then, I would not break even, an earlier point of entry could be reached if I bought night electricity at 1/3 rate and sold it at full.

For now, for me, battery makes sense as a silent emergency backup. With some noise and pollution, a small portable inverter generator can do that at way lower investment and running cost of $1 / kWh give and take, including fuel, oil, maintenance and depreciation. To be lightweight, alternator efficiency is near 50%. For stationary generators, up that beyond 80% and use the waste heat for the building, and we have CHP, decentralized and competitive. Because of the reduced primary energy usage, Germany gives CHP a small FIT, like 5c / kWh.

Re: Use your Mobile Phone to Scan Business Cards

CoCreatr — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 19:41:49 -0000

Thank you. Still searching a card reader that does not phone home. Looked up Abbyy app, as you write it can do OCR offline, but then as one commenter posted:

"Don't like automatic link [one star of five]
by Joehv
Remove this! It's my data, not yours!"

Re: Introducing The New Capitalism

CoCreatr — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 08:36:15 -0000

Thank you. Just learned to see the BIG WHY for limitations and perverse incentives built into the free market, the worst economic system except for all the others we have tried before. In Beijing, for example, people buy up expensive made in Japan air filter devices to reduce particulates indoors. Some of the stuff got swept to Japan right in front of my camera lens. http://cocreatr.typepad.com...

From a recent dialog, "If we do not pollute the air, clean air is abundant and there is no market for it. If we pollute the air, clean air becomes scarce and we have created a market for it. I've been in Beijing in February. I assure you that is not the way we want to go.

The point remains the same. So long as you focus on market solutions, you will never solve the problems created by the scarcity system that is the market."

Taking into account the performance potential of self-organization (rather like a
city than a factory) what next steps can I do to be playing with a workable system at
the next edge?

Re: V3Solar Spin Cell = 8 Cents/kWh? (CleanTechnica Exclusive)

CoCreatr — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 08:50:43 -0000

Wow, 157 comments by now. Some would not IMHO pass this test: http://yourlogicalfallacyis...

Re: Little Black Box For Big Green Motors Could Save Billions

CoCreatr — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 08:39:39 -0000

Great news. The place I live in has two 24h air-exchange fans driven by 100V 50Hz induction motors of some 50W each running an annual bill of close to $200 together. If a retrofit gets below 10 year pay-back I'll buy it

Re: V3Solar Spin Cell = 8 Cents/kWh? (CleanTechnica Exclusive)

CoCreatr — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 07:12:09 -0000

Thank
you for sharing. Once there is a working prototype, I would like to see
real life measurements of power under varied angles and degradation
curves, especially verifying the claim that the concentrated flash of
light from passing one of the lenses on the cone more than compensates
the 50% of time the rotating cells spend on the shadow side (if I
understand the animation right). Also I do not fully understand how the
spinning cone of cells dissipates some 80% of the additional heat by
rotation as it moves under a hermetically sealed cone, separated by an
air gap, which adds thermal resistance along the path to the only heat
sink, the cone itself.