Solar Hot Water

Just before Christmas we had an interesting meeting with folks from Viridian Concepts. With high oil prices and global warming, there's lots of interest in domestic solar water heating solutions but it can take a long time for such systems to pay back their install costs. Viridian's novel approach is to avoid chasing every last percent of operating efficiency and focus instead on keeping the initial cost low, so payback time is short. Their "Solar House" report is a model example of how to gather and present data clearly, and a real treat for a graph-nut like me. They also taught us the important concept of Embodied Energy - the energy used to make a product, including all of its constituent parts.

If and when AlertMe integrates with domestic Heating controls, maybe we'll end-up working together - of course we plugged the benefits of ZigBee to them!