Hot off the press. Living Maths interview with David Lipschitz. Streamed and available on Youtube,
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Cape Town Science Centre Talk by David Lipschitz - 27th May 2015
Dear all
Just a note that I'm speaking at the Cape Town Science Centre tonight at 5.30 for 6pm. Science Centre group on Facebook.
The topic is: Load Shedding, why its happening and what we can do about it.
Steve Sherman from Living Maths has set up the talk and he will be interviewing me after the talk.
The talk uses Powerpoint, but if there is load shedding, I have a backup talk which uses a few posters I have prepared.
Regards,
David
Just a note that I'm speaking at the Cape Town Science Centre tonight at 5.30 for 6pm. Science Centre group on Facebook.
The topic is: Load Shedding, why its happening and what we can do about it.
Steve Sherman from Living Maths has set up the talk and he will be interviewing me after the talk.
The talk uses Powerpoint, but if there is load shedding, I have a backup talk which uses a few posters I have prepared.
Regards,
David
Saturday, May 23, 2015
The Mercedes on my Roof
Do you have a Mercedes on your roof?
I do!
Actually its not a Mercedes. It's a Renewable Energy System and part of it is on my roof and part of it is in my Garage.
I bought it in late 2008 and it was all installed and running by April 2009. A friend of mine and I installed it!
Everybody, except my wife, said I was crazy. Why would anyone want to buy an electricity generation system rather than buying a Mercedes? I had even just test driven the new shape Mercedes in 2008 and a friend asked me when I was going to buy it.
As it was I spent R200,000 on the physical equipment and another R100,000 on a one month business trip to the USA, where I learnt about Grid Tie Photovoltaics (PV), wrote the NABCEP (North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners) Entry Level exam and attended conferences, in Phoenix Arizona, and in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Total R300,000, the cost of my new Mercedes.
Today the R200,000 component is about R70,000 and the education is priceless.
By the time I went to the USA in February 2009, I had already put over 1,000 hours into R&D (research and development) re learning about my first renewable energy system.
And every time I arrived in my garage after that, in my Renault Clio, which is now 14 years old, I saw my Mercedes on my wall and on my roof.
Load shedding has effected everyone I know, except us. Lots of people I know have recently done installs and they are getting to be like us now, and we are so welcoming of them. Thank you for joining this retirement party.
In my view, one is retired when one doesn't have any expenses. By 2008, Mirjana and I had spent 9 years working on our retirement plan and I only had to work for 8 days a month to pay all our expenses. One day we will be back there.
Back in 2009, everyone was asking me how long this system was going to pay off. We worked out that it was costing us about R5 per kWh, when City of Cape Town electricity was only costing us 50 cents per kWh. Mirjana said it would take 20 years to pay it off.
In hindsight, I realised that we paid off this "car" off in 5 years, just like we would have paid off the real car. And so from January 2009 till December 2013, we paid off the car, and then in January 2014, our electricity bill suddenly dropped from R5,000 per month to R350 per month. If we hadn't done anything, then in January 2014, our electricity bill would have been R1,800 per month.
So in the past 17 months we have saved about R26,000 in electricity costs AND had no load shedding.
We still have a way to go as we want to add a pool cover this year, increase our PV from 1 kW to between 4 and 5 kW, depending on how much we can put on our north facing roof, add another battery bank and add another inverter (or perhaps buy a new model), and then we won't need Eskom.
We will in fact be able to supply electricity 24 hours a day as and when the City or Eskom need it, but in order to do this we want Net Metering and Time of Use Tariffs, otherwise we just don't think its worth exporting any electricity.
At some point in the future we also want to add another 5kW to power our electric car, when we can afford it and when it is affordable for us.
Some of the incredible things that have happened in the past 7 years are:
And so I wish everyone I know another amazingly interesting year. At a recent party, I said that life would be so dull if it was perfect. I look forward to making our world more perfect each day, together with so many amazing people in my life.
If you want to read more: here links to some other places I have written or published things on the 'net:
Here are my web sites and BLOGs:
Work:
http://www.mypowerstation.biz/
http://mypowerstation-sa.blogspot.com
https://mypowerstation.wordpress.com/
http://loadsheddingguru.blogspot.com/
http://loadshedding.guru/
https://www.youtube.com/user/DavidLipschitz
http://www.orbital.co.za/
http://www.slideshare.net/DavidLipschitz
https://za.linkedin.com/in/davidlipschitz
https://www.facebook.com/MyPowerStation
https://www.facebook.com/groups/87529220082/
https://www.facebook.com/NetMeteringSA
https://twitter.com/mypowerstation
https://twitter.com/LoadShedingGuru
Other personal writings can be found here:
http://repairyourworld.blogspot.com/
http://afterthemayancalendar.blogspot.com/
Also:
https://www.facebook.com/david.lipschitz
https://about.me/david.lipschitz
I do!
Actually its not a Mercedes. It's a Renewable Energy System and part of it is on my roof and part of it is in my Garage.
I bought it in late 2008 and it was all installed and running by April 2009. A friend of mine and I installed it!
Everybody, except my wife, said I was crazy. Why would anyone want to buy an electricity generation system rather than buying a Mercedes? I had even just test driven the new shape Mercedes in 2008 and a friend asked me when I was going to buy it.
As it was I spent R200,000 on the physical equipment and another R100,000 on a one month business trip to the USA, where I learnt about Grid Tie Photovoltaics (PV), wrote the NABCEP (North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners) Entry Level exam and attended conferences, in Phoenix Arizona, and in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Total R300,000, the cost of my new Mercedes.
Today the R200,000 component is about R70,000 and the education is priceless.
By the time I went to the USA in February 2009, I had already put over 1,000 hours into R&D (research and development) re learning about my first renewable energy system.
And every time I arrived in my garage after that, in my Renault Clio, which is now 14 years old, I saw my Mercedes on my wall and on my roof.
Load shedding has effected everyone I know, except us. Lots of people I know have recently done installs and they are getting to be like us now, and we are so welcoming of them. Thank you for joining this retirement party.
In my view, one is retired when one doesn't have any expenses. By 2008, Mirjana and I had spent 9 years working on our retirement plan and I only had to work for 8 days a month to pay all our expenses. One day we will be back there.
Back in 2009, everyone was asking me how long this system was going to pay off. We worked out that it was costing us about R5 per kWh, when City of Cape Town electricity was only costing us 50 cents per kWh. Mirjana said it would take 20 years to pay it off.
In hindsight, I realised that we paid off this "car" off in 5 years, just like we would have paid off the real car. And so from January 2009 till December 2013, we paid off the car, and then in January 2014, our electricity bill suddenly dropped from R5,000 per month to R350 per month. If we hadn't done anything, then in January 2014, our electricity bill would have been R1,800 per month.
So in the past 17 months we have saved about R26,000 in electricity costs AND had no load shedding.
We still have a way to go as we want to add a pool cover this year, increase our PV from 1 kW to between 4 and 5 kW, depending on how much we can put on our north facing roof, add another battery bank and add another inverter (or perhaps buy a new model), and then we won't need Eskom.
We will in fact be able to supply electricity 24 hours a day as and when the City or Eskom need it, but in order to do this we want Net Metering and Time of Use Tariffs, otherwise we just don't think its worth exporting any electricity.
At some point in the future we also want to add another 5kW to power our electric car, when we can afford it and when it is affordable for us.
Some of the incredible things that have happened in the past 7 years are:
- I have a thriving software development business and I truly enjoy making people happy and solving problems and this fits my personality profile. I also love that I can work from anywhere in the world and travel to be with my wife's family every 18 months to two years. As our expenses continue to go down, we want to increase these visits.
- I have become a world renowned expert in Renewable Energy. I wasn't expecting this when I started out. I thought I'd just be an installer, installing systems, but I am in demand at conferences all over the place and I have had negotiations with conference organisers overseas, but nothing materialised yet. Soon or later it will happen.
- As part of this I have attended conferences and / or written letters to newspapers and magazines on behalf of Treasure The Karoo Action Group and the South African Alternative Energy Association and Greater Cape Town Civic Alliance.
- I am also doing battery based system designs and consulting and I refer work to various contractors for doing installations.
- Last year I turned 50. What a milestone it was. My business turned 20 years old last year and I have been married to the woman of my dreams for 17 wonderful, if somewhat turbulent, financially, years. But this is the life of an entrepreneur.
Dawie Roodt in his book, "Tax, Lies and Red Tape", has this to say about entrepreneurs in South Africa: "Besides the taxman, the workforce has also been demanding its pound of flesh, and then some. In fact, South Africa's organised workforce has become so powerful and militant that it has been forcing entrepreneurs to pay employees more and more of the wealth they are trying to create - without offering them anything that resembles an equivalent rise in productivity. In addition, once an entrepreneur has hired a few workers, he or she cannot simply fire them again. Obviously entrepreneurs need workers to succeed in their effort to create wealth; good workers. But red tape from here to eternity prevents them from showing poor performers to the door. Small wonder then that there are so few entrepreneurs in South Africa; theirs is the most exploited occupation in the country.But there are those of us who still believe in South Africa and are still here and still putting as much as we can in every day, paying all the taxes that are demanded of us, whilst at the same time still trying to make things better by offering electricity to the grid, or offering other services, which our government still ignores.
And so I wish everyone I know another amazingly interesting year. At a recent party, I said that life would be so dull if it was perfect. I look forward to making our world more perfect each day, together with so many amazing people in my life.
If you want to read more: here links to some other places I have written or published things on the 'net:
Here are my web sites and BLOGs:
Work:
http://www.mypowerstation.biz/
http://mypowerstation-sa.blogspot.com
https://mypowerstation.wordpress.com/
http://loadsheddingguru.blogspot.com/
http://loadshedding.guru/
https://www.youtube.com/user/DavidLipschitz
http://www.orbital.co.za/
http://www.slideshare.net/DavidLipschitz
https://za.linkedin.com/in/davidlipschitz
https://www.facebook.com/MyPowerStation
https://www.facebook.com/groups/87529220082/
https://www.facebook.com/NetMeteringSA
https://twitter.com/mypowerstation
https://twitter.com/LoadShedingGuru
Other personal writings can be found here:
http://repairyourworld.blogspot.com/
http://afterthemayancalendar.blogspot.com/
Also:
https://www.facebook.com/david.lipschitz
https://about.me/david.lipschitz
Monday, May 18, 2015
Sunday, May 3, 2015
Elon Musk's Tesla Energy Lithium Ion Battery Comments from David Lipschitz
Why Tesla is backing batteries
Did Tesla Just Kill Nuclear Power?
Elon Musk and Tesla aren't the first when it comes to home-scale battery backup systems. These are already available. It's just that in the energy world, Tesla's marketing is better than anyone else's in the world. Just like Apple's and Google's marketing.
Did Tesla Just Kill Nuclear Power?
Elon Musk and Tesla aren't the first when it comes to home-scale battery backup systems. These are already available. It's just that in the energy world, Tesla's marketing is better than anyone else's in the world. Just like Apple's and Google's marketing.
Isn't it incredible that these companies can have such clean and uncluttered websites, even though they have so many products and so much information?
There are already great Lithium-Ion (LiOn) products in the marketplace, but everyone is now saying that Elon Musk and Tesla will change the world. And yes, they will, along with many other great companies and technologies. I think the thing with Elon is his openness and wanting to share his technology and his ideal that we can get off fossil fuels. That appeals to everyone, including many of the sceptics out there.
My Lead Acid battery bank at the moment is 12 kWh of which about 4 kWh is usable on a regular basis. And cost about R18,000 (US$1,500). So the Tesla battery is about the same price if it lasts 10 years or more as claimed, or twice the price if it lasts 5 years. LiOn batteries have lots of great advantages such as lasting 4 times longer, fast charge, and fast discharge, without impacting the life of the battery. Higher charging/discharging efficiency should actually make the LiOn battery cheaper than Lead Acid. And fast charging means that one can have a large PV array to ensure that the battery is fully charged every day, including on rainy days.
We'll wait for more news once the system is in operation.
I've also been researching a Chinese LiOn battery for house-scale systems which is already available in South Africa at about the same price as the Tesla. See FreedomWon.
You can charge LiOn 1 to 1 under normal use, ie fast, ie if you have a 100 AH battery, you can put 100 Amps into it to charge it; with a 100 AH lead acid battery you can only put 20 Amps into it taking 5 hours to charge. And then another thing is that you can discharge a LiOn battery almost completely flat on a regular basis. With fast three-phase super-chargers one can actually charge LiOn 2 to 1, ie put 200 Amps into a 100 amp-hour battery bank.
And then there is the efficiency. The charge/discharge cycle of a Lead Acid battery is about 56% efficient, whereas the charge/discharge cycle of a LiOn battery is claimed to be 96%. Therefore a smaller LiOn battery can be used, ie fewer AH (Amp Hours) and therefore the LiOn battery might finally be cheaper than the Lead Acid Battery. Up till now, LiOn has been about 2.5 times the price of Lead Acid.
A LiOn battery takes up less space than Lead Acid, as can be seen in the size of Tesla's wall mounting.
There are already great Lithium-Ion (LiOn) products in the marketplace, but everyone is now saying that Elon Musk and Tesla will change the world. And yes, they will, along with many other great companies and technologies. I think the thing with Elon is his openness and wanting to share his technology and his ideal that we can get off fossil fuels. That appeals to everyone, including many of the sceptics out there.
My Lead Acid battery bank at the moment is 12 kWh of which about 4 kWh is usable on a regular basis. And cost about R18,000 (US$1,500). So the Tesla battery is about the same price if it lasts 10 years or more as claimed, or twice the price if it lasts 5 years. LiOn batteries have lots of great advantages such as lasting 4 times longer, fast charge, and fast discharge, without impacting the life of the battery. Higher charging/discharging efficiency should actually make the LiOn battery cheaper than Lead Acid. And fast charging means that one can have a large PV array to ensure that the battery is fully charged every day, including on rainy days.
We'll wait for more news once the system is in operation.
I've also been researching a Chinese LiOn battery for house-scale systems which is already available in South Africa at about the same price as the Tesla. See FreedomWon.
You can charge LiOn 1 to 1 under normal use, ie fast, ie if you have a 100 AH battery, you can put 100 Amps into it to charge it; with a 100 AH lead acid battery you can only put 20 Amps into it taking 5 hours to charge. And then another thing is that you can discharge a LiOn battery almost completely flat on a regular basis. With fast three-phase super-chargers one can actually charge LiOn 2 to 1, ie put 200 Amps into a 100 amp-hour battery bank.
And then there is the efficiency. The charge/discharge cycle of a Lead Acid battery is about 56% efficient, whereas the charge/discharge cycle of a LiOn battery is claimed to be 96%. Therefore a smaller LiOn battery can be used, ie fewer AH (Amp Hours) and therefore the LiOn battery might finally be cheaper than the Lead Acid Battery. Up till now, LiOn has been about 2.5 times the price of Lead Acid.
A LiOn battery takes up less space than Lead Acid, as can be seen in the size of Tesla's wall mounting.
Elon Musk and Tesla and companies like FreedomWon and maybe even My Power Station are changing the world, a step at a time, helping us all finally retire and become independent from the big corporations and big government upon whom we are all overly dependent.
Give me a call to do a presentation to your directors, company, organisation, community group, NGO, or family about your power station and your power needs.
PS: Batteries like these aren't the only kinds of storage we can use in a Decentralised Electricity with Embedded Generation. This mind map shows many different kinds of "batteries", all essentially storing electricity, energy and heat for later use.
PPS: One should note that both fossil fuel-based systems and renewable energy systems waste electricity and often have electricity when it isn't needed. In the past, this energy has been wasted in fossil fuel systems, but modern batteries can be used both by renewable energy systems and fossil fuel systems thus reducing our peak demand requirement and the need for so many power stations.
Give me a call to do a presentation to your directors, company, organisation, community group, NGO, or family about your power station and your power needs.
PS: Batteries like these aren't the only kinds of storage we can use in a Decentralised Electricity with Embedded Generation. This mind map shows many different kinds of "batteries", all essentially storing electricity, energy and heat for later use.
PPS: One should note that both fossil fuel-based systems and renewable energy systems waste electricity and often have electricity when it isn't needed. In the past, this energy has been wasted in fossil fuel systems, but modern batteries can be used both by renewable energy systems and fossil fuel systems thus reducing our peak demand requirement and the need for so many power stations.
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