BMS reConnect #47: DRONES! DRONES! DRONES!
Also: Revisiting electrification at my house, heat pumps for beer, and more!
DISCLAIMER
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DRONING ON AND ON AND ON
Pardon my French, but this drone situation in NJ has become an absolute sh!t show. One of the weirder, more ridiculous situations I’ve encountered in my life. Nearly as ridiculous as the Giants going from a well run franchise that wins Super Bowls to one that is an absolute laughingstock.
To re-cap:
First blip of activity seemed to occur over/around Picatinny Arsenal in North Jersey on 11/18.
Then people started to report seeing them all over the surrounding areas.
The FBI asked for assistance from the public in spotting them.
Public goes into a frenzy at this FBI request, starts reporting every airplane that flies over as a potential drone sighting. You really need to see some of the local Facebook pages to believe it. Please, keep uploading your grainy cell phone footage of 747s flying overhead.
The FBI and NJ state officials say nothing? Do nothing? Know nothing?
But don’t worry, because there’s nothing to worry about.
Congressman from NJ Jeff Van Drew says its Iranian drones launching from a “mother ship” off the coast? WTF???
Pentagon says its not that.
Picatinny does lots of advanced weapons stuff…maybe it’s their new tech? Not us, they say.
Maybe there’s a missing nuke?
Or maybe it’s just missing nuclear material (whew!).
This whole thing has become extremely exhausting. None of it makes sense. Pretty sure “They” know something but aren’t spilling the beans. For the record, I live at ground zero of where this stuff has been happening—Morris County, NJ—and I haven’t seen a single drone. Seen a whole lot of airplanes flying in/out of Newark, Morristown, and Essex County airports, but no drones. Now that doesn’t mean they aren’t there, I just haven’t seen them myself. For me to personally get on-board with Drone Mania, I either need to see one flying at low altitude, see highly erratic aerial maneuvering, or see a swarm of them flying in coordination. Hasn’t happened yet.
Maybe they are just straight up, old school UFO’s? UAPs? NHIs? Not sure if that would make people feel better or worse at this point, but at least it would be an explanation. And frankly…the news cycle moves so fast these days, people would probably stop caring in about 36 hours anyway as long as there weren’t any mass abductions/probings. (Note: if the UFO topic scratches an itch for you, I found this website a few years ago that provides a fun, seemingly objective look into topic)
Overall…really just ready for this one to be over. I get it: we don’t know anything, or we know something and we aren’t saying, or its UFO’s, or its foreign actors, or it’s our top secret stuff we’re testing, or we’re looking for a lost nuke, or…or…or….
ARGHH!!!!
Two upsides for me:
It prompted me to get a really cool inflatable Christmas decoration that I think really met the moment:
My ugly Christmas sweater I ordered in mid-November is going to really sleigh (see what I did there?) if it ever gets here:
ELECTRIFICATION AT MY HOUSE
Way back when, in issue #7, I wrote about getting off the old oil-fired beast in the basement and walking the walk when it comes to electrification. Time for a checkin to see how we’re doing! Note please that our home is heading towards its 100th birthday in a few years (built in 1927), so we’re working with some old bones here.
Here’s what my consumption looks like in terms of kBTU per month for gas and electric. On the year, I average 61 therms and 870 kWh per month. You can see from the chart below that the consumption is very seasonally correlated (as one would expect). I had absolutely *thought* we heated mostly with the mini-splits…turns out, we’re using a lot more energy for the gas fireplace in the winter than we are with the mini-splits. About 75% of the heat comes from gas.
Fortunately/unfortunately, the gas fireplace makes it very cozy in my living room so we keep it on more than we should. And with the cost of natural gas at $1.38/therm ($13.80/MMBtu) and my electric at $0.06/kWh ($17.58/MMBtu), it still just makes more financial sense for me to run the fireplace and skew the heating load more towards gas. Gonna have to vote with my wallet here until that cost consideration flips.
But wait…what? Why is my electric so cheap when I’m in a high cost-of-energy area? If you didn’t link through above to that previous post, you’ll have missed that I installed solar panels back in 2021. Since my utility company does net metering, my production cancels out my consumption and I only have to pay the balance and any service fees. Here’s how that has gone so far, with my 12.6kW PV array having offset ~88% of my total electric consumption since Sept ‘21:
And stupid me: I got a plugin hybrid Pacifica within a year of doing the PV job and I couldn’t account for that load when the system was sized. I think I would probably be covering 100% of my annual consumption if I weren’t also charging a car. (Well, sometimes charging a car: the hybrid drivetrain on the Pacifica has given us a bunch of problems…in the past 8 weeks I think we’ve only been able to charge the car less than 5 times because of problems with the charger. Bringing her back in on Thursday for the 5th service call on the EV side of the vehicle in under 3 years. I’m probably going to ditch the car in the near future because of this.)
I’m generally curious as to what the payback has been on the solar, but it is a bit tricky to calculate because I did a cash-out re-fi of my house to pay for the PV. The whole thing was about $38k (including some tree removal). I figure I’m saving somewhere around $1500/year on the electric. When the car actually charges, that saves us money on gasoline, so maybe a couple hundred more a year there? We got a 26% tax credit on the install and I get about $1000/year back from the state through TRECs. I guess we can say I’m saving around $2800/year and after the tax credit the system was about $28k, so all-in it’s probably a 10 year payback. Noting also, the system is underperforming the output that was modeled/sold by about 10%. This is disappointing, but not terrible.
A few key KPI’s overall on my home energy consumption:
$0.52/sq ft. What I am spending to heat the home. On the lower side of average.
7.19 BTU per sq ft per heating degree day (aka Heat Slope). This is probably pretty close to the median and probably pretty good for a 98 year old home.
13.12 BTU per sq ft per cooling degree day (aka Cooling Slope)
$0.69/sq ft. Total energy cost. American average is $1.04/sq ft, so this is pretty good.
A few rambling thoughts to wrap up:
I had to replace a gas water heater about two years ago and did so in-kind. I was looking at a heat pump style unit but had concerns. I wanted to do a split-style heat pump unit but they cost a fortune at the time. Next time around we’ll do that.
I have a finished attic I am going to condition at some point that will impact all of this.
I really want a whole-home battery, but they are expensive. It cost as much as the solar a few years ago when I was looking at them.
More nuanced…I wanted a small whole-home battery and then an EV that allows for bidirectional charging. The idea is the car battery can power the home when it is docked, then when the car leaves the system fails over to a modestly sized battery in the house. Good in theory but I’m not sure the tech is there yet. Or the price for the tech, at least.
There are definitely a few cold spots in the house that are surely sucking energy out. I should fix those.
There are about 20 single pane windows w/window weights in them that need to be replaced.
EVERYTHING—windows, cheeseburgers, grapes, etc—is so expensive these days. It’s nuts.
All-in-all, we’ve done a lot to the house since we got it, but there are a bunch more projects to do, many of which will impact the energy consumption. We’re in this for the long haul; incremental progress is progress nonetheless.
CYBERSECURITY
Interesting article I came across on LinkedIn the other day:
A few key takeaways:
Rise in Cyberattacks: As password-related attacks increase, Microsoft is prioritizing the shift to passkeys, which are more secure, faster, and resistant to phishing.
Successful Adoption Strategy: Microsoft has seen a strong response to passkeys, with users 3x more successful in signing in and 99% completion rates for registration. Proactive nudges and messaging emphasizing speed and security have been key to user engagement.
Simplified User Experience: Microsoft claims the transition to passkeys simplifies the sign-in process by defaulting to passkeys when available and guiding users through the enrollment process at strategic points.
Massive Scale-up: Microsoft’s efforts to scale passkey adoption led to a 987% increase in usage and a 10% reduction in password reliance, signaling a significant move toward passwordless security.
Future Vision: The ultimate goal is a phishing-resistant, passwordless digital landscape, and Microsoft’s strategy is laying the groundwork for a future where passkeys replace passwords entirely.
Multi-factor authentication can be a bit frustrating, but I guess so can forgetting passwords. Interesting trend to take note of. I’m curious how this will push into the building technology space, noting I’ve already seen plenty of it with Cloud-based BAS overlay’s that utilize a Microsoft Azure environment.
STEAM HEAT PUMPS FOR BREWING
I could’ve pulled this article from any one of the wide variety of engineering/manufacturing sources that I was able to find about this project, but we’re going to source this one from BeerToday.co.uk. Just feels right.
Innovative deployment in the UK, as Hepworth Brewery has installed a breakthrough technology—industrial heat pumps that are capable of generating steam—within their brewing process.
“The Greensteam heat pump from Futraheat cost-effectively recovers low-grade waste vapour from the brewing process and delivers it back as steam with a temperature of 130oC (298F). This is far higher than most heat pumps, which typically deliver hot water up to around 80oC (176F). This is the first time a steam-generating heat pump has been installed in the UK.
Initially operating on just the boil stage of brewing at Hepworth Brewery, the heat pump could, if rolled out across the business, replace the oil boiler completely, enabling the brewer to cut carbon emissions by up to 90% and reduce fuel costs by around 40%.”
I wanted to highlight this story for two reasons:
Topical interest. I’ve found that many people in the HVAC space also like beer.
This stuff is coming to North America. The steam heat pumps, not the beer. And in capacities that are available in commercial building applications.
I’m aware of North American made heat pumps that are being marketed as capable of going up to 210F, with rumors that they are capable of truly making low pressure steam.
2025 should be an exciting year for these technologies. More to come.
ACOUSTIC JAMS
Heavy metal ballad on a piano by a talented Russian lady. Nothing Else Matters.
dang...probably negligent here that I didn't weave in any conversation about the potential for the vast majority of these sightings being a form of mass hysteria a la Salem,1692. Guess I'll wait for the next drone invasion to cover that angle.