The Nuclear Illusion

Posted by Jeroen van Agt in Unsustainable No Comments»

A widely heralded view holds that nuclear power is experiencing a dramatic worldwide revival and vibrant growth, because it’s competitive, necessary, reliable, secure, and vital for fuel security and climate protection.

That’s all false. In fact, nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options. These are the conclussions published in an in-depth research about nuclear power published by the Rocky Mountain Institute.

The full report: The Nuclear Illusion (PDF)

The Real Price of Solarpanels

Posted by Martin Kleinman in Solar energy 2 Comments»

panelen Due to very popular demand ☺ I was asked to translate my original article into English.    The original article, written in Dutch, can be found here.   Because this article is 6 months old,  I have updated the latest prices.

Last summer I received a question from one of my co-workers about our solar panels.   He didn’t want to know the recovery time of the whole set,  but the net kWh price from the generated electricity over the lifetime of the set of solar panels.  After making a calculation,  I found the conclusion surprising.

Dimmers used by OliNo

Posted by Marcel van der Steen in Explanation, Lamps No Comments»

When OliNo receives lamps that are dimmable then OliNo has a few dimmers to choose from. Dimmers that are connected between the grid voltage and the lamp have two main principles of operation: phase Wanneer OliNo lampen te meten krijgt die dimbaar zijn, dan heeft OliNo een paar dimmers waaruit ze kan kiezen. De dimmers die rechtstreeks tussen de netspanning en de lamp aangesloten worden kennen een tweetal dim-pincipes: forward phase-cut and reverse phase-cut. Some of it has been explained in an explanation article on this site.

In this article the available dimmers are used for different types of lamps. The current and voltage are measured after the dimmer, so the voltage across the lamp and the current through it.

It will become clear that there are different types of dimmers and lamps react differently. We will look at the voltage and current waveforms to see the differences. The article explains whether the lamp tested was well dimmable with a certain dimmer type or not.

Update Dec 013: addition of new dimmer, the Lumeo Domus that works with loads from 7 W/VA.

Update April 2014: addition of Busch Jaeger LED dimmer 6523 U.