They Shall Shine in the Dark

On February 24 I wrote: They shall shine in the dark. I use this sentence as a seed for Twitter search poetry – interlacing poetry with temperature waves again . ~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~ They shall shine in the dark The interstellar void going down much faster determined to take over under renewed attack under…

Loops Near the surface. Lumped Together in Space.

There was a time, when most articles here looked like lab reports or chapters of a thesis. Occasionally, there was a weird poem thrown in. Now is the time for art only, and the thesis-like postings provide for raw material. Temperature waves beneath the ground, driven by the oscillation of the temperature on the surface…

Heat Conduction Cheat Sheet

I am dumping some equations here I need now and then! The sections about 3-dimensional temperature waves summarize what is described at length in the second part of this post. Temperature waves are interesting for simulating yearly and daily oscillations in the temperature below the surface of the earth or near wall/floor of our ice/water…

Data for the Heat Pump System: Heating Season 2016-2017

I update the documentation of measurement data [PDF] about twice a year. This post is to provide a quick overview for the past season. The PDF also contains the technical configuration and sizing data. Based on typical questions from an ‘international audience’ I add a summary here plus some ‘cultural’ context: Building: The house is…

My Data Kraken – a Shapeshifter

I wonder if Data Kraken is only used by German speakers who translate our hackneyed Datenkrake – is it a word like eigenvector? Anyway, I need this animal metaphor, despite this post is not about facebook or Google. It’s about my personal Data Kraken – which is a true shapeshifter like all octopuses are. (Because…

Alien Energy

I am sure it protects us not only from lightning but also from alien attacks and EMP guns … So I wrote about our lightning protection, installed together with our photovoltaic generator. Now our PV generator is operational for 11 months and we have encountered one alien attack, albeit by beneficial aliens. The Sunny Baseline…

Temperature Waves and Geothermal Energy

Nearly all of renewable energy exploited today is, in a sense, solar energy. Photovoltaic cells convert solar radiation into electricity, solar thermal collectors heat hot water. Plants need solar power for photosynthesis, for ‘creating biomass’. The motion of water and air is influenced by the forces caused by the earth’s rotation, but by temperature gradients…

The Impact of Ambient Temperature on the Output Power of Solar Panels

I have noticed the impact of traversing clouds on solar power output: Immediately after a cloud has passed, power surges to a record value. This can be attributed to the focusing effect of the surrounding clouds and/or cooling of the panels. Comparing data for cloudless days in May and June, I noticed a degradation of…

An Efficiency Greater Than 1?

No, my next project is not building a Perpetuum Mobile. Sometimes I mull upon definitions of performance indicators. It seems straight-forward that the efficiency of a wood log or oil burner is smaller than 1 – if combustion is not perfect you will never be able to turn the caloric value into heat, due to…

Random Thoughts on Temperature and Intuition in Thermodynamics

Recent we felt a disturbance of the force: It has been demonstrated that the absolute temperature of a real system can be pushed to negative values. The interesting underlying question is: What is temperature really? Temperature seems to be an intuitive everyday concept, yet the explanations of ‘negative temperatures’ prove that it is not. Actually, atoms have…