Real-life lessons from three years with a HEMS (Home Energy Measurement System). In our experience, it has potential for peak savings, but overall savings are negative. And then the gateway broke down. Continue reading

Reading: 13455kWh Three years ago, just before the great Tohoku Earthquake and disaster, we connected our solar inverter to the grid. It is still noisy, but for power the system does perform. If all years are as good as this third year, when we sold 2702 kWh and consumed the rest, we will reach payback break-even after 11 years, not in 13 years as we initially expected, based on the installer's forecast of harvesting 3477 kWh a year. After that it is all profits for as long as the sun shines, the system works, and TEPCO buys the electricity. On 2014-02-28, our inverter showeds 13567 kWh harvested, of which roughly 1/3 is own consumption, for which we do not need to pay on average 28 ¥/kWh, daytime rate with "8-Hour Night Service" 2/3 feed into the grid, most near peak... Continue reading

One of my paid hobbies has been innovation for the company, as in making new technology work for us to help us complete our jobs for clients, easier, faster, or more reliable. More than a year ago, one of my responsibilities shifted from process innovation to business development. Loving it. In my free time, I took basic courses in project management, both waterfall and agile, read business books like Tribal Leadership and The Culture Game, all good and valuable, but none of these prompted me to post. The framework for directed innovation does. It is old enough to be proven in business and criticized in public, yet new enough (to me, anyway) to get excited about innovation insights. (You too, maybe?) Let's begin with quoting from one of many insightful articles from the company Strategyn, whose logo I borrowed for... Continue reading

How to economize at home while keeping comfort levels up. Principles for practical choices from a presentation given in 2013 at United Nations University. Continue reading

Today's takeaway: tagging tried and tested tools for project management, like paper and mindmapping for quick concepts, traditional project planners for the heavy lifting and a convenient one-page overview tool. As few of the tolls speak to each other, some data rework happens, but it acts as refinement of the project statements. Continue reading

Examining how I could accelerate innovation in the company, I saw the need to learn about professional project management. This is a story in two parts: 1. how, where and what I studied recently, and 2. what tools I picked up along the way work for me. Continue reading

Intercontinental dust drift approaching from North in Yokohama 2013-03-10 around 14:00. We closed all windows shut and stopped the 24h venti... Continue reading

We are deconstructing more than a managerial illusion of control. ... At the edge we see better ways to work together, have access to more experience, make better buying decisions within the constraints of time, money, information, and moderated by the vast repertoire of emotional appeal. Example: buyer's remorse about new air conditioners. Continue reading

Artists inform scientists what might be worth trying. Engineers build what might be worth buying. Marketers find people, offer win-win for mutual profit. Industrialists make it affordable and cheaper - this might not work much longer. Financiers take risks and take rewards, cyclically bubbling. Teachers help future artists, scientists, engineers, marketers, industrialists, and more find their vision and calling. This might work. Others create safe spaces for stillness and peace, to find personal truth. This might be worth trying. I will be glad if I can help you get better energy technology to succeed, in the ultimate vision non-polluting yet safe and easy to use, easy to get used to, and easy on the planet at end-of-use. Likely decentralized for added resilience. What might we co-create if we connect? Image credit: plus.google.com retrieved 2013-01-02 Related articles Industrialists vs. the rest... Continue reading

When I was 16, I was ignorant, like most at that age (nothing new to see here, move on, go to work). Almost 40 years later, I am still ignorant, that amount of accumulated knowledge and experience not making a visible drop in the ocean of what might be knowable. Here is one drop that stood out for me. Continue reading

Grateful for our forbears' lives we enjoy building on foundations they laid and clean up messes they had to leave behind. And the next generation will build the next level and do it for us. Continue reading

Here we are, in the new year, and some of us choose to make resoutions. Fine if you like to, but for many it is better not to, writes Chuck Blakeman. Instead of resolutely setting goals, I went to follow a faint calling to examine and re-discover what am I still longing for, silently, at the turn of the year. Continue reading