Earth Notes: Diarycast - Interview Snippets (2021-01-14)

Diarycast

Hi, I'm Damon Hart-Davis, and welcome to Earth Notes podcast on all things eco and green and efficient @Home!

14th January 2021.

So, we're under another national coronavirus lockdown in England, with a post-Christmas surge in infections and all the rest, but free virtual meetings can still happen!

[00:31]

Imperial College's Grantham Institute has been creating content to celebrate the success of the Grantham Institute's Accelerator program.

[00:40]

Recently, Imperial College published the "World in 2050" which shows how a sustainable positive future is possible using technology being developed today.

[00:50]

The interview that I have lifted a couple of bits from is for a section about Radbot and retrofitting.

[00:58]

How does Radbot use light to infer occupancy?

[01:01]

I mentioned level and edge sensitive stuff and a risk-based approach and Radbot's rolling memory of room use.

[01:09]

Well, there's a few things. So there's both to be engineering about it, both level and edge sensitive stuff there.

[01:19]

So the strongest signal, the one that Radbot has always used basically from the start,

[01:26]

that you're there is a sudden rise in light levels, either you flicked a light on

[01:30]

or you've drawn a curtain. And in winter when you need heating, you're not going to sit in the dark all day.

[01:41]

That was the first clue. The second thing is there's a kind of risk-weighted view in there

[01:55]

And then it also has a rolling memory of what it's seen you do before and if it thinks you're generally around at this time

[02:03]

and it can't see you now, it will apply an even smaller setback.

[02:05]

What beyond Radbot might I do to fix the climate?

[02:11]

I talked about forever tinkering, energy storage and redeveloping my local council estate right

[02:17]

so as to reduce fuel poverty and climate change and how I believe in encouraging active travel.

[02:23]

What is the best thing I can do to fix the climate?

[02:27]

At the moment the best thing I can do I think is this. I mean I'm always tinkering so if you go and

[02:31]

look at my Earth.Org.UK site you'll see I've got all sorts of things. There's a project which got

[02:35]

suspended because of lockdown where I want to tinker with some, I've got online AC coupled mains storage, I've got offline storage, I want to try some heat storage...

[02:47]

I'm always agitating for things to be better done. The council estate I'm on is going to, my house is going to get pulled

[02:50]

down under compulsory purchase and they're proposing to rebuild a whole lot of stuff and

[02:55]

the thing I've been bellyaching about is well a) not ripping me off but b) making sure they build

[02:59]

these homes to a high enough standard to eliminate fuel poverty amongst the tenants and the need to

[03:06]

retrofit to avoid climate change. So if I am instrumental at getting space to house 2000 people

[03:13]

built to much much better building standards than what otherwise has been that would be a great win

[03:18]

right? So things like that but you know and you'd think I was a mad cyclist if you looked at my

[03:24]

Twitter account but I'm very strongly in favour of supporting non-car based travel

[03:29]

but you know I'm putting all my energies that I possibly can into Radbot.

[03:35]

I will add a link to the finished piece in the show notes when it's done.

[03:44]

[OUTRO MUSIC]

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There's more on my "Earth Notes" Web site at Earth.Org.UK.