Inspected Streetlights

Last week I shared the "No Apparent Structural Damage" sign on my office building after Hurricane Sandy. Walking around this week, I noticed these signs on streetlamps, too:

And, while my building was undamaged, the whole of the South Street Seaport was trashed:

Solar Sillyness

In recent years PSE&G the main local power company has been installing solar panels on utility poles.  Many have long considered this to be a complete folly.  Well I am here to both prove them correct and show an inaccuracy on the PSE&G website about these panels.

During Hurricane Sandy a number of utility poles came down in my opinion largely due to the large sail like solar panel bolted to them.  All my simple analysis will exclude damage caused by solar panels and maintenance costs.

Hurricane Sandy is was caused me to start thinking about this.  I looked on the back of one of the downed panels and found out how much power they are rated for.  The panel was rated for a maximum of 200 watts (AC).  A MAXIMUM of 200 watts!  It also must be pointed out that this is when the solar panels are at 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).  I will also assume that the price of this unit is about $650 as this seems to be the approximate price of a good solar panel in this wattage range.  Given all the things stacked against the solar panels like our climate, clouds, winter, and trees, I will assume (very generously in my opinion) that they generate about 50 watts for about 8 hours a day on average over the course of the year.  The manufacturer of these panels Petra Solar gives a data sheet for these panels and the dimensions are given as 66.14" x 39.40" or about 5.5 ft by 3.3 ft.  They also confirm the output of 200 watts, however the PSE&G website claims they put out 235 watts (DC), they do however have a 240 watt (DC) max INPUT.  This may just be do to me not understanding what they are talking about, but I rather suspect they like having a higher number on the site.  It will also be noted that Petra Solar give a limited 5 year warranty.  I will assume the panel has a 10 year lifespan (which is also very generous).

Its time to do some simple math (50 watts)*(8 Hours)*(1 kW/1000 W) = 0.4 kWh, so each day on average one panel generates 0.4 kilowatt hours (The average American household uses about 31.5 kWh a day).  So (0.4 kWh)*(365 days/year)(10 years) = 1460 kWh, which means that over the course of 10 years that panel will power one house for about 46 days (this is of course assuming that the electrical usage of the average American stays the same for 10 years, which is a very silly thing to assume).  Lets now calculate the cost of the power coming from that panel. ($650/1460 kWh) = $0.4452/kWh or 44.52 cents/kWh.  PSE&G rates(page 51) are 16.57 cents/kWh (NJ has on average the 4th most expensive electricity in the country).  This means that over the course of its lifetime the solar panel is 2.69 times more expensive than the normal grid power cost, in fact it would take 26.87 years for the solar panels to break even at current rates.

The final analysis shows very clearly that theses panels are totally stupid, and a huge waste of money.  These costs don't include the cost of instillation which with unions could increase the initial cost by 50%.  Additionally, this doesn't take into account damage they cause due to storms which can exceed the simple cost of replacing the pole due to property damage and people being out of power.  So basically they exist because uneducated people who can't do simple math think they are a great idea.  Oh also the government gave huge tax breaks for putting in these humongous wastes of money.

Fidelity Password Insecurity

So my company recently switched to Fidelity for our 401Ks and it looks like their password security is abysmal. They require minimum of 6 chars and a maximum of 12 ... which is shorter than my high-security password. The cherry on top: no symbols allowed! just alphanumeric, pretty crazy. My financial investment account is potentially less secure than my doodle account.

Update:
Thanks to some diligent commentators and www.howsecureismypassword.net we have learned that these passwords can be cracked in about 4 minutes by a computer.

Welcome back to Lower Manhattan

My new job is in Lower Manhattan. In case you haven't heard, Lower Manhattan got flooded in Hurricane Sandy:

When I finally made it back to work on Tuesday, this sign greeted me on the building's main entrance:

Verizon provides my Internet, really?

Verizon is an internet service provider, but it stinks like a pea-brained Dinosaur.

I recently signed up for Verizon Fios, which is actually pretty good compared to what I had before but here are a few interesting things. When I wanted to unsubscribe from their spam emails I found they could unsubscribe me in 10 business days.

In 10 days I could walk from Boston to verizon headquarters in NYC and handhold them through setting up constant contact which would have unsubscribed me instantly.

Well I suppose that is okay, as long as the main part of the site works ... right? No.

The ads and nonsense were working full speed but the actual thing I came for? Broken. Also, notice the "helpful" web search tool at the top ... because I'm going to visit my.verizon.com when I need to Google something?!

Maybe they really are trying hard to make things better, in video below it says that "Your bill is now simpler than ever." Great, I guess that is why you need six and half minutes to explain it.


Oh and one more thing verizon, you spelled my name wrong.

Welcome to Northern New Jersey

So, while Aryeh posted about what happened in Central NJ, up here in Northern NJ we still have no electricity. Fortunately, we didn't sustain any water or tree damage. Currently, our generator is powering the essential human needs: Fridge/freezer, sump pump, and internet connection. Unfortunately, that means a lot of waiting in fuel lines:

PSE&G currently estimates our electricity will be back by 11:59PM, Friday November 9th.

Welcome to New Jersey

As most of you should know, New Jersey was hit severely by Hurricane Sandy Monday evening.  My house just got power back about two hours ago.  The coast line was badly damaged, pictures of what is left of the boardwalks are all over the news.  I will show you what I did during the storm and what my area looked like in a walk around yesterday afternoon.

Playing Rummikub, by flash light, listening to classical music and drinking wine is not a bad way to weather storm.

 This tree ripped the road up.

 This was the worst damage I saw on my walk and based upon the way it came up it was self inflicted.

 You can see the new driveway right next to where the tree came up.  Based upon the fact that it is not ripped up we think that when it was installed they cut the trees roots.  This weakened it for the wind and when it came down it hit their house hard.

 In the top left you can see the top of the telephone pole is snapped and hanging down.  This tree snapped 4 poles.  This is the first.

 This is the next and it full exploded apart.

 The last one was at a corner and here it is sitting on the ground.  The one next over was very bent over.

 This is a tether cable from one of the poles that came down.  It is made up of seven 1/8th inch steel cables.  They are all snapped at a 45 degree angle as expected due to failure theory.  Metals under tension fail due to shear load.  Based upon the fact that there is minimal necking at the fracture site the cable probably failed under impulse load.  Say the pole it was connected to slamming to the ground.

 This pole appeared rotted.  We think that the bending and twisting moment on the street light caused it to fail.

If you ever wondered what was inside a street light.  It appears to just be a transformer and a high pressure sodium lamp.

Photo credits to my mother.

A cloudless view of earth from space

I recently bought a used book over at the Davis flea.

Notice that there are no clouds... very odd ... but look when it was published:

1960! Yeah that is right before people went to space; it was before the Apollo program and photos of earth seen from the moon being distributed worldwide. Since then, artists do not made the mistake of drawing earth from space without clouds.

This picture from the Galileo spacecraft is a good example of what the view would really have looked like.

This blog post is based on another blog post I came across sometime ago, which actually had a picture of the book too. I would love to link them but I haven't been able to find it.

Mathematica StackExchange Swag

I've been a member of the mathematica.stackexchange.com Mathematica Q&A site since it started (I'm user #9). The site recently "graduated" from beta, and they gave away some "swag" to top users. Although I haven't been that active recently, I was early on, which placed me in the top 14% of all-time users, and qualified me for some swag.

So, a few days ago, I got a box from StackExchange:

How awesome is it that StackExchange's address is on Exchange Plaza?!?

Anyway, inside was a T-Shirt:

and some assorted stickers and writing implements:

Forget any academic credentials -- this is some exciting nerd cred!