City Sends Spy Planes Out To Determine If Your Home Is Wasting Energy
from the only-trying-to-help dept
It's no secret that not everyone realizes how wasteful they are of energy resources. However, apparently one city in the UK went to rather extreme measures to make that point clear to residents in the city. It hired a spy plane to fly over the city and take heat loss photos across the entire city. The photos were then matched to a city map, displaying which houses were leaking the most heat at the time the spy plane passed over. Eventually, the entire map was put online so everyone could see which buildings were wasting the most energy. What's unclear is whether or not these heat maps convinced anyone to actually do anything (or if it just freaked people out).
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Filed Under: energy, spy planes
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Hot houses
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Re: Hot houses
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Re: Hot houses
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Re: Hot houses
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Re: Re: Hot houses
Most police helicopters are already equipped with IR and heat sensors.
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Re: Re: Re: Hot houses
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Re: Re: Hot houses
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not new
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not legal to find pot
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Re: not legal to find pot
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Re:
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die
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Fuck them.
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Re: Fuck them.
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Re: Fuck them.
As it turns out, it wasn't or isn't. Otherwise they would have done more than just throw the shit up on the web when they were done.
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Re: Fuck them.
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Re: Fuck them.
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save energy, turn off your heater.
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Re: save energy, turn off your heater.
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Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
Police do use thermal imagery for 'hot spot' detection. Instead of using that sole evidence - which may or may not be violating your rights - they simply go to the electric company and find out what your bill is.
No matter how much you want to use - if you have a grow room lit up - it will make a huge difference. That's why most people steal the power from others, esp. commercial establishment.
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Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
I'd venture to guess that around Silicon Valley, it's not that unusual. A couple of friends have small datacenters in the their houses, I'd think that all of those make a 'huge difference'.
Chris.
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Re: Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
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Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
Police do use thermal imagery for 'hot spot' detection. Instead of using that sole evidence - which may or may not be violating your rights - they simply go to the electric company and find out what your bill is.
No matter how much you want to use - if you have a grow room lit up - it will make a huge difference. That's why most people steal the power from others, esp. commercial establishment.
reply: why not just use a gas generator to supply your power???
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Re: Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
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Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
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Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
And what are they going to say? we asked this guy's bill on a hunch? Otherwise I think it'll all be fruit of the poisonous tree
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Rental property
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Re: Rental property
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Even if you don't believe in global warming, you must recognize power grids and fuel supplies are limited commodities. Every bit of efficiency you can encourage reduces the speed of consumption and expansion... not to mention your monthly expenses.
Seriously, who loses here?
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I want to see
Clearly, the page for public consumption has no details, but the original photos may contain many indelicate items of people doing things in their backyards when they thought they had privacy. I don't know the area's layout so I don't know if backyards and all that even exist, but still. Also, it does not take into effect how many people are in the structure using lights and so forth. Furthermore, it does not show how the houses relate to the surroundings. Maybe it is all really warm except for the houses that were empty?
I kind of like the idea, and if it increases awareness and people act on that then its win/win. However, this is more of an expensive political stunt.
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Let's see.
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Theft?
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Re: Theft?
Either way, what's your address?
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gubberment
vote ron paul, suckas
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weed growing
using IR cams to find growing rooms has been going on for years and years!
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Really, this is news in the UK?
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Jesus People
Your Natural Gas comes from outside of your own country. Your primary source is Russia, who just happens to think you're a little needle nosed dick with too much political clout. Kudos to this local government for positive efforts made.
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spy planes
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To "secure" can mean "to keep safe from harm" or it can mean "to keep possession of". Therefore "security" means one thing to you and something entirely different to them.
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the title of your piece
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what the planes were really doing....
Plant a seed, grow a weed!
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Yikes
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Poor Method of Determining Energy Waste!
When I think about roof type construction -vs- heat loss -vs- air conditioning use... I begin to think of how useless this data/map really is.
Not to mention the fact that this is merely a snap-shot in time that only shows HEAT LOSS for a given building at a specific point in time. You would have to have continuous monitoring over say an entire month to create any useful data that would show where to focus energy conservation.
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Re: Poor Method of Determining Energy Waste!
It also depends on what the ambient air temperature is when the survey was done. During winter, there's little need for most places (except data centres etc) to have aircon on cooling.
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A/C isn't all that common here, we tend to use more heating.
I think this is a _very_ good idea, especially when you point out to people that you only have to waste 'x' amount of heat before fitting insulation would have been cheaper..
appeal directly to peoples pockets.
as for costing a fortune, well i doubt it was a real spyplane, easier to use the local plods helicopter with a thermal camera for the same effect. but then would that have got in the news?
I'd be interested to see a thermal piccy of this place
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this
First reply commented about pot-houses (mentioned nowhere in the links) and then next thing we know is that its Bush's fault.
Way to go guys. Really intelligent.
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Very good idea
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sandwiches
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Re: sandwiches
I AGREE!!
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Not a bad idea really
Added to this I'm looking to move house within the same area soon - I'd love to be able to check out the energy readings to get an idea of bills etc
I just hope they average out readings for a few days or so to get them reasonably accurate, although some of the comments about empty buildings giving high heat readings seem odd
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The objective of the project was no doubt to increase awareness of energy use, hence, in my view it has succeeded!
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This has no value...
The temperature readings you get from an object are highly dependent on its surface texture. There will be no continuity between houses sitting next to each other with different roofing materials, so saying one is ‘hot’ while the other isn’t is utter bull. If they took these images during the day (or different times in the day) you’d even get a huge amount of heat reflected from the sun!
Also remember that a building has five effective sides for heat loss, and your only looking at roof insulation. Thermal cameras can be used effectively to look at heat-loss in a building (and current housing sales regulations in the UK require you to look at this before you sell), but this sort of methodology is not in line with professional practise.
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And while im on it...
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There's a VERY good change those houses, along with other 'aristocracy' houses are using likely as much as 25 times the energy a normal family does.
It's complete BS they don't need to fly over houses for this and all of you who think this is a good idea are idiots.
One can simply call the power company and ask for a energy usage report, why do they need to fly over? Seriously.... come on... How stupid are people getting?
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Re:
Ironicly the ritch don't pay that sort of bill, because they can afford to fit good quality insulation and double-glazing.
But you can't just phone up a power station and ask how much power someone is using, because that will violate provider/consumer confidentiality. Its not representative either, as naturally a larger or older house will cost more to heat.
But all this isn't to say the technology doesn't work; it does. A propper thermographer will consider the outside temperature and the inside temperature (clearly you can't do this if the two are the same), along with the thickness and surface area of the walls. He'll then consider the energy going in to heat the house, the proportion its loosing and tell you where you can invest to reduce this.
If this is intended as a publicity piece, fine. Raising awareness of these issues is important. The danger is that people consider this credible, and run out to spend money on new double glazing they don't need.
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EM spectrum
> afoul of the fourth amendment
I'm always confused by this reasoning. It's all just the EM spectrum, what difference does it make if it is visible or not? If you are emitting energy at any wavelength into a public space (say the street), and it is detected there using a passive detector, why isn't that fair game for anyone to observe? If you want to hide it, make sure you HIDE IT!
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Heat Maps/Utility Monitoring
Since the 70's when the US had a spurt of energy consciousness and started to seal up buildings, allergies and chemical sensitivities have been on the rise. Also, during this time frame our use of questionable cleaning products and syntheitic air fresheners, personal fragrances and perfumed products for cleaning clothes has increased. We are making ourselves sick.
In 1968 my first child was born and I read Dr. Spock's baby book............he suggested that the perfect temp for a healthy baby is 68 and that there should always be a window cracked in bedrooms to allow the flow of fresh air.
Here in the midwest of the US, we overcool and overheat most of our buildings................people do not have control of thermostats...................main computer for this school district where I worked in St. Louis was located in Atlanta.................heat on in the spring sometimes and air on in the winter...................and by time problem was corrected, weather changed..........common sense needs to be used..................people wear sweaters and jackets in restaurants in the summer in ST. Louis.................I know people who keep their air down so low that they wear sweats and use comforters while watching TV in the summer time..........and have their heat up so high that they wear summer clothes at home in the winter...................
We have many challenges in our relationship to the environment and the connection of our health. However, we need to stop trading one problem for another.
Please google for more information about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.
robin
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Spy plane heat loss maps
The government should provide an tax incentive for utility companies and home and business owners to work together.
Utility companies could subcontract out insulation work based on a government provided formula.
Of course there are all kinds of reasons to say this not would work 100% well. But think about defense budgets and how far something like this would cut down on the NEED to defend oil sources.
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