Pay back analysis - General Electric GE GeoSpring

Pay back analysis - General Electric GE GeoSpring Heat pump hot water heater

I've been working for some time to reduce my electric bill and concluded that the main driver was my very old (5+ years) water heater. I explored several options for hot water (gas, solar, etc.) and finally concluded that from a payback/ROI standpoint a heat pump based hot water heater was best.

Earlier this week I went ahead with the installation and after only 24 hours I have the first data showing my actual savings.

Rather than waiting until the end of the month, I can now (thanks to the new GMP smart meters), go into my GMP account and see my electricity consumption on an hourly basis - all the way up to this morning.

After signing into my account I was able to export my data into an excel spreadsheet and generate a chart showing my hourly kWh consumption for the past few days - and then compare my "old water heater" usage patterns to my "new water heater" pattern.

The resulting chart looked like this:

Hourly Electric Consumption (click to enlarge)

The blue line was the day before installation  the red line was the day of installation and the green line is today. You can see a dramatic decrease in my base level of consumption.

To calculate my ROI on the water heater I calculated my % savings and was astonished to see that I was saving an average of 80%!

Assuming that this continues, in 1 year i was save $1538 - for a total investment of $1500 (not counting the $300 tax incentive).

My payback period? 1 year, maybe less. The official GE website puts my total savings at only $300 per year, but this wasn't taking into consideration the age and efficiency of my very old electric water heater.

My conclusion? Take a hard look at your water heater and then shop around for the most efficient solution you can find - you may be surprised at how much you can save.

Getting started with the Mind Body Online (MBO) SOAP API - classic .ASP VBSCRIPT

I've been working on the Mind Body Online API for a few weeks now and finally got things to come together. My challenge was that I'm still coding in classic ASP and all the sample code is PHP - so I had to start from scratch to get things up and running.

The final collection of code is too extensive to post - but as a starter here is the .ASP code that retrieves the test class collection from the -99 test MBO account.

'--define credentials '--source credentials strSourceName = "LogsItAll.com" strSourcePassword = "XXXXXXX" '--user credentials strUserName = "Siteowner" strUserPassword = "apitest1234" '--site credentials intSiteId = -99 set xlaGChttp=server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") Set oXmlHTTP = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") oXmlHTTP.Open "POST", "http://api.mindbodyonline.com/0_5/SiteService.asmx", False oXmlHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8" oXmlHTTP.setRequestHeader "SOAPAction", "http://clients.mindbodyonline.com/api/0_5/GetActivationCode" SOAPRequest = "<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=""http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"" xmlns=""http://clients.mindbodyonline.com/api/0_5"">" & vbLf &_ "<soapenv:Header/>" & vbLf&_ "<soapenv:Body>" & vbLf&_ "<getactivationcode>" & vbLf &_ "<request>" & vbLf&_ "<sourcecredentials>" & vbLf &_ "<sourcename>" & strSourceName & "</SourceName>" & vbLf &_ "<password>" & strSourcePassword & "</Password>" & vbLf &_ "<siteids>" & vbLf&_ "<int>" & intSiteId & "</int>" & vbLf &_ "</SiteIDs>" & vbLf&_ "</SourceCredentials>" & vbLf &_ "</Request>" & vbLf &_ "</GetActivationCode>" & vbLf &_ "</soapenv:Body>" & vbLf &_ "</soapenv:Envelope>" oXmlHTTP.send SOAPRequest '--process the response a bit so I can read it strReturned = oXmlHTTP.responseText

Getting the most from your "POV" (point of view) video camera

I've been using the JVC Adixxion POV camera now for a few months and have experimented quite a bit with it. I've taken some terrible videos, made the terrible mixes and some pretty good ones. I've found a few key details can make all the difference between good and better...

1. Use multiple points of view

Just shooting 5 minutes of video from the top of your head can be incredibly boring - even nauseating for some ski shots. So what can you do - given that your POV camera is screwed onto the top of your helment? The answer is simple - fake it! Use Google image search and pull up some stills showing your ski run from a distance- then mix these stills into your final video. The other alternative is to ski the same run more than once and shoot some video from your POV and then give the cam to a friend and have them shoot from a distance. The final mixed product can then incorporate both POV's into a more interesting video.

Example:

2. Mix in stills, multiple video clips to create 'video postcards'.

Rather than just have a running video - create freeze frames during the video and use them to call attention to specific events of details.

3. Create "mixes" not just runing videos

The best way I've found to do this is to use an iPad + iMovie app + iPad CD card reader. This of course assumes you already have the iPad! This combination lets you travel light and view your day's video on an iPad  - then mix in stills taken from your camera or video camera.

4. Shoot in high resolution

I set my camera to high res (Full HD) and then uploaded to youTube as high res. The tricky part is that youTube by default serves up the video in medium quality - so you have to edit the video settings to be HD... Try playing back either of the two videos above and choose the settings icon to see how HD improves the quality of the video.

5. Practice before you go out...

Nothing is more frustrating than having the perfect run, perfect shot and then pushing the wrong button or ending up with a still instead of a video. Take the time to practice with your camera - and be sure all your friends who will be shooting with you do the same!

Have fun - and let us know how your own videos come out!