World: r3wp

You run your server in the attic?  the hotest part of the house??

Some days of the year, yes

Then again, we don't have hundreds of heart patients hanging off 
it

I think I should setup a secondary fall back server in the Singapore 
availability zone.  Hopefully what happens in the USA does not impact 
other regions.

Amazon's talk of region isolation was clearly not true.

Houses here don't have cellars anymore, because, as anyone knows, 
electricity is always there...

Don't most Dutch houses have wind mills on them for power?

Just a few farms

And besides, they run the machines that cut out the wooden shoes

and the wooden shoes are burnt to make steam?

When a hunger winter comes, yes

That's when we eat the tulips

http://www.wind-works.org/articles/noiseswt.html


search for Chiu to find out about the wind turbine I had on my house 
:)

And here's a picture of my turbine http://www.compkarori.com/images/air403.gif

I have an inverter so that I could use the power from the 12V batteries 
to power my server

It says you still have it but it will cost you tonnes to turn it 
on...

I don't have it anymore .. the company took it away :(

The threat of a $200,000 fine was a little too oppressive for me

How big was it?

not very big .. just over 1m span I think.  Made lots of noise energy 
only!

I think they use these on small boats where if the neighbours complain, 
you just sail somewhere else!

:-) Yeah, I've seen those in recent years

So they make too much noise because they're too small?

yes

well, because they spin so fast

That's the case with CPU fans, as well

Size matters. The bigger the better

to shed energy ( so that they blades don't fall apart ), they undergo 
fibroelastic shudder

which creates vortices and lots of noise

flutter

here's a picture from the roof .... http://www.compkarori.com/images/karori403.jpg

I've been riding my bicycle under those really big ones in a big 
storm. Pretty impressive

I thought I would be far away from the neighbours .. but clearly 
I was not

It looks quite close. The noise of small fans is very high pitched. 
It annoys the hell out of me, too

I was going to short it during the night which basically puts a break 
on the whole thing.  And leave it going during the day

Even with the turbine shorted .. it still spun quite fast in a strong 
wind

One of these days I'm going to cover my roof in Photovoltaic panels

The longer you wait, the more efficient they become :-)

True ... there's a lot of research in this area

I think you can even create tiles of the PV panels and use them to 
cover the roof

And I think I've seen flexible ones that can wrap around objects

You could have clothed you wind sculpture with them ;-)

To maximize the benefits from PV panels you need to track the sun 
and not the wind!

Most passive sun trackers use an inert gas which vapourises and condenses 
elsewhere changing the balance so that the whole thing pivots with 
the change in weight redistribution

A bit like a sun flower I guess

or a tulip?

I'm planning on VAWTs.  Make little to no noticible noise.  Work 
from any direction, so less parts.

And sadly the Savonius design is very inefficient.  I helped my child 
build one for her science fare though .. still got it.

I looked at these years ago http://www.windside.com/technical.html#WS-4C
but deemed them to be too expensive

Electricity in Maui is .33 per kw...  All alternative power options 
are "worth it".