Students and staff from the BSc (Hons) degree in Environmental and Natural Resource Management and BSc (Hons) degree in Computing Smart Sustainable Energy pictured at LIT Tipperary’s new weather station on a stormy day on the Thurles campus when winds were gusting at 60 km/h and 4.6 mm of rain fell. Pictured left to right, Elisha McGrane, Kevin O Meara, Matthew Connaughton, Alex Herzog, Zu Mecklenburg, Thomas Murphy, Shaun Russell, Michael Dunne, Fearghal McDonnell, David Connolly, Padraic Grace, Christopher Maguire, Dr Liam Noonan

Rain, hail or shine…..you can now get the most up-to-date information on weather conditions in Tipperary from the LIT Tipperary webpage: www.lit.ie/tipperary

LIT Tipperary has recently installed a weather station which records all weather data to the Internet. This data is available to all and should prove an invaluable resource for primary and secondary schools as well as amateur meteorologists.

The provision and installation of this service was identified and installed by the staff and students of LIT Tipperary’s honours degrees in Smart Sustainable Energy and Environmental and Natural Resource Management.

“Being able to measure and record weather conditions means that we can use this information to try and utilise less energy in our homes and offices. The graduates from our Smart Energy degree programme will be able to use this information to design products to reduce our energy consumption. Companies in all sectors are actively trying to reduce their energy demand and will require graduates with these skills” stated Dr Liam Noonan, Programme leader for the BSc (Honours) degree in Computing (Smart Sustainable Energy) - http://www.lit.ie/Courses/LC420

“The production and analysis of data is an important part of environmental management. Students of the honours degree in Environmental and Natural Resource Management at LIT Tipperary are keenly aware of this in their examination of a wide range of resources including waste, water, energy, climate and biodiversity. Our students get opportunities to produce and gather their own scientific data during research they undertake as part of the programme” said Elisha McGrane, Programme Leader for the BSc (Honours) degree in Environmental and Natural Resource Management - http://www.lit.ie/Courses/LC408

So for up to the minute information on whether it’s time for the ‘brolly’ or the ‘bbq’, just check out the LIT Tipperary weather station!

http://www.greatenergychallengeblog.com/

These meters reported usage on a 30/60 minute interval, this information was available through an online portal as well as a device in the building.

The CER also publsihed that the smart electricity meter trial recorded a reduction on average of 2.5% and a peak time reduction of 8.8%

We envisage that stundents of LIT Tipperary’s Smart Sutainable Energy degree programme will be examining the design of these meters as well as the cost/benefit analysis

An investigation by the newspaper the Herald Sun has uncovered a significant design flaw with the meter roll out as the meter were not designed to integrate with the governments roll out of a digital cable network known as the National Broadband Network (NBN). The meters are not compatible with the NBN for a number of “technical reasons”

The smart meter roll out commenced in October 2009 while the NBN roll out only commenced in August of this year so there is some argument but I am surprised that there is no simple bridging/gateway solution. Bridging/gateway solutions are a popular for allowing different protocols and systems to interface with each other. These are issues that our Smart Sustainable Energy students will be studying and developing hardware and software solutions for.

About 800,000 of the 2 million meters have been installed already and the cost of the roll out has doubled to 2 billion Australian dollars. Analysts estimate that if the meters were NBN compatible they could save between 250 and 300 million dollars on the roll out.

So the mantra for a smart meter roll out in Ireland is compatibility.