Pat 'n' Steph

21 August 201722 August 2017

Guerrilla Solar Panels

I live in the old city of Amsterdam, in a 350 year old house. Like a lot of people, my circumstances limit my ability to install solar panels on my house. While not many people may live in such an old house, many are renters and may not be able to get permission from their landlord or live in an apartment building and not have access to their roof. In some cases the local authorities may not allow connecting solar panels to the grid.

In my case, even if the city let me, my roof is 30 or so years old, and too old to consider putting holes in it. I’m also not likely to get the necessary building permits from the city to install solar panels. I am however allowed to lay something on my roof, and am allowed to make temporary installations. As long as whatever I do does not change the structure of my house, is not visible from the street and can be removed if necessary, the city is not likely to bother me.

In addition, solar panel technology is rapidly evolving, and in the last few months a number of new possibilities have come on the market.

As a test, I bought the solar panel you see above, a 500w grid tie inverter:

And a meter, which is visible above connected to the inverter:

The meter cycles through a number of different readings, showing watts, watt hours, amps and so on. Pretty much everything you need to know. One side connects to the solar panel(s), and the other side to the grid tie inverter.

The purpose of this post, and the ones that come later, are to take you through some of the thought processes involved in designing your own solar system like this.

Solar Panels

The solar panel pictured above is a new kind, laminated in plastic, and weighs about 1kg. They are flexible, and can be bent to about 30 degrees. It’s easy to carry a stack of 5 of them, under your arm, and up the stairs. You can install them in an area that gets light foot traffic, and walk on them with soft soled shoes. They have grommets in the corners, and you can tie them down with rope, or mount them on a wall with 4 screws. You can also glue them to a vehicle or home roof. They are intended for temporary installation, and so often don’t require a building permit to place on your house. Even though they are intended for temporary installation, they are just as durable as the older glass panel type.

It’s not really the purpose of this post to do product reviews, so I won’t mention the brand. In fact this same type of panel is made by different manufactures, and they all seem very similar. I suspect they are all more or less the same. They all seem to be made in China, but I think the technologies were developed in the Bay Area in the US and are being made under license.

The price of these panels is coming down very quickly right now. If you are considering buying some, you might want to wait. The panel I bought for testing cost €180, I recently ordered 5 more to expand my setup for €160 each, and I now see they are going for €130. In a year or two they will probably be much cheaper.

These panels are so-called 12v panels, even though they really operate at 18v. I guess they’re called 12v because, they are suitable for charging a 12v battery, if your system uses batteries. The voltage they produce is dependent on the load and amount of sunlight, as well as the temperature of the panel. They also have a Voc, or maximum possible voltage of 20v. This is an important number, because equipment is easily damaged by over-voltage, so you want to make sure anything you connect it to is within it’s Voc rating.

System Voltage

If you use equipment that’s designed for a higher voltage, it’s easy to achieve this by combining solar panels in series. When you connect the positive lead of one panel, to the negative lead of another, then use the remaining unconnected leads, you have the equivalent of a 24v panel (that really operates at 36v, and has a Voc of 40v). If you connect more than 2 in series, the voltage continues to increase in a similar way.

If you connect the panels in parallel, the voltage stays the same but the current increases. The current will double with 2 panels in parallel, triple with 3 panels in parallel, and so on. Most equipment like inverters is not damaged by the presence of too much current, but you have to be careful not to use cabling and connectors with equipment that may draw more power than they can handle. You can think about this in comparison with household appliances, for example a table lamp or a mobile phone will need one thickness of wire, whereas a washing machine or oven will need a larger cable.

In terms of the cost of a solar system, lower voltages tend to need simpler and cheaper equipment, but heavier and more expensive cabling. If you try to work at the extremes, for example trying to do everything at 12v or everything at 100v+, you are likely to find yourself developing a very expensive system of solar panels. Also, except for combining solar panels like I describe above, using equipment to change to another voltage, is also likely to be expensive and limited in it’s capacity.

Also, if you’re tempted to try to connect your system of solar panels to multiple devices, for example a combination of battery charge controllers or inverters, you are also likely to find yourself limited. Some brands of inverters or charge controllers are ‘stackable’ with the same brand, but you are likely to have a lot of issues with load balancing and race conditions, where one device draws all the power. You have to be very careful with cable length, and mixing technologies like MPPT and PWM (more on these later). Here’s a video that explains this a little. In general, you need to match a single solar panel or combination of panels, at a single voltage, to a single device.

Meter

The meter I use pictured above cost about €15, and works well enough. It’s really only useful for testing and not gathering long term information, because it only goes up to about 8kWh, then resets to zero.

You can see on the left side of the picture, some small wires. There are small pins which you can connect to a supplemental power source. This is necessary, because the meter itself requires some power to operate and retain it’s memory. It can draw this from the solar panels, but of course only during the day. At night, there is no power available, and so it loses it’s stored information. You can connect to the pins with jumper wires used with circuit breadboards, that have a female end. For example, these. The minimum required voltage is 4.6, so I cut off the micro USB connector from a standard USB charging cable, and exposed the red and black wires in the cable. I then used a standard USB charger for the power source.

Grid Tie Inverter

With a solar system you can either use a system of one or more batteries, a grid tie inverter, or both. A grid tie inverter simply connects to your household wiring, and feeds power back to the grid. In my case, the one I bought is designed to simply plug into a standard outlet. It works very well and is trouble free.

There are different suggestions on the Internet, but mostly the suggestion is that if you feed back more than 450W, you should use a dedicated circuit. In other words, you should hire an electrician or install a dedicated fuse in your fusebox for feeding back onto the grid. I would take particular care when using a circuit that has sensitive appliances, like computers or those that use high power like ovens or washing machines.

What happens when you feed back onto the grid? For most people, in most cases, your electric meter will turn backwards. The main exception to this is if you have a so-called smart meter, that can detect the direction of the current and records this together with the time of day. Even modern digital meters will usually just turn backwards when you feed power back.

In most cases you can do this without prior arrangements with the utility company, although this may be illegal or against the policies of your utility company. Consider that it may not be appreciated if your utility company comes to read your meter, and you have a negative usage.

In this way, using a grid tie inverter is like using the power grid as a giant battery, feeding it when you have surplus power, and drawing from it when you need power. Your electric bill is calculated as the net.

The argument is sometimes used that safety can be an issue in unauthorized feeding back to the grid, especially during a power outage. You have to consider this yourself, but modern grid tie inverters have what’s known as anti-islanding protection, where they will automatically shut off during a grid failure.

MPPT and PWM

PWM is the standard type of charge controller. If you have a relatively small solar panel setup, this may be enough, and they are much cheaper than MPPT. MPPT (Mamimum Power Point Technology) is included with many inverters and the more expensive battery controllers. Solar panels perform better at their working voltage (18V for 12V panels), and if you attempt to draw too much power from them, the voltage will drop and they will become less efficient. MPPT attempts to maintain the ideal voltage, but some products implement this differently than others, and are more or less effective.

Most serious solar panel systems will use MPPT.

With MPPT charge controllers it is technically possible to use different voltage on the solar panels than on the batteries, but the charge controllers that do this at higher currents are very expensive, and there are limits in any case. You will find it difficult to maintain large differences.

My Setup, Issues and Specifications

The solar panel I bought to test, pictured above, is 100cm x 50cm. I have two places on my roof, one for a row of 6 of these, and another place for a row of 8. I have another spot on my roof terrace wall for 2 more, and beyond that there are a few places where I might put more if necessary, but they wouldn’t be convenient. In short, I have a convenient place for 16x 100w solar panels. Some will get more light than others.

My electric bill is about €500 per year, about €100 of which is paid by a subsidy that I would receive in cash if I didn’t use the electricity. My goal is to bring my electric bill somewhere between the total amount, and the total amount less the subsidy. If I generate more electricity than I use, the amount paid back to me by the utility company is trivial. It’s not my intention to generate 100% of my own electric needs.

I have done some calculations, making some assumptions that may or may not be true, that suggest a 2kW solar panel system would meet all my electricity needs and cost €4000. This should mean it pays for itself in 8 years. Since I have convenient space for a 1.6kW system (16x 100w solar panels), I will make due with this and perhaps look for ways to make my house more energy efficient to make up the difference. I’m expecting to spend €3000 in total, and will do it step by step rather than installing a large system in one go. As I expand, I will look for ways to eliminate bottlenecks and use the cheapest and most efficient technologies and products.

Results of My Test

At the beginning of this post I explained I bought a solar panel, meter and inverter to test. The idea was to learn about the equipment, the sun conditions on my roof and so on. In broad terms the test was a success and proof of concept, but I also learned some things.

First of all, while the meter one time recorded 104w from my 100w panel, proving it is working to specifications, that was really an exception. In general, the efficiency was much less than that. I never personally witnessed the panel generating more than 75w, and doubt it frequently goes beyond that.

This is probably due to the angle of the sun with respect to my roof. On one hand this means some of my expectations weren’t met, however my original calculation that I need a 2kW system does seem to be correct. This is because while the peak output of the panels are not as high as I expected, the panels are unexpectedly good at lower light conditions. In particular, on a cloudy day, the panels can usually generate 50W, and in the evening with no direct light, but a lot of indirect light, they can usually do 25W. Normal panels are about 15-18% efficient, but these are rated at 22-24%, and that may be the difference.

Because the panels rarely reach their peak performance, I can think about using a cheaper grid tie inverter, one that’s rated for fewer watts. This is because when if the panels do generate more power than expected, the excess power will be wasted, but if this doesn’t happen often, not a lot will be lost.

One issue that came up was the size of the cables needed. As a rule of thumb, you need a 4mm cable for up to 30amps, and a 6mm cable for 50amps. These are very heavy cables, and since they are designed to be in the direct sun and outdoors, they are covered with a thick and heavy layer of insulation.

For a 1600W system, the number of amps is calculated by dividing by the number of volts. So,

A 12V system (operating at 18V) would be 1600/18 = 88 amps

A 24V system (operating at 36V) would be 1600/36 = 44 amps

After pricing various options, and taking into account that I already had one 500w 12v grid tie inverter, I came to the conclusion that I would need 2x6mm cable pairs. One of the pairs would be 12v and the other would be 24v. It might also be possible to start at 12V, using what I have, but then later switching to 24V.

I went over and over these calculations, and was really looking for another solution. These cables are not only expensive, but very heavy and would be difficult for one person to manage. The main problem was this:

This is the view up from where the cables would run. It would be a 6-7 meter straight drop from the edge of my roof, and the cables themselves weigh some 10’s of kilos. I may eventually need to run 2 pair of them, about 50kg combined, and drill holes in my 350 year old wall for them. If something happened, and one or both of them dropped, the weight would potentially bring the solar panels off the roof with them, or at least rip the wiring out of the panels. This would have been a lot of trouble to install securely.

They needed to come this far down, because this is where I both had a dedicated circuit to connect them to the house electric wiring, as well as space for inverter(s) and batteries.

The Solution, and the Next Step

I have a spot on my roof good for 6 panels, and already have the one panel I bought to test with. I will later expand to 16 panels in total, but buying 5 more now is a good step. What you see a little to the left in the picture above is this:

And more specifically, this in the bottom center:

This is a disused junction box, for an outdoor light. There’s already a hole in the wall for this, and as it turns out, it’s on it’s own electric circuit.

Together with the 5 new panels, I will buy an outdoor grid tie inverter, what’s sometimes called a micro-inverter. This will convert the power from the solar panels into electricity suitable for feeding back to the grid, at the level of the roof, eliminating the need to run heavy cables down the back of my house. A normal electric cable can be used for connecting it to the junction box in the picture.

Soup Kitchen — Dutch Style

Soup Kitchens

As far as I’m aware, soup kitchens don’t exist as such in the Netherlands. We’ve just had elections, and the government is changing. Until now however, the government has been so pro free enterprise and privatization, the setting up of a government funded place, giving away something for free just didn’t happen here.

On the other hand, this country has very strong socialist values, and has a very strong commitment to helping the poor.

How do you rationalize both the idea of free enterprise and the need to help the poor? Basically, the government is going in the direction of only handing out money.

If you are poor, and need something to eat, the government gives you €5 and points you to McDonalds. If something happens to that money between the time they give it to you and the time you reach McDonalds, that’s up to you. Going to the supermarket instead, or spending it on cigarettes, are both possibilities.

Something similar happens if you need to sleep in a homeless shelter. These cost about €7/night, but if you want to spend the money on something else, and don’t get in trouble with the police, this is up to you.

Since I’m not on benefits, and I’m sure things are different in different places, what I say here may not be completely correct, but this is the general direction the government is taking.

Also, I should emphasize, not everyone is entitled to benefits, or there may be some strings attached. I think most cities insist all able-bodied people do volunteer work for benefits, for example, and if you are not recognized as being entitled to long term benefits, then your benefits are periodically cut off to encourage you to look for work. Unless you are recognized as a refugee, you are not likely to get benefits if you just show up from some other country.

Long Term Benefits

Fundamentally, long term benefits are not a lot different from short term benefits, they are just paid out on a monthly basis. If you show clearly that you are not able to manage your own money, then they force you to accept the services of a financial management company, at a cost of about €100/month. Those people who aren’t forced to accept financial management, can voluntarily accept it if they choose.

Most single people or couples get about €1100/month.

Financial management means, for example, you get €60/week (€10/day, but not on Sunday) in pocket money. This has to cover all your food, tobacco and possibly alcohol, and all other miscellaneous expenses like clothing or whatever. Your bank account is blocked, except for this pocket money, and you aren’t allowed to use any online or other banking services. Your rent and utilities are automatically paid, and in addition a lump sum is paid to finance a simple vacation in the summer (but again, this is cash and you can spend it how you want). Otherwise, if you need to buy something, you need permission from your financial manager, and they have to arrange the payment.

This is all my understanding, but like I said, I’m not on benefits, and don’t have any direct connection with these issues. It may also be different in different parts of the country.

As you can probably imagine, this is all pretty tough. If you aren’t able to make good choices between food and cigarettes, or just in general don’t have your life together enough to manage such a small amount of money carefully, you can get in trouble pretty quickly. I would guess most people can’t really manage, unless they have friends who can help out from time to time.

The Neighborhood

I used to live nearby, in the building above, called Hofgeest, and understanding the neighborhood is really key here. The neighborhood is called the Bijlmermeer or just the Bijlmer for short. Designed by an Italian architect, with very high expectations, and intended to become a sort of high class suburb of Amsterdam. It was once home to the mayor. Since I was born in Chicago, in the US, the closest thing I could compare it with was Cabrini-Green.

Basically, it turned out not to be a nice place to live. The population density was too high, and open spaces between the buildings intended to give a sense of luxury, became overgrown and full of muggers. The neighborhood was designed with complete separation between cars, pedestrians and bicycles, facilitated by elevated roads and underpasses. These elevated roads physically divided the neighborhood, and junkies moved into the underpasses, effectively controlling the movement from one area to another.

The city thought they had a clever solution, when they required low income people in Amsterdam to accept an apartment in the neighborhood, solving the neighborhood’s vacancy problem. In different stages, they also relocated junkies from the center of Amsterdam to this neighborhood, and over the years continued to make decisions like this which filled the neighborhood with behavior problems. They even at some point decided the neighborhood was really nice, except for these behavior problems, so why not relocate the behavior problems into their own building!

There were even discussions as recently as a few years ago of relocating drug addicts into their own building, ostensibly so they could be better cared for… Can you imagine a super high-rise building with nothing but drug addicts?

In 1992, a few months before I moved out of the neighborhood, there was the Bijlmerramp. An Israeli 747 airplane crashed into one of the high rise buildings, killing many people. It hit one of the other buildings near where I was living, about 1 mile (1,5 km) away. This was really a watershed, and prompted the Dutch government to take the rebuilding of the neighborhood seriously.

Many of the high rise buildings were torn down, renovated, or individual low income rental units were sold as condominiums.

Buildings like the one in the background here:

Were replaced with flimsy looking low rise buildings like this:

Would you like to live in the orange one or the red one?

Many of the same anti-social residents still live in these new buildings, and music like gansta rap can be heard coming out of open windows.

As well as replacing the high rises with lower buildings, they’ve also now built large office blocks around the neighborhood, and many people commute into the neighborhood for work.

They have also built some more luxurious housing, and in a few places have let people build houses of their own design.

The People

In spite of all the anti-social behavior, this neighborhood has always had some of the warmest people. It’s also become a place for immigrants, and is a melting pot with people from all over the world. Even though it was always possible to walk around the wrong places at night and get robbed, it’s never had a huge problem with violence or aggressive people. There are very few guns or other weapons around.

When I lived there, about half the residents were on some kind of social benefit, and this probably hasn’t changed much.

Many people who live here feel very attached to the neighborhood, and wouldn’t live anywhere else.

Cultural Expression

One of the biggest shames about the neighborhood, and Dutch society in general, is how self expression is discouraged. If you’re an immigrant, and you move to the Netherlands, you’re supposed to forget your past and become Dutch. All the buildings in the Bijlmer are sterile in their design, and don’t lend themselves to self-expression. You are not allowed for example to paint your front door a different color from your neighbors, or publicly display something that represents your own culture individuality. Nearly everyone speaks native sounding Dutch, and mostly without any unusual accent.

The Dutch are really missing something very special by not allowing immigrants to freely express themselves.

Freedom of Expression

In one of the most dismal parts of the old neighborhood, where they tore down a notorious high rise called Develstein (Devil’s Stein — as in beer stein) and put up low rises, they left the old parking garage of Develstein behind. This neighborhood was lacking in places to buy food, and the residents dependent on fast food had to walk a long distance. The city of Amsterdam decided to establish the World of Food.

As well as establish the food court itself, they decided to subsidize some startup food stalls, run by people in the neighborhood. The inside looks a little rough, remember this is built into a repurposed parking garage, all the steel and concrete from the old structure is still there, and the floors slope:

What did I get on the day of my visit? I wasn’t very hungry, and just wanted a snack. I chose the stand with the man barely visible on the right, in the picture above, Hi Lo Rotishop. I ordered a bara, which is a type of deep fried bread topped with chutney made from papaya and habeñero style hot peppers. This is a pretty common snack here in the Netherlands, it’s a type of Surinamese food. I have never seen someone roll out the dough in front of me and make it fresh!

It was really good! Normally the topping is screaming hot, but this was not. It was a little hot, and had a really nice flavor.

On another day I was there without a camera, and I ate at Monrovia Childhood Memories, a stand selling Liberian food. This was also very good!

I guess many of the other stands are really good too, but these are the only two I’ve tried. I’m vegetarian, and some of the stands only offer meat. All of the stands seem to offer a cheap alternative, as well as a more complete serving for those with more money to spend.

The Future

On the days I was there, I was nearly the only customer. Not just at any given stand, but in the whole place. It’s not getting enough foot traffic to survive.

The city has said they will not invest any more money into it. The small startup stands have said they aren’t getting enough foot traffic to survive, while at the same time the larger fast food chains have said they want to invest more into the project. This means soon the small stands will be replaced by Mc Donalds, KFC and similar places.

So much for the small glimmer of hope, in a neighborhood full of disappointments… So much for free cultural expression. Get there and try it while you can!

28 April 201628 April 2016

Problems With Aliexpress

Kingzone N5 mobile phone

If you don’t already know what Aliexpress is, it’s sort of the Ebay of china. It’s parent company Alibaba is a business to business wholesaler, and Aliexpress is the branch of the company that handles business to customer transactions.

Aliexpress has a large number of individual companies that offer products to consumers. For common items, usually several companies will offer competing prices, and customer reviews are supposed to keep the individual sellers honest. Aliexpress themselves have an escrow service, and if your item doesn’t arrive, in theory you can make a claim and get your money back.

In theory it’s all a good idea, and in fact I’ve bought some 50+ items over the last 2 years or so, ranging in price from a few cents to a few hundred euros, and not had any serious problems until now. Until now, I haven’t had any problems with individual sellers, and have only just uncovered how bad the escalation process is for complaints.

Basically, I bought this phone for 2 reasons. It supports 4G mobile frequencies used in my area, and necessary for reception in my house. It also has 5Ghz (802.11ac) WiFi, which is what I use at home. Otherwise I was looking for the cheapest phone. It was also a small bonus that this phone had the latest Android 5.1 and a dual sim I bought it from this seller at Aliexpress: D&S Electronic Mall. This seller has a very bad attitude, and does not stand behind what they sell.

It turns out the 5Ghz WiFi, 802.11ac, does not work on this phone. The description of the phone was just wrong. On the manufacturers website, it does not mention this as a feature. According to the seller mentioned above, they were told by the manufacturer it does support 5Ghz WiFi, so it must. Perhaps it’s necessary to fix it with a future software upgrade…! Therefore there’s nothing more for the seller to do, and it’s my problem. The seller pointed out all the other sellers selling the same phone say the same thing, so how could everyone be wrong?

Just for the record, I noticed dx.com was selling the same phone with the same mistake in their description. I notified them of the mistake and they updated their website.

Final Settlement (not yet appealed)

After a very long dispute process, including making a video ‘proving’ the fault with the phone, they finally offered me a refund of about $20. They also offered that I could return the phone at my own cost for a full refund, but the shipping costs are too expensive for this. I’ve appealed this, so it might change, but the whole process has completely warn me out and turned me off of Aliexpress.

Words cannot describe how dissatisfied I am. This was their mistake. They advertised the wrong features of this phone. If they got the wrong information from the manufacturer, that’s up to them to sort out. In a case like this, when it’s the sellers fault, there are generally three things to do:

Fix the phone
Pay the costs of returning the phone and give a full refund
Send a new phone that works according to the description

A small refund like $20 is an insult.

The entire reason for dealing with the business to costumer branch of Alibaba is so they will fix problems like this when they occur.

Other Stories

In the Netherlands there are quite a few unhappy people with Aliexpress. I was reading for example about one woman who ordered a pair of shoes. When the package arrived it contained two left shoes. She agreed with the seller she would send it back at her own expense for a refund, which cost her about €25. After several months went by without anything happening, she started to enquire about her refund. Then she got a notice from the post office a package was waiting for her, and it turned out the seller in China refused to accept the package so it was returned to her.

This is another reason for not trying to return something at your own expense.

Other Complaints About Aliexpress

They are in the process of completely eliminating the possibility to directly contact a customer support representative. Instead you have to go via a robot, that tries to answer your questions, and in the end if it decides to connect you to a real person it only does this during working hours in China and only with a web chat session.

I personally won’t do business with a company where direct contact with a customer support representative is not possible, offline, 24 hours per day via eamil or a web form.

Their website is very buggy. Uploading videos doesn’t always work. Some things, like their entire dispute process, are very confusing and it’s very easy to mistakenly press a fatal button, from which there is no recovery. For example, with every dispute, there are two options: ‘agree with seller’ or ‘cancel dispute’. These have very different consequences, depending on which one you press.

The review of the sellers are not well presented, and tend to make all sellers look honest. They also expire the information after about 6 months, and after a month you can’t change your review anymore in case you discover more about the product you bought. After a time they also only have the star rating, and the text of the reviews is removed. Aliexpress should make the review information open source, and let interested parties do their own analysis and presentation of the information.

Conclusions

It doesn’t seem to me there is any real consumer protection at Aliexpress, except perhaps if you never receive the item and can prove that.

I contacted my credit card company, and asked if they would reverse the payment for this. They said no. I plan to use another credit card from now on, because most offer this protection.

If you buy anything from Aliexpress, I suggest you make sure you can ask your credit card company to reverse the transaction in case something goes wrong. Otherwise, you’ll really have no recourse.

9 January 20159 January 2015

Light Bulb Review

I guess some of us knew it would happen eventually, but normal light bulbs are legal once again in Europe, and becoming more available. I just bought some the other day from De Gloeilampen Winkel here in the Netherlands, and I thought I would write a review. I paid €1,65 per bulb, with a minimum purchase of 10 per wattage, and free shipping over €50. I hope they come down in price soon!

There is an exemption in the EU light bulb ban for ‘rough service lamps’, bulbs built to operate while vibrating. This is a Reinforced Construction or RC lamp. Some of the bulbs are labelled that they are intended for a marine environment. None of them have a brand name.

Here’s a closer view of the specifications.

Notice they are rated for 3000 hours, which is 3 times longer than the bulbs commonly available here just before the ban came into force. This makes the price a little more palatable, and similar to the price per hour of pre-ban bulbs.

Manufacturer Energy Rating: E

Real Life Energy Rating: A++

Since mostly the bulbs are to be operated in a space warmed by central heating, the bulbs are 100% efficient. Energy is given off in the form of light and heat, and any heat given off reduces the load on the central heating by a like amount.
No energy needed for recycling, and it’s not necessary to take them to a recycling center — possibly even by car. Bulbs can be discarded in normal household waste.
Bulbs can be manufactured locally, and it’s not necessary to transport them from China.
Manufacturing process is simpler and less energy intensive than ‘low energy bulbs’.
Longer life means less frequent replacements are needed.

Functionality

It’s a light bulb, and does everything you might expect a light bulb to do.

Long Life

Historically, manufacturers of light bulbs have had the problem that long life bulbs mean loss of profit. This is because they stay in service too long and consumers don’t need to keep rebuying them. Singer, the sewing machine company had a similar problem, because the products they built were too reliable. In the case of Singer, they had to buy back some of their older machines, so consumers would have to buy some of the newer less reliable ones.

In the case of light bulbs, manufacturers have been building them to glow brighter, so they would burn out faster. This is the motivation for the energy efficient bulbs, followed by the complete ban.

Leading up to the ban 1000 hour bulbs were common, and these are 3000 hour bulbs. 10.000-20.000 hour bulbs are very feasible, and 100.000 hour bulbs are not out of the question. As consumers, this is what we want and should look for. They should not necessarily cost more.

Some Final Comments

No flickering, slow warm up or fading with age.
Fully dimmable
No toxic components
Pleasant light spectrum
This bulb was not labelled with country of origin. Research your bulbs and buy locally! Unlabelled should be assumed to be from China.
These bulbs are rated for 235v, but the power in Europe is 230v. This probably means the bulbs will withstand voltage spikes better, have a longer life, but also probably give off slightly less than the rated number of lumens. I consider this a good thing.
It’s obvious in other ways the consumer energy ratings are intended to mislead consumers. For example here, diesel cars often get lower ratings, even though they get better mileage and have lower carbon emissions. Electric cars often get better ratings, even though energy used in manufacture and disposal are much higher. Use your head instead of trusting energy ratings!

23 October 201428 October 2014

Marktplaats

Watch out for Markplaats!

Here’s another post not very related to seeds and gardening. It’s also somewhat specific to the Netherlands, but I think it’s a useful thing to be in English, because there are expats who may read this. Those of you who live other places may have similar websites.

Marktplats.nl is a website owned by Ebay, and primarily a place where you can put up free classified ads to buy and sell second hand things, either for a fixed price or auction. It used to be an independent site, but got bought early on by Ebay. It’s sort of a mini Dutch language Ebay, with things specific to the Netherlands. As well as classified ads, it’s possible to leave reviews, giving your opinions on the merchants. As well as free ads, there are various paid options, like better placement or the ability to mention an external website. It’s very popular here, or at least used to be.

I regularly read comments on the Internet of people who try to use free ads. They say they end up placed on page 9 or something, completely unfindable. People also complain that as soon as you sign up and give them your email address, they flood you with spam, and you can never get them to stop. It’s pretty clear, maybe logical, that they really only care about their customers who place paid ads.

It’s also not as safe a site as you might think. It was in the news recently, that someone was arrested for pretending to sell tickets to events, but then just taking people’s money. He ripped off more than 200 people before he was stopped, which is a lot of people for a country as small as the Netherlands. You might wonder why on a site where you can leave comments about merchants, so many people would get ripped off. The way it should work, is people should be able to leave reviews and ratings, and honest people should build up their own reputation. Dishonest people should have a hard time getting established.

Well I just got ripped off using Marktplaats the other day, and in the process I learned something important about how it works.

I don’t usually use Marktplaats to buy and sell stuff, rather I look for services. In this case, I was looking for a plumber. I choose a plumber who had been on Marktplaats for 7 years or something silly like that, and only had positive reviews, all of them spread out one or two at a time, over the entire 7 years. The name on the ad was ‘Daniel’, and only a mobile phone number and email address was given for contact information. I also chose him based on geographic location, an option in the site’s search engine, because I only wanted to work with someone based nearby.

As it turned out, he had paid for multiple listings in multiple locations, and actually came from out of town. Not only did he have multiple locations for the name ‘Daniel’, but I was able to see later that he also had multiple listings under other names. When he showed up at my house, he wore a sort of uniform with the name AKC-Loodgieters, and there is a website with this name.

After getting ripped off by him, I went to Marktplaats to leave a negative review. I created a new account using a disposable email address, clicked away their terms and conditions, and left my review which appeared instantly. It was a pretty straight forward review, saying I was ripped off, explaining how and why, and advising others to choose another plumber.

Ik heb geen specifiek klachten over de qualiteit van de werkzaamheden, maar Daniel is geen bijzonder vakman. Ik heb €1450 betaald voor iets met waarde €700. Daniel biedt geen eerlijk dienst voor geen eerlijk prijs, en wel een oplichter is.

Eerst was de onderzoek. Voor dit moet ik €500 vooruit betalen. Hij moet naar Almere rijden voor een héél duur (2000 euro) apparaat met en camera om binnen mijn rioolering te kijken. Daniel was agressief en grof over dit vooruit betaling, dat niet normaal is. Hij was niet duidelijk hoezo dit zo duur moeten zijn. Dit onderzoek was met waarde €200, inclusief duur apparaat, en was niet sluitende over de oorzaak van de probleem.

Ten slotte was de reparatie. Eerst biedt Daniel een prijs van €2000, helemaal vooruit betaald. Dit heeft niets te doen met de werkzaamheden, gewoon wat ik was klaar om te betalen voor een oplossing. Daarna praten wij over de specifiek werkzaamheden, en komt naar een prijs van €700 inclusief onderdeel (Daniel zeg hij dacht de onderdeel kost €200), ook 100% vooruit betalen. Daniel daarna belt mij te zeggen de onderdeel was €450 en eist nog een betaling van €250, anders gebruikt hij een laag *qualiteit alternatief. Een gelijk onderdeel is wel bestelbaar op amazon.de voor €60-150, afhankelijk van qualiteit. Dit reparatie, inclusief onderdeel, heeft waarde van €500.

Dit advertentie heeft geen legitimatie bewijs, geen website, alleen een 06 nummer en de naam ‘Daniel’. Het zeg niets dat Daniel werkt ook als bedrijf AKC Loodgeiters. Je betaald contant, geen PIN, altijd 100% vooruit, altijd met grof en agresief eisen. Als je moet politie of jurdisch hulp, heeft je echt niets.

Bescherm je geld en veiligheid, kies een andere loodgeiter.

A few hours later, my review was removed and my newly created account was blocked. I seem to have been banned from Marktplaats for leaving a negative review! I started researching their terms and conditions, to see what I may have violated. I found this: “Mag geen scheld- of kwetsende woorden bevatten”, which says reviews cannot contain swearing or ‘hurtful’ words. It says if you violate these rules and are banned, you can contact their helpdesk and ask to be reinstated.

It’s now been 3 days since I sent a message to their helpdesk asking the reason my review was removed, and they haven’t answered They seem much more interested in removing negative reviews then they are at helping you leave a negative review that satisfies their criteria as acceptable, and doesn’t contain any ‘hurtful’ words. It would of course been no problem if I had created 3 or 4 new accounts with disposable email addresses, and left multiple positive reviews.

It’s now very clear to me how someone was able to cheat more than 200 people before being stopped by the police. It’s much easier to file a police report than place a negative review!

Update

A few hours after making this post an item appeared in the news [in Dutch].

It says at least 8 times this year Marktplaats thieves used violence against their victims. In different cases there were different injuries. In one case a person lost a piece of their tooth.