White Tiger’s Lair

I think it is time i face the truth, i am and always will be …  a geek.   Yeah, Ok I had been a bit geeky though school and into later years, but I thought I had gotten it all out of my system by the time I went to business school.  Two things have recently proved to me that it is a curse that will stay with me for life. 

First, I was at a networking meeting not too long ago, and one of the other participants asked me “What software solution could help PV”.  Immediately monitoring of PV systems came to mind, currently most systems only monitor aggregate output of the entire system at the inverter.   This means there is no notification if a panel is stolen or something is broken on only part of the system unless it significantly lowers the entire system efficiency below normal for extended time (a week or so).  It turned into a lively discussion and the next thing I know it is 2 hours later, myself, the software person and another person who works with RFID had devised an active monitoring system built into the PV casings that use simple web based software, common sensors and active RFID tags to monitor the output of each panel in the system, aggregate performance independent of the inverter and provide real time notification (and alarm) for theft or removal.  Is any of it really possible and more importantly marketable, I don’t know, but I have not had so much fun in months.

Today was the final straw that shattered my delusion of non-geekyness.  I was working on automating some reports.  As I will be leaving my current job soon I want to leave things tidy and easy to maintain.  I was having a few troubles with some stubborn formulas but when I finally got the countifs (and coutif) and sumifs formulas working properly I jumped up to tell my coworkers, to which I got blank stares, so I tried again this time “zählenoders”  still nothing.  Ok so I explained how this nice little function means I could delete one of the intermediate tables and it cut the formula down to only ½ a line.  Oh yeah, no doubt about it, I am a geek….

God forbid someone gets me started talking about Solar Powered Desalination systems (the topic I am spending my time with this week).