City Sends Spy Planes Out To Determine If Your Home Is Wasting Energy
from the only-trying-to-help dept
It’s no secret that not everyone realizes how wasteful they are of energy resources. However, apparently one city in the UK went to rather extreme measures to make that point clear to residents in the city. It hired a spy plane to fly over the city and take heat loss photos across the entire city. The photos were then matched to a city map, displaying which houses were leaking the most heat at the time the spy plane passed over. Eventually, the entire map was put online so everyone could see which buildings were wasting the most energy. What’s unclear is whether or not these heat maps convinced anyone to actually do anything (or if it just freaked people out).
Filed Under: energy, spy planes
Comments on “City Sends Spy Planes Out To Determine If Your Home Is Wasting Energy”
Hot houses
Haha, I wonder how many marijuana hot houses they found glowing bright red?
Re: Hot houses
hahaha
Re: Hot houses
I’m a sympathizer to those who do as they please. Free people smoke or grow whatever they’d like. Those who oppose free people will find the hard way it’s ingrained in human nature to be free. You’re going against nature to inflict your values upon others. Against nature = wrong. “I know better than you, so I tell you what to do” is near an end. If you don’t feel it yet, you will, should you live a bit longer.
Hot houses
Quickly!!! Patent it!!! you’ve just invented a new way to find pot houses!!!
Re: Hot houses
This is already used in the US.
Most police helicopters are already equipped with IR and heat sensors.
Re: Re: Hot houses
Yeah, I’ve seen them flying over my township several times before.
Re: Hot houses
they used to do that in georgia (us) but it was ruled an unlawful search….
not new
police already do that in at least some parts of the US.
not legal to find pot
Court rulings have basically affirmed that it’s illegal to drive (or fly) around looking for heat to find people growing marijuana. Because it uses spectrum not normally visibile, it runs afoul of the fourth amendment. Basically it is considered the same as the police going door to door and looking into people’s houses and back yards trying to find a crime.
Re: not legal to find pot
Just like it’s illeagl for law enforcement to pull someone over just cause they look suspicious – perfect example of something that happens on a lower level no matter what the law says.
How do you go about hiring a spy plane? What door in London do you knock on to talk to some MI6 guy? Can you pay with a credit card?
Re: Re:
Helicopter rental plus IR Camera gear gets you there all on your own. No A-Team type knowledge required.
It seems to me that this isn’t illegal or overly intrusive. This is just showing which places are putting out the most heat. The city map, anyone could find so that’s not a big deal. The infrared isn’t intrusive either. It would be a problem if it somehow allowed people to see into other people’s homes or allowed people to see what certain people were doing inside their homes, but it doesn’t.
Re: die
die you dirty cop
Fuck them.
Fuck them. I pay the electric bill and I’ll use exactly as much as I fucking care to.
Re: Fuck them.
Amen to that brother. People need to stop worrying about their average citizen neighbor is up to and start worrying about what their governments and corporations are doing.
Re: Fuck them.
They’re weren’t trying to oppress the rights of dicks who abuse natural resources. They were trying to find our if oppressing the rights of dicks who abuse natural resources is economically viable.
As it turns out, it wasn’t or isn’t. Otherwise they would have done more than just throw the shit up on the web when they were done.
Re: Fuck them.
Well, fuck you. Trolls like you are responsible for the environmental disaster we are heading to.
Re: Fuck them.
You must be American, well you don’t pay enough. That’s like saying I payed for these bullets so I may as well use them as I please. Aaaa … I am talking to person with the IQ of a box of rusty hammers
save energy, turn off your heater.
How much energy was wasted flying the spy plane?
Re: save energy, turn off your heater.
Yeah, that was pretty much my thought, too. How much energy do they think this little stunt is going to save, that it will offset flying around in a damn jet for an hour or two?
Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
The fourth Amendment, huh? Well, with our current Administration all that is up for question you know. At least the DOJ, CIA, et al. were enjoined from issuing any more National Security Letters this week.
Police do use thermal imagery for ‘hot spot’ detection. Instead of using that sole evidence – which may or may not be violating your rights – they simply go to the electric company and find out what your bill is.
No matter how much you want to use – if you have a grow room lit up – it will make a huge difference. That’s why most people steal the power from others, esp. commercial establishment.
Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
I dunno, when I started my company, I had a dozen servers in my house, one of which was a monster RAID5 7U quad-processor thing. My electricity bill went up by $25/month for just that machine, and has gone down by about $75-$100 since all the stuff was colo’d.
I’d venture to guess that around Silicon Valley, it’s not that unusual. A couple of friends have small datacenters in the their houses, I’d think that all of those make a ‘huge difference’.
Chris.
Re: Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
I think I would add solar cells to my roof and make them look like a good old slate roof. Let them TRY to check my energy bills!
Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
The fourth Amendment, huh? Well, with our current Administration all that is up for question you know. At least the DOJ, CIA, et al. were enjoined from issuing any more National Security Letters this week.
Police do use thermal imagery for ‘hot spot’ detection. Instead of using that sole evidence – which may or may not be violating your rights – they simply go to the electric company and find out what your bill is.
No matter how much you want to use – if you have a grow room lit up – it will make a huge difference. That’s why most people steal the power from others, esp. commercial establishment.
reply: why not just use a gas generator to supply your power???
Re: Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
What would stop a private concern from doing the imaging in the US and just putting it on the net? The fourth amendment comes into play when the state collects and uses that information to begin an investigation. I imagine that a warrant could be gotten to image a house if there were grounds for suspicion.
Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
the fourth amendment doesn’t really apply in the uk which is where the infra-red images are taken
Re: Heat Maps / Utility Monitoring
Police do use thermal imagery for ‘hot spot’ detection. Instead of using that sole evidence – which may or may not be violating your rights – they simply go to the electric company and find out what your bill is.
And what are they going to say? we asked this guy’s bill on a hunch? Otherwise I think it’ll all be fruit of the poisonous tree
Rental property
I wonder how well does high heat loss correlate with rental property. Arguably, landlords want to offer properties which look nice but are poor on heat insulation. How many landlords actually produce a energy efficiency certificate before renting a property? Probably none.
Re: Rental property
Next year nearly all will have to.
Think of how much energy is being wasted in Iraq. 🙁
Re: Re:
Huh? o_O
Personally I’m all for this. It won’t change everybody, but there will be some who are startled thier house was yellow, orange or even red. They will do something about it. Spending a few hundred gallons of jet fuel for even a marginal increase in efficiency in 1% of the reviewed households will pay back in exponential orders of magnitude. The flight is a one time cost. The savings are perpetual.
Even if you don’t believe in global warming, you must recognize power grids and fuel supplies are limited commodities. Every bit of efficiency you can encourage reduces the speed of consumption and expansion… not to mention your monthly expenses.
Seriously, who loses here?
I want to see
them fly over the building in which the web server hosting the Haringey Interactive Heat Loss Map site is located. That poor thing is probably putting out major joules trying to display the page for the world to see.
Clearly, the page for public consumption has no details, but the original photos may contain many indelicate items of people doing things in their backyards when they thought they had privacy. I don’t know the area’s layout so I don’t know if backyards and all that even exist, but still. Also, it does not take into effect how many people are in the structure using lights and so forth. Furthermore, it does not show how the houses relate to the surroundings. Maybe it is all really warm except for the houses that were empty?
I kind of like the idea, and if it increases awareness and people act on that then its win/win. However, this is more of an expensive political stunt.
Let's see.
I wonder if the right to privacy people will condem this or not due to the fact they are usually the same people screaming global warming. I bet there wont be a word mentioned, by them or the ACLU! As far as the fuel consumtion they can always plant a tree to offset the carbon damage. Afterall this is what Al Gore does!
Theft?
Am I the only one it’s occurred to that a thief might use heat maps to find possible targets. The lights are on but but who leaves the heat on high while their on holiday.
Re: Theft?
I didn’t get the impression these maps were being updated daily.
Either way, what’s your address?
gubberment
yep this is one step past too far. i pay for my energy so mind your own dam business.
vote ron paul, suckas
weed growing
erm.. guys , any weed grower worth his salt is using T3 lighting which runs COOL. they also line their attics/basements with heat reflective material which cuts down DRASTICALLY on ANY heat footpront thay may be caused by the growing room.
using IR cams to find growing rooms has been going on for years and years!
Really, this is news in the UK?
I have had a couple friends busted by this in San Diego when they are growing weed, it’s a common thing.
screw digg
Jesus People
It’s just a cost/benefit study. “Let’s find out if there’s enough energy being wasted to warrant civil action in trying to curb energy waste.”
Your Natural Gas comes from outside of your own country. Your primary source is Russia, who just happens to think you’re a little needle nosed dick with too much political clout. Kudos to this local government for positive efforts made.
spy planes
This is talking about engergy waste, not energy use, therefore it would have nothing todo with farmers of the weed. So there.
Everything they do is a double entendre. There is a publicly stated goal that is the excuse which the majority always accepts (almost always “security”). All the while, there are secondary effects which address the true motive.
To “secure” can mean “to keep safe from harm” or it can mean “to keep possession of”. Therefore “security” means one thing to you and something entirely different to them.
the title of your piece
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, let alone wasted.
wondering why this helicopter fly so close i wanted to do a spiderman and capture it. perhaps a spy plane. it happens in the wee hours of the morning. am not sure who is piloting this toy. don’t google earth me. i’ll give my address!
what the planes were really doing....
Using FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red) to show “heat loss” is a convenient way to mask the real objective. That being using FLIR to see who ‘may’ be growing some ganja in their homes…
Plant a seed, grow a weed!
Yikes
I guess it wasn’t a smart idea to set my house on fire then was it.
UMM how much ENERGY was wasted flying the plane for no real reason?
Poor Method of Determining Energy Waste!
What about all the homes/buildings using A/C to cool their places, or maintain a certain temp? Infra-red will show them as cool, yet they are consuming a fair amount of energy to maintain this cool. Imagine how much a cold-storage place would use!
When I think about roof type construction -vs- heat loss -vs- air conditioning use… I begin to think of how useless this data/map really is.
Not to mention the fact that this is merely a snap-shot in time that only shows HEAT LOSS for a given building at a specific point in time. You would have to have continuous monitoring over say an entire month to create any useful data that would show where to focus energy conservation.
Re: Poor Method of Determining Energy Waste!
Air conditioning does NOT generate COOL, it is a way of shifting hot air to another part – typically the condenser. The aircon condensers will show up as a heat source.
It also depends on what the ambient air temperature is when the survey was done. During winter, there’s little need for most places (except data centres etc) to have aircon on cooling.
Air con? wasn’t this a british thing?
A/C isn’t all that common here, we tend to use more heating.
I think this is a _very_ good idea, especially when you point out to people that you only have to waste ‘x’ amount of heat before fitting insulation would have been cheaper..
appeal directly to peoples pockets.
as for costing a fortune, well i doubt it was a real spyplane, easier to use the local plods helicopter with a thermal camera for the same effect. but then would that have got in the news?
I’d be interested to see a thermal piccy of this place
this
I love the ass-tard replies to the subject about a city looking to curb heat loss by some method.
First reply commented about pot-houses (mentioned nowhere in the links) and then next thing we know is that its Bush’s fault.
Way to go guys. Really intelligent.
Very good idea
They should use that technology to find insurgents in Iraq and in other countries.
sandwiches
They should use it to find out who is making the best grilled cheese sandwiches.
Re: sandwiches
> They should use it to find out who is making the best grilled cheese sandwiches
I AGREE!!
Not a bad idea really
I quite like it and wish they would do it around us, it’d be useful to know if we are wasting a load of energy from ineffective insulation and let us know if it really is worth spending more money on this or not – costs me nothing to view and could help save me a few quid
Added to this I’m looking to move house within the same area soon – I’d love to be able to check out the energy readings to get an idea of bills etc
I just hope they average out readings for a few days or so to get them reasonably accurate, although some of the comments about empty buildings giving high heat readings seem odd
Whatever your thoughts on the project the point is that every single poster has considered (maybe only very briefly) the amount of energy they are using as a result of viewing the heat loss map.
The objective of the project was no doubt to increase awareness of energy use, hence, in my view it has succeeded!
This has no value...
This is a very, very dubious use of the technology. I’d go as far to say that this is completely misleading and of no actual value what so ever.
The temperature readings you get from an object are highly dependent on its surface texture. There will be no continuity between houses sitting next to each other with different roofing materials, so saying one is ‘hot’ while the other isn’t is utter bull. If they took these images during the day (or different times in the day) you’d even get a huge amount of heat reflected from the sun!
Also remember that a building has five effective sides for heat loss, and your only looking at roof insulation. Thermal cameras can be used effectively to look at heat-loss in a building (and current housing sales regulations in the UK require you to look at this before you sell), but this sort of methodology is not in line with professional practise.
And while im on it...
Oh, and its also worth pointing out that these images were taken in the middle of a rather damp summer. This sort of thermal imaging should always be done at night, with dry conditions and of course with cold ambient conditions.
I wonder if they flew over any politician houses?
There’s a VERY good change those houses, along with other ‘aristocracy’ houses are using likely as much as 25 times the energy a normal family does.
It’s complete BS they don’t need to fly over houses for this and all of you who think this is a good idea are idiots.
One can simply call the power company and ask for a energy usage report, why do they need to fly over? Seriously…. come on… How stupid are people getting?
Re: Re:
Think about that for a moment. If a house is using 25 times the energy as the next one along, hes paying 25 times the electricity bill!
Ironicly the ritch don’t pay that sort of bill, because they can afford to fit good quality insulation and double-glazing.
But you can’t just phone up a power station and ask how much power someone is using, because that will violate provider/consumer confidentiality. Its not representative either, as naturally a larger or older house will cost more to heat.
But all this isn’t to say the technology doesn’t work; it does. A propper thermographer will consider the outside temperature and the inside temperature (clearly you can’t do this if the two are the same), along with the thickness and surface area of the walls. He’ll then consider the energy going in to heat the house, the proportion its loosing and tell you where you can invest to reduce this.
If this is intended as a publicity piece, fine. Raising awareness of these issues is important. The danger is that people consider this credible, and run out to spend money on new double glazing they don’t need.
EM spectrum
> Because it uses spectrum not normally visibile, it runs
> afoul of the fourth amendment
I’m always confused by this reasoning. It’s all just the EM spectrum, what difference does it make if it is visible or not? If you are emitting energy at any wavelength into a public space (say the street), and it is detected there using a passive detector, why isn’t that fair game for anyone to observe? If you want to hide it, make sure you HIDE IT!
Heat Maps/Utility Monitoring
While sealing up buildings to cut down on hear loss, this also cuts down on fresh air flow…………….which contributes to sick building syndrome, allergies and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities.
Since the 70’s when the US had a spurt of energy consciousness and started to seal up buildings, allergies and chemical sensitivities have been on the rise. Also, during this time frame our use of questionable cleaning products and syntheitic air fresheners, personal fragrances and perfumed products for cleaning clothes has increased. We are making ourselves sick.
In 1968 my first child was born and I read Dr. Spock’s baby book…………he suggested that the perfect temp for a healthy baby is 68 and that there should always be a window cracked in bedrooms to allow the flow of fresh air.
Here in the midwest of the US, we overcool and overheat most of our buildings…………….people do not have control of thermostats……………….main computer for this school district where I worked in St. Louis was located in Atlanta……………..heat on in the spring sometimes and air on in the winter……………….and by time problem was corrected, weather changed……….common sense needs to be used………………people wear sweaters and jackets in restaurants in the summer in ST. Louis……………..I know people who keep their air down so low that they wear sweats and use comforters while watching TV in the summer time……….and have their heat up so high that they wear summer clothes at home in the winter……………….
We have many challenges in our relationship to the environment and the connection of our health. However, we need to stop trading one problem for another.
Please google for more information about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.
robin
I wish that I had this kind of data for my house, so I could determine whether installing more insulation would be a good investment. The solution that this UK city used seems like a great way to provide this data, inexpensively and conveniently.
Spy plane heat loss maps
Home owners with large heat losses are often ignorant OR are simply too poor to fix the problem.
The government should provide an tax incentive for utility companies and home and business owners to work together.
Utility companies could subcontract out insulation work based on a government provided formula.
Of course there are all kinds of reasons to say this not would work 100% well. But think about defense budgets and how far something like this would cut down on the NEED to defend oil sources.