The Biochar Blog

Archive for September, 2010

Most people have become concerned about the increase in air pollution. We often associate air pollution with the outdoors, but indoor air pollution has become a growing health concern. The air quality in our homes and offices can have an affect on our health. Polluted indoor air can cause a host of problems such as breathing difficulties, allergies, and sinus problems. One method of reducing air pollution is to clean the air ducts.

Health Risks and Dirty Air Ducts

Air ducts can be found in such places as homes, schools, office buildings, hotels, retail establishments, apartment buildings,etc. Contaminated air ducts are often a major a major source of indoor air pollution. Air ducts can provide the perfect environment for the accumulation of allergens, bacteria, fungi, dust, dust mites, mold, and other organisms. Every time a heating and cooling unit runs, pollutants can be pulled in and over time, they will accumulate and flourish. Eventually, these contaminants are blown into rooms where they are inhaled by the occupants. The result will be the development of illnesses and severe allergic reactions.

Poor indoor air quality can cause or contribute to the development of chronic respiratory illnesses such as asthma, bronchitis, lung disease, headaches and migraines, dry eyes, nasal congestion, nausea, insomnia, and tiredness. Biological pollutants such as moulds, bacteria, viruses, pollen, and animal dander reduce air quality which can cause serious illness.

Duct Cleaning Benefits

Cleaning your air ducts is a great method of improving the quality of indoor air. It improves air circulation, eliminates the built-up of contaminates, and improves the quality and function of heating and cooling systems. Duct cleaning involves the cleaning and disinfection of the components of a heating and cooling system. This normally includes supply and return air ducts and registers, grills and diffusers, heat exchangers, heating and cooling coils, drip pans, fan motor, fan housing and air handling unit housing. If not properly maintained, the components will become contaminated with dirt and other microorganisms.

Moisture in ducts is a breeding ground for bacteria and fungi which can cause respiratory illnesses when inhaled. If there are mice or rats running through the ducts, they will often leave their droppings in the ducts. Air blowing the droppings can result air contamination and may lead to serious health problems.

Duct Cleaning technicians have the experience and tools to thoroughly clean and disinfect ducts. There are professional cleaners that can clean a variety of ducts such as commercial, residential, and industrial ducts. The outcome will be a cleaner and less dusty home or building because there will no longer be any dust blowing into rooms. The chance of an indoor allergic reaction will be greatly reduced. Dust mites feed on debris found in air ducts. When you eliminate the debris, you will eliminate the dust mites. Newly constructed homes may also need a duct cleaning.

Materials such as plaster and drywall particles, wood, dust, insects and insulation can accumulate in ducts during construction. Removing these contaminants will make breathing in your new home much easier. New homes are now being built to be more energy efficient. This means that they are more air tight. Dirty air ducts in an energy efficient home can seriously affect the health of the occupants.

If left unclean for a long period of time, your air duct system could be a major source of dust and contaminants. For businesses, hiring a professional duct cleaning service once or twice a year will greatly improve the health of employees, clients, and customers. Cleaning home ducts will benefit homeowners, their children, and their pets

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Much Energy Does Solar Panel Produce

The whole idea of this feed-in-tariff business is that you earn money by selling units of energy produced by your solar panels. So much so that after 25 years of operation you’ve made your money back and have even turned a tidy profit. This means that in order to know whether putting up some solar panels makes any sense, you need to know exactly how much energy they’re going to produce over the 25-year guarantee period.

Easy, you might say – the calculation is pretty straightforward. You find out the average annual irradiation (sunnyness level) from your local weather station, and multiply by the efficiency of your solar panels and the number of square metres you have. This will give you a nice number and away we go. The only problem is you might be more than 50% wrong because we’ve missed out a couple of variables. Variables such as temperature coefficient, tilt angle, diffuse-light fraction, solar cell type, shading losses, inverter losses, cable losses, degradation, module de-rate factor, mismatch losses, anti-reflective coatings, snow and lightning strikes, to name a few.

Of course there are an infinite number of effects that can influence the output of your photovoltaic system (solar eclipse, anyone?). The question is whether you have considered the important ones or not.

Knowledgeable installers use one of a number computer programs designed specifically to take these factors into account. You type in what type of solar panel you’re using, how many, where they are, what angle they’re tilted at, what direction they’re facing and then press ‘go’. It then calculates the amount of energy you’ll produce each month and even the return on investment if you want it to. Behind these models is actually some physics that describes the behaviour of solar cells under different light intensities and correctly.

The most commonly used model in Europe is called PVSyst, developed at the University of Geneva. This software package contains information on a large number of different solar panel types and is capable of taking into account many of the above listed factors. Installers across Europe use this software package to predict the energy yield of residential solar systems, as do many banks pondering whether to provide multi-million euro loans to super-large PV power projects. Even with this advanced software package however, some of these factors are very complex, and improving these models is an active area of research.

Here, I’ll deal with a couple of these complications as examples. When you buy a solar panel, it invariably comes with a power rating. Full size modules are generally around 200W. What does this mean though? In principle, the power rating indicates what you get when the panel is illuminated by full-sunlight. ‘Full sunlight’ is not very specific, so the international community has defined what is known as Standard Test Conditions (STC), which corresponds to an irradiation of 1000 W/m2 and a cell temperature of 25oC, when the light has a specific spectrum (or colour) known as Air Mass Index 1.5. So the power of your solar panel comes from its performance under exactly these conditions. In general this is measured using special type of lamp called a ‘solar simulator’ that tries to reproduce the AM1.5 spectrum as closely as possible. Calibrating these lamps precisely is notoriously difficult and there are very few testing centers around the world that are truly trusted. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado, USA uses at least two different lamps and one outdoor measurement to record STC performance, after a long period of calibration. Much Energy Does Solar Panel Produce

Because measuring the STC performance is so tricky, the power rating you get has a plus or minus 5 percent error margin. This is hard to include in your simulation. In addition, manufacturers will often deliberately under-rate the power of their solar panels to be sure they don’t fall below the warranty. This means you may well get considerably more power than you expect.

Another factor that adds to uncertainty is the degradation factor. When you buy solar panels they are normally guaranteed for 20 years, but only to 80% of the initial power output. This means the manufacturer expects them to degrade 1% per year on average. When calculating performance in the models, people also tend to use a 1% degradation rate per year. This is only a rough estimate however. During the certification process, solar panels are given all sports of nasty treatment to test their reliability to breaking point. This doesn’t tell you much about the rate of degradation when the solar panels are outside under normal operation though. The only reliable way to test degradation over 20 years is to wait 20 years, but this is complicated by the fact that technology improves reliability much faster than that. So the degradation of solar panels made in 2008 has only been tested since, well, 2008.

What these issues highlight is that understanding the energy yield output of your solar panels is not as straightforward as it may at first seem. When having your system designed, make sure who-ever you’re dealing with has some experience, and if possible, get a second opinion.

The other critical piece of information for understanding the financial viability of a solar installation is how much you will get paid per kWh under the feed-in-tariff. Unfortunately, the UK government has not released the final figures yet, which means no-one in the UK can make a reliable financial plan for getting solar panels, even when the launch date for the feed-in-tariff is just 4 months away.

Hopefully I will be able to update you on this in the near future. For now though, it’s better to be more conservative with your numbers than too ambitious…. Much Energy Does Solar Panel Produce

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Today we are in the era of globalisation. Multinational organisations worldwide have adopted globalisation as their first strategic choice. Advancement in technology has facilitated globalisation too.   There has been a marked improvement particularly in the area of maintenance, storage, availability and transfer of data. The world has literally shrunk to become a “global village”.

Banks have transformed themselves and are offering services through internet.  From computerization to networking to ATMs and now E-Banking, banks have moved up the value chain.  Internet banking refers to the use of internet as a remote delivery channel for banking services.   It means any user with a personal computer and a browser can get connected to his bank website to perform any of the virtual banking functions.    The number of visits to the bank can be minimized effectively by operating from the internet account. Thus the number of contacts required to perform a transaction and solve a problem has been reduced through online banking.  The usual branches of banks have culminated into PC networks, whereby the consumer can draw all the benefits and services of the bank at a single click of the mouse. Once the branch offices of bank are interconnected through terrestrial or satellite links, there would be no physical identity for any branch. It would a borderless entity permitting anytime, anywhere and anyhow banking.  A customer can log on banks website and access his account.

Evolution of technology in Indian banking

The technological development4 in banking can be traced as follows:-

1960 - Mechanised banking introduced.
1970 – Introduction of computer based banking industry.
1980 – Introduction of computer-linked communication based banking.

Advent of computer technology has created a major impact on working of banks.  The computerization and subsequent development in history of Indian banks can be traced back to 1966 when Indian Bankers Association (IBA) along with exchange banks associationsigned first wage settlement with the unions, which accounted for the use of IBM or ICT accounting machines for inter-branch reconciliation etc.   A committee on computerization and mechanisation was appointed by RBI in 1983 under chairmanship of Dr. C. Rangrajan recommended that computerization and installation of Advanced Ledger Posting Machines (ALPM) at branch, regional and head offices of banks will bring around a new era in banking.  Narsimhan Committee in 1991 paved way for reform phase in banking.  Saraf Committee was constituted by RBI in 1994 that recommended the use of Electronic Fund Transfer System (EFT), introduction of electronic clearing services and extension of Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) beyond metropolitan cities and branches.

The rate of adoption of IT by foreign and private sector bank in the country has been significant over the last five years, which can be attributed to fierce competition and the internet phenomena worldwide.  The arrival of private and multinational banks with their superior state of the art technology based services pushed the Indian banks to follow the suit by going in for the latest technologies to meet the threat of competitors and retain their customer base. “The last four years have seen dramatic changes, making customers’ convenience critical aspect of banking”.  Indian metros are surging ahead in online banking usage.  Today the delivery channel of banks include direct dial up connections, private networks, public networks etc. and the devices include telephone, Personal Computers including Automated Teller Machines, etc.

Impact of on line banking

It has been observed that customers who adopt online banking are typically more profitable to the bank, stay with the bank longer and use more products strengthening the bank customer relationship.  Information Technology and Internet banking has bridged the information gap, which was interestingly because of human involvement.  Banks can make the information of products and services available on their site, which is, an advantageous proposition.

Prospective customer can gather all the information from the website and thus if he comes to the branch with queries it will be very specific and will take less time of employee.  Customer can visit these websites and can compare the services offered by a bank with that of another.  Customer can get all the information, by saving money and time.  The trend thus emerging out is that of virtual corporate system where the human role is minimized to maximum effect.

The overall banking size and structure has increased considerably.  It can also be accredited to the current market characteristics.  More private players and multinational banks are establishing their base in India.  Earlier nationalized bank dominated the scenario.  Now after deregulation private banks have emerged as a powerful force.  As a result, there is a fierce competition among these players for capturing the savings of individuals and current accounts of organisations.  This has been spearheaded by the liberalization in the insurance industry.  Insurance industry is giving fierce competition through their offerings on various policies.  This sudden surge has necessitated the use of technology in offering better services competitively.  Most of the banks have coupled IT with their offering to add value.

Several banks have been positioning themselves as a one-stop shop financial service provider with a fairly exhaustive range of products, including deposit products, loans, credit cards, debit cards, depository (custody services), investment advice, bill payments and various transactional services.  These apart, banks have also been entering into the business of selling third-party products such as mutual funds and insurance to the retail customers.  To provide their customers greater flexibility and convenience as well as to reduce servicing costs, banks have been investing to computerize their branches and in new delivery channels such as ATMs, phone banking, internet banking and mobile banking.

Internet banking in India

The Reserve Bank of India constituted a working group on Internet Banking. The group       divided the internet banking products in India into 3 types based on the levels of access granted. They are:

Information Only System General Purpose information like interest rates, branch location, bank products and their features, loan and deposit calculations are provided in the banks website. There exist facilities for downloading various types of application forms. The communication is normally done through e-mail. There is no interaction between the customer and bank’s application system. No identification of the customer is done. In this system, there is no possibility of any unauthorized person getting into production systems of the bank through internet. 
Electronic Information Transfer System The system provides customer- specific information in the form of account balances, transaction details, and statement of accounts. The information is still largely of the ‘read only’ format. Identification and authentication of the customer is through password. The information is fetched from the bank’s application system either in batch mode or off-line. The application systems cannot directly access through the internet. 
Fully Electronic Transactional System This system allows bi-directional capabilities. Transactions can be submitted by the customer for online update. This system requires high degree of security and control. In this environment, web server and application systems are linked over secure infrastructure. It comprises technology covering computerization, networking and security, inter-bank payment gateway and legal infrastructure.

Internet banking can be categorized in following stages:
Information Kiosks: traditional information on banking products and services are available on the website of the bank.
Basic I-Banking:  Here, bank sets up infrastructure for internet banking and for accessing basic services like opening an account, paying utility bills and checking the balance.
Virtual medium: Here internet is taken as an official medium for financial transactions.  Buying and selling activities can be undertaken through banks payment gateway technology. Today most of the banks are having their own functional websites through which banks are serving customers.

Unique features of internet banking

Online banking solutions have many features and capabilities in common, but traditionally also have some that are application specific.

Support account aggregation to monitor accounts in one place
Make fund transfers between own accounts and third party accounts
Interbank fund transfer
Maintenance of future fund transfers
Maintenance of beneficiaries
Make Payment on bills to service providers
Maintenance of registered bill payment
Manage our investments with placement in our General Investment Account
Withdrawals with details of investment history
Initiate standing instructions and delete them Manage financing accounts payment facility financing details
Manage Card account
Manage cheques status inquiry
Stop cheque facility
Release of stop cheque facility
Cheque book request
Cheque return inquiry

Cheque deposit inquiry
Current Account statement request
Profit rates inquiry
FOREX rates inquiry
Update profile
Change account correspondence address
Change  password
Send message to Internet Banking customer care
Delete ATM card in cases of loss or authorized usage.

Services through e-banking

Bill payment service It facilitates payment of electricity and telephone bills, mobile phone, credit card and insurance premium bills as each bank has tie-ups with various utility companies, service providers and insurance companies, across the country. To pay our bills, all we need to do is complete a simple one-time registration for each biller. We can also set up standing instructions online to pay our recurring bills, automatically. The bank does not charge customers for online bill payment.
Fund transfer We can transfer any amount from one account to another of the same or any another bank. Once we login to your account, we need to mention the payees’ account number, his bank and the branch. The transfer will take place in a day or so, whereas in a traditional method, it takes about three working days. ICICI Bank says that online bill payment service and fund transfer facility have been their most popular online services.
Credit card customers With Internet banking, customers can not only pay their credit card bills online but also get a loan on their cards. If we lose our credit card, we can report lost card online. 
Railway pass Indian Railways has tied up with ICICI bank and we can now make our railway pass for local trains online. The pass will be delivered to us at our doorstep. But the facility is limited to Mumbai, Thane, Nasik, Surat and Pune.

Investing through Internet banking We can now open an FD online through funds transfer. Now investors with interlinked demat account and bank account can easily trade in the stock market and the amount will be automatically debited from their respective bank accounts and the shares will be credited in their demat account. Moreover, some banks even give us the facility to purchase mutual funds directly from the online banking system.

Recharging prepaid phone Now we just top-up our prepaid mobile cards by logging in to Internet banking. By just selecting our operator’s name, entering our mobile number and the amount for recharge, our phone is again back in action within few minutes.
Shopping With a range of all kind of products, we can shop online and the payment is also made conveniently through our account. We can also buy railway and air tickets through Internet banking.

Advantages of online banking

The advantages of online banking can be encapsulated as: 
– Convenient
-Unaffected by boundation of operational timings.

-No geographical barriers

- Services can be offered at very low cost

-cost per transaction through internet banking is very low.

Challenges in internet banking

Internet banking in India is in its earliest stage of development.  Most of them are offering basic services only.  The deregulation of banking industry coupled with the emergence of new banking technologies is enabling new competitors to enter the financial services market quickly and efficiently.
Indian internet banking faces following challenges:

Proper understanding of the customer For this a massive survey must be undertaken may be in collaboration with other banks.
Need for transparency in offering services as customers awareness has grown considerably.
Breach of privacy online transactions enter straightaway into the records revealing the identity of customer.  Thus black money cannot be transferred with ease.
Bandwidth Though companies claim to offer good speed and high bandwidth, still there are problems in accessing high speed on net.  Internet banking can go high only on the wings of proper infrastructure comprising telecommunications and bandwidth.
Computer literacy in India is still very low and that is a barrier in fast acceptance of Internet banking.
The mindset of the Indian customer needs to be changed.
Cracking login and passwords is a common way of fiddling with the data.
Denial of services Directing millions of queries can block computer network.
Data Diddling Data can be modified in an unauthorized manner.  A customer can therefore receive bills of higher amounts than the actual transactions
Session hijacking Hijackers become unauthorized intermediaries between the server and the client; they can then hijack the data and prevent it from reaching the destination. Most online transactions involve disclosing up of the credit or debit card number.  Hackers can very easily track down these numbers.  They can thus enjoy the full benefits of the card without being an actual cardholder.                                                                                                                                           RBI has issued some guidelines on Internet banking for safety of customers and banks. Some of which are:
Application for account opening can be accepted over Internet but account should be opened only after proper introduction and physical verification of the customer.
Security procedure adopted by bank, for authenticating user, must be recognized by law as a substitute for signature, from a legal perspective.                                                                                                                               The secrecy and confidentiality of customers account has to be maintained.
Consumer Protection Act is applicable to banking services as well.

Information Technology Act 2000 has given legal recognition to creation, transmission and retention of an electronic (magnetic) data to be treated as evidence in court, except in those areas which continue to be governed by the provisions of Negotiable Instruments Act 1881.

Security precautions

Customers should never share personal information like PIN numbers, passwords etc with anyone, including employees of the bank. It is important that documents that contain confidential information are safeguarded. PIN or password mailers should not be stored, the PIN and/or passwords should be changed immediately and memorised before destroying the mailers.
Customers are advised not to provide sensitive account-related information over unsecured e-mails or over the phone. Take simple precautions like changing the ATM PIN and online login and transaction passwords on a regular basis. Also ensure that the logged in session is properly .Internet banking is changing the banking industry and is having the major effects on banking relationships out.

Security token devices

Protection through single password authentication, as is the case in most secure Internet shopping sites, is not considered secure enough for personal online banking applications in some countries. Basically there exist two different security methods for online banking.

The PIN/TAN system, the PIN represents a password which is used for the login and TAN represents one-time passwords to authenticate transactions. TANs can be distributed in different ways; the most popular one is to send a list of TANs to the online banking user by postal letter. The most secure way of using TANs is to generate them by need using a security token. These token generated TANs depend on the time and a unique secret, stored in the security token  which is called two-factor authentication or 2FA.Usually online banking with PIN/TAN is done via a web browser using SSL secured connections, so that there is no additional encryption needed. Signature based online banking where all transactions are signed and encrypted digitally. The Keys for the signature generation and encryption can be stored on smartcards or any memory medium, depending on the concrete implementation.

Attacks

Most of the attacks on online banking used today are based on deceiving the user to steal login data and valid TANs. Two well known examples for those attacks are phishing and pharming. Cross-site scripting and keylogger/Trojan horses can also be used to steal login information.

A method to attack signature based online banking methods is to manipulate the used software in a way, that correct transactions are shown on the screen and faked transactions are signed in the background.

Countermeasures

There exist several countermeasures which try to avoid attacks. Digital certificates are used against phishing and pharming, the use of class-3 card readers is a measure to avoid manipulation of transactions by the software in signature based online banking variants. To protect their systems against Trojan horses, users should use virus scanners and be careful with downloaded software or e-mail attachments.’

Conclusion

Internet banking is changing the banking industry and is having the major effects on banking relationships.  The net banking, thus, “now is more of a norm rather than an exception in many developed countries” due to the fact that it is the economical way of providing banking services.  Banking is now no longer confined to the traditional brick and mortar branches.  There is need to scan and analyse the market and respond to the needs of customers and to generate awareness regarding advantages of internet banking. Providing internet banking is increasingly becoming a ‘need to have’ than a ‘nice to have’ services.

Calculating carbon emissions is a complex process. The different types of emissions need to be identified and collected company wide. From this information, the amount of each type of gas released into the environment needs to be calculated. In addition, tracking methods need to show the daily use of refrigerant gas. The end result will show the global warming potential for each facility with a refrigeration and air-conditioning (RAC) system or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system. Refrigerant systems use high levels of greenhouse gases, so the EPA established the Climate Registry Protocol for calculating carbon emissions on a regular basis. The international equivalent of this requirement is outlined in the Montreal Protocol and Kyoto Protocol. The main purpose for calculating carbon emissions is to begin reducing the damaging effects that refrigerant gas has on the environment. Commercial refrigeration and air-conditioning (RAC) systems or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems operate on refrigerant gas, which is made up of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs). When broken down, these substances contain carbon, chlorine, fluorine and hydrogen. These gases are major ozone depleting substances. By calculating carbon emissions, government environmental agencies will be able to better understand the situation. Companies who fail to report their carbon emissions will be issued a substantial fine. Various carbon emissions reporting protocols have emerged from the EPA, ISO, World Resource Institute, and Climate Registry protocols. All of these documents define in great detail how organizations must collect data, calculate carbon emissions, and report the results. In short, the monitoring, tracking, and reporting requirements mandate that all locations where refrigerants are being used or serviced must collect, organize, and calculate as part of an enterprise’s carbon emissions. Some volume of carbon is released into the environment by any company with a refrigerant system. Trying to determine how much carbon is emitted is an intricate process. Calculating carbon emissions begins by collecting data across the entire company and all its locations and identifying the gases. From there, a determination on how much of each gas is released must be made. Then various reports that include tracking methods need to be completed and submitted. Refrigerant management programs can best handle the tedious process of calculating carbon emissions. With so many components involved, a computerized refrigerant management program is much more effective than manually handling and reviewing paper reports. A refrigerant management program that includes a solution for refrigerant gas tracking and an automated way to calculate carbon emissions is important. Solutions like this make is easier to handle calculating carbon emissions for all AC/HVAC systems operated by a company. There are several reasons that led to the EPA and international environmental agencies to require companies to include calculating carbon emissions in their reports. It is an important step to define your organizational boundaries, where you do business, and to identify the refrigerants you own or other sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Equally important is to establish a tracking mechanism for determining how much harmful gases are released at any given time. The information and data collected for the emerging refrigerant management programs will enhance and improve atmospheric conditions with specific requirements for reducing carbon (CO2) emissions. By calculating carbon emissions, companies will be able to recognize the extent of their carbon footprint. For companies with multiple locations using refrigeration and air-conditioning (RAC) systems or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, the task becomes even more critical. But there is help to address this challenging issue. Emerging software provided by clean-tech development firms track carbon dioxide gas emissions across all sites so companies can do their part to ensure a healthy environment for years to come.

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