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Net Work Alan Winstanley In this column, I explain how I used a wireless weather station to banish indoor condensation. You can check the resulting live weather data online. I also have an update on Britain’s Small Modular Reactor program and electricity generation in general. A s I pen this month’s column, we’ve had a taste of winter, with early snowstorms battering parts of the British Isles. Unlike many betterprepared countries, Britain almost grinds to a halt when the first snowflakes hit the ground. We are unaccustomed to wintry weather extremes that invariably catch us on the hop. Apart from amateur weather watchers, others interested in the weather include horticulturists and growers, small boat owners, fishpond keepers and owners of solar panels (or home wind turbines, for that matter). I introduced my new internet weather station in the July 2023 and January 2024 issues. It is an Ecowitt HP2551 WiFi­-enabled system with a crystal-clear 7-inch (178mm) TFT display that logs various meteorological metrics on its colourful screen. It generates plenty of data that helps owners to recognise trends and anticipate weather conditions. Additional sensors sold by Ecowitt can measure soil moisture, soil temperature and pond or pool water temperature. Pricier add-ons will monitor PM2.5 air quality (particulate matter density) and lightning strikes, although the data captured is only available on an app. Alarms can be set to warn of high winds or rainfall, although I find the console’s on-board piezo buzzer is quite timid. The weather station’s 7-in-1 outdoor array (WS69) measures wind speed, gusts and direction, rainfall, humidity, temperature, UV index and solar radiation. It must be installed pointing to true north. European models use the reliable and less-crowded 868MHz frequency band to transmit data wirelessly. Data can be stored on the console’s microSD card for later use (eg, in Excel), but it can also upload to Ecowitt’s cloud server and other popular weather websites. This month I’m sharing an exclusive link where readers can check my data online for themselves (see later). A single WH32 sensor is included that reads indoor temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure, and you can add up to eight wireless sensors as your enthusiasm grows. In my case, this would prove very handy as I’m trying to tackle a condensation problem this wintertime, possibly caused by insufficient ventilation or insulation in the home. AI with everything Since indoor condensation is caused by warm, moist air hitting cold surfaces, I set up several Ecowitt WN31 temperature/humidity sensors around the house. I hoped to keep track of ambient humidity levels indoors, and I could also check the performance of a domestic dehumidifier bought especially for the winter season. The British brand Ebac manufactures dehumidifiers designed especially for the British climate. Some models use an advanced and unique “Smart control AI” sensor instead of a basic humidistat that only measures relative humidity (RH). “Smart” here does not imply internet connectivity. Ebac says its ‘smart’ approach is superior for British weather, as there’s never an optimum RH figure anyway, because RH changes when the weather changes. I chose the Ebac 3650e 18L ‘smart’ model (it extracts up to 18 litres per day), bought online direct from the makers at https://ebac.com/dehumidifiers/range Online buying tip: hold back until special discount offers appear; direct The author used an Ecowitt HP2551 weather station like this one to check indoor humidity levels using multiple wireless sensors. The Ecowitt WN31 indoor sensor has an LCD screen and monitors the local temperature and humidity. 4 Practical Electronics | February | 2025 A set of DIP switches at the rear of the WN31 indoor sensor select one of eight possible channels. operating the Ebac costs about 45p a day, as shown by my Ketotek power meter (see Net Work, January 2024). Indoor humidity has fallen to 4550% or so regardless of the weather. Best of all, the condensation problem has disappeared completely. After 18 months of operation, I’m also pleased to say that the Ecowitt weather station still performs flawlessly. I’ve had no problems at all with sensor communications, even though the outdoor array is 30m or more away, and the console is located well inside the house with quite a few brick walls intervening. Net Work’s weather station sales also attract an extended fouryear warranty. Moist air tends to rise (it’s less dense than dry air), so I permanently plugged in the dehumidifier upstairs. Keeping internal doors ajar improves air circulation. The appliance then becomes the coldest spot in the house, where humid air is forced to condense before being collected in a tub, emptied daily. Alternatively, water can drain externally through a small pipe. Using the Ecowitt weather station this way was an interesting exercise. Initially, I was astonished to see some three litres of water extracted every day before it settled down over the course of a few weeks. Continuously This UK-made Ebac dehumidifier has a unique ‘Smart AI’ humidity sensor. Practical Electronics | February | 2025 I’m now pleased to offer readers an opportunity to view some of my own live data on Ecowitt’s servers, by visiting the special link at https://www.ecowitt.net/home/share? authorize=1HJ565 There’s also a QR code you can snap with your smartphone. The URL is valid for up to one year and may change over time. Graph lines can be toggled to hide or reveal parameters (eg, click the small Solar and UVI icons to show or hide the corresponding lines). The date range is selectable from a dropdown box. It has been interesting to compare indoor humidity against outdoor weather. I was intrigued to see how the Ebac operated pretty much continuously during periods of heavy rain, until indoor humidity fell and it settled down again. The ‘Smart AI’ sensor is obviously working well. If you don’t want a fully fledged LCD weather display console, a simple low-cost ‘gateway’ is available that works with a smartphone app instead. The Ecowitt GW1200 would be a good place to start; a wide range of Ecowitt products is sold online. One UK website that’s worth checking is https://weatherspares.co.uk and Amazon also has a selection of Eco­ witt products as well as dehumidifiers. AliExpress also lists many Ecowitt products, noting that prices exclude VAT. Other popular dehumidifier brands include Meaco, De’Longhi and Pro Breeze, which are sold by the usual outlets. Many can also be used for drying laundry indoors. Incidentally, ‘dessicant’ types are the best choice for low-temperature locations such as garages, outbuildings or, say, caravans that are laid up over winter. If you decide to pipe the dehumidifier’s water outlet outside, remember to insulate the pipework so it cannot freeze up. This QR code will display the author’s weather station data in your browser. Next, I’ll try uploading data direct to the UK Meteorological Office Weather Observation Website (Met. Office WOW) at https://wow.metoffice.gov.uk – but that’s a project for the winter holidays! A gloomy outlook There are a few German-language words that have no English equivalent; schadenfreude (relishing someone else’s downfall) is an obvious one, but another word that recently joined our lexicon is dunkelflaute. Britain’s anti-cyclonic weather in early November saw a period of some 10 days or more with absolutely no sun, little wind and low cloud – a perfect dunkelflaute, or a gloomy lull in the depressing weather. No amount of renewable solar or wind energy generation will be of much use during a dunkelflaute. November’s miserable weather brought into sharp focus the UK’s ongoing march towards ‘Net Zero’, as the country strives to move away from fossil fuels towards becoming self-sufficient in ‘green’ energy instead. At such times, to keep the lights on we rely on storage battery farms, nuclear, biomass and fossil fuels, overseas interconnects and some hydroelectricity to top it up. The highly informative website at https://grid. iamkate.com designed by Kate Morley shows admirably the status of the National Grid as it edges perilously close to 100% during peak periods. See the example screen grab overleaf. Data provided from the last ten years is insightful, as it also shows how energy costs of £35 per MWh in 2020 increased five-fold in 2022. International Energy Agency (IEA) statistics show that the UK now has easily the most expensive industrial energy costs anywhere in the Western world, 4.5 times higher than Norway’s, for example. At one time, the UK had an ambition to become entirely self-sufficient 5 Our first new nuclear power station in decades is long behind schedule, partly because Britain has had to relearn forgotten nuclear power construction skills all over again, says EDF. The immense pressure on Britain’s energy infrastructure has been well documented, and the rush to meet ‘Net Zero’ carbon emissions has created a perfect political storm. The last coal-fired power station has closed and some gas power stations have been bulldozed. Meanwhile, ‘solar farms’ are springing up that carpet agricultural land with Chinese-made solar panels. Many ‘green’ ambitions are being pinned on wind power, such as the world’s largest offshore wind farms being built at Dogger Bank and Hornsea, off the UK’s east coast. A network of undersea power and data cables now criss-crosses the world’s oceans. Recently, a Chinese bulk carrier, the Yi Peng 3, was accused of dragging its anchor 100 miles to deliberately cut two cables in the Baltic Sea. Fortunately, the damage was swiftly repaired, and the ship is now being shadowed by NATO vessels. However, it’s not thought that China was behind the episode. In today’s uncertain times, such resources are undoubtedly vulnerable to foreign interference. Thus, in 2023, the Royal Navy Fleet Auxiliary launched RFA Proteus, a converted oil-rig service vessel equipped with a helipad and remotely operated submersibles. It is dedicated to safeguarding undersea infrastructure such as energy supplies and data cables. A second vessel is scheduled to be built. Meeting demands Live National Grid electricity power data compiled by the IamKate website. Roll over the charts and graphs for more details. in generating electricity from nuclear power. That was half a century ago, in 1975. I wrote about the UK’s chequered history of nuclear power in Net Work, November 2022, which included details of the 1957 Windscale nuclear disaster. Delayed reaction Sixty years ago, Britain’s forwardlooking Government placed its bets on the wrong horse, backing the development of its own Advanced Gascooled Reactors (AGRs) to replace first-generation Magnox reactors, while the rest of the world was opting for Pressurised Water Reactors (PWRs) instead. 6 Fourteen AGRs were built after 1963, all of them used exclusively in the UK. Buoyed by the arrival of North Sea ‘natural gas’, the famous 1990 Creature Comforts TV adverts (shown in full on YouTube at https:// youtu.be/fBJ6pixLHtc) implored us to use as much of this bounteous energy as we could! After a two-year long public enquiry into the nuclear power sector, it wasn’t until 1988 that construction started on Sizewell B, our first PWR, which finally went online in 1995. Sizewell C and Hinkley Point C are currently being constructed by France’s EDF, and promise to generate electricity for the next 60 years. In January 2022, I first described the prospect of the country adopting Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) to fill Britain’s energy gap. For financial reasons, Japan’s Hitachi and Toshiba had previously pulled out of building nuclear power plants in Britain, adding to Britain’s power generation shortfall. Hitachi’s former sites in Wales have since been purchased by Great British Nuclear (GBN) as part of its future growth plans. SMRs are nuclear power plants that can be assembled on-site using major prebuilt elements that can be transported by road. In 2022, SMRs were still a decade away, and a government ‘competition’ was held to produce a short-list of contractors that the UK would support in developing them. There was much flag-waving from Practical Electronics | February | 2025 The new Royal Fleet Auxiliary Proteus is a vessel designed for undersea surveillance and warfare. Source: YouTube (Navy Lookout). Rolls-Royce, but foreign rivals were eager to offer SMRs too. France’s EDF withdrew early from the race, followed by American company NuScale. The ‘competition’ finalists have now been announced as Rolls-Royce, GE-Hitachi, Holtec and Westinghouse. Holtec Britain is already heavily involved with Britain’s nuclear construction program and chose Doncaster in South Yorkshire as the site for a new SMR factory. Some 70% of components are to be UK-sourced. The world-famous Sheffield Forgemasters steelworks, now owned by the Ministry of Defence, is just up the road and produces highly specialised castings for the nuclear sector. Holtec fast-tracked the regulatory approvals needed for its US-designed SMRs and, once approved, construction could start as early as 2026, the firm says, with ‘shovel-to-startup life cycle’ estimated as three years. Rolls- Royce is also known to be scouting locations to build several factories. GBN says that they will make the final decision on which technologies to select in the spring of 2025. Until SMRs eventually come on stream and energy supplies loosen up, UK consumers are going to be encouraged (or bribed) to cut energy consumption at peak periods. Previous trials of the so-called ‘Demand Flexibility Service’ (DFS) over winter 2022/23 were deemed a success (even winning industry awards), and the scheme is again being offered this winter. In a nutshell, DFS offers consumers with smart meters a rebate to encourage them to use power-hungry appliances such as washing machines during off-peak periods. This will shift demand on the electricity supply during so-called ‘DFS events’, when the supply operators struggle to match electricity demand with supply. It’s probably only a matter of time before ‘Event’ messages pop up on smart meter displays or via SMS, so consumer behaviour may well be manipulated that way too. Hidden deeply in some small-print from the electricity system operators is a caveat, though: Using electrical goods overnight can create an increased risk of an incident. We advise all consumers to follow the guidance offered by organisations such as the [campaigning charity] Electrical Safety First [https://www.electricalsafetyfirst. org.uk/guidance/safety-around-thehome] and where possible to avoid using their electrical appliances overnight. In the meantime, let’s hope that the country doesn’t suffer from any more dunkelflaute and enjoys more sonnenschein instead! As always, you can drop me a line at alan<at>epemag.net PE An artist’s impression of Holtec’s proposed SMR-300 nuclear reactor site. Practical Electronics | February | 2025 7