I’ve weighed in on the Net Metering debate before. So my opinions, which I like to think have a decent foundation in the facts, even though I clearly have some bias, aren’t exactly unknown. In the video below Matt Ferrell (a well known green energy advocate) goes into a fairly high level of detail (it’s kind of his thing), around […]
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Smart panels are cool. I firmly believe this, but I also believe that they probably aren’t the right way to solve the limited electricity supply problem, at least not yet. The problem is cost. If a smart panel is $4,500+ just to buy it, ignoring installation costs, and moving from 100A to 200A service is around $2,500… We don’t need […]
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Generally, I’m a fan of both of Alex’s car focused channels. I only know of one other YouTuber that gets into the weeds (in a good way) to the same degree that he does. I say that because I approach his content with PMA and an open mind, but I’ve been somewhat confused by a couple of the conclusions in […]
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Gotta say, it was really weird to see something like this Op-ed on how attacks on net metering are a good thing on a site like CleanTechnica. But, you know, maybe there is something to it that I wasn’t aware of, so I approached it with an open mind. But unless I’m missing something, it seems to be promoting the […]
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The massive amount of user provided integrations to various 3rd party providers available to Home Assistant is one of the best things about the platform. This is a quick walkthrough of how I used hass-sunpower (https://github.com/krbaker/hass-sunpower) via HACs to pull electricity consumption & production values into Home Assistant so I could see it in the Energy dashboard.
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There have been several oddly similar anti-net metering op-eds floating around the national newspapers recently. I say “oddly similar” because they tend to repeat the same talking points, argued with little factual backing, with a clear intent to invoke an emotional “that’s not fair” response from readers using class-based rhetoric around how the scheme is a “subsidy” for the rich. […]
Read moreI don’t talk about this much here, but I LOVE cars. They are the ultimate gadget, so there’s not much for me to dislike, except the price, and depreciation, and the fact that they’re dirty. But, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a path forward for those who want to have their cake, and eat it too. Even though this […]
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August 11th, 2020 was finally Solar Install Day. At least for me :). While I would have loved to catch those June/July rays, I definitely think it was worth the wait to get the system I wanted; and also I can’t say how long it would have taken for any of the other vendors either. In total, it took three […]
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As a technology enthusiast, digging into the underlying system specifications was of particular interest to me, both for the panel and inverters. I’m not going to get into detail around the inverter debate, but based on my research I’m solidly in the “micro” side of things, given the type of system I wanted installed here. Qualifying it that way, is […]
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Going off grid is the solar power dream, right? Actually, I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. The grid is the ultimate battery backup for your solar installation. Local storage, aka batteries, are a great way to insulate your house from a grid outage or peak usage pricing, but I think for most people they probably aren’t […]
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