Emporia Vue 2 Smart Home Energy Monitor
This is a review of the Gen 2 Emporia 2 and a comparison to the IoTaWatt, which provides similar functionality.
Read moreAuthor: Andrew Van Til
Overheating Kia/Hyundai J-1772/Charge Port Problems
There seems to be a strange number of people who are trying to DIY a fix to the charge port overheating problem on Kia/Hyundai GMP platform cars like our EV6. Normally I’m totally down with fixing things yourself if you can, but all of these cars are under warranty right now. There is no reason to try to DIY a […]
Read moreKia/Hyundai – The Update File Is Incompatible With Your Vehicle
Every few months Kia provides a navigation update for our EV6. The update process is very 2010, but I’m not going to complain. I’m mostly just glad that they provide the updates, which often include improvements and bug fixes for the media interface, not just the maps. The process is fairly simple, as long as you have a PC or […]
Read morePassive House Electrical System Design (BETA)
I’ve talked through some of the preliminary research and outputs for the electrical system in our passive house, but I haven’t mentioned the requirements that drove the decision making or explained the proposed design in detail. We’re going to fix that.
Read moreGeothermal (ground-source) vs air-source heat pump ROI
There are many factors that make determining return on investment for something as complicated and unique as a home’s HVAC system difficult. I was looking forward to this video from Matt because I knew that he had opted for a Water Furnace ground-source (aka geothermal) heat pump setup. We’re opting for air-source for our passive house, probably a Mitsubishi Hyper-Heat […]
Read moreAll LG Laptops Have Problems With Thunderbolt 4 Docking Stations
I decided that leveraging the Thunderbolt 4 port on my LG laptop to add multi-monitor, a keyboard, mouse, and a wired network connection was a great idea. Turns out that all LG laptops do not properly support Thunderbolt docking stations, and the network connection will not work. It’s really disappointing that this issue exists. Hopefully LG will take it seriously […]
Read moreEnphase Energy IQ Battery 5P vs Sol-Ark 15K Hybrid Inverter
I’ve received a few questions around the post I wrote comparing some of the popular all-in-one (AIO) inverter batteries to a hybrid inverter plus stand-alone batteries. Most notably from our architect, and the solar/storage company they usually work with. I was planning to write a post digging into that in more detail anyway, so here goes…
Read morePassive House #1 – Before
I mentioned in a post that we started the process of building a passive house. Given the level of “smart” and gadgets going into the house I thought it might be interesting to document the steps involved. This is the “before” installment.
Read moreTesla Universal Wall Connector Announced
$595 isn’t the cheapest EVSE you can buy, but when you factor in the built-in J-1772 adapter that is included with Tesla’s Universal Wall Connector it’s a great solution if you already have a J-1772 EV, are planning to buy one, or already have a Tesla in the mix. All signs are pointing towards NACS long term, this provides easy […]
Read moreThe Tesla Range Claims Teapot Tempest
I’m sure everyone here is going to be shocked to learn, clutch pearls, that cars don’t get their EPA rated mileage. We’re all probably even more shocked to discover that EV, also don’t get their rated EPA mileage. Sorry, I probably should have asked you all to sit down first. My bad.
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