Considering Home Energy Storage

We recently purchased a tear-down with the goal of building a new passive house on the lot. Naturally, there will be will be a massive solar array on the house, and probably on the detached garage as well. Picking a panel fairly easy because the differences in PV (photovoltaic) products seems to mostly come down to warranty period. Energy storage […]

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Emporia Accidentally Outs Vue 3 Energy Monitor

I almost feel bad for the team at Emporia, but obviously not enough to keep quiet on this. Mostly because there’s no point, I received two copies of this email sent to two different email addresses, so my guess is that everyone who has ever contacted them also got the super secret news that there’s a new version of the […]

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GM grabs a hammer, Tesla hands over a nail

First it was Ford, now it’s GM. The not actually a standard “North America Charging Standard” (NACS) connector used by Tesla, has put another nail in CCS’s coffin. Now that GM is on board, 70% of the US EV market is committed to NACS. Most of my thoughts around this can be found in the post about Ford’s action, so […]

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Huh? Fancy that… Net Metering Isn’t a Scam…

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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NACS Takes A Step Closer To De Facto Standard

Despite the use of “standard” in the name of the North America Charging Standard (NACS), aka Tesla plug; NACS isn’t actually a standard. There are procedures around how standards get made, and Tesla didn’t do that. That’s not always important, Apple’s Lightning Connector isn’t a standard either, and it does just fine – well, until recently. What really matters is […]

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UL Certification is a Band-Aid®

Safety certification in the US is more complicated than it should be. A big part of this is that Underwriters Laboratory (UL) plays a dual role in the ecosystem. I recently got in an extended discussion with a UL Supremacist around this, after I said something was UL Certified when that wasn’t technically true, because UL is a Band-Aid®, and […]

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California May Mandate Bidirectional EVSE

While I wouldn’t want to rely on a bidirectional EVSE as a complete home backup, it is a great solution for load shifting, and would be an excellent supplemental option when combined with a small permanent battery installation for home backup. As is the case with many of these things, California seems to be driving progress here, with the potential […]

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