News and Views

I got a burr coffee grinder for Christmas this year. I’m really impressed by the difference it makes in the taste of the coffee. The theory is that a blade grinder just whacks the beans into smaller pieces, with lots of variation in size from powder to big chunks. The burr grinder yields a much […]

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Here’s a graph showing the the progress of our two power meters over about 4 days. The red line is from the meter that measures the solar power we generate. The blue line is the SRP meter. The vertical axis is in kWh. Notice the solar meter does a “stair step”, rising during the day, […]

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The doctor said to come back in 8 to 10 years. Glad to hear I won’t have to go through that prep again for a while!

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Our solar energy system finally became active today. SRP (the local power company) was here at 9:00 am, and did the final connection. Since then (it’s now 3:00pm) we have generated about 24 kWh. Of that, about 14 were sold back to SRP, and we have used about 10. They installed a new meter that […]

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Today is the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution that guarantee us most of the civil rights we enjoy. I think most of us take these rights for granted, somehow thinking that even without the Bill of Rights we would probably still have most […]

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SRP, the local power company, sent me an email today scheduling the “commission” for next Wednesday, Dec 21, 6 days from now. So it’s nice to finally have a firm date, but it’s hard to understand why it took so long.

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Nothing big, just a few updates: The solar power system has STILL not been turned on. We have been waiting for just a month now since the installation was complete. Every month that goes by costs me between $100 and $200 in electricity costs. Most of the time has been waiting for the local power […]

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Gisele got a new car to replace her 2003 Honda Accord. After more than 2 weeks of researching and test driving, we decided on a 2012 Hyundai Sonata. We got all the cool options, including navigation. It is only a 2.0 liter 4 cylinder, but turbocharged and delivers 274 HP, more than most V6 engines. […]

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