News and Views

The contractor was out today doing some painting and checks, and briefly activated the solar power system. It was generating about 5000 watts, most of which was flowing back out of my house into the power grid. No air conditioning or TV was on, so besides my computer, refrigerator and some lights, we weren’t using […]

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They didn’t quite finish today, but all that’s left is some trim, wire termination, and a little roof repair. Here they are installing the first solar panel: Here’s what it looked like with several panels installed: And here’s the finished job: Here’s a close-up, looking up the array: And here’s a close look at one […]

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Looks like there’s going to be a “Day 4” post. They didn’t finish today. I guess the rain Friday and Monday set them back a little. Most of the work today was wiring, in and out of the attic. Not much to show, but I’ll post some pictures anyway. Here you see where the wires […]

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Two things were accomplished today: They cut the tiles so the mounts could extend up through them, and they fastened rails to the mounts. Here are the rails. Tomorrow they should fasten the solar panels to the rails. Looks like the ends still need to be trimmed. Here is a close up of one mount […]

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We have approvals from the city of Tempe, the HOA and the utility company, so we are ready to move forward and install the solar panels on our roof. Construction is scheduled to begin this Friday (November 4), and be complete on the following Tuesday. Inspections and final approval will take another 1 – 2 […]

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I posted in February about installing a new hybrid hot water heater. Although the initial price was almost $1000 higher, it is supposed to cost less to operate. 6 months later, I have some data. Comparing kilowatt-hours consumed in 2011 with 2010, my average monthly bill is $43 less than it would have been at […]

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I received an email this morning that looked like spam — Xerox_Document.zip. Looking inside the zip file was a file like this:   Xerox_Scan_phyexe.doc Looks like a Word document, right? NOT! The sender used something called “Right to Left Override”. It was originally implemented to support languages such as Arabic that write right to left. If […]

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HP announced a couple of days ago that they were going to discontinue their “TouchPad” tablet. They decided to clear inventory by reducing the price to $100 for the 16GB, or $150 for the 32GB version. The web and retail stores immediately were hit by a buying frenzy that is still going on. Most of […]

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About once a year I check the price of adding solar photo-voltaics on my roof, and every year decide that it’s still too expensive, and the payback is too far out. This year things finally look good enough, with payback estimated to be about 10 years. Tax credits and utility company rebates cut the cost […]

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***Geek interest only disclaimer.*** Lately I’ve been using the Pale Moon web browser. It’s a modification of Firefox, optimized for speed and simplicity. (I was going to call it a “fork”, but since each time they update Firefox they soon create a new Pale Moon based on it, it’s not really a true fork) It […]

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