Tag: renewables

I helped finance this war

When W invaded Iraq in 2003, I realized that as long as I was buying gasoline for my car and natural gas for my stove and furnace, I was part of the problem. I started looking for the exit.

The following decades saw petroleum prices riding a roller coaster while electricity prices were nice and stable. The following chart shows the volatility difference between electricity (green) and gasoline (orange).

Electricity prices range from on par to considerably cheaper than gas. I dipped a toe into the electric car market with a Ford Fusion Hybrid. That experience led to leasing a 2013 Nissan Leaf. Besides being better cars, EV drivers pay $0.05/mile and gasoline drivers pay $0.12/mile. And that was before the current price spike. That hybrid was the last gas powered car I’ll ever own.

Ref: Maybe you should have bought an electric car

Ryan’s Solar Install

In early November I flew to Dallas and helped my buddy Ryan install a solar array. Since he had a large low-slope metal roof on his garage, we decided that was the right place to put them. Ryan’s dad also helped and in two days, the three of us had hoisted three large stacks of panels up onto the roof, bolted them down, and wired them all together.

Then we pulled the feed wires onto the roof, hooked up the three strings and then spent a bunch of time futzing with the inverters, replacing optimizers, and updating the locations of panels whose optimizers had invalid serial numbers on them (pro tip, check them all on the ground beforehand). Then we hooked up his eGauge meter so he can monitor total production and consumption.

On day 3, the inspector showed up, checked a few things, asked some questions, and then approved the final inspection. Since then, Ryan’s solar array had been making me jealous. Between the much higher solar factor in Dallas and having more panels, his winter production is ~10x mine.