Spring Electric Bill

May 3, 2018

I was pretty excited today to get my electric bill in the mail. Excited? Yes. While most people don’t ENJOY the prospect of shelling out their hard-earned cash, I installed SOLAR POWER last summer. It’s finally turned to spring in south-eastern Wisconsin, and the weather meant that I was finally producing some decent power once […]

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Spinning the PowerMeter Backwards

April 29, 2018

Spring has returned to Wisconsin. Although we had a blizzard last week, we are finally in clear skies and warming weather. In fact, it’s been almost ideal weather in my area for solar power production lately. My garage has 24 solar panels, each paired with an Enphase brand micro-inverter which can output up to 225 […]

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Hit by a Truck!

March 26, 2018

Dear Friends, I had recently been working on repairing a friend’s Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle. I had just completed it and was then doing a few road tests. On Friday, March 16th, at some time in the afternoon, I was stuck by a lumber truck. According to the police report, we were headed in opposite […]

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Solar Ammo Can

March 2, 2018

With my recent work in solar, quite a few people have started asking me about designing small BATTERY-based solar systems. I thought it would be nice to work on a project demonstrating basic solar battery charging principals, and at the same time, have a handy and useful project when I was done. Thus, the Solar […]

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Star Trek Doors Update Feb 2018

February 18, 2018

I’ve been working with my brother-in-law, Fred, for the last while, helping him out with a project. He’s always been a big Star Trek fan, and he wanted to upgrade a door he had to one done in the style of a space or sci-fi television show. We decided to make it air-powered, and I […]

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Tesla Model 3 First Viewing!

February 11, 2018

Yesterday, I got my first chance to see a Tesla Model 3 in person! Let me say, I LIKE it! This is the first Model 3 in the state of Wisconsin. We were holding a Wisconsin Tesla Owners and Enthusiasts meeting at a restaurant in Madison, the state capitol. The meeting was a social gathering, […]

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Disaster Preparedness with a Prius

December 31, 2017

I commonly get questions about battery backups, generators, solar panels, and other provisions which might be useful for disaster preparedness. There were plenty of disaster-related comments on social media at the end of September, due to Hurricane Maria hitting the coastline of the United States. And while most of us enjoy fantastic electric service on […]

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Snow Rake for Solar Panels

December 11, 2017

A few days ago, we got the first snow storm of the year. Not a big deal, but that was the first snow we had since I installed the solar array on my garage. I found that using a broom, even from a ladder, I could only clear the lowest of the three rows of […]

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Snow-cover on my Solar Panels!

December 9, 2017

I woke up this morning to a gray half-light, and a blanket of snow covering everything…. including my solar panels! Hmmm. What would this do to my solar power production? To find out, I thought I would clear the snow off as many of the panels as I could and see what the difference would […]

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Solar Shading

December 6, 2017

A few weeks ago, I started noticing a shadow creeping up to the solar panels on my garage. Sure enough, in winter the sun would be low enough in the sky for the shadow of a pine tree in my front yard to start blocking solar panels! What’s a person to do?! Well, other than […]

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