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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Gen 2 Flux Mopeds DIY Special

December 2, 2017

Recently, I’ve had a fair number of people asking me about electric scooters. Not only are scooters fun to ride, but you don’t need a motorcycle license, and they are often cheaper to insure and title. That’s why I was excited to recently hear from Matt at Flux Mopeds. A while back, they had a […]

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Video of Tour the Mitsubishi iMiev

November 24, 2017

One of our YouTube viewers asked for a video tour of the Mitsubishi iMiEV electric car. So, we pulled out the video camera, filmed it, and gave our honest review of the vehicle. Here’s that video! We’ve been driving this car for two years now, and have put about 20,000 miles on it. In a […]

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EV Salvage – AC Motor and Controller from Van

November 21, 2017

About a week or so ago, I got an e-mail from my friend, Tom. He had a “hot lead” on some electric vehicle salvage.  And it turned out that I was already familiar with the project. In fact, I had already shot a YouTube video about it! Tom has been involved in salvage for some […]

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Electronics Project: Sophie’s 3-LED Traffic Light

November 16, 2017

Yesterday, my Crazy Circuits arrived in the mail. After dinner, the Little Girl (Sophie, just turned 7 years old) and I decided we would play with them. I thought the first thing we would do is a simple LED circuit – just a battery going to an LED. Well, we barely had that done before […]

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Crazy Circuits Unboxing

November 15, 2017

I was pleasantly surprised today to get a package in the mail. When I shook it, it rattled just the same way that Legos do, but I knew that what was inside was electronics. Electronics which are as much fun to play with as Legos… This package is from Brown Dog Gadgets, a local educational […]

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Sensing Current for Solar

November 13, 2017

About a week or so ago, I started playing around with a DIY current sensor. The initial experiments seemed to work, so I took it out to the garage, and hooked it up to my grid-tie solar array. I first removed the cover from my garage circuit breaker panel so that I could get to […]

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Solar REBATE Arrives!

September 11, 2017

Through the window of the envelope, I could just make out the words “PAY TO THE ORDER OF” above my name and address. Could it be? Was this finally my SOLAR REBATE CHECK!?…

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St. Paul Energy Fair

September 11, 2017

We had a great time this last weekend at the NEW Energy Fair in St. Paul, Minnesota! I’ve been going to the MREA (Midwest Renewable Energy Association) Fair in Custer, Wisconsin for about 10 years now. It’s always a great event, and something to look forward to. This year, the MREA hosted the new fair […]

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