Solar generation

I forgot to post that I am up to 28.9kwhs of electricity generated. My meter is down to about 200, so I expect it to roll backwards this year before winter hits. So next summer it should be significantly negative and possible never go positive again. Of course, if I convert my Camry to a plug-in then that's going to changed things pretty drastically but we'll see what happens.

2012 Camry Hybrid

Saturday 8/18/12 I bought a 2012 Camry Hybrid. Simple statement, but it was a long complex decision process in which I looked at every hybrid and EV that is readily available (and a couple that won't be available until later this year, or only in some states) and compared a huge amount of data on the vehicles. I read reviews, I looked at reliability data that was available. What I really wanted to buy is the new Toyota Rav4 EV, but unfortunately Toyota has chosen to make what in my opinion is a monumental mistake and price this vehicle at $10K more than it's nearest competitor putting it between the other EVs on the market and the Tesla market space. This is a terrible mistake, I think a lot of people were looking forward to a Rav4 EV with a base price around $30K, possibly as high as $40K but in fact the base model is going to be about $50K. Far too much money for something with a 100 mile range. For the same price you can get a Tesla Model S with a 160 mile range and half the 0-60 speed.

So after a bunch of comparisons of various kinds, it came down to 6 vehicles in the last set of comparisons. 3 of those don't have conversions available to be plug-ins. The last 3 on the list were all Toyotas. Prius V/Prius plug-in Camry Highlander

The Prius plug-in is smaller on the inside in pretty much all ways than the Prius V. This is really unfortunate because I'm a big guy, and the Prius V ends up being too small for me. I was really intending to buy a Prius Plug-in since I couldn't get a Rav4 EV.

I spent several days debating between the Highlander and the Camry. The Highlander had everything I wanted and more, but it was $12,500 more than the Camry and only got 28mpg (combined) whereas the Camry doesn't have 4wd, doesn't have much cargo capacity especially for long objects, and is only as easy to get into as my Saturn SL1 but it gets 44mpg combined and is radically cheaper. So...I spent several days debating, asking friends for alternative view points, etc.

Then I went back over with some specific things to check out in detail. After driving the Camry and trying some things out it basically came down to the advantages the Highlander has don't make up for the initial cost, let alone the over the lifetime of the car cost.

So now I have a fantastic new car that gets great gas mileage and if the cargo capacity gets to be too much of a problem that I can't just rent a solution for, I'll put a roof rack and carrier of some sort on it.

And as I jokingly suggested, the company I started with a friend and that my good friend Bryon still runs sells body lift kits for a 1"-3" additional lift, and a bunch of aftermarket things I could add to the car.

Speaking of adding on to the car. It looks like I could get a 4kwh plug-in conversion kit for the car for about $4000. I think I'll start saving up for that.

solar and a drive problem.

27.6 MWh generated so far as of this evening. My main drive failed it's backups and I didn't notice. The drive failed before I got the new mirror set up. So...the drive that held a significant portion of my accumulated data since 1992 crashed to the point where it is not recoverable by me. The data recovery place teased me with a $400 bottom price (which would have been expensive, but I lost some important shit) and then told me it was going to be $1900 and no guarantee. Oh, but if it failed, I could send it in for the really expensive treatment. Sigh. So...I'm trying to recover my drive. I've lost all my solar data that I didn't put in this blog.

more solar!

25.3GWh generated total. 1.1kwh generated this month. That's a pretty good total for March. I really think I'll roll my electrical meter back below 0 this summer.

I'm seriously considering building a porch over my back patio specifically so that I can put a solar thermal installation in that will drastically reduce my heating costs for water and space. But it's a bit more expensive than I was hoping. On the other hand it'll last pretty much forever.

Monthly solar generation

24.2MWh of electricity generated so far. I'm hoping to get a much better way of monitoring my electricity soon. I asked for a good monitor to be added to the system when it was built, then after it was done, then again a year later, but REC was appearently completely uninterested in selling me a monitoring system. So since then I've been trying to get ahold of the money and enough information to buy a monitoring system and just haven't managed it yet. I am determined that this spring I will have a good monitoring system though.

Envia Systems claims 400 watt hours-per-kilogram battery

They claim to have a 400 watt hours/kg battery that they have produced and is ready for production, or at least will be ready for production in a year and a half. So I'm guessing they already have the batteries built, but don't have a factory to produce them at industry numbers.

They say this more than doubles industry energy density and halves the cost, but I'm betting they really mean that doubling the energy density will halve the cost of the battery, not that it's a X4 gain. Still, that's a very significant jump forward and affects all kinds of things, not just EVs. You could use the same batteries to build your house sized UPS also.

http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/End_Use_Electric_Transportation/A-cheaper-EV-battery---for-a-300-mile-range-EV-4531.html

The emperors new security system

An excellent story of despair and horror. The despair and horror of our cyber security and how our government does a crap job of protecting it's citizens.

http://assassinsmace.squarespace.com/blog/2012/2/9/the-emperors-new-suit-the-us-response-to-cybercrime-cyberwar.html