As I wrote earlier this month, the Powers household is now generating some of its own electricity, via photovoltaic panels on the roof.  Soon after the installation, our local utility PG&E installed a spiffy new digital meter and certified the system for use.  I turned it on last Thursday afternoon.  Yesterday afternoon (one week later) I played around with the power inverter to see the cumulative energy production since the system was turned on.

In exactly one week of long, sunny days, the system of 18 panels produced 154 kWh — or 22 kWh per day.  In that same period (which included some nice days and some very hot days — it was over 100 degrees F at our house yesterday), the new meter tells me that our house used all that plus 151 kWh more from the grid.  So even with the pool filter running and above-normal air conditioner usage, the solar panels produced almost exactly half the electricity used by our large-ish suburban California home.  Not bad, given that we could only put solar panels on a relatively small fraction of the roof (too much shade on the rest of it).

More economic analysis to follow after I get a bill or two.

Tags: photovoltaics, roof, Solar power, utility

Late this winter, we had a whopper of a Pacific storm, and it became clear that the Powers Roof had reached the end of its useful life. (The weather inside may not have been as bad as the weather outside, but it was bad enough.)

This wonderful opportunity led to the “while-we’re-at-it” syndrome that plagues so many home repair / improvement projects. So while we’re replacing the roof — why not investigate installing a photovoltaic system at the same time?

And after a bit of analysis (more on that another day), we decided to go for it. The process of collecting bids and testimonials went smoothly (hint — the housing market really is as soft as people say; contractors are hungry!), and after a bit of permitting and paperwork — BAM, new roof and new solar panels. From two signed contracts (roofer and solar guys) to completed project took less than 10 days, including Memorial Day weekend. PG&E will be out “soon”with a new meter, and we’ll be getting about half our electricity from the sun.

The whole system will pay for itself in about 8 years (given California’s outrageous electric rates), and we’ll take a few toes off our carbon footprint.

Panels like these were quite rare even here in California even 2-3 years ago. Now, they’re popping up all over. The California Healthcare Foundation (where Marian works) just put up a 100 KW system, which is 30 times the capacity of ours. Google put in a 1.6 MW system a year or two ago. Walmart has started putting them on stores here. It’s not enough to account for much power yet, but it’s a big change in a short time.

If you want to find out how solar might work for you, call Jason at Borrego Solar, and tell him I sent you — they did a great job (and no, I don’t have any financial interest in Borrego).

Tags: photovoltaics, roof, Solar power, utility

OK, it’s mildly annoying that iTunes and Quicktime want me to install 60-MB updates pretty much weekly these days, but no big deal, I can ignore their nagging messages. But I actually wanted to upgrade today — and here’s what I got when I hit “Install 1 item:”

My Martian is a little rusty, so I did not “accept” this particular upgrade.

Maybe next week’s upgrade will be more intelligible.

Tags: Apple, iTunes, license-agreement

I got an email from the VSIP program last night, requesting that I fill out a satisfaction survey.  I did so happily — there’s nothing like a quick dose of VSIP to wash away the taste of a bad MSPP experience.

(OK, too much jargon — sorry. Let me explain.)

The Visual Studio Industry Partners (VSIP) program is, pound for pound, the best partner program run by Microsoft, period. The VSIP program is personal, effective, and responsive. True, it’s a LOT smaller than the enormous Microsoft Partner Program, and that makes it less prone to operational headaches than the giant MSPP, but it’s a great program. What have they done for us?

• Put our bits in front of 50,000 folks (directly in our target market) at TechEd and other conferences through the VSIP Partner DVD!
• Put our announcements in MSDN Flash!
• Helped arrange our participation in MSDN Webcasts!
• Subsidized our advertising! (Yup, we got cash — which as Yogi says is just as good as money — to spend on advertising our VS-related product.)
• Supported our press releases with timely quotes without a lot of Microsoftian fuss!

So — if you make software for the Windows platform, and it can be tied in any way to Visual Studio, RUN, do not walk, to the VSIP program. You’ll be glad you did!
And — if you run a partner program at Microsoft, and you want to see Redmond Best Practices in Action, RUN, do not walk, to the VSIP program. We’ll all be glad you did!

Tags: Digipede, Microsoft, Visual-Studio, VSIP

I am on vacation in Oregon with my family.  (As some of you know, I’m a closet Oregonian — the seven years I lived here left a big impression, and I come back here a lot.)

At first I thought “hey, this will be a great time to catch up on all the blogging I didn’t do last week from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, and to write a few posts about all the cool things I have to say about the upcoming release of Version 2.0 of the Digipede Network, and to comment on a bunch of recent blog posts I think are cool, and . . .”

Now I think — forget that.  I’m going whitewater rafting.  Go read Dan’s blog, and Rob’s blog — I’ll be back late next week, with much stale news.

Tags: oregon, Vacation

Digipede is the 2007 ISV Innovation Partner of the Year!

A huge thank you to all our customers, partners, and the increasingly large, vocal, and supportive Microsoft chapter of the Digipede Fan Club.

I will have more details on this announcement, and on our experiences at this year’s Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference some time soon, but I wanted to get this out there now.

Tags: Digipede, innovation, Microsoft, WPC, wwpc

It’s been a year since I started blogging.  Powers Unfiltered has provided me with a number of unexpected benefits and consequences. 

First, it has put me in touch with more customers, partners, and prospects.  Given how erratic I’ve been with my posts (in timing, topics, and quality), I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the real business benefits I’ve seen.  The grid community remains open and accepting of new ideas — hopefully, so am I — and I see this conversation growing month by month.

Second, some of the most interesting and engaging conversations have erupted over a single topic — partnering with Microsoft.  I’ve tapped into a very interesting intersection of frustration / confusion from fellow partners and good will / bright ideas from some of Microsoft’s best people.  Something good may come of this.

Finally, the left-field crap has been fun.  I think several dozen people have learned how to adjust the brightness on their laptops thanks to my description of my own ineptitude.  I found a whole mess of people who are pissed at Velocity Micro (sorry, I’m closing off that topic, no more whining please.  My VM box works great now, and I’m a reasonably happy customer – end of story, at least for now.).  And a few folks are impressed with my quarters trick (ok, very few). 

So I’m ready to try this for another year — expect the unexpected, and thanks for all your encouragement and support!

This blog has been quiet lately because I’m on vacation with my family on the Big Island of Hawaii.  Our condo has good internet connectivity, and I’ve used it a few times to keep up with email late at night, but mostly this has been a pretty relaxing week.

The least relaxing thing we’ve done so far was to hike across miles of barren lava flows to see this:

OK, it’s not the greatest picture in the world, but when you’re standing on the edge of a crack with 2000-degree lava inside, your mind may wander away from camera settings.  Or at least mine did. 

It’s a long hike, and not well marked, and the terrain is pretty nasty, and we ran out of water in the heat, and still — it was worth it to see how the Big Island is still growing every day. 

Tags: Hawaii, lava, Vacation

Oracle is on the march again — buying grid software company Tangasol. 

http://www.crn.com.au/story.aspx?CIID=76604&src=site-marq

Oracle may be coming to its senses about the grid space, and the importance of application performance and scalability.  Following up on its aquisition of Sleepycat last year, its interest in in-memory solutions continues.  This is more validation from a (very) large company that true innovators in the grid space are having a real impact on mainstream software providers.

I was also impressed with Nati Shalom’s analysis over on the GigaSpaces Blog, which (while understandably a bit one-sided) relates Oracle’s history in this area better than I could.

Once again — a big congratulations Cameron and company! 

Tags: acquisition, grid-computing, Oracle, sleepycat, tangosol

Oh, Robert.  I had hoped, since this blog is relatively lightly read, to escape this — but I’ve been tagged by the Five Things meme, and will not shirk.

Five Things You May Not Have Known About Me:

1. I am teaching my 15 1/2 year old daughter to drive.  Nothing at work is stressful anymore.
2. I worked three summers during college as a telephone solicitor.  I earned a year’s worth of “spending money” in two months each summer.  By the time I was 20, I was possibly the best telephone solicitor in the state of Utah.  I sold circus tickets, season tickets to a professional volleyball team, light bulbs, garbage bags, and I forget whatall else — sometimes for charity, sometimes not. 
3. I am known at Digipede as the guy who does NOT program, and I was never a professional software developer, but earlier in life I was definitely paid to program.  As a significant part of my job as an economist at PGE, I wrote FORTRAN for money.  I liked it, and I was good at it, but not great — fast, clever, but sloppy.  I learned to do other things.
4. I have an almost unbelievably poor sense of direction.  Despite carefully reading a simple subway map in New York this week, I got off two stops too early — and it was 15 degrees outside and blowing hard.  Today, I could not find Page Mill Road in Palo Alto — and I have been on Page Mill Road three million times in the past 21 years.  I have learned to work around this near-disability, but it’s damned inconvenient (and frequently amusing to passengers in my car). 
5. I can do this:

I will respectfully decline to pass this on; I think we now know five too many things about way too many bloggers.

Tags: Five-Things