Powers Unfiltered

Leaving the energy industry turns out to be harder than I thought. When we started Digipede (more than 7 years ago!), my partners and I had spent more than a decade working together in the electric utility industry, and frankly were ready for something new.  While some of the ideas that eventually became Digipede had […]

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Earlier this summer, we marked the one-year anniversary of the connection of our rooftop photovoltaic (PV) system.  Last year I promised a more complete analysis of the economics of this system once we had sufficient history.  Here goes. First, let’s not bury the lead:  Our PV system generated 36.5% of the electric energy used by […]

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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) […]

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Emil Sit has an excellent post on his recent experience with SunGrid, charitably titled “Observations on SunGrid Customer Care.”  He begins with: I  haven’t used the SunGrid this week. In fact, no one has: there was a four day outage from last Saturday morning through this morning. His post is quite illuminating about Sun, customer care, […]

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There is a stirring moment in the movie version of the Return of the King in which Aragorn rallies his troops in the face of nearly impossible odds.  As the hordes of Mordor pour out of the black gate, he roars:  “A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and […]

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