Our First Solar Year

Solar ArraysAlthough this is probably the first time I’ve blogged about it (mostly due to procrastination), it was exactly one year ago today that our solar panel array went live. It took some doing to get to that point, but looking back over the collected data (note: I don’t have all the numbers right now – I’m working on compiling them, and I’ll update this post when they’re available on the website), it was definitly worth the hassle. The system has performed very well (beyond our expectations, but to size the system we had to rely on electric bills from the previous owners, who had a different lifestyle from ours, so we suspected it might perform better than projected), and there were no problems with the system at all in the first year. Not that it would have been a major issue: the company that installs it supports the system for the first five years: something that tells you right off that not too many problem tend to occur. The best part of the year was discovering that the spring months are so optimal for power generation, that we built up a credit with the power company large enough that we should have at least one free summer month.

Fun with Bluetooth

This morning, I brought my car in for regular service, and decided to wait for it (I wouldn’t have had to, they would happily provide me with a loaner, but this was only going to be a couple of hours, and they have wired & wireless Internet access).  5 minutes before my service manager walked in to tell me my car was ready, I already knew: I happened to be looking at my phone and noticed it had connected to the car!  I’m not sure exactly where the service bays were from where I was, but I suspect it was the other side of the wall, and my car was close enough to establish contact with the phone when they started it to bring it around.  Nice.