Divemedic

Astroturf

My social media feeds flipped to being overwhelmingly about THROATUS over the past few days. It’s been overwhelming to the point where social media is unreadable at this point. I am guessing that Kamala is using all of those campaign funding dollars to hire a few people to run thousands of social media accounts to shill for her. It wouldn’t be hard to do.

One person can easily send 30 messages/posts/tweets per hour, all on different accounts. That means a total of 240 messages in an 8 hour workday. If you were to hire 150 people at $15 an hour, if would cost you about half a million bucks per month. During that same month, more than a million messages would be posted in support of you from a million different accounts.

It would look like overwhelming support, and that is assuming you don’t use bots to get even more coverage.

By Divemedic, ago

Four Days

So we are four days into operation of the solar equipment. Right now, we are operating on a limited basis, more on that in a moment. I am not home because we are on the road, but both air conditioners, all vampire loads, and the water heater are running.

Output

We chose a system that is 10 kilowatts DC. That translates to about 8600 watts AC. The system begins generating electricity at about 9am, and reaches a peak of 8kw at around 10:30. By 1pm, the Powerwalls are fully recharged from the night before. At that point, there is no place else for the generated power to go, so system output drops to match whatever the house is using. More on that later.

We haven’t used any electricity from the grid since the sun came up on Friday morning. That indicates that I have enough panels for my house.

Storage

There are two places that I can store the power I generate. One of them is in the Powerwall, which has a total capacity of 27 KWh. Right now, I am maintaining a minimum of 30% as emergency backup, and using the rest to compensate for lower output at night or overcast conditions, or to make up for transient high loads, like when both air conditioners and the water heater are running at the same time. The advantages of using the battery are that the power stays within my home, and losing the grid means that I can still access it. The disadvantage is that the upfront cost of batteries is high.

The second place that I can store generated power is in the grid. The electric company buys my excess power in the form of credits that I can redeem when my system can’t keep up with the loads that I am placing on it- nighttime, stormy weather, or when loads simply exceed what I am producing. The advantage of this is that the upfront cost is low, but the disadvantage is that it relies on the electrical grid for redemption.

I can’t use the grid as storage because I don’t yet have permission to operate (PTO) from the power company. I should get it within two weeks after our final electrical inspection, which is supposed to be this week. So we should be fully operational by August 9.

Results So Far

Each day, we are generating between 35 and 45 kWh before panel output is reduced when the batteries are full. The solar energy being generated is directly running the house during the day, with the rest charging the Powerwalls, which run the house at night.

The water heater is using 4 kw when running, the upstairs AC is using 1.5kw, the downstairs AC uses 2.7kw, and the rest of the house uses 0.3kw. Since the ACs and water heater don’t run all of the time, the panels are more than capable at this point of keeping up by charging the batteries during the periods when the large appliances aren’t running.

Once we get our PTO, I will know more.

By Divemedic, ago

Here it Comes

I continue with my prediction that the left won’t let Trump take office again. With that in mind, here is what THROATUS is saying she wants to do:

Make sure that you have enough guns for you, your friends, family, and a hidden cache as a backup so they don’t get all of them. Make sure you have lots of ammo. It’s coming. I’ve been warning you for four years now- you DID heed my warnings, didn’t you?

By Divemedic, ago

You Need a Program to Identify the Acts of the Play

So here it is, to get you caught up:

  1. They tried to smear him in 2016 by claiming Russian collusion. The evidence, as it turns out, was fake.
  2. they tried impeaching him
  3. they tried impeaching him again
  4. they tried suing him into the poorhouse
  5. they filed tons of criminal charges against him, finally getting a conviction on some rather dubious legal grounds. When SCOTUS issued the ruling on Presidential immunity, the court delayed sentencing.
  6. All of the other cases were dead in the water. The left went apoplectic.

Then there was an assassination attempt on Trump’s life. In order for this event to have happened, at least one of two things must be true:

  • The Secret Service is entirely incompetent.
  • The Secret Service was complicit in the attempt.

There are no other possibilities. Where I am leaning is complicity.

In either event, the attempt failed. Then the poll numbers came out, and Trump’s numbers looked even better. It was at this point that Biden reversed course and decided to drop out of the race, citing health concerns. So now there are only two possibilities:

  1. Biden is too addled and mentally incompetent to run for office, which makes him too addled to hold the office of President, and he needs to go under the 25th Amendment. Now.
  2. Or, he resigned because his numbers looked so bad that it was unlikely that he would beat Trump in the election. In this case, the left is guilty of election tampering. The Democrat party can no longer claim to “support democracy(tm)”

No matter which of the above is true, welcome to banana republic status.

By Divemedic, ago

Installed

The solar power system was installed this week, We turned it on this morning. 24 panels, each capable of supplying 420 watts, for a total capacity of 10 kW. We can’t yet sell the power back to the power company, because they haven’t yet approved our application. Until then, we will run off of batteries and solar, with the excess being given to the power company free of charge. Hopefully, that will change within a week or two.

The install took two days, even though it was supposed to only take one. On day one, the team got the Powerwalls mounted, and 21 of the 24 panels on the roof before an incoming afternoon thunderstorm stopped work for the day. On day two, they got the final three panels up, ran all of the conduit and wiring, then shut power off to the house for about an hour so they could make all of the connections. They turned the system on, but that was at 1700, after it began raining again, so we didn’t generate any solar at all yesterday.

At 1000 this morning, we were generating 5 kW from solar while only using 0.5 kW, with the 4.5kW of excess going into the batteries. Our Powerwalls are already charged to 50% of capacity, and we have already generated 6.5 kWh purely from solar.

I will revisit the numbers within a week or so. It’s still to early to talk about how well the system is going to meet our needs.

By Divemedic, ago