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Thursday, June 23, 2022

Welcome to Summer


Summer 2022 has officially arrived in the northern hemisphere! The June solstice was the kick-off and, since that's the longest day of the year, I like to mark the occasion by sharing our solar production. 

Solar Generation On June 21st, 2022

Here in the NW corner of Oregon, the sun rose at 5:23 AM and didn't set until 9:04 PM. That's 15 hours and 41 minutes of daylight. As the graph above shows, our PV system was cranking out power from 6 AM until 8 PM. We generated a total of 76.5 kWh of energy. 

Destinations of our Solar Production

As you can see, about one-third of the energy was used to run our home. The bulk of the remaining two-thirds was sent to the grid, running our meter backwards for most of the day. 

How Much? 

On this one day, we generated 76.5 kWh of energy; just for fun, let's look at this amount of energy in several ways. 

76.5 kWh of energy is equivalent to: 

  • 2.5 days of use in a typical US household
  • 203 Million foot-pounds
  • 261 BTUs 
  • 65822 food calories (about 132 meals)
  • 306 miles in a 2022 Tesla Model 3 standard range

Obviously, this energy cannot be converted directly into food calories or meals. I'm just trying to put some perspective on the number. 

The 306 miles in a Tesla is interesting and the energy can be directly used in an EV. Looking at fuel averages, a 306-mile trip would typically use about 15.3 gallons of gasoline. At current gas prices, that's about $76 dollars. Not a bad day's work. :) 


Sunday, June 5, 2022

Tesla's Eye In the Sky

Tesla's vehicles are flush with sensors. They have 360-degree cameras, sonar, temperate sensors, GPS, accelerometers... These are intended primarily for Tesla's Full Self-Driving, but what other purposes could they serve?

What data could these computers on wheels gather? Here are a couple of ideas:

Collecting and reporting traffic is an obvious example. There are many smartphone apps that already have similar functionality. This would certainly help for route planning to avoid traffic (assuming you can't take a tunnel). 

Another suggestion that was posted on Twitter was for Tesla vehicles to collectively look for license plates associated with Amber Alerts and, if spotted, report the location to the appropriate authorities. This could save children, but it is also a little creepy to know that Tesla cars could be reading all the license plates around them.

What other ideas do you have for a massive fleet of internet-connected robots?