We are concluding our mini-series on home energy and power management trends with a review and summary of the big trends in electrification inside and outside the home. Check it out!
Bloomberg recently reported a story about a microgrid in Puerto Rico, which became a lifeline for the community. The small town of Castañer built a micro-grid comprising 121 solar panels spread across three rooftops feeding a bank of industrial batteries and inverters. Before the microgrid went into service in May 2022, constant outages and voltage fluctuations that damaged electronic equipment made it difficult for a small bakery and other businesses that are now part of the microgrid to make their pastries or cut their customers' hair.
Maximizing Energy Production in the Year. When residential rooftop solar started, the goal was to produce as much solar energy as possible. In the early 2000s, a single 125 Watt solar panel cost $1,000, and the focus was on maximizing solar energy production during the year. A solar panel produces the highest amount of solar energy annually when mounted facing south* at a tilt equal to the latitude of the location where the solar array is installed. (*or north in the southern hemisphere)
As part two of our mini-series on Home Energy and Power Management, we are now looking at what is happening inside the home, shaping the all-electric future and driving YouSolar’s business.
Part of the YouSolar team spent the past two days in Phoenix, AZ, attending the Grid Edge Innovation Summit 2022. The conference has been a great opportunity to network, learn and discuss major trends and developments with industry peers. We were also thrilled to see that YouSolar’s PowerBloc® is the right product at the right time.
Clean Tech is, sadly, still a man’s world, which is why we love having Lyla Ramos as part of our team. Lyla builds our control boards, which include many very small parts. This plays to Lyla’s passions: she has always loved miniatures and getting close to things most of us walk over: fungi and mosses, which she also photographs.
When I launched YouSolar a decade ago in the “Dark Ages of Solar”, defined as the two or three years after the collapse of the solar technology company Solyndra in 2011, I gave an elevator pitch to a venture capitalist. I do not think he listened to anything I said while he studied my business card. But after I was done, he looked up and said: “No one will invest in a company with the word ‘solar’ in its name.” My response was that that was crazy because solar energy will be the single most important energy source in this century.
Few birds are as beautiful as the turkey, a species only found in North America. On Thanksgiving, it is a symbol of all plants and animals that we rely on to nourish ourselves. The abundance of the harvest allows us to have time and energy to create all the ideas and things that make Earth an extraordinary place to live: Beethoven's symphonies, Einstein's equations, War and Peace, and, of course, the smartphone.
Yes, generators are on their way out. Solar-battery systems are more reliable and produce cheaper electricity than generators. Solar-battery systems are also clean and silent. But if you are off-grid and your roof is covered with snow or run a clinic or other critical facility, it is still very reasonable to include a generator as an additional backup energy source to charge the batteries.
Last week the New York Times reported on the Return of the Jaguar in Mexico, which is coming back in the Yucatán Peninsula thanks to conservation efforts. The Times reports that “in Mexico, an alliance of ecologists, nongovernmental organizations and local communities have embarked on an ambitious conservation project that has effectively pulled the species back from the brink — part of a broader mission to save the jungles of the Yucatán."
