Hurricane Milton hit Tampa Bay as a category 3 hurricane. The storm surge and high winds caused widespread damage and casualties. The planet is heating rapidly, and the frequency and ferocity of storms will increase. But Milton is only a preview of what is to come.

What do you do if you want to live quietly off-grid in the Sierra Nevada mountains, but your home is located in an old-growth forest with tall incense cedar, pine, and sequoia trees? 

Less than a year ago, biblical downpours followed a historic drought in Southern Europe. Last week, parts of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Austria became a water world. The next once-in-500-year flood did not even let the year elapse.

YouSolar’s CEO, Arnold Leitner, takes California’s Capitol Corridor train to work every day. The ride takes 80 minutes each way, 2 x 80 minutes of productive time, not driving time. However, the Capitol Corridor train operated by Amtrak is hardly clean. It is pulled by a diesel locomotive, but tracks can be electrified. In the Bay Area, Caltrain introduced its first electric train.

Many of our customers’ homes have flat roofs. For aesthetic reasons, the solar array is also expected to be flat, except with a small angle for rainwater to run off. The problem with flat roofs at our Northern California latitudes is that solar production is very “peaky” in the summer: Solar production is 3 times higher in the middle of summer than in the depth of winter. At the same time, loads are typically higher in the winter in Northern California.