In a recent New York Times article about the crypto collapse, Harvard finance professor Mihir Desai bashes the techno-utopianism and exclusive emphasis on positive outcomes that has infected American capitalism. The result of what Desai calls “Magical Thinking” has led to the latest “tech” bubble that began to deflate in 2022. At YouSolar, we are not utopians, but we are techno-optimists.
California has been devastated by wildfires in the past years. At this time, an “atmospheric river,” a flowing column of vapour in the atmosphere, is delivering huge amounts of rain and snow to California. The result has been widespread flooding and landslides.
The New York Times published an article this week explaining why California did not see the large wildfires it had experienced in past years, Why California’s 2022 Wildfire Season Was Unexpectedly Quiet. Wildfires have burned “only” about 362,000 acres in 2022, compared to 2.5 million acres last year and a historic 4.3 million acres in 2020.
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.
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.
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."
