Recent content by Robert.Boston

These increasingly awkward rollout events make me pine for the days of George Blankenship, master showman, who managed to work Elon’s awkward engineer-speak into an exciting event. Now it’s just awkward.

@dave4444 Bean's isn't being entirely altruistic installing these chargers, they're trying to get people to stay longer and spend more! In the Portland Herald piece, a stated goal was to encourage people to spend more time shopping in Freeport generally and Bean's in particular. (How to sound...

I reached out to my friend, Fortunat Mueller, who owns ReVision Energy about the J1772s at Bean's. His project manager writes: Sorry to have been AWOL from the boards, but been very busy lately. Hope to see more of you all now!

@longshadows Welcome! We Tesla-Maniacs are few but fervent, and delighted to add another to the ranks. I live in Portland and summer in South Bristol, so I'm through Brunswick regularly. I hope to meet up with you.

So here's a question: why would Hydro-Québec sell power to New England for anything less than the market price? New Englanders have the choice of importing yet more power, or building our own renewable energy base. I've yet to hear a good argument for the former.

@Gwgan -- very excited that you've got your X! I hope you'll take a run down to Portland sometime.

I'm not going to either place, but Dedham is likely to be more fun because *everyone* there is going to be excited about Tesla. OTOH, at Natick it'll be easier to do snack runs.

Anecdotes that illustrate trends are helpful in getting people's hearts engaged. The comparison I use is to dice: rolling boxcars (6-6) once doesn't show that the die are weighted, but if you get 20 boxcars in 100 rolls, that's pretty clear evidence. One hot day doesn't prove climate change...

Ah -- I see. You're partially right and partially wrong. The tariff for any particular installation is fixed for 20 years, based on when it is built (for on-site installs, for or community solar projects under 250 kW) or its bid in an auction (for grid-scale, large commercial, and community...

I'm puzzled by the question. If/when the Standard Offer rate goes up, the value of not buying power at that rate goes up. The value of your net injections (measured hourly) is fixed at the yet-to-be-determined residential solar rate. Compared to net metering, this proposal offers less upside...

Even if the delivery charge were waived for factory delivery, you'd be stuck paying state and local sales taxes in California (which has very strict rules about this, unlike other states that waive sales taxes for cars being taken directly out of state).

This could be important: Governor LePage and Quebec Premier Couillard Announce Electric Vehicle Corridor Initiative

Once again, it looks like unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Maine is going to impact the lobster industry here. Between the clear impacts of warming on lobsters and also on our shellfish industry here, few people doubt that there's a warming trend. I suspect most will even say human...

The Public Advocate's spreadsheet calculating costs and benefits is available at the Maine PUC website, item #95. I worked a lot on this case and even on this spreadsheet. It's important to note that this feed-in tariff for residential and small businesses (incl. small community solar) is part...

Or even 50 seats and the White House (because the VPOTUS is the President of the Senate and therefore breaks ties). FWIW, the Iowa Electronic Markets currently has the odds of a Democrat-controlled Senate at 53%, Republican control at 40%, and the "Other" (e.g. 50/50) at 7%. IEM also has the...