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It’s enlightening to look at personal, State, and national household energy consumption.* The average U.S. household consumes ~22,500 kWh/yr (76.8 million Btu). Here in California it's ~15,700 kWh/yr. To get more granular in CA: ~10.5 kWh/yr per sq ft and ~5,900 kWh/yr per household member...

Efficiency...Love heat pumps. We've got them to heat/cool our homes, the Tesla lineup, our hot water for home, and clothes dryers. We've got induction for stoves/cooktops. And of course we have electric vehicles. The next area for disruption for home efficiency, sorely needed, might be our...

This has been discussed piecemeal in other forums, so figured it would be good to move further the discussion into a dedicated thread. Interesting article recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans: They have added a new tool to the toolkit to look at patterns of Arctic...

Charging rate structures continue to evolve in CA. Many supercharging stations here are now Time of Use (TOU). Different spread of times and rates, mostly in metropolitan areas. Great way to help balance load on the grid and bottom line for Tesla with demand fees. It's not simply the "save...

Any here with experience using full-sized (U.S. standard) heat pump dryers? We have a standard electric resistance dryer and estimate we use 1500-2000 kwh/year. This is the biggest energy hog appliance in most houses. We have been wanting a standard size heat pump dryer for a long while now...

Other PG&E customers here may be interested. Don’t know if this has been posted elsewhere but looks like PG&E has recently started offering a rebate for anyone currently on or willing to switch to a time of use plan. $120 when paired with an Energy Star smart thermostat...

I will venture to say that ours is one of many whole house fan households grieving in California these days. It’s a great way to cool the house at night and early morning during the summer for a fraction of the energy the air-conditioning would require. Alas with all the smoke, that remains a...

I'm in PG&E land. Have a 11.43kW solar PV system and am currently grandfathered into NEM 1.0 and the E-6 rate plan (E-6 rate plan starts to phase out next year). Considering buying 3 Powerwalls. Does anyone know if I will be booted from either NEM 1.0 or the E-6 rate plan by doing this? No...

Any prior fans still a fan of Michael Moore? New Michael Moore-Backed Documentary On YouTube Reveals Massive Ecological Impacts Of Renewables

Record low 10-year U.S. Treasury yield today. As this is strongly tied to mortgage rates, refinancing may be particularly attractive at this time and rates will likely go lower if these low treasury yields hold. We have ~2 years left on a 10/1 ARM with a pretty good interest rate, but have...

As recently as October, Betelgeuse glowed around magnitude 0.5, considerably brighter than its nearby Aldebaran (0.9). But observations made this month by both amateurs and professionals indicate a steep drop in brightness. On December 28.2 UT, I used Aldebaran (magnitude 0.9) and Bellatrix to...

We are considering adding Powerwalls in the next few years. We have a Square D Combination Service Panel (see below), solar PV, and are contemplating a Powerwall setup for whole home battery backup. For this arrangement, the Powerwall gateway would go between the main panel and utility...

Wanted to start a thread on what others are doing, have done, or are contemplating with heat recovery/heat exchanger improvements within their homes. Also, ideas about building code improvements in this regard as a matter of public policy seems worthy of discussion. Nothing to report on my...

Latest net import data is July, so U.S. may already be a net exporter of crude oil. Right now the story is mostly due to the U.S. being the world's leading producer. Hopefully in a few years plummeting U.S. demand will become a much larger driving factor. U.S. Net Imports of Crude Oil and...