The other day while I stopping by at a local cafe a gentleman buttonholed me before I got on my bike and asked whether I thought the ebike I was riding would be suitable for a senior. He clarified that a lady he knew had recently suffered dementia and as a result had lost her license. She was 69 years old with no form of transportation.
Tag: Silver Linings
The good side of shit things.
Excuse me, but why does anybody need solar power batteries?
Today I intend to lay out a system that works well in harnessing the power of the sun, without the need for any costly solar power batteries.
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Cafe Overload In Coastal Tourist Locations
It has been a busy summer and Whangamata has just recently opened its 26th eatery, according to TripAdvisor. Despite the flowering of new businesses, there seems almost relentless demand to be serviced. Hour long waits are very common and customers readily (if not happily) accept them during peak times over summer.
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So Far, So Good – One Month In and Solar Is Outperforming Expectations
It’s a bit early to do a case study on solar power for the Otaki Motel, because quite frankly, we haven’t received enough data yet to assess how much of an impact our 1.5 kWh solar power system has had on out energy use across all weather patterns and seasons. What we have had is our first electricity bill come in.
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Why Solar Power and Slow Cookers Go So Well Together
The motel solar power system has now been successfully installed. I’m able to log in to my inverter system (through Enphase Enlighten) and get a near-real-time reading of the energy consumption versus production through the solar panels. This reading quickly threw up an unintended side effect, which is that the motel solar system is producing way more power at present than the original estimate.
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Solar Power From the Actual Experts
I must confess I am just about the furthest thing from an actual engineer – while I have a great deal of curiosity about the nature of solar power and its possible impact on household energy consumption at a micro level, on certain technical matters I will be a small kid with armbands swimming in the deep end.
What do we do when we are potentially out of our depth? We consult a real world expert. So for that reason, this week we speak to Martin King and Bryn Bennett of Degree Limited, who specialise in the installation of all things heating and cooling.
Why It Helps to Start Planning a Year In Advance When It Comes to Solar Power
In last week’s article I wrote about the need to calculate your own power consumption before investing in any solar power proposal. This week I want to talk about how extending the timeline for your data set well in advance can help you to improve the data accuracy of your energy saving calculations.
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How Much Extra Energy Supply Will the Electric Fleet Require from NZ?
The phasing in of the electric fleet could be a momentous occasion for New Zealand, enabling us to switch from fuel consumption to electric vehicles powered primarily by renewable energy. But the process also comes with a series of economic effects, most notably the need to construct additional sources to power this fleet. In this article we look at what the electric fleet could require from NZ in terms of additional power sources.
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The silver lining of running a motel
NZ businessman Sir Bob Jones commented in his book Jones on Property that ‘hotels and motels are like farms; they are no bloody good – offering a life-style, lots of hard work and a rotten return.’ This little remark made me chuckle as I couldn’t agree with him more.