I'm with you there! I HATE snakes! In this case, Orange Cat Bad did not bring it in. It just came in from the crawlspace somehow. (That happened once before, also.) I went and got Orange Cat Bad to see what he would do, but he was only mildly interested. (His response was better than that of a previous cat we owned. In that case we carried him out to a nest of blacksnake eggs which were hatching out and he was so interested in getting us to pet him that he walked right across the nest, stepping on one of the snakes in the process! He never even noticed the snake was there! 😄)

Bump. I added the "Avoiding Factoring" section in the post about factoring.

When DS30 was about 16 years old, there was a terrible accident "next door" (about 1/4 mile away), in which two cousins, a boy and a girl, who were 16 years old failed to negotiate a curve and drove into a stone pillar. They were on their paper route. The accident happened at about 5AM and both died at the scene. We didn't learn of the accident until we read about it in the newspaper, but I believe it traumatized DS30 to hear that young people his age had died so close to home. He did not get his license until years later.

Yeah, the insurance "covered" MomsintheGarden's checkup, but it still ended up costing about $65. Plus I didn't want to go to the doctor. I'm cheap!! I'll see what comes from the home test and then perhaps I will try to get a more accurate test done sometime. Your levels look good!

There is an interesting quote in the link under the words "capacity market" in the Planning Engineer article: When I read that, I thought: "hindsight is 20/20", but then I noticed the publication date: April 10, 2019.

Why create a strawman? He didn't suggest getting rid of wind power. Here is what he actually said: Again, the point is this (which is the first quote I posted from this link): As you see, he was very clear in saying that they will not "do this out of the goodness of their hearts". That is what a capacity market incentivizes.

Orange Cad Bad with studious sons: Orange Cat Bad with snake:

Bucky on pavement:

I would rather do a "boost" with Vitamin D4. Is there a way that we can get that outside of a hospital setting?

Perhaps you missed this part: The point is that the energy-only market that is designed to level the playing field for renewables removes the incentives for ANYONE to provide emergency capacity.

This is "Bucky" helping MomsintheGarden fold her sweaters (after getting them out for yet another StyleBook photosession):

Here is an excellent analysis of the situation in Texas by an electrical utility planning engineer he is someone who plans for these types of events for a living. It's a very good read which gives a flavor for what is involved with getting management to spring for contingency plans since they are costly and only pay off when there are significant events that occur. While he mentions the above three issues from my header post in the article, he lays the blame squarely at the feet of ERCOTs "energy-only" electricity market. He sums up the problem with this type of market right at the beginning of the article: So the question becomes this: If an energy-only electricity market does not incentivize energy providers to plan for extreme conditions, why is it being used? Here is his answer: The bottom line is that Texas has restructured energy incentives so that wind and solar do not get penalized for not providing the ability to provide electricity under emergency conditions. While this approach allowed wind and solar to flourish in Texas, it means that NO ONE now has ANY incentive to address the rare cases that ACTUALLY occur, such as what happened this week. It is the best explanation I have yet seen for why the resources were not available to fill the desperate needs of the customers this week.

Please do let us know what your numbers look like! I'm impressed that you have been doing this for 18 months. Good on you for being ahead of the curve! MomsintheGarden's numbers were 29 ng/ml (I THINK. It was so stupid: they called her on the phone and read the numbers to her. No units or anything. Then the little slip of paper with the numbers on it got lost. Grrr!)

Thank you!

I am happy to say that the solar arrays are shedding pretty well on their own! The garage is doing much better than the house. (You can see Orange Cat Bad in the first picture of the garage.)

That's too bad since the "proper lab result" comes from a test which costs over $150.

Big batteries is the simple answer. As you can see from my plot above, my heat pump did not run all night, That is why I have asked for anyone in Texas to provide me with hourly (or finer) consumption data from their home. That will give us an idea how difficult (and expensive) this would be to address. I will note, however, that cooling even at 115° F uses less energy than heating at 0° F since 115° F is only 40° F away from 75° F while 0° F is 65° F away from 65° F. (Does that make sense?) The point is that you will have more than 50% more heat loss in the heating case than you have heat gain in the cooling case. Now, there will be some extra thermal load from solar heating in daytime, but that does not impact battery sizing, only the size of the solar array.

I'm with you 100% on this point. Take a look at what I wrote in the "responsibility" thread two days ago. I think you will see that we have the same perspective here. The electricity utilities used to be what economists call a "natural monopoly", but new technologies are changing that so that individuals now have the ability to break free from their grasp. There will certainly be a bit of struggle over this turf going forward. I will also point out that a system in which each load provides its own electricity is significantly more immune to system-wide outages than the existing grid-based approach.

What is sad is that the government has not made an effort to make this information widely known. This is particularly true since low vitamin D levels disproportionately impact blacks and hispanic at the high latitudes found in most of the U.S.

That's what I bought. Like you said, I don't know how accurate. John Campbell actually did TWO tests: One was an *instant* test that gave the results you mentioned. The other one looked similar to the Everlywell one and he is waiting for the results from that.

I worked with a guy once who bought his wife a chainsaw for her birthday! 😄

Vudu has LOTS of content available free with ads and the free content changes monthly. Vudu is Walmart's streaming service, so if you have a Walmart online account, you don't even need a new account to use it. You can also get free movies, shows, ebooks, and audiobooks through most libraries through a service called Hoopla. You just need a library card at a participating library. You will get 6 or 10 borrows/month depending on what plan your library has. I know you already have Netflix, but I thought I would mention that we get Netflix included with our T-Mobile cell phones. Originally it was free, but Neflix increased their rates and we pay $2/month for a 2-screen HD plan. Finally, he should be able to find some channels on YouTube to subscribe to that produce daily content. There are tons of creators out there putting out excellent material. I have used all four of the above in the last 24 hours! All for $2/month!

Fair enough. Keep in mind that I am talking about Texas going 100% solar. One way (almost certainly not the best way) to do this would be for everyone to disconnect and provide their own electricity. In that case, net metering laws are irrelevant. In fact, Hawaii passed a law a couple of years ago preventing ANY more solar electricity from being put onto the grid. Their system simply couldn't handle it anymore. The reason is that solar is so cheap and electricity is so expensive (US$0.45/kWh) there that everyone did it. It is because of places like Hawaii that very well-engineered solutions now exist which allow you to stay connected to the grid, but your solar energy will never flow back that way (either with or without batteries). I think the whole "the grid needs upgrading" on your street thing is just laziness (or should I say passive-agressiveness) on the part of the utility. My house is connected to the grid with a wire capable of delivering 50 kW of power continuously (200-Amp service). If you look at my plot above, neither my consumption nor my production ever approaches that number. In fact, I have NEVER seen over 15 kW in either direction. And I live in an all-electric house. If I lived in the house in VA with the oldest connection type there was in the 20th century, I could draw (or deliver) 15 kWh through the wire. On top of all of that, the power that I produce actually reduces the amount of current flowing in their wires, since I feed the neighbors houses directly and they do not draw as much through the main wire. The real reason is that the power company has all of the grid connected up to be a LOAD. As such, they tap all of the transformers up to near the highest voltage possible (250 VAC) so that when people draw electricity from the grid, the voltage droops but still stays above the minimum voltage (230 VAC). When people like me start producing, that approach is no longer valid. I have to RAISE the voltage at my house in order for the electricity to flow the opposite direction. If I am already at the limit, I may go over. They just don't want to have to go around and change the tap connections on all the transformers. Wah!!

It's actually more necessary today than it ever was. Do you remember when you used to be able to purchase a battery with an 8-year warranty. No more. And that is not because they make them more poorly today than in the past (although some of them are junk). It is because the vehicles have some many loads that run all the time. Those loads draw down the battery. When a lead-acid battery discharges, the lead from the plates and the sulfuric acid from the electrolyte combine to produce a white paste called lead sulfate. During discharge the lead sulfate is used up and lead is replated onto the plates. The problem that occurs as the lead sulfate sits without being used, it tends to get harder. If the vehicle does not get fully recharged every so often, the lead sulfate will eventually get so hard it will never participate in the battery reaction again. This effect is cumulative until at some point the battery does not have much capacity left. But @skimomma is correct in that it is not cold that damages these batteries. Like most chemical reactions, the hardening of the lead sulfate happens very slowly when it is cold, but it can happen very quickly in the heat. Also, in hot weather, many cars will run the engine fan for a few minutes after you turn the ignition off. That creates some lead sulfate right away when you stop the car. If you do not drive it again for a few days in hot weather, that lead sulfate may harden and that capacity will be lost. Case in point: My daughter purchased a used Prius a couple of months ago. Because the DMV is shut down, she had to wait SIX WEEKS to get her registration and plates. After four weeks, I measured the battery. It was at about 20% state-of-charge. In other words, it had lost about 20% of its charge EACH WEEK. And her Prius is about 8 years old. Newer cars are often worse. If you purchase the charger I recommended upthread and use it occasionally, you will save the cost of the charger many times over in the cost of new batteries. And that is not to mention the damage done to the environment by throwing away products that could have been used for a much longer time.

Better yet, purchase a high-quality desulfating maintenance battery charger and hook it up occasionally. That way you are not using a 300-hp engine to produce 20 Watts of power!! I recommend the BatteryMINDer 1510 from the vendor linked. You might also want to by the 20' DC extension cord for convenience. (If you have a Prius like my daughter has, good luck finding the place to clip it onto the positive battery terminal!!)