As a former electrician turned software engineer and serial entrepreneur I have always been conscious of my utilities consumption. Per Lorde Kelvin one can only improve what one measures and there are many things most people in society complain about yet those individuals could improve if they just measured; the data doesn't lie, people do.

Around about 2006, after being in my newly built home for a few years, I began to ask the questions that many more are just starting to ask now about their utilities. Having had an extensive background in residential and commercial electrical work I knew the options then were limited to measure home consumption digitally but I stumbled upon TED, The Energy Detective. In 2007 I installed TED in my panels and it has been running ever since. I initially only used it as a curiosity item, much akin to many Tesla Solar+PW users today in checking the app for production and consumption data, never before available in such a simple near real-time form of access. TED did however earn it keep in helping me deduce electrical draw issues when systems within the house were changed alongside just other general consumption curiosity.

In 2016 I got serious and started logging all of my utilities at the first of every month directly from my meters and I also cross collected utility bill data into a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet is now large but the information is invaluable in providing me an aggregate collection specifics to me and my family only over that time. Another side story in itself are the errors I have discovered and reported, some of those errors have benefited me greatly, once again you can only know such things through measuring and monitoring. All of this effort was my LONG GAME preparation for going near fossil fuel free and energy independent at my home when I found the correct solution for my needs.

In 2018 we went fully electric with our personal road vehicles. I installed the largest wall charger at the time which supported 220V up to 70A. This of course spiked our home usage at times however free supercharging was a great bonus and still is. Yes, we were early adopters of a fully electric vehicle family now for over 6 years and have driven hundreds of thousands of miles combined across the U.S. and Canada. I am still amazed at how ignorant people are about charging infrastructure since the fossil fuel industry has brainwashed people's expectations with gas stations on every corner. I have referred many an EV owner and while the program no longer exists I still refer people to electric, just referred a CT a few weeks back.

As time passed so too did my roof age and those here aware of asphalt shingle degradation know builder selections rarely last. In 2020 I started down the solar roof planning journey which had me upgrading all aging appliances to EnergyStar and in August of 2021 the solar roof was installed with two PWs. This led me to refactor my spreadsheet to now include my personal generation and consumption which the new system was providing me. Here I mention the TED again because this old still functioning device had provided me with years of historical data and now I would use it to compare the numbers from the new system. Yes, I found discrepancies that no one had found before and those issues had to be resolved within the new system; a new more accurate CT device was required as well as firmware changes. You may be able to hear me still smiling from this near energy independent choice.

My choices have guided my curiosity which has guided my choices and this is still so extremely relevant today in that I have a unique energy loss problem of which I intend to solve through my own energy storage device I am building. Everything provable in life boils down to either science or math so if the science and math check out then it is only the implementation that matters to reach one's goal. I am applying my software, hardware, electronics, and electrical experience as a unique subject matter expert to build something that solves my problem through the dog-food method. Once I have hashed out all the basic issues with this simple "complex system" I am building I will then apply my entrepreneurial talents once again, that whole ‘serial’ thing. You likely know what happens next given the world's growing awareness of a pursuit that I have long had devoted interest in represented by the choices I have made solely from monitoring and measuring. Thanks Kelvin!

Stay Healthy!