Author Archives: Kevin Wilcox

We are at a Crossroads…

I read with some amusement today about the crisis being faced by oil futures traders as they grappled with the fact that if they didn’t dump their shares soon, a whole lot of oil was going to show up on … Continue reading

Posted in Our Fragile Planet | Comments Off

COVID-19: open the economy or shelter in place?

4/15 UPDATE: Yesterday Trump backed down from his “Absolute Authority” stance.  For the moment at least, its crisis averted… This one’s pretty long but please don’t expect a TL;DR synopsis. The points below, I think, are too important to summarize. … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | Comments Off

Planning for Climate Change: Test your backup generator!

Ok preppers, here’s the second installment in my little “planning for climate change” series… For those of you who own portable backup generators, you really need to test them out on a regular basis to make sure everything’s running well. … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Planning for Climate Change. First in a series

I’ve been saying for quite some time now that “global warming is about more energy in weather systems”. But what does that mean from a practical perspective? In short, it means that we can expect our weather to intensify. Temperature … Continue reading

Posted in Our Fragile Planet | Comments Off

The Dawn of GOP and Trump.

Here I am on the 9th of November contemplating an election victory that handed congress, the presidency and soon the supreme court to the GOP.  America looks like this to me currently: Dow Jones 18,300 my retirement nest egg value: … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | Comments Off

Here’s a new renewable energy storage option.

What’s popping up in my news feeds thanks to the Climate Change conference is incredibly interesting! Here’s a new energy storage system now being tested off Lake Ontario. Makes sense given all those wind turbines we saw travelling through the … Continue reading

Posted in Energy | Comments Off

Tesla’s battery for your home

I found this article while surfing the web today.  Sadly, the utilities themselves who could be embracing/profiting the most from this technology are actually the ones who are trying to squash it the most. By building a smart grid that … Continue reading

Posted in Energy | Comments Off

WE Energies to Squash Distributed Renewables with their latest rate case.

Their current rate case being considered by the Public Service Commission proposes that on January 1, 2016 all Customer generation rate schedules will go to the following: COGS-NM Tariff Capacity demand charge of 3.794/month/KW installed Facilities charge of 3.32/month for … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Surge Protecting PV Arrays

My original design called for surge protection and I was getting sick and tired of powering down the array every time the weather looked threatening.  So I decided to remedy the situation before leaving on a two week vacation. SPDs … Continue reading

Posted in Energy, Solar | Comments Off

The bottom line on our Solar Installation

Here’s the final breakdown for our Solar project (minus the required occasional trips to Home Depot…).  The bottom line is really quite good if you ask me! Do your own research on this then consider DIY Solar.  Its time!  Click … Continue reading

Posted in Energy, Solar | Comments Off