I can visualize images in my mind. I can "see" an apple, or even "read" a page of words from an image of it in my head, which is distinctly different from reciting words from memory without the visualization for me. What I can't do is generate moving images in my mind. If I try and think of a person walking, I can visualize some individual frames but not the full motion. Slideshow yes, movie no. This has always bothered me. I do dream with full motion, though.
Did you at least get a t-shirt?
Summary of the OIG report: lax processes allowed the purchasing of non-FedRAMP cloud services using department purchase cards (credit cards) instead of approved contract vehicles, which resulted in CSPs and cloud environments not on department inventory. Ghost clouds. Furthermore, they weren't properly audited nor were sufficient controls in place (obviously).
So, basically, "I need a waiver because none of the secured stuff will let my entire team have local admin! Screw you! I'll put it on a credit card and not tell IT!"
I currently live in West Virginia and have lived in Illinois and northern Idaho, and my wife is from northern Indiana. We've spent plenty of time, including winter, in Montana and South Dakota. I'm intimately familiar with the winters and the cold and how there's nothing in winter between you and the North Pole but pine trees.
If extended cold is your concern, your money is better spent -- and health preserved -- by properly insulating your house. It will by far give you the most bang for your buck in reducing your heating needs, regardless of the fuel or source. Get loose fill fiber or foam blown in the walls, and double up on the attic insulation. Get a blower door test, then fix every last draft and leaky spot you can, and the heat that is in there today will STAY there and you won't freeze even if it does go sub-zero outside.
Solar panels and batteries, including possibly an EV that can act as a big, backup battery are what I recommended to help improve your personal electricity reliability. Are you aware that a fully charged F-150 Lightning can power a typical home for multiple days? Switch to "critical loads" like heat pumps, lighting, phone charging, and light cooking, and it is a week plus. That's WITHOUT a separate home battery and ZERO solar panels generating any electricity. Cold improves the efficiency of solar panels, as long as they aren't completely buried in snow that you have to brush off.
Your focus on keeping warm is absolutely right, and I don't disagree. But it is a horrible waste of money to just burn more stuff if you're leaking all the heat outside, regardless of the fuel source.
Are you familiar with reconductoring? While the cost of the conductors themselves are more expensive, that cost is more than saved by being able to do the work as maintenance and not new lines. All the permitting, right-of-way issues, and associated work goes away.
The DoE has a loan guarantee program to help encourage this. A more technical analysis can be found here. And this is more than just theoretical and has actively been rolled out worldwide.
There's a nice IRA incentive for upgrading a "biomass heating device", which is gov't speak for a high-efficiency wood stove, including inserts. I installed a Regency i2500 in an older fireplace and am quite happy with my emergency backup heat and ambiance.
You're right in that it makes little sense to replace an existing, functioning gas/oil furnace. I swapped mine for heat pumps when the oil tank rusted thru and everything was needing replaced anyway. The electricity is cheaper than the fuel oil and doesn't stink.
As far as where those gov't incentives come from...yep, get some of your hard earned tax money back. They're offering, I'm accepting where possible.
To clarify, I would recommend a smaller, stationary battery with the car being an emergency, long-outage backup. I certainly wouldn't want to have the power go out in the house if I needed to use the car during a grid outage!
And the extra cycles aren't really an issue if you're just fluctuating between like 60-80%, especially at lower L2 charge levels. You don't generate the heat and stress that way. Yes, I love the whole "topped off every morning".
If you have the option, install residential solar with batteries and focus on self-consumption. WAY too many people are bitching about rates paid to them for selling back extra solar to the power company. Stop using the grid as storage and backup. Basing your entire calculation on "when's my ROI" leaves out the value of being able to tell the power company to fuck right off and not worry about their shenanigans.
If you're in the market for a new car in the next couple of years, focus on EVs that support bi-directional charging (V2H). This way you can get a smaller home battery and use your vehicle for the rest.
Looking at new appliances? Inductions stoves, hybrid heat-pump water heaters, mini-split heat pumps instead of A/C and heaters, condensing dryers -- lots of stuff runs off of electricity and uses WAY less power than the old stuff. Some of it may cost more up front, but ROI on these can be just a couple of years depending on how much you use them.
Add to that the ability to break the oil/gasoline addiction, not worry about major utilities screwing you over, grid stability, or any of that shit adds a whole lot of value that needs to be considered. Take a hard look at the government incentives and tax credits available and stop leaving yourself at the mercy of multi-national corporations who don't give two shits about you.
It looks like Electrify America's EV charging stations use the AT&T network for payment and account processing. Many of them were reported in "free to use because the network is down" mode today.
Quoting a different article, no.
"Unfortunately, the site was not insured. We're a small market station, but we're going to get back, and we're going to be back on the air as soon as we possibly can," Elmore said.
I thought one of those sprinklers spun because they contained an arm on a hinge that was impacted by the water jet, causing it to impart spin when in was pushed out and hit a stop. It then was pulled back by a spring and the process repeated.
Remove the arm and it is just a nozzle and would flop around like every other nozzle if it wasn't fixed to the ground.
Think of a heat pump as an AC with a reverse gear. It doesn't just cool, it can reverse flow and heat as well. It moves heat from one side to the other. One side cools, the other heats. They are very efficient.
You don't understand it, but then again you didn't bother to read the article. It is about encouraging and improving local resiliancy.
Solar panels can form microgrids -- islands of locally generated power -- that residents might be able to rely on even if thereâ(TM)s a blackout on the broader power grid. Energy-saving appliances, including heat pumps that are more efficient than traditional air conditioners, can also help prevent power outages by taking pressure off the grid when cooling demand peaks during heatwaves.
Sheetz is like this, too. There's one in Breezewood, PA right there before the onramp to the PA Turnpike. When I'm heading that way -- off to the midwest -- I stop there and plug in to top off before getting on the highway. I've timed it a couple times and everyone (3 people) getting out of the car, going to the bathroom, getting snacks/drinks and getting back to the car is frequently 20+ minutes depending on how busy the place is. Perfect for topping up before continuing on down the road.
It'll cure this, too. Like everything else, it isn't instantaneous.
Things like reservations and paying to reserve spots and more charger build-out will solve this.
Besides US gov't incentives, recently, petroleum giant BP announced that it would purchase around $100 million in Tesla EV charging hardware featuring the NACS connector for deployment within its growing BP Pulse EV charging network. BP also said it will invest up to $1 billion in EV charging across the US by 2030.
Texas-based gas station chain Buc-ee's is partnering with Mercedes-Benz to add high-speed DC fast charging hardware to its travel centers across the Southeast with around 30 stations planned by the end of 2024. Previous gas station charging partnerships include Travel Center and Electrify America (1,000 stalls at 200 locations) and Pilot and GM (2,000 stalls at 500 stations).
By the end of 2024 the main growing pain will be behind us, and after a couple of years the EV bottleneck of the 2023 Chicago winter will be a story your grandpa tells you before he nods off in the rocking chair.
Happiness is a positive cash flow.
