Featured Walmart sues Tesla over fires, widespread negligence

Makes me glad I went with Sun Power and not Solar City.

 

Typical business dispute. If you can't come to a resolution, legal action by the injured party follows.

 

The Judge tells them to go work it out and fearing the Judge's wrath, they do.

Big natural gas explosion in Columbia MD today too.

Bob Wilson

 

iirc, walmart is also being sued

 

smartness loves company. Yes, we went with both SunPower inverters as well as panels. They're the industry leaders, AND made in the US ... at lease 10yrs ago. Not sure if that's a standard manufacturing thing nowadays.. Their Leading Edge products are such that some of the European countries get long-term contracts for their latest & greatest & most efficient, leaving the USA customers with the mere 'good stuff'.
18.5% efficiency back in the day, now they're nearly 23%.

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We went with Sun Power for several reasons over Elon’s also ran:

• They’ve been in business longer
• They’re technology is better
• They’re degradation was less over time
• The price was equivalent (slightly higher but not enough to make us consider Solar City)

When I asked about the Power Wall availability, the rep laughed at me.

Must have been focused on their automobiles instead.

 

not all is as it necessarily seems. We've known a couple companies that dealt with Walmart, until they ground them down, nearly out of business. With that in mind, - one might want to consider who the True Villain is here;

What's The Real Reason Walmart Is Suing Tesla? | CleanTechnica

always good to look at both sides. Meaning the reason they have prices competitive with non brick-and-mortar stores, is because with their size, they know how to wheel and deal.
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they paid 65m to cashiers without chairs

check out the waltons fortune

 

You don't get rich, sitting in a Walmart chair.
Segway;
I do recommend anyone traveling to Arkansas to visit the Sam Walton original 5 & 10¢ History museum. A man of humble beginnings (& remained that way), who not only made it, but launched his business into something he never imagined. Too bad Arkansas is so void of superchargers - more owners might head up there to check it out.

 

unless you're a walmart heir

 

I think there are flow batteries now available for residential use. These won't be competing with cars for supply.

 

Looks like the price of vanadium increased since I last read about them. Sounds like some companies are trying out leasing the electrolyte.

It isn't down to residential scale, but this company is using an iron based electrolyte.
Battery Systems - Behind the Meter Storage - Iron Flow Battery - IFB | ESS

 

Makes me glad that I went DIY.

Though I wouldn't push this direction on anyone without significant electrical engineering or electrician experience.

 

One of my staff worked at a solar company a few years back, so I’d have a helper.

But why go into the second story of our house and risk it?

Sun Power had the install done in 2 days, and for a team of 4 on the install, I didn’t feel that they raked me.

I did my part for economic stimulation .

 

My house is only single story, so the rooftop work risk was lower. It produced a lot of project satisfaction. It meant that a number of wiring finish details were done the way I wanted (pulled through inside garage wall studs and crawl space), rather than in more labor-cost-effective but less visually appealing manner (horizontal exterior conduit).

It put some of the PV knowledge I gained in my last engineering contract, exploring some technical blue-sky stuff (one of many such ideas that died en masse when upper management chose to focus most available product development resources to a different basket), to actual use.

It gave me real world experience and examples to help confer with and bounce ideas for an acquaintance (an environmental scientist but not an engineer) when she recently took a semester-long technical solar PV design class as part of her continuing education. This then became very useful in finding a new and better position in industry when her old government department was cut back by current political funding realities. While the basic course material was very good, it was missing numerous of points of engineering sense that I was able to add.

 

7½ yrs after our initial 7.2kW AC install - & having room for 4 more panels, i did the 4 more, DIY. 2nd story WAS high risk ... not so much for the simple wiring as it was for schlepping them up that ladder & they're awkward weight & size, coupled w/very little room to walk. Risk taking pride, & fool hearty - lived to tell anorher tale. Had i fallen & lived, onlookers would be within their rights to yell out "idiot". it's a younger man's game.

SO - now it's 8kW's - perfect for 2 plugins & a better ½ that likes to keep the indoor summer temps day & night set like we're living in a meat locker.
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lucky man, most women prefer it a little warmer

 

Here is my setup, 5 years ago but as currently shown on Google's free public maps / overhead views:

Stage 1 was the upper-right-most 6 modules, Stage 2 filled out this east block to 16 modules. The western wall of neighbor trees at the property line is visible here, causing impairment from late afternoon. An eastern row of trees is farther away, causing milder morning impairment, their shadows are still visible in the upper right of this morning picture. My best guess image date is September 2014, give or take a month.

When re-roofing, a solar tube skylight was moved just north of the ridgeline, and a kitchen vent was moved a bit west, in line with a plumbing vent, to clear the field for mounting this PV block.

This left room for 16 more modules in an identical western block pattern, closer to the tree wall. Stage 3 is just 10 modules of that pattern installed in 2015, enough to reach net-zero-energy with a bit of margin for aging, tree growth, variable weather, and conservation laziness. Racking and plugins are in place for two more to simply snap in, the rest would require more hardware.

Real estate sites are using (paying for?) more recent Google images but this is the only usable one I could find, taken from an angle where the tree wall hides much of Stage 3. These trees don't start shading modules until mid afternoon (about 3 pm summer time), but the camera imaging angle makes it appear worse. Stitching artifacts show that the two blocks were plucked from different images.