Save or Savor

Songs I've been feeling lately

Just a recent collection


Raury - Cigarette Song (Snakehips Remix)


Cathedrals - Ooo Aaa


Royal* - Royal's Theme


Phantogram - Fall in Love (RATKING Falling Off Remix)


Tensnake & Jacques Lu Cont - Feel of Love (Kaytranada Remix)

The Sunshine State? Not Yet


I spent the first 22 years of my life in the great state of Florida.  One day I might return for good too (the smart money is when I'm retired and can find some land inland that will be beachfront property in 40 years with the rising sea levels).  But likely not anytime soon.


A lot of people in Florida are amazed that solar energy is bigger in places like Massachusetts or Oregon where the sun doesn't shine as often or as intense (insolation is as much of a part of the amount of energy you get as the amount of time it's sunny) as it does in the "Sunshine State".  They think solar is something that is far off in the future because they don't see it as popular in the state where it should rightfully be.  


While there are some realistic reasons why solar is not as popular in sunny Florida as it is in sunny California or Arizona (such as hurricane winds making the structural supports a bit more difficult than normal or the amount of intermittent cloud coverage making power fluctuations more frequent), the real reason is because the local Southeast power companies making the battle EXTREMELY uphill for solar.  They are in the legislators back pockets and wield A LOT of monetary "power" (the other kind).  


They won't be able to fight off common sense forever but they'll do a good job of putting the state well behind the curve when it comes to solar adoption.  Here is a quote from a SolarCity spokesperson in a recent article about the subject:

"We get all kinds of inquiries every day" from the South, said Will Craven, spokesman for SolarCity. "People there want to be our customers."

Florida, in particular, is known as the "sleeping giant" of his industry, Craven said. "It has a ton of sunshine, a ton of rooftops," he said. "But there is no rooftop solar industry in Florida."


In the south, utilities are fighting very hard to prevent solar, all the while maintaining the public image that they want it and are doing everything in the public's best interests, not their own profits.  I'll end on this note from the same article:

Officials at Dominion Virginia Power say they are moving as aggressively as they can to promote solar in a heavily regulated, fiscally conservative state reluctant to subsidize homeowners who go green.

Nearly two years ago, the company launched a pilot program that mimics the SolarCity and Sunrun models for leasing solar equipment to businesses. So far, two systems have been installed.

"It might sound small," said Dianne Corsello, manager of customer solutions at Dominion, but she says regulators want to see evidence that such programs will not create unreasonable costs for the utility.

"We are studying the impacts and assessing the benefits to our grid," she said. "It is providing an opportunity to get data."

Solar installation firms scoff at such utility programs. Sunrun Vice President Bryan Miller calls the Dominion rooftop effort "a make-believe program" designed for public relations, not to entice customers to install panels.

Swarms

I haven't hidden my love of distributed generation.  There's something great about seeing a clear vision for the future and knowing that, while it may take some time, society's progress towards this vision is inevitable.  As one of my high school football coaches liked to say to us when we were enjoying the last few moments of cold air conditioning before going out into the sweltering Florida heat, "Get your asses off that bench, there's no point in delaying the inevitable."


That's one of the best things about being in the solar industry.  It doesn't matter how much money big oil/gas throws at ads that make solar advocates look like radicals, you simply cannot stop something that makes sense economically and environmentally.  People are starting to come around and it will only intensify in the future.


As distributed generation evolves, it's only logical that the future of the utility industry is in localized power management.  It happened with computing, it happened with cell phones, it's going to happen with your electricity.  Getting your power from one, big, central source that is very far away will become as outdated as landline telephones.  Houses are going to be generating their own electricity, storing it to use later and sharing it with their close neighbors when there is excess (and get paid of course).  You won't need to worry about the power going off for the entire city because a squirrel chomped on a power line 200 miles away anymore.


In one of my favorite TED talks, Steven Strogatz talks about how we and other animals naturally sync (not the Bluetooth kind of way).  In it, he has mesmerizing footage of swarms of birds beautifully moving through the sky together.  They look like they're being orchestrated by a single maestro or even central nervous system.  But they're not; there's no one leader or director, each bird moves independently but in unison as a group.  He says swarms only have 3 simple rules:

1.  They can sense what's around them

2.  They like to form lines (be ordered)

3.  They like to be close to each other but still have some space in between


When predators try to attack a swarm, those in the group don't know exactly what is happening, they just know that they neighbor moved out of the way quickly so they in turn move out of the way.  Their neighbor made a sharp left, so they made a sharp left.  The predator attacking the middle is left with a mouth full of air because the swarm automatically avoided it, without even knowing what was going on.  A single leader's job would be incredibly complicated, instead the swarm knew exactly what to do without even communicating to each other because they just followed those 3 rules.


I bring this up because localized power management will eventually do the same thing, it will act as one swarm but with no single leader.  Except in this case the predator is power outages, it could even be clouds.  Yes clouds.  Shade is the enemy of solar power and clouds passing overhead cause intermittent power fluctuations.  Just like anything else, stability and consistency is the name of the game so these variable changes cause problems in power management.  


But don't worry, we're just going to take notes from Mother Nature on how to combat this.  We won't need a central player or advanced algorithm to predict what will happen and direct the power to different houses depending on its usage.  The houses will all communicate with each other, when one needs more power it will be sent some, when another is temporarily shaded it too will be helped by other houses that aren't shaded.  Localized power management will act as a swarm, each unit acting independently but the group as a whole will be one efficient system.  And it will follow the same 3 rules that birds and fish have been using for millions of years.


"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority."
- E.B. White


// Edited because the first draft had a couple mistakes

What a Good Remix Does

For some people, when they see the word "remix" next to a song's name, they automatically dismiss it.  For me, it's the opposite.  I think remixes, when done properly, can add a great deal to an already great song.  Sometimes it just enhances the original, sometimes it completely creates a different song.  Here are two examples of remixes completely changing already great songs and, in my opinion, creating better versions.




And...