return on investment ...

i was delighted to read the article on return on investment. The article is written in a very simple language that anyone can understand. That is the greatness of the author.

Legacy of Tesla & Edison ...

An odd bit of history that can instruct us on the current configuration of the massive grid, as it exists today, is that it came to be as the culmination of a personality war between the two promoters/inventors of mass commercialised electrical production, Nikola Tesla & Thomas Alva Edison. Tesla, being the developer and great promoter of Alternating Current and Edison the slightly maniacal believer in Direct Current.
Tesla?s proxies inevitably carried the day as AC is much more adept to transmission.
The moral of the story is that, as in almost all wars of every nature, when the last battle is fought and the war is over, it is always the innocent noncombatants of both sides that pay for it. For at the end of the day it became a matter of one or the other in the minds of electrical engineers. Either one uses, exclusively, a centralised grid and Alternating Current or a decentralised grid and Direct Current. A strange ironic metaphor inversed when one thinks of decentralised capitalism and centralised socialism.
Point being, there?s nothing technically, to keep us from blending the sources other than the economic desires of those in control of the centralised grid.
Whence in densely populated areas of the coastal regions a more centralised grid becomes logical, in particular when one considers that it can often be the extraneous draws from far flung regions that can trigger a grid failure. Bringing power generation closer to these centralised areas can alleviate a major cause of grid failure.

I live in the back of beyond so it was not just merely my moral compass but the economic logic of investing $15,000 in photovoltaic panels & control systems as apposed to $25,000 to bring in the ?Store Bought? grid electricity.
I certainly get no where near ?freezing in the dark? as the old Nay Sayers of Solar used to say in the seventies. As a matter of fact I live a life of ?normal? electrical consumption with the exception of eliminating the most wasteful of appliances.
Standard refrigerators tend to be rather wasteful, believed to represent about 20% of domestic annual electrical consumption, ironically the same quotient of electricity produced by nuclear fission in America. Anything that heats electrically is intrinsically wasteful, kinda, sorta like having a semi controlled short circuit to contend with. I wont give up my coffee maker, though and a toaster is dandy too.
Otherwise I run a one and one half horse power 220Volt deep well pump, 20 gallons a minute @ 40-60 PSI . All my beloved power tools inclusive of table saws & other stationary equipment do just dandy on my $15,000 investment, serve to keep me off the street.

It is my belief that, perhaps, we should find a way to peace between the ghosts of Tesla & Edison. That perhaps we should blend both systems of energy production & distribution.
Don?t reckon we?d have naught to lose for it, yet, perhaps, the world to gain.

other cheap things..

Thanks for the additional thoughts. I agree there are many good ideas out there ansd readily availbale for us to take control of our power generation, environment and economy. We as consumers and citizens must be proactive in our move towards a cleaner world and a brighter future.

Thanks again.

Other cheap things ...

Hey Steve,
You really are a bit smarter than the average bear ain't'ch'a?
Thought that I'd add an idea that also was floating around in the sadly denigrated time of our 39th president.
If you have a side of your home that faces the sun at noon around Christmas time (facing south-east/west access-of a wall line as little as 5% of the over all perimeter of your house), it becomes possible to create an extraordinary amount of passive solar heat from simply either adding or enlarging window surface on those exterior walls facing the sun.
Proper overhang to allow for shading in the summer on any window area east, south & west will also save in cooling costs.
Back about thirty years ago, during the nascent period of solar design, there were certainly some bad ideas floating around out there but there were also many excellent ideas. It would appear that it has become incumbent upon us to re-examine ideas that have been neglected since the Reagan administration. I do believe that the simple idea of doing as much as we can from a virtually free source makes perfect sense ...

Management Execution ...

To add on to what Matt has recommended, there are other management execution techniques that can help you get more done. I've written about them here.

http://hubpages.com/hub/managementexecution ...