557 karma · joined May 24, 2009
For decades I've struggled with diets but tirzepatide is the only thing that's made me stick with it. Will power alone wasn't enough, but with tirzepatide I'm very confident I'll get down to a under 100kg for the first time since I was a teenager, within a few months.
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/powerwall-3-launch/
Two of those is $27,200 minus installation and some solar panels to feed them (but the PW3 does have 3x 6.6kW solar MPPTs built-in unlike previous ones, so all you need to do is connect the panels directly to the PW3 and then the PW3 to your home).
I consider helping my family with their tech stuff a privilege, not a burden. They help me with so much, why wouldn't I want to guide and support them on things I am knowledgeable about?!
Ditto for Yubikeys (which can be added as a passkey), you need more than one so if you lose it you can still access.
Installing any Linux distro is trivial, just boot the installer for your distro of choice off a USB stick. Hold down the Option key when the Mac turns on and it'll appear as a boot option alongside the internal drive and internet recovery.
https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/origin-energy-electric-v...
And a grid operator has been experimenting with special tariffs that are “free” during peak solar times:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/networks-test-time-of-use-appeti...
You’re right - it wouldn’t surprise me if there becomes a standard for EV chargers in Australia that makes it so they have to be centrally controlled to protect the grid/take advantage of excess renewables. Good to do it now before too many homes install EV chargers (probably only 30-40,000 in the country right now).
For Park N Plug, missing out on the grant from ARENA was a big kick in the balls as we had investment depending on receiving the grant. When the grant didn’t happen we had no capital. To make things worse, we were relying on the R&D tax incentive to come through on our software platform, but the tax department said it wasn’t eligible despite earlier guidance it was.
That left us out of pocket on developer costs and deflated from the setback. We probably should keep at the software stuff and pivot the business, but my co-founder and I have other businesses we are busy with so the energy hasn’t been there.
This blog post and the reaction to it has been quite positive, so who knows, maybe I’ll try a third time to get something EV charger relate going.
I’m not convinced EVs as grid response or virtual powerplants will be as important as people think. No EVs on sale right now can do it except the Nissan LEAF and the hardware required (a rectifier) is not cheap (approx A$10k). I’m also sceptical car owners will get much value out of it. Is it worth the hassle just for a few bucks on your electricity bill every month?
Fleets however represent much more of an opportunity. Buses, heavy vehicles (garbage trucks, delivery trucks, etc) and general fleet cars that are idle at night in a depot could be quite lucrative.
In NZ they have a government list of every fast charge station.
https://www.journeys.nzta.govt.nz/ev-chargers-list-view/
Probably wouldn’t be too much more effort to add chargers status to it. Or even an API that others can develop apps against (like what we do in Australia for fuel pricing).
I did however, learn a fair bit about EV charging - the software that runs them, choosing locations, the electrical needs, how to install chargers, etc. - that someone else with a bit more business sense and access to capital might find useful.
I've got an email newsletter that 874 people pay me $5/m to read (The Sizzle - https://thesizzle.com.au). I set it up outside of Substack a few years ago, then migrated when Substack launched with the hope their platform would bring in new readers and make my life easier.
This turned out to be a massive waste of over a year, as not only did the newsletter stop growing, it lost subscribers. There was no platform effect by being on Substack, so I left it, setup my homebrew solution (where all the bits, like billing, email sending, customer info are interchangeable) and growth has resumed and I'm doing better than ever - all without giving Substack a 10% cut and further locking myself into their ecosystem.
Here's a blog post explaining in more detail why I chose to remove myself from Substack if anyone is interested: https://blog.decryption.net.au/t/why-i-use-a-mishmash-of-ser...
e.g: http://ev-torque.com.au/ https://www.evmachina.com/ https://www.ozdiyelectricvehicles.com/ https://www.evclassic.com.au/
Pretty harsh I reckon.
I haven't done a lot of tweaking to determine if I'd get more conversions if I slowed down the pace of the up-sell emails though.
I'm working on getting costs down, but prefer to put my energy into content and marketing at this stage.