Category Archives: Uncategorized

As we have discussed, electric vehicles (EVs) are more expensive to purchase, but cost less to run. How does all of that shake out in terms of a total cost of ownership (TCO)? Much discussion has emerged on TCO of electric cars, some have gone as far as suggest the Tesla model 3 has aContinue reading “Total cost of ownership?”

Keep going North when you get to Barrie, and you will eventually find Awenda Provinical park. Its easy to get to from Toronto, fairly close at 180 km, and offers many interesting sites, including a shipwrek, dog friendly beach, camping and great hiking. What is not to like. Charging is mostly around Barrie, ON. WeContinue reading “Awenda Provincial Park”

Recently we discussed hot water heater economics (see this post). With a heat-pump tank heater now installed, and some early usage statistics, we can now add real-world usage data to the mix and see how close we came in our earlier analysis. We find that our usage is higher than expected, but through some cleverContinue reading “Does a heat-pump water heater save you money?”

As with most things, no appliance lasts for ever. To add to the chaos, things often break when under stress, in other words when the need is the greatest. This can lead to short term thinking, at the expense of you and the planet. While government programs are available, in most cases some planning isContinue reading “Appliance replacement”

Why are EVs expensive? After all, the battery pack cost is very close to that magical $100/kWh where we are supposed to be at cost parity. Lets look into new car prices on autotrader.ca to see if we have some other market forces at work. We find that new car prices are high, be itContinue reading “New car prices”

Tesla has to much fanfare introduced per kWh billing at least for some of their supercharger locations. Some third party charging networks are following suit, we discuss if that is a good thing? From the perspective of the user, it makes the charging more predictable, as there are occasions where either the station or theContinue reading “Is per kWh billing a good thing?”

The average US home spends about 20% of its overall energy use on hot water heating (source). Much of it via natural gas. Further traditional wisdom suggests that electric water heaters are more expensive to operate than gas (source). Lets check that one, we find that much depends on your energy price assumptions, at theContinue reading “Water heater economics”

Here in Toronto, most homes have a hot water tank. Its mainly used to supply domestic hot water for laundry, dish-washing, showers and the like. But could it also be a source for energy storage? Lets do some math and find out. Indeed a 50 Gallon (200L) tank has the potential to hold about 5Continue reading “Energy storage on the cheap, your hot water tank”

Previously we discussed a simple “peak-shifting” setup, consisting of a small eco-flow delta 2 battery in the Kitchen on a smart outlet which ensures the Eco-Flow charges up at the cheap and green ultra-low overnight rate, discharging to make air-fried treats and hot chocolate during the day. This has been a fairly successful setup, inContinue reading “Solar panel or a bigger battery?”

I recently had lunch with an engineer working for a major legacy automaker. As with automakers these days, this one is very particular about quality. So much so, that developing a new internal combustion engine, is a major ordeal and they are very limited in what they can do in terms of engine improvements. GivenContinue reading “Engine innovators dilemma”