About Me And My Blog: Local Energy At Home

About Me

As a kid, I was always intrigued by how things work and how they were made.  I'd often study things, take them apart, and put them back together again; sometimes without any pieces leftover! Luckily for my parents, I never broke anything expensive, and mostly I tried to build new things.

Still to this day, my interests follow a similar path.  I once heard, "the amount of knowledge gained is directly proportional to the amount of equipment destroyed!"  Yeah... that's painfully true.

Growing up, I became intensely interested in computers and science.  As a young adult, I earned a degree in Computer Science and soon after a fantastic job doing what I love; programming and engineering software and electronic devices.

About Local Energy At Home

So why this blog?

In the early 2000s, I noticed it was becoming increasingly practical to use solar energy to generate electricity for personal use. This was exciting to me and I started dreaming of one day building a photovoltaic solar electric system to power my house.

In late 2009, I started heavily researching the technology available at the time, and in 2010, my wife and I decided it was time to make it happen.  By the end of that year, we were producing a good portion of our own electric power, and at the time of this writing, we have produced over 11 MWh; that's 11 Million Watt-hours of electricity.

But it didn't end there.  Instead, this was just the beginning of my journey to study and learn how all the pieces fit together; and more importantly, realizing the answers to a question I never asked, "just what are all the pieces?"  Little did I realize at the time that the big picture was composed of much more than just the pieces of the photovoltaic system.

This Local Energy At Home blog is my way of sharing what I've learned with anyone who wants to listen.  With this blog, I provide topical discussions of local energy production, consumption, monitoring, and conservation, along with details I've personally gathered or researched, and wrapped up with my own conclusions and ideas.  From this blog, I hope to hear that I've enlightened others, and I look forward to learning from you as well.  Maybe you can point out things I should explore and share?  So please share your thoughts with me.

I'm not an expert, but I do know a few things that may be of worth to you, and I'm learning more all the time.  If you're a beginner in this field, you're in the right place to learn where to go from here.

Let's explore this together!