Supply Chain Blah Blah Blah Blah

 We have now ordered and are awaiting:

• 200A Service Upgrade
• Home Battery Backup
• Span Smart Panel
• Electric Vehicle

I've spend tens of thousands of dollars but don't own anything yet. Kinda like an NFT.

Our Powerwall is going to cost an additional $16,400?!????

In 2019, we installed solar panels, which locked us into a particular utility rate (Net Metering 2.0) for 20 years. Great! 

In 2021, we ordered battery storage to add to our system. The Powerwall backorder is quite long, so we don't expect installation to complete until late 2022. Annoying, but I get it... supply chain, etc etc.

Last month, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) made a ruling that would, among other things, decrease the locked-in rates from 20 years to 15, and require that any new rooftop solar pay an additional $8 per KW per month.

To add insult to injury, adding a storage battery to an existing system is considered a "substantial update", which will trigger the new rates! 

So a battery we ordered last year and don't even have yet will cost us an additional and unexpected $8 * 9KW = $72 / month in perpetuity?!!

In other words, over the next 20 years, this battery is going to cost $16,400(!) more than we expected when we signed the contract.

If you're reading this, please call Gov Newsom and tell him that this is not OK, and that he needs to intervene to save rooftop solar.

Socializing an Induction Cooktop

Probably the last appliance to go in our house will be our gas stove. My wife is an amazing cook and LOVES her gas stove. We've got a fantastic 6 burner Viking and her (reasonable) perception of electric stoves are the old crappy coils from the 80s that we grew up with. It also works fine, so we're not super motivated to get rid of it, at least not this year.

But I do want to start socializing the idea of an induction cooktop... see what we like and don't like, what cookware we have and what we need, how much of "now you're cooking with gas" is actually better vs marketing campaigns, etc.

So to try it all out, we bought a portable, single burner, induction cooktop on Amazon for just $75. It plugs in and we can start trying it out next to our regular stove as part of the transition. 

It arrived yesterday so I'll post my experience in the coming days.

Update: aaaand none of our existing pots work. Sigh. Off to a rocky start convincing her this is the bright and shiny future we get to look forward to...