
It’s hard not to get carried away with projects. What saves
us now are the shift in seasons and the shorter days of fall. Now that the
rains have begun, we can ease up on watering and trust that our plants are all
taking root. Soon it will be time to mow fields and plan for the spring. This week
I’ll begin using a fan and vent to cool down the root cellar, which this year
only contains a couple baskets of farmer’s market potatoes and a few fall
vegetables.
Our solar panels are working very well. Here
are some drone pictures of them that our installer recently took. If you
look REALLY close, we are sitting on the porch watching the drone with my
brother and sister-in-law. I’ve become a true geek about our energy efficiency.
My favorite app is our Tesla battery, which shows in real time how much the
panels are producing, how much our house is using, how much is going back to
the grid, and how much is stored in the battery. So far, we have sent more than
twice as much back to the grid as we’ve taken. Since we pay four times as much
for grid power than we receive in credit, plus another $37/month for the
privilege of being connected, having a battery that stores our power for nights
and cloudy days is a tremendous advantage. I can take the EV Bolt into
Louisville to run errands while the house battery charges up, come home and
charge up the car, and then refill the battery before sundown.
Speaking of the Bolt, we recently drove it to Winston-Salem,
North Carolina, where I taught a class on scripture and creation care at Wake
Forest Seminary. This would not have been possible a year ago. But VW’s
settlement over their emissions cheating mandated the creation of Electrify America: the
installation of hundreds of charging stations at Walmarts all over the country.
In addition, many college campuses, including the two we visited, have free
charging stations, and Chevy dealers likewise offer free superfast charging.
With the turning of the seasons, we’ve also turned on the
geothermal in-floor radiant heat. It’s not what people expect—you can’t touch
the floor and feel toasty, because it’s only 70 degrees. But along with the
superb insulation and triple-pane windows, it noiselessly keeps us cozy, and
hardly registers at all in our electric use.