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Alicia Schmidt and I are proud to announce the “Measure Twice, Cut Once Trades Scholarship,” which is two $2,500 awards to those in Arenac County pursuing vocational or trade schools post-graduation. Please share within the community! Teachers like Fran Laakman and Ann Holland (among many others) saw something I often overlooked in myself. While acknowledging my academic challenges, they celebrated my strengths and interests in computers, sports, and exploration. It took missed opportunities and honest conversations about my potential and lack of drive to realise I was more than the ‘intellectual old soul’ stereotype. My true passion lay in technology, a field I have embraced since the days of the Commodore 64. ...

I was on the road longer than I had hoped this trip, flipping through old photos alone in a hotel. As one does when you are lonely and philosophical, you think about German philosophers, right? Schopenhauer eloquently outlined that “aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful consists, to a large extent, in the fact that, when we enter the state of pure contemplation, we are raised for the moment above all willing, above all desires and cares; we are, so to speak, rid of ourselves.” ...

For most of my adult life, I have been on the road travelling. Some years, it was mostly CONUS; other times, it was extensively OCONUS, but I found my old Slingbox while cleaning the basement. What is a Slingbox, you might be asking? Sit down, children and let me talk about a time you will soon see again… Slingbox (Early 2000s) Slingbox, introduced in the early 2000s, was a pioneering device that allowed users to remotely view their home television programming from anywhere with an internet connection. The device connected to my cable box and streamed the content over the internet to a computer, tablet, or smartphone. This groundbreaking technology allowed me to access their live TV and recorded shows without being physically present at home. When I was travelling in countries without English TV, it was a godsend. ...

I will do a little experiment and let ChatGPT also write this blog post. I have made minor edits to ensure it aligns with the screenshots, but this is not me! A few essential items before we dive in: I am using GPT4 with Data Analysis through a paid account I work in the energy space, so I knew basically what I was trying to do with the prompts The Consumers website could have done this analysis in precisely 3 clicks through their portal, so I saved little time Yes, we use a ton of electricity! We have a large geothermal system, 22kw solar array, and 26kw of batteries in the basement. We also have 2 Electric Vehicles and a manufacutring shop on the land. ChatGPT Shortcomings: There is no confidence rating here. You ask the model; it gives answers. Are those answers correct? Sometimes. There is a fallacy that you upload and ask away. In another exercise, I needed to go back and validate the PDF breakout, and the table read needed to be corrected. Verify everything. For a site-by-site analysis, this works great, but scaling this would require API integration. Back to my first point here, you would trust that automation wholeheartedly. As technology advances, the ability to quickly ingest and distil complex tariff documents will be a net positive to the energy industry. We are close, but not there just yet. Steps I used to complete this exercise: I went to GreenButton Connect for Consumers and downloaded my interval and billing data. I tried using some lower-level interval data from my parallel metering, but it was too small of an interval to process correctly. Downloaded the latest tariff book for all Consumers Energy rates. Logged into ChatGPT, selected my GPT4 analysis mode and provided the prompt - How does my utility bill compare to other people in Michigan? before starting to have it evaluate the usage against the tariff specifically. Reviewed the Python code and processing You can see the entire chat minus the actual code here: ChatGPT Chat Prompts ...

In our household, energy is more than just a utility; it’s a way of life. We’ve gone to great lengths to optimize our home, employing a symphony of solar panels, batteries, geothermal systems, and even energy monitoring to keep things in check. But, as they say, the devil is in the details, and I’m on a mission to uncover the hidden secrets that conventional energy monitoring won’t reveal. I often remind my team that energy is a force that doesn’t just vanish into thin air. Whether we’re monitoring temperatures at our EV chargers to predict potential faults or pondering the idea of dissipating excess energy into a vault of oil to tame its fiery temperament, we understand that energy has to go somewhere. ...