See y'all in 3 months :)

Wombat_EE Q2'26 patchnotes:
-balcony solar appreciation corrected(disappointment over failure of OR HB4080 increased by 80%)
-furry update installed (feline edition)
-PNW snowpack below spec, fix expected Q4 '26
-bad fire season expected, needs patch
-social media addiction reduced by 99%

Fuck.

Tbh I've been meaning to do this for a while & it's really helping my mental health not to scroll. I'll be back on occasion but nowhere near as often as I used to be. Catch me working on my house or working out at the gym or going for a hike. Life is better when you ignore things you can't change.

Looks like I chose an incredible time to almost entirely quit social media. I'll see y'all when this all blows over. Maybe.

I do only use it a couple of times a week so I'm not a very heavy user, but I still can't wait to electrify it (and my furnace) and get off gas entirely.

I got a gas bill that actually had billed usage! Wow!

My range (only gas thing that gets used in summer) using a whopping 1 therm of gas in 3 months.

Camel by Camel is such an odd song but it's admittedly kind of a banger.

There's not a single non-racist explanation for thinking like this.

Good way to look at it.

I haven't been able to open my windows overnight for weeks because of wildfires exacerbated by climate change. So much fun.

Amazing stuff going on in (checks) the department responsible for energy and nuclear weapons

This is incredible.

"Support our troops!"

"Wait, no, not like that!"

I'll be in NYC in October and I intentionally booked old Acela to get there from Philly because soon I won't have a chance to experience them.

Also it'll be my first time ever on HSR so that'll be neat.

(I actually do have a class B CDL so am in theory also fully qualified to drive a garbage truck, so maybe bad example.)

I'm a bit of an expert in protection engineering, so I guess I should be fired and the garbage man should start developing recloser settings. I'm sure that'll end with no additional deaths or forest fires.

And in the meantime I'll start driving the garbage truck.

IEEE 1547 governs DER connections, I'm sure this stuff can be added if it's not in there already.

It's fine though, Washington voted for Harris so let it burn.

That's probably some of their logic, anyways.

All of the new reclosers I've been working with come with dead-line checking by default, which makes sure to avoid closing into an unsynchronized island. It's a bit harder with substation breakers though, since you need PTs on the getaway and those aren't free.

IEEE 1547 (iirc) requires inverters to trip within 2 seconds of losing grid power, so changing the standard first reclose interval from <1 second to >2 seconds could definitely work as a band-aid fix. Voltage regulators, it's a pretty simple change to just block stepping when in reverse power flow.

Fwiw I own guns for a completely different reason: I live in the middle of nowhere and going to the range is 1 of about 6 activities to do out of the house around here. Why deprive myself of 17% of my activities?

This is just nuts. Imagine talking about this like it's an accomplishment. Meanwhile rent in the LA area continues to be absurdly high.

Definitely agree there. If I have to choose between slower Netflix or losing my air conditioning during a heat wave, I'm picking the slower Netflix every single time.

I strayed away from my beloved flavor blasted last week and had the parmesan ones, and honestly they were pretty bland. Gimme that xtra cheddar any day of the week.

That's basically to stop a circuit breaker or recloser from closing in on a circuit that's still energized but not synchronized. Closing in out of phase is bad news, and the even worse bit is that in a situation of inverters vs the big grid, the big grid wins and your inverter fries.

Though I will say as an EE at a utility, it won't be truly permissionless. You'll have to submit a thing to the utility where they'll check your circuit to make sure no protective devices are getting backfed that don't have the ability to be backfed. But that's probably automatable.

I still want to install rooftop eventually to completely offset my usage and run a whole home battery, but if plug-in gets legalized in Oregon you bet I'm buying some.

I'm refinancing my mortgage and buying euros.

Probably not, unfortunately.