ProVision Solar

Today I met with Zachary from ProVision Solar. In November 2016 I had initially made contact with Solar City about having photovoltaic panels installed on the garage; Matthew came and did the site assessment & told me the upgrades that needed to be made to the roof. I told Solar City that the garage needed to be reroofed first and kept them aware of the progress. Reroofing was completed in December 2017; Solar City had now been bought out by Tesla & Matthew came out again this February to do another site assessment. But then I got a call from someone else from Tesla in May, the company had decided to close their photovoltaic installation section in Hawai'i. Hence today's visit by Zachary to start the process again; it turns out they are a lot faster than Tesla. They might have a permit for the installation within the next 6 or 8 months!

Zachary taking a photo of the garage roof.

I picked a bunch of the calamondin limes to make another batch of salted limes; it took longer since I had to reach up and pull down branches to pick them. I was running low on the last batch that I made last year; I had put 20 in double-bagged quart Ziplocs to send to Tomiko.

Step 2 for making salted limes; Step 1 is picking them.

I also picked up the Meyer lemons that I had found on the ground around the tree; there were a dozen, some partially yellow but most green. There are a whole bunch of green ones still on the tree. I don't know whether the green Meyer lemons are usable.


Hurricane Norman is now about 275 miles northeast of Hilo; it is heading off to the northwest as a Category 1 and is predicted to weaken more over the next few days.

At 5 p.m.

Another hurricane, Olivia, is currently in the Eastern North Pacific. It is a Category 4 and is predicted to turn towards the west, which would put it on a path to hit Hawai'i, though it is too early to tell whether it would continue on that path. I have begun moving up potential projectiles in the yard.

At 8 p.m.

The other thing I did today while I was at Takata Store was to pick up some emergency food supplies. Unlike in Honolulu, there is hardly any food here because no one is here very often. I looked at what was on sale and picked up a few things to start my 14-day emergency supply.

Not a 14-day supply.

One of the discussions that I had with Zachary was about the battery storage system that solar photovoltaic systems must now have since the infrastructure can't handle all the power that would generated by the new systems coming online. The way it normally works is that during the day excess energy produced is stored in the battery. In the evening, if all the energy is not used at the residence, the excess is sent to the grid. If power from the grid is lost at any time, a switch that is part of the installation automatically switches over to the battery so there is no interruption in power. Which means if a hurricane knocks the power out, we won't lose power. Which also means the piezoelectric starters on the gas stove & gas water heater will still function so we can still cook & have hot showers. This is a positive unintended consequence that I had not considered when I was first looking in to solar panels for the house.

Happy Birthday to cousin Lem & Rosario!