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Support for this instance is greatly appreciated at https://sdf.org/support
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Mistakes Mistakes Mistakes
I will admit it here and now: the images used in these prompts were a mistake. Someone recently commented on these posts and said I should make some changes to them. So, I made changes to them - even thought I hate to admit to my own mistakes. ;)
Day Seventeen Prompt
We all make mistakes. Sometimes we could have avoided them, and sometimes we couldn't avoid them. What is most important about mistakes is examining them, understanding why we made them, trying to take some kind of lesson from them. Honestly, I think the more mistakes we examine the better we are understanding ourselves, our limitations, and our strengths. So, this is something that is worth writing about whenever you feel the need.
Write About Mistakes that You Have Made.
Note: These prompts are being supplied as a completely optional item for you to use, if you are stuck on what to write. In fact, you might want to use one of the earlier prompts later in the month if you get stuck.
Leader Board Update
I've been giving this a bit of thought. I think posting the leaderboard in here twice a week should be sufficient to show the progress the participants are making in the goal. My current thought is to post it on Sunday and Thursday, but I might change the days if I think of a reason to.
Instead, I will supply the link to the leaderboard most days.
Resources
If you haven’t seen them already, we have two (hopefully) helpful documents:
And, if you didn’t have it already, here is the link to the TrackBear App.
Closing Note
If you haven’t posted before, leave us a comment below. We’d love to get to know all the participants in the event.
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English/German as always. Embedded link:
I like to hide some treats for my 12 y/o Miez. Can you spot the one she has yet missed on top of the dart wall behind the milk carton? I don't know how I managed to throw and land it up there, and definitely would fail many times if I tried.
Miez bevorzugt es, ihre Beute auf dem Boden zu verspeisen
Ich verstecke meiner 12 jährigen Miez gerne Leckerli. Seht ihr das zwote Leckerli auf der Dartwand hinter dem Milchkarton? Keine Ahnung wie ich's geschafft hab, dass das da landet, und es würde mich definitiv viele Versuche kosten eins absichtlich da rauf zu werfen.
Edit: useful green circle:
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Trump says he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the US controlling Greenland
(apnews.com)
Go on, do it. 
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ICE agents ate at a Minnesota Mexican restaurant before arresting staff
(www.the-independent.com)
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Is there a better place for bicycling shitposts?
Behold, the affordable and flexible (literally) cargo solution! The avocado cardboard produce box from Costco!
It holds multiple kilograms, while stationary!
I've been working on setting up storage for a new bike. The MIK adapter plate I'm planning to use for mounting arrived before the basket I plan to attach to it. In the interest of getting some kind of storage on there, but mostly because I wanted to tinker with the adapter plate, I grabbed the first cargo-shaped thing that came to hand.
I haven't had time to try ride testing this setup because the proper basket did actually just arrive.
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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7353557
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20103
If you’re a typical American, you get home from work and start flipping switches and turning knobs — doing laundry, cooking dinner, watching TV. With so many other folks doing the same, the strain on the electrical grid in residential areas is highest at this time. That demand will only grow as the world moves away from fossil fuels, with more people buying induction stoves, heat pumps, and electric vehicles.
That’s a challenge for utilities, which are already managing creaky grids across the United States, all while trying to meet a growing demand for power. So they’re now trying to turn EVs from a burden into a boon. More and more models, for instance, feature “vehicle-to-grid,” or V2G, capabilities, meaning they can send power to the grid as needed. Others are experimenting with what’s called active managed charging, in which algorithms stagger when EVs charge, instead of them all drawing energy as soon as their owners plug in. The idea is for some people to charge later, but still have a full battery when they leave for work in the morning.
A new report from the Brattle Group, an economic and energy consultancy, done for EnergyHub, which develops such technology, has used real-world data from EV owners in Washington state to demonstrate the potential of this approach, both for utilities and drivers. They found that an active managed charging program saves up to $400 per EV each year, and the vehicles were still always fully charged in the morning. Utilities, too, seem to benefit, as the redistributed demand results in less of a spike in the early evening. That, in turn, would mean that a utility can delay costly upgrades — which they need in order to accommodate increased electrification — saving ratepayers money.
Active managed charging works in conjunction with something called “time of use,” in which a utility charges different rates depending on the time of day. Between 4 pm and 9 pm, when demand is high, rates are also high. But after 9 pm, they fall. EV owners who wait until later in the evening to charge pay less for the same electricity.
Time-of-use pricing discourages energy use when demand is highest, lightening the load and reducing how much electricity utilities need to generate. But there’s nothing stopping everyone from plugging in as soon as cheaper rates kick in at 9 p.m. As EV adoption grows, that coordination problem can create a new spike in demand. “An EV can be on its own twice the peak load of a typical home,” said Akhilesh Ramakrishnan, managing energy associate at the Brattle Group. “You get to the point where they start needing to be managed differently.”
That’s where active managed charging comes in. Using an app, an EV owner indicates when they need their car to be charged, and how much charge their battery needs for the day. (The app also learns over time to predict when a vehicle will unplug.) When they get home at 6 pm, the owner can plug in, but the car won’t begin to charge. Instead, the system waits until some point in the night to turn on the juice, leaving enough time to fully charge the vehicle by the indicated hour. “If customers don’t believe that we’re going to get them there, then they’re not going to allow us to control their vehicle effectively,” said Freddie Hall, a data scientist at EnergyHub.
The typical driver only goes 30 miles in a day, Hall added, requiring about two hours of charging each night. By actively managing many cars across neighborhoods, the system can more evenly distribute demand throughout the night: Folks will leave for work earlier or later than their neighbors, vehicles with bigger batteries will need more time to charge, and some will be almost empty while others may need to top up.
Read Next
How EVs can fix the grid and lower your electric bill
They’re all still getting the lower prices with time of use rates, but they’re not taxing the grid by all charging at 9 pm. “The results are actually very, very promising in terms of reducing the peak loads,” said Jan Kleissl, director of the Center for Energy Research at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn’t involved in the report. “It shows big potential for reducing costs of EV charging in general.”
Active managed charging would allow the grid to accommodate twice the number of EVs before a utility has to start upgrading the system to handle the added load, according to the report. (And consider all the additional demand for energy from things like data centers.) Those costs inevitably get passed down to all ratepayers. But, the report notes, active managed charging could delay those upgrades by up to a decade. “As EVs grow, if you don’t implement these solutions, there’s going to be a lot more upgrades, and that’s going to lead to rate impacts for everyone,” Ramakrishnan said.
At the same time, EVs could help reduce those rates in the long term, thanks to V2G, a separate emerging technology. It allows a utility to call on EVs sitting in garages as a vast network of backup power. So when demand surges, those vehicles can send power to the grid for others to use, or just power the house they’re sitting in, essentially removing the structure from the grid and lowering demand. (And think of all the fleets of electric vehicles, like school buses, with huge batteries to use as additional power.) With all that backup energy, utilities might not need to build as many costly battery facilities of their own, projects that ratepayers wouldn’t need to foot the bill for.
Active managed charging and V2G could work in concert, with some batteries draining at 6 pm as they provide energy, then recharging later at night. But that ballet will require more large-scale experimentation. “How are we going to fit in discharging a battery, as well as charging it overnight?” Hall said. “Because you do want it available the next day.”
To cut greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible, the world needs more EVs. Now it’s just a matter of making them benefit the grid instead of taxing it.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This tech could keep EVs from stressing the grid — and save everyone money on Jan 15, 2026.
From Grist via This RSS Feed.
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