David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.

How we can get lots more charging stations – power sharing

Some electric car charging station installations require a power management system to ensure power consumption is constrained to the service panel capacity.  The “service panel” being the grey box containing circuit breakers for each circuit, and the master circuit breaker for the panel.  Service panel capacity is what constrains the total…

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Elon Musk launches Tesla Energy – grid energy storage systems for homes and utility companies

Tonight Tesla Motors announced what we’ve expected, but it’s a bigger deal than expected.  Specifically, Tesla Motors is launching what’s essentially a new business unit, Tesla Energy, and positioning itself not as an automaker but as an “energy innovation company”.  Tesla Energy’s product line is, initially, grid-tied energy storage units…

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GM’s Chevy Volt to come out big and publicly later in 2015

A piece of news has come which could cheer anti-electric-car “Conservatives” — GM is ending production of the Chevy Volt.  But the actual reason for ending Volt production isn’t what those so-called-Conservatives had predicted.  Instead of the Volt being a dismal flop (it’s not, quite), GM is stopping Volt production to…

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