|
|
distant battery information Wednesday, January 12 2022
This morning someone at the main corporate office finally answered my email wanting to know why I couldn't access my HR information at Paylocity.com. It turns out that, as part of the ongoing corporate reshuffle (and digestion of the small company I work for) I'd been reassigned to a different company. So I hadn't been fired in the most cowardly manner possible, hooray!
Meanwhile, the chuckleheaded solar installer AJ never responded to either of my two emails. So at some point I started watching YouTube videos on Sol-Ark's channel (Sol-Ark being the manufacturer of our inverter). On one of these videos, they mentioned a phone app called PowerView Pro, which was different from the SmartESS app AJ had told me to download. As I set up PowerView Pro, I had questions about about a verification code for which there was no description. It turned out that this was mailed to me automatically as I added my email address to another part of the form (not an expected behavior for an app). So I asked Sol-Ark using their handy web form. Unlike AJ, they got back to me immediately. Once I was able to create an account, I found I couldn't add my particular inverter because it was "bound," probably meaning it was connect to AJ's account. So I asked a question about that. Immediately I got a phone call from a nice gentleman in Plano, Texas who works for Sol-Ark. All he had to do was make a configuration change adding my email to the account. After that, not only could I monitor live data from the cabin's solar installation, but I could even make configuration changes remotely. So I sent an email to AJ telling him not to worry, I'd managed to get things working by contacting Sol-Ark.
The reason for my urgency in getting access to this data was my paranoia that I'd accidentally misconfigured the cabin and again set the thermostats supplying heat too low and the thermostat turning on the generator too high, and that again I'd caused the generator to run for days. But according to the live data, the battery was slowly draining down, indicating the generator was not on. Had it been on, I probably would've driven back to the cabin just to make sure it was only being turned on by the inverter.
This evening I made a big pot of chili for the first time in probably months. Something about the balance of ingredients made it especially good, even though it contained no refried beans or hominy. Maybe it was the fire-roasted diced tomatoes or the trace of a powdered cheese substitute from Soledad Cheezes.
For linking purposes this article's URL is: http://asecular.com/blog.php?220112 feedback previous | next |