“The No. 1 question is, ‘What are those things?’” said Dunn’s daughter, Elizabeth Dauble, 41, of Granite City, a bartender and cook. “And I tell them, ‘They’re helicopter pads.’ But then I tell them what they really are, and they ask, ‘Do they power the whole building? How much is your power bill?’”

Tesla and its competitors in the battery-powered electric vehicle market dominate debate over who will control the future of cars, but there’s another kind of green transportation technology making inroads in the United States, and it is based on the most abundant resource in the universe.

Other utilities incorporate demand charges when customers consume energy above a certain number of kilowatts.

Other DC transformerless options out there like Pika and SolarEdge are designed for newer 380-volt Lithium batteries. But Brennan notes these batteries are still 50 volts internally and require a double conversion every time going in or out of the battery. It’s why Sol-Ark has focused on just making 48 volt batteries more efficient.

The home battery subsidy is available to all South Australian households and scaled in line with the size of the system being installed. This means that a household with a large battery providing 10kWh of storage is in line for a $5,000 or $6,000 subsidy, the latter one being reserved for concession holders – such as pensioners and low-income homes.

Technical specifications: 7 power channels with direct input of 0.3 V 1000 V DC/AC (RMS). Direct current input 500 µA to 32 A DC/AC (RMS). Sensor inputs from 3 mV to 4 V. Measurement frequency from DC up to10 MHz with sampling rate of 1.2 MS/s. 10’1″ Touch screen. 18 bit A/D converter. Process signal interface with digital and analog speed and/or torque and/or temperature sensor inputs. CAN bus. Ethernet compatible with TCP/IP protocol. Extendable memory up to 500 GB. USB 3.0 and RS232 for interfacing.

“People automatically think ‘Oh, you’re only doing it because you want to be green or because you want the publicity,’ but there’s also a lot of operational things in there,” Lloyd says. “It’s about running a business efficiently. Energy is a huge cost to the club, so managing that properly is great. If we can do that in a sustainable way, then all the better.”

Don’t rely on candles. A report by the National Fire Protection Association found burning candles are a major cause of death when the lights go out.

Just after 9 a.m. on an overcast day back in November, three Mikes gather in an that assuming waiting room for one of the best-known football clubs in the world.

Leasing has been a popular consumer choice for fuel cell and battery electric cars because the technology is new and early adopters don’t want to be tied into a current model for a long time as the technology advances and efficiency improves.

San Lin Tun is a freelance writer of essays, poetry, short stories and novels in Myanmar and English.

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