I used the ClimaCell api about a year ago as part of a POC and it was pretty nice.
The biggest feature for my use case was their granularity. The ability to query the service using a point (lat/long) and have returned the specific weather for that location was nice.
All other services required two requests, one to find the nearest weather station, another to query said station for data. ClimaCells model predicts weather for locations where no forecast data exists.
I would recommend ground-truthing the forecasted vs actuals for the modeled areas.
Beyond their api, they have a pretty killer dashboard where you can plot your assets and set geofences for weather alerts.
Photovoltaics (PV) is not a new technology. It’s been in production-state since the 50’s and powering percentages of some countries for at least the past ~5 years.
Adopt the existing, proven and cost-effective implementation of PV (~3’ x ~5’ aluminum framed panels).
Waiting on Elon to figure out boutique solar so the affluent can all install it first and drive mass adoption (decade?) stalls PV development as much as the US tariff on Chinese-made solar!
- 100ft.2 of solar panels (Qty: 5, off the shelf, ~3’ x ~5’ panels) = ~1kW of AC electricity (post-inverter, in low-sun Seattle)
- At the roof, this represents 10 wires and ~8 roof penetrations (racking lags through flashing into rafters)
AKA: simple setup, proven implementation
Questions:
- How many wires (points of failure) are in 100ft.2 of solar shingles?
- How many roof penetrations?
- How many roofer-electricians do you know?
- Why can we not just embrace existing panel technology and put them everywhere, yesterday?
Rant:
- We don’t need boutique renewable energy, we need ubiquitous RE.
- Elon, get your priorities straight. In the three years you’ve been trying to figure out the perfect solar status symbol, you could have installed megawatts of photovoltaics.