... a beginner at something

Went solar in Yokohama, for about 2 hours

On Tuesday, the panels and wiring got installed. On Friday, the utility installed the second meter to count the electricity we generate and sell.  Today, Saturday, at 10 in the morning, the utility inspector came, measured the system and declared it good to go. Switch on, wait 300 seconds (5 minutes!) for the power conditioner to count down and - electricity started flowing back to the grid. On this sunny morning, we read up to 2.4 kW. Green power as we had planned! Great Day! My wife and I looked at each other and decided this day will end with champagne.

Except...  

(one celebration, two disappointments, conclusion for the day)

Went solar in Yokohama (almost)

Fifteen Panels were installed as planned (prior article: Going Solar in Yokohama). Again I am amazed at the dependability of craftspeople in Japan. They appear on time, normally know what to do and proceed to deliver their work as scheduled. On January 29, the utility will come, install the second electricity meter, and then we can try out making home power.

The scaffolding is done extra for the one hundred homes of the Yokohama City project, they want no accidents. Normally there would be only the ladder and the lift-ladder (already removed when this picture was taken, more here). The rooftop team coordinated by Nitten Solar worked well, took regular breaks and finished by early afternoon.

Electric wiring work and installation of the HEMS took much longer, way into darkness. If I figure out how to do it I will make the actual power generation data available, which we can access on the home LAN and which are shared with Yokohama City via Toshiba, the supplier of the Home Energy Management System.

Crowdsourcing to improve a standard. The ISO 9001 survey.

Here is a rare chance to experience and get insights into how an organization approaches their audience that buys and reads their kind of short books: standards.

Millions of organizations use ISO 9001, for example as a contract supplement for business-to-business transactions. The standard specifies generic requirements for a quality management system, aimed at enhancing trust a company can deliver what they promise. It mainly does this through specifying a few generic processes, through internal and external auditing and by continual improvement. The standard comes on 35 pages for some $120. No, I do not sell it and I do not benefit from its sales.

If you or your company is using or influenced by the ISO 9000 series of standards in any significant way, please take the ISO 9000 Survey. It takes about 30 minutes. The time you save may be your own, whether you read for interest, apply for improvement, get certified, audit for compliance, or consult for others. How? Imagine the ways this collaboration shapes the next revision of the standard.

After all these years: chicken or egg problem has one or more solutions

How often have you heard this:

"which was there first, the chicken or the egg?"

And how did it make you feel?

Especially when you are all fired up about a project of your choice and someone offers this as a non-solution?

Not helpful at all.

Well, I like paradoxes, and was reminded of this when I read my first article of the new year