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.
Setting up the Toshiba Feminity Home automation system took another specialist to come by, authenticate himself to the system through a company laptop he brought, show us the registration page and and tell us the initial password. Toshiba then proceeded to confirm the e-mail address and sent all the personal data including the log-in password and recovery "secret" over unencrypted e-mail. So much for information security.
The Feminity home server interface
feels like it is 2003 all over again. Other than the web page that is in English, the server interface is only in Japanese. Among a vast menu there is one button for the energy monitor, the rest is a thinly veiled attempt at spamming home shopping and Toshiba home automation products, which are like the other makers' products - not compatible among each other. Unlikely to buy a single piece of home automation until the systems of all makers are standardized and compatible.
What is your experience (or expectation) about "going solar?"
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