Electric evolution.

Alternating and Direct Currents have been on my mind quite a bit over the past 48 hours. It started by dragging out the AC powered Onkyo phonograph to play an original Star Wars LP on Saturday. As a side note, pure analog music signal is so clean! I can hear the digital sampling gaps on encoded recordings; annoying. The day ended with me taking my house completely off the power grid for Earth hour. Only the real-deal at my house; we literally cut the house off at the power meter breaker outside (none of this "turn off all the lights stuff"). That gave us plenty of time to reflect on alternating current power consumption by candle light. Kind of funny to think about the first municipal grids being DC.

Today was met with Tendril Networks announcing a new round of financing. They aim to give me, the consumer, visibility into, and control of, both AC and DC consuming devices in my home. The world going this long without a closed end-user feedback loop for power/utility consumption is beyond me. My local municipality, Boulder, has teamed up with Xcel Energy to put the entire city on a "smart grid." All this news provided an opportunity to catch up with a good friend at GridPoint who's on course to help me out as an energy consumer as well.

Power; such an un-tamed industry when it comes to consumer interfaces and control.

Looking at recent math around electric cars and power grid demands has me not-so-excited about them as an alternative anymore.