Not really much to say, except… It’s a palindromic number! Yes, there’s a 0 in front, but look at all the other numbers!
Month: October 2012
Charge It! – Great food near public chargers #6 in an ongoing series – Valley Road, Montclair, New Jersey – Nauna’s Bella Casa and ActiveE #1
I still owe you guys my first National Plug In Day experience. However, to be a little more timely, I figure to update my Charge It! series.
As many of my readers know, I’ve been writing on a series of great restaurants to go to while you charge. Today’s post is a little different. It’s nowhere to be found in the Los Angeles area. It’s in Northern New Jersey, approximately 30 minutes (with no real traffic) from New York city – Nauna’s Bella Casa. No, I didn’t take several weeks to go from Los Angeles to New Jersey to go to lunch with my ActiveE. For this trip, I rented a Nissan Leaf from Hertz on Demand. Hertz car sharing subsidiary which allows members the opportunity to rent either a Nissan Leaf or SmartEV in the New York city area.
Nauna’s Bella Casa can be found at 148 Valley Road, Montclair, New Jersey, 07042. (973) 744-3232.
So, what takes me from New York City to Montclair, New Jersey. Frankly, I wanted to meet this guy, Tom Moloughney, aka Mini-E #250 and more importantly to me, Mr. ActiveE #1 and the top mileage leader that I foolishly challenged to try to “catch up” on top mileage use for all of the other ActiveE Electronuts. As of the writing of this posting (in-flight from JFK to LAX) my ActiveE is waiting for me at LAX Lot 6 with 17,902 and Tom’s listed mileage on wotnogas.com is 27,795… Needless to say, this is a TOUGH challenge.
Here’s a picture of Tom Moloughney and me in front of Tom’s New Jersey EF-OPEC (AKA Active E #1).
So, how’s the food. It was good, home-style Italian food at a great value. I had the lunch special which was Soup, Entree, soft drink, coffee (or tea, I believe) and dessert for $9.99. As opposed to other posts in this series, I have NO picture of the food. I was too busy enjoying the discussions between Tom and myself on the Active E, EVs, new BMWs, Teslas, Energy Independence, etc.
For my choice of soup, I picked the Pasta Fagioli. There were other choices, but I really like Pasta Fagioli so I had that. For my entree, I went with the Fusilli e Pollo which is the spiral pasta with grilled chicken & spinach. I really enjoyed the Fusilli e Pollo, but since I went out to Nauna’s in Day two of my trip to the East Coast, the meal was biologically breakfast for me, so the portion size was a little larger than I could finish, so I brought the rest to go. I skipped coffee and had ice cream for dessert (chocolate). The meal was very good and felt home-cooked.
How about the chargers? Nauna’s has two J1772 chargers, one on Chargepoint and the other on the Blink Network. If you’re eating here, the charging is gratis, otherwise, the network fees would apply, I believe that the Chargepoint is free, but the Blink is based on your membership plan, so to get that charging at no cost, check in with the restaurant before you plug in.
How did I do getting to Nauna’s. Well, I picked up the Nissan Leaf (was hoping for a SmartEV, but that will have to be a different post) from Hertz On Demand’s location at 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. This drive was approximately 20 miles away, but my consumption is closer to 35 miles from the range. This was my first time driving a Leaf for ANY extended period and I must say that it was not as fun as my Active E, at least it seemed to perform better than the Coda that I test drove a few months ago.
So, if you find yourself anywhere near Montclair, NJ. Even if it isn’t that near, give Tom a call and see if he’s available and you can enjoy a tasty lunch and have some fun “talking EV and stuff”. I’ll probably get around to plug in day 2012 (Part 1, Part 2 to follow) and my Hertz on Demand SmartEV rental fiasco.
Real Goods Solar installation
A picture is worth a 1000 words… So,here are some pictures…
This is what the front of the house looks like. One of the good things about our house is the fact that the south facing roof (the one with the most power generating capability) is not on the front of the house. This fact made it easier to sell Solar Power to the better half on the aesthetics of the solution.
More front of the house shots. Closer to the roof –
My new roof looks great, but you’re here for the Solar pictures…
So, the next picture is from the backyard looking up.
That doesn’t really give you a good shot of it, so… Even though I have a fear of the sudden stop after a fall… (i.e. it’s not really the heights that scare me or kill you.) I decided to get on the roof to take some pictures.
Here is a nice shot of the conduit runs for the electrical cable.
Here’s the ActiveE peeking out from the roof.
Closer shot…
Here’s a shot of the junction from the South Facing and the West Facing roof… The conduit still looks good.
Better shot of the junction
Panoramic of my most productive panels
Panoramic by the chimney. The shading really wrecks havoc on my production for three of the panels.
Some of the nice warning signs
Another shot of the ActiveE from the roof…
Meter is going backward! Success!
One of the things you get with Real Goods Solar under this plan is TWO monitoring systems. This one is a closed system mounted by your panel and it is for the finance company to ensure that they’re producing what they committed to.
Here’s the one from Enphase that allows the user to see what the system is producing. It connects to the panel via Ethernet over Power and then you need to have a port on your router to connect to the Internet.
Here’s the ports on the box –
Here is the sub-panel for the whole system –
These are the breakers for each of the 3 sets –
Here’s the disconnect for the whole system –
Lastly, the installation was very clean, here is where they ran the power to the main breaker as well as the Ethernet for the monitoring.
The conduit on the left side (on the wall of the house) is where the power comes from the solar panels to the main panel.
I asked them to run two Ethernet runs from the monitoring to the wall so that there’s one spare in case of failure in the future. This sucker is supposed to last 20 years.
That’s it. Several THOUSAND WORDS worth of pictures.
Interested in going solar? Get a quote from my solar vendor – Real Goods Solar.