Introduction to this Site


At this site you will find a variety of articles on wide ranging topics.  This site will also refer to videos at my channel, woodfirepower.

In a general sense, woodfirepower and this blog site, are about self reliance.  They explore the topics of energy, food production, heating, shelter, and so on.  The topics will hopefully stay close to those real people can use to make real life easier or better.

The first post (after this intro) explores solar PV power technology Is it better to purchase the equipment, or to sign a PPA, or Lease?  While 90% of systems sold in New Jersey, and perhaps 80% across the country are sold under a PPA or Lease, my post strongly suggests that those customers have made a poor decision.  This opinion is counter to what you will read in other posts.

And counter opinions are what I focus on.  Whenever I can write about a subject where the general consensus holds an opposite opinion, I will.  But other topics are just practical.  We have a daughter 1.5 years old and son 5.5 years old.  My second post will be about the top ten (or more) things you will want to have as tools to more easily raise a child through the first 3 years of life.

Rather than a silver picture frame, I will talk about things new parents can actually use, every day, to ease the challenge of raising a baby.

My background is as a Mechanical Engineer.  I have a lot of knowledge that goes across the science / physics fields of study including a fair amount of Inertial Confinement Fusion research.

I have designed and built Aquaponics systems and explored new methods for efficiently growing food while using just 10% of the water used in normal gardening.  I worked for a while (and intend to return to this work in the future) on Tesla Boundary Layer Steam Turbine development.

I will write several articles on energy of all sorts and solar energy in particular.  An up coming article will explore energy storage technologies such as batteries, that may one day connect to create a new network of power generators.

To understand what that article will explore, just pretend that you could head down to a warehouse and acquire batteries for energy storage for free.  If that were the case, how would our world change?

For one, the most expensive component of electric cars would be free, so they would cost less than gasoline cars and win significant market share.  Further, you could install (for free) energy storage at your home and business.  This would enable you to capture solar energy by day, and use it by night and through stormy winter weather.  Having a network of energy storage devices, analogous to the Internet, would change the global energy profile and eliminate wars being fought over oil.

So by making some simple, and at present absurd, assumptions we can explore ways the world around us would change.  And if we find that some wind up creating a world that we like better than the one we now live in, it might just be worth the effort to attempt to create those particular technologies.

Personally, nearly free battery technology would be something I would want to work on developing.  Hopefully someday soon I will.

In the meantime, I am adding this blog to my youtube channel woodfirepower so that I can present information in both written and video formats.