Month: May 2022

Safari Cannot Load Certain Pages (iOS 15.5 & macOS 12.4)

I upgraded my iPhone and iPad to iOS 15.5 and my Mac’s to 12.4. I noticed in the past couple of days that certain web pages would not open. I have discovered that the following domains were effectively blocked:

assets.adobedtm.com
fonts.gstatic.com
platform.twitter.com

This causes web sites containing references to the above domains to load very slowly or not at all.

I first took the attitude that this was a great feature and Apple is helping me to remove more SPAM or prevent further identity tracking. However, this morning when I try to access canada.ca, which is our government site also has the same symptom. Clearly Apple’s technique of applying privacy tracking has crossed the Rubicon sort of speak and is now generating enough false positives that is hindering day to day use.

I do have the option of using Chrome on my Mac’s but this is a huge CPU guzzler. I prefer to stay with Safari.

I came across the following thread on the MacRumors forum. The discussion pointed to the Limit IP Address Tracking feature to be the culprit. After turning off the feature on my iOS and macOS devices, I am now able to load the problematic web sites without any issues.

This may be a temporary problem with Apple with their cloud relays, so perhaps it will be automagically fixed in the future.

Below are screen shots from my iPhone and my MacBook that shows where you can turn off this feature.

If you are experiencing similar difficulties, I hope you will find the above useful and you can continue to visit certain web sites without issues.

Update: It looks like you also have to check to make sure the Safari Privacy Settings as well:

Reminiscing PC Tech

We are in the process of shredding our paper records from twenty years ago, stuff like tax returns, invoices, insurance papers that are no longer relevant or needed.

During this paper demolition process, I came across this invoice from 24 years ago!

A Windows 95 PC costing over $4,500 in 1998 money. Wow. I did not realize I had such an appetite to spend that much money back then.

Notice that we were still using dial in modems back then. No high-speed internet yet. Most motherboards did not come with sound and video either. I also have to laugh at the hard drive specification. At 8.4 GB, that would be smaller than most USB flash drive you can now get at Staples.

Fascinating walking down memory lane!

First Outage Since Solar

Yesterday we had our first major hydro outage. A short but severe storm blew through our neighbourhood with recorded gust of up to 125 km/h winds. This just makes category 1 hurricane speed. This occurred in the early afternoon before 3pm and then the power immediately cut out after that. A photo taken from one of our neighbours clearly showed down power lines.

Downed hydro poles near our house (compliments from our neighbour)

We had a few flickers and then our backup solar and batteries kicked in. I took the entire system off grid to avoid any on grid glitches and also as an extra safety measure for the working crews on the power lines. At first the solar was generating enough power to both cover the house load and charge the batteries. Once the batteries were fully charged, I took the panels offline until night time, because the extra power will have no place to go.

When night came on our block, we were the only house that kind of shined. Although others were suffering from a lack of power and wholly I empathized, It was a good silver lining to see our house with electricity.

House lights clearly evident during power outage in the evening

We are now in the morning after. The grid electricity was restored about 30 minutes after midnight. The outages lasted near 10 hours, quite a long one.

We were extremely fortunate to have our solar project completed on May 4th, and in less than 3 weeks we experienced this outage.

I am now going to flip the switch and go back onto the grid, so we can recharge our batteries in case anything else happens to the grid during the restoration process.

Canada Greener Home Grant

In a series of posts, I have documented my experiences and adventures on installing solar panels and backup batteries. One of the incentives that prompted us to start the project is the new Canada Greener Home Grant, which offers a maximum of $5,000 grant towards certain home projects that are classified as “green”. I also mentioned EnerTest as a great company that chaperoned us the entire process of the Canada Greener Homes Grant.

EnerTest was extremely prompt in organizing and conducting the energy audits, which are required for the grant eligibility. I wanted to thank Nick Crosby from EnerTest who played a very supportive role in guiding our family through this, and sometimes very confusing process.

Knock on wood, but I think today we crossed the last hurdle.

Confirmation from Canada Greener Homes Grant Web Site

If you are embarking on the same grant, take note that you must perform the first energy audit prior to you getting the work done. This is very important.

You will have to perform a second audit once all the work is completed. Make sure you keep all of your receipts and working documents relating to the work.

I would highly recommend Nick Crosby for the job if you are starting a similar journey that I did. Click on his name to email him.

It certainly feels good that the grant is coming our way in 30 days!

Reading Our Net Smart Meter, Carbon Neutrality?

We now have been running our net smart meter for more than a day now. I mentioned that we got our new net meter on this previous post.

Of course I am now curious how to read the meter so that I can decipher how much electricity we sent back to the grid. Here is a short video of what the meter is showing:

Meter Display Sequence

Initially the displayed information is quite cryptic, but looking at the meter’s label, I found this group of small prints.

These labels essentially tells us what is going on. The LED display cycles through 5 modes in total. The initial display is a segment test, which means all segments of the LED are displayed. This is a simple test to ensure that the LED display itself is functioning correctly. Next, it shows LST003, indicating that the next number it shows will be the amount of kWh of electricity that we ended up consuming or using. This is followed by LST004, another label indicating that the following number is the amount of kWh of electricity that is sent back to the grid.

Now with this new found knowledge, the above video shows that we used 13 kWh and exported 103 kWh since the meter was installed in the afternoon of May 4th.

In about 1.5 days, and bright sunny day yesterday, we generated and provided to our community electricity grid with a net of 90 kWh of energy.

Excerpt from the CBC article from Oct. 8th, 2021

There are 4 people in our house right now, and according to a recent CBC article our average carbon footprint is about 14.2 tonnes of CO₂ per person. Doing a little more research, I found this white paper titled, “A Clearer View on Ontarios Emissions June 2019“. On page 8 of this paper, we see an annual average emissions factor (AEF) of 31 grams of CO₂ per kWh. One tonne is 1,000,000 (a million) grams. This means to offset one individual, we need to offset 14,200,000 grams of CO2, and using the AEF this is equivalent to approximately 458,065 kWh!

To put this big number in perspective, I think our last month’s electricity bill only shows us using around 1,200 kWh of electricity.

It is clear that we will not be able to offset one of us, never mind all four of us by just using solar ourselves (at least not in Ontario). The idea of carbon neutrality is still a long ways off, and the above numbers show that we cannot do it alone. It will require every industry to do its part.

Update 2022-05-26 2:45pm: Took another reading outside. Used 313 kWh, Exported 1018 kWh, a net of 705 kWh. This with about 23 days of operation since May 04th.

Net Meter Installed

Today is a good day. Alectra finally installed the net meter. From my previous post, I noted that without a net meter, any excess energy being sent back to the grid will be interpreted as usage. With the addition of the net meter, we can finally export our excess electricity from our solar panels without being charged for the generation. Instead, we can start earning and storing credits for the excess energy that we will supply to the grid.

Prior to the presence of the net meter, we gained plenty of experiences on going off grid. Effectively even on a cloudy day, we were able to generate enough energy for the house and charge our batteries to get us through the night. Below is a depiction of our energy utilization from Alectra.

The process of getting this net meter installed was not an easy feat! It took 22 days from the time of ESA inspection (April 12th) to Alectra installing the net meter. In summary, we played with the solar system to see what it can do for 11 days (April 12th to 22nd), while paying for the excess generation, and went off grid for the remaining 12 days (April 23rd to May 4th).

The small usages from the 23rd to the 30th that you see above were primarily charging our Toyota Prius Prime from the garage. That circuit is still grid tied and is independent of our Solar system. I cannot get an updated chart that contains data all the way up to today. Perhaps Alectra is doing something in the background in preparation for them to switch to net metering. In summary, we were pretty much off grid from April the 23rd to around 2pm today (May 4th). There was one exception, when we charged our backup batteries during off-peak hours from the grid on the evening of the 26th. We didn’t have to, but I was bit anxious with the battery at 50% whether it will last through the night and to the next evening, so this was more of an insurance. As we get more experience, we now have the confidence that even during cloudy / rainy days in the month of April, we should have no problem charging the batteries from solar that will last to the next night time operation.

Once again, I have to thank New Dawn Energy Solutions for their correspondence and baby sitting the net meter installation process, as well as closing out the building permit from Richmond Hill. I am certain there was plenty of red tape that must be cut by them to get to where I am today, so kudos to them!

Today was also the day when we completed our second audit with Enertest. Once again Nick Crosby, A Certified Energy Advisor did a professional job. This audit is mandatory for the participation of the Canada Greener Homes Grant program.

If you are thinking of installing solar, New Dawn and Enertest are partners and experts in your endeavours.