Hacker News: mcbishop

New comment by mcbishop in "OpenGridWorks: Electricity infrastructure, mapped"

mcbishop — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:47:17 +0000

Thanks, it's much easier to load info with the option you shared.

New comment by mcbishop in "OpenGridWorks: The Electricity Infrasctructure, Mapped"

mcbishop — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 03:57:10 +0000

This is awesome. It'd be even more awesome if it was easier to show a power plant's info upon hover / click. ...It's currently too much of a cat-and-mouse game for me.

New comment by mcbishop in "In Edison’s Revenge, Data Centers Are Transitioning From AC to DC"

mcbishop — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 04:15:41 +0000

I've heard the EV charging has played a big role in the maturation of GaN / SiC.

New comment by mcbishop in "Libre Solar – Open Hardware for Renewable Energy"

mcbishop — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 05:02:05 +0000

A distinction was made:

> the transfer switch variety switches your house between the inverter and the grid whereas the disconnect just physically disconnects the inverters output

New comment by mcbishop in "Libre Solar – Open Hardware for Renewable Energy"

mcbishop — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 04:56:03 +0000

Thanks, and I agree that a DIY-inverter designer should be able to meet grid-interconnection requirements (e.g. IEEE 1547-2018). With that said, I think case-by-base evaluation from the AHJ would be prudent without a UL listing... something that AHJs don't want to do.

I'd prefer to just put the DIY inverter behind a transfer switch (with an adequate battery bank and maybe a small propane generator)... with the grid as emergency fallback.

New comment by mcbishop in "Libre Solar – Open Hardware for Renewable Energy"

mcbishop — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 22:47:52 +0000

> Why the fearmongering?

The main concern is exporting to a downed grid that line-workers are trying to restore.

New comment by mcbishop in "Libre Solar – Open Hardware for Renewable Energy"

mcbishop — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 21:55:35 +0000

Not that this is accepted by insurers or AHJs ("authorities having jurisdiction"), but one can use UL-certified components in an (open-source) _assembly_ that itself isn't UL certified. This at least supports the argument that the overall product is safe if thoughtfully designed and assembled. An example is the OpenEVSE level-2 car charger (which I had a really good experience with).

New comment by mcbishop in "New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes"

mcbishop — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 21:19:40 +0000

The creator of OpenClaw, for example, has come to appreciate grammatical / spelling errors in human writing (as he said in a recent Lex Fridman interview).

New comment by mcbishop in "Physicists Make Electrons Flow Like Water"

mcbishop — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 03:56:22 +0000

Loosely related: This Lex Fridman discussion with a nuclear-fusion engineer, about 1-million-amp 100-million-degree electrical systems... blew my mind: https://lexfridman.com/david-kirtley

New comment by mcbishop in "The wonder of modern drywall"

mcbishop — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 05:53:46 +0000

I really like this guy's drywall-install how-to videos: https://www.youtube.com/@vancouvercarpenter

New comment by mcbishop in "The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus' (2025)"

mcbishop — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:15:22 +0000

For me, there's a sharp binary: If I ask AI to "own" a coding-problem solution — with me passing back the failure responses until resolved — my mind gets numb and I learn nothing. If I insist on owning the solution — using AI in my effort to better understand the problem space — my mind is active and I get better at coding. Sometimes I'm lazy and fall into the former. But mostly, so far, the latter.

New comment by mcbishop in "Advanced Rail Energy Storage of North America"

mcbishop — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 18:12:36 +0000

Thanks for this! ...Thanks for helping me curb my naivete a bit. I think you'd appreciate this effort at even cheaper grid-scale chemical battery storage: https://www.volts.wtf/p/can-second-life-ev-batteries-work

New comment by mcbishop in "Advanced Rail Energy Storage of North America"

mcbishop — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 01:57:11 +0000

> This is just a grift.

I'd like to understand why. Just too much complexity? Gravity storage is compelling to this layman.

New comment by mcbishop in "Advanced Rail Energy Storage of North America"

mcbishop — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 04:42:02 +0000

I'd love to see an unbiased financial-analysis comparison: this vs. hydro vs. electrochemical.

New comment by mcbishop in "The future of software development is software developers"

mcbishop — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 03:36:10 +0000

I think the heavy investor subsidization / speculation makes this different. The high cost of early 1Tb flash drives was largely borne by buyers.

New comment by mcbishop in "The future of software development is software developers"

mcbishop — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 20:46:39 +0000

The parent comment's point is that we _should_ care because cheap frontier-model access (that many of us have quickly become hopelessly dependent on) might be temporary.

New comment by mcbishop in "Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?"

mcbishop — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 12:44:03 +0000

Right, $200-300/kWh is more the range for ~16kWh residential stationary energy storage systems.

New comment by mcbishop in "Puerto Rico's Solar Microgrids Beat Blackout"

mcbishop — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 04:30:23 +0000

Net metering is gone in most of California (for new solar). I think it's going away in general. Distributed solar supports a more stable grid for everyone (per UL 1741-SB requirements).

New comment by mcbishop in "Puerto Rico's Solar Microgrids Beat Blackout"

mcbishop — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 04:23:53 +0000

You can run sans grid with Enphase (with their "system controller").

New comment by mcbishop in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)"

mcbishop — Sun, 04 May 2025 00:15:51 +0000

Thanks so much! I do plan to open-source it. ...Once it's tightened up. Please email me if you'd like to be on a beta list. mike at bishop dot wtf