sandy woke up a bit after 10am. given her track record, i wasn't confident she was going to work today, but i remained optimistic. when she left by 10:20am i was so happy i almost danced in the living room. what would i do with myself without a roommate until the evening?
solaredge contacted me while i was in the bathroom. i called them last night close to 8pm but their tech support was near closing so i left a message. i wasn't expecting them to call back but they did. the woman on the phone confirmed what i'd already discovered through online research, that the nominal AC power output is the maximum output for the inverter and that any production above that amount will experience "clipping" as she called it. as to whether there was any solutions, that was something i had to contact the installer about regarding warranty and production guarantees.
i had a simple kielbasa sausage on whole wheat english muffin sandwich for lunch. both the milk and half & half i had in the fridge had gone bad; i poured the milk down the drain but kept the half & half until i can get more. i've been on a loose leaf tea kick recently. i have quite the extensive collection as every chinese astrophysicists who's ever stayed at my place have felt compelled to bring some local tea as a gift. there's a loose leaf tea from GC that i like, but my favorite is actually a box of taiwanese tea shaped like tiny black curls that open up into full leaves when soaked and has a strong flavor. i actually have even more tea but some of them i gave to my parents.
my mother is getting an colonoscopy exam thursday morning. her doctor called her and said based on some recent tests, she also wanted an upper endoscopy done while she was there to check some abnormality with her stomach. the doctor told me mother to call the exam place but she wasn't sure what to say and told me to come down to the cafe and help her call. we couldn't find a direct number to the gastroenterologist so my mother called back her doctor. we only managed to get the receptionist, who told us the additional endoscopy was already scheduled. later her doctor called back personally to let my mother know (where we also confirmed it was an upper endoscopy and not a lower). i left with a container of fried rice.
an e-mail from united solar greeted me when i got back home, from an agent with a vietnamese name. he sent me a photo from the monitoring portal which showed all my panels working. i called his direct number and discovered it was actually a young woman. i explained the problem to her: yes, the inverter was working fine, except we were supposed to have a 7600 model while they installed the 6000 instead. that meant our 8kW rated solar panels could only ever make 6kW before getting clipped. she said she'd talk with a project manager. all and all, it went better than i'd imagined. i wasn't sure if anyone would contact me, and not so quickly. i also have a direct number to an agent, so there's somebody at united solar i could call at least when i have issues. now i'm waiting to hear back from either the project manager or the agent.
my mother tasked me with a few errands. one was to pay the belmont water/sewer bill. when i went to the online utility website however, i noticed they were already signed up for autopay, something we must've done the last time. i confirmed with the bank account that the payment had indeed gone through just a few days ago. i was also asked to order some checks for my grand uncle's irrevocable trust. a lot of these online check companies look sketchy, especially some of the awful design choices. i just wanted the classic, simply design, easy to read. business checks are more expensive for some reason. the first place i went to, it was $37 for 250 checks (3-on-a-page format) and $15 for a compact 3-ring binder. that didn't seem like a bad deal compared to some other places, but when i went to go pay, the cheapest shipping cost was $27 with another $5 for taxes. i ended up going elsewhere, to checks in the mail. for just $30 including taxes (the cost of just shipping and taxes alone from that other place), i bought 252 checks including a free binder.
we set a new production record for this year at 45.49 kWh. coincidentally, a year ago on this same day we had very good production as well at 45.71 kWh. however i didn't feel much like celebrating since i knew with the 6kW clipping that we actually made even more electricity. it's going to be nagging at me until united solar can get it fixed.
sandy came home around 6pm. she reheated her ribs from last night along with a plate of steamed broccoli. she insisted i have some more ribs, i tried to take the smallest one i could find. as for me i microwaved the fried rice i picked up earlier, drizzled with some sriracha sauce.
sandy asked me if there was anyone living here during the summer because her MIT office mate annie is looking for a place to stay between june and july while she finishes up her astrophysics internship. though i don't have anyone staying here during that time, i immediately thought of my grand uncle's place, which will have 3 empty bedrooms very soon (2 are already empty, my sister's godmother has the 3rd bedroom but she's in the process of moving out). i told her i would ask my parents about it.
i ordered some personal checks for myself. i couldn't find any place that had my current check design (tiny flowers that came in different colors) so i just went with the classic safety green. i hardly ever use checks nowadays, the only time is to pay steve my portion of the water bill every 3 months and the annual gutter cleaning bill. i ended up getting a box of checks (not sure how many, but definitely more than enough) for $4.95 from checks unlimited. the shipping was free but there was a $2 handling fee per box of checks (lame) and a few cents in taxes, bringing the total to $7.33.