Vacation in Marseille - EVs and Solar

Last week, we went down from Paris to Marseille, using TGV - French high speed train - at 300 km/h

We have been there several times and love it because the weather is warmer, and staying at the Vieux Port - old harbor - is pretty nice

We can do mostly everything in walking distance or using public transportation, sometimes electric, like this Solar powered free boat, going across the harbor

Two screens show the instant power Generated by Solar (around 3kW on the roof) and Used by the Motors (front and back, since it goes both directions)


The view of the harbor from it is great





Tramway, electric also and well designed


Also I saw some EVs here and there, even a famous shellfish delivers using small city EVs

Marseille City Water Service i-MiEV


A Renault Twizy parked with motorcycles here


A city small electric truck charging directly from the office outlet by the window :-)



A Smart ED, in black for once, with the a broken gas lid, did someone try to still gas here ? :-) no luck ...



New buses are Hybrid, still diesel, but at least their engine stops when they are not moving

MyELifeNow : 2 years and 300,000 + visits, thanks ! What I did and what you can do too !

Started two years ago to talk about what I do to use less energy, pollute less, I hope I have reached many people and will reach even more in the future

Thanks to all of you, followers and one time visitors ...

You too can do all this:
- Change all your home light bulbs to LED
- Install an Energy Monitor to see how much Electricity you are using
- Change your ICE car for an Electric car, the LEAF is a very good one (3 years without a single battery problem)
- Get an Electric Scooter: Vectrix VX-1 or BMW C-Evolution (coming to market in May)
- Change your gas/fuel heating system for a Heat Pump, you will get Air Conditioning with that
- Install Solar on your Roof to use the Generated Electricity
- Use most of your Generated Energy by Storing it for later use with my DIY ESS Kits
- Use High Speed Train instead of Air Planes , TGV here gets you to French Riviera from Paris in 3h only
- .... there are many others ways to improve .... find your own

DIY ESS - Powering the Electric Train !

Winter is here and it is the perfect time to take the Electric Train out of the closet and play with the kids in a warm home



My daughter is actually discovering since I did not use it for years, since she was to young; She seems to like it :-)



Helped by a little bit of solar, our home DIY ESS is providing power to the whole home, for heating, cooking, lighting, ... and even for the Electric Train !



Just starting with a small circuit


Yes, I put a solar panel on the train station roof, back 7 years ago - used for lighting -

A bit dusty, but still fine

Many rails in there, we did some big circuits years ago with up to 4 trains, including a TGV Est, the very first version of the famous French high speed train of the 80s 

Stay tuned ...

DIY ESS - Adjusting to Heat Pump Power Consumption while Heating the Apartment

Daily iPhone remote ESS follow up:

Shots of the 2 Wattson units, displaying Generated Power - Solar & ESS - on the left and Net Usage on the right, while our Daikin Heat Pump is heating up 

As a reminder, now in cold days, I use the Forced Charge Mode to charge the ESS at night when Electrcity is twice cheaper than during the day, and we use our stored Energy along with Solar during the day ... Capacity Shifting & Peak Shaving ... 

Here the heat pump is isung more and more Power - gradually - and the ESS is putting out more and more Power too, to compensate 

Heating stopped, and now the ESS will downgrade the Power Output 

And we are back to a Net Usage close to 0W - and slightly positive -

Graph details with Wattson Anywhere

Daikin Heat Pump Air Conditioning Big Maintenance

This morning, another visit included in my maintenance contract with the company that installed our Daikin Heat Pump back in 2008

It was a "big" maintenance said the technician when I saw him completely remove the internal units white plastic casing, times 5 units, checking, measuring, and cleaning everything

First time I see a technician do this ... and First time I see this bare units

Oops, this is the cause of a small leak during Air Conditioning mode in summer (not used a lot) and a water drain pipe cut in two : He realized that during the installation, technicians did use two pips instead of one to evacuate condensed water and linked them together with a small rigid tube inside: a small part of the water was leaking from there; He fixed this with two nylon straps tightly wrapped around each ending

His toolbox

After going downstairs to clean our bedroom unit, the technician came back up and asked me what these meters were - the Wattson units I have downstairs, in the stairs, and upstairs on the ESS -, so I explained everything along with the Solar on the roof and the ESS, opened the doors to show him the inside; He was very interested and I was happy to show him and talk about it :-) 

and the live graph that goes with it on the iPad

He then went on the roof to check the main/external unit that is mounted on an unused chimney stack 

and, since he was up there, I handed him a meter and asked if he could measure for me the South-East Side of the roof where I originally wanted to have most of the Uni-Solar PVL-68 Solar panels mounted: He said: 4 zinc roof pieces are 3.40m in length on either side of the roof access opening/window, so that means I could get 4 more PVL68 panels - since they measure only 3m long - and have them mounted there for additional Solar Power, and these ones would benefit from the best orientation ... to be continued ...

(The measured free and South located pieces of zinc roof are located on the right of this picture)