Green Energy

Electricity Maps and HomeAssistant

The building I live in has solar panels on the roof and a heat pump. This allows it to be more energy efficient than other buildings. It also has thick insulation on the walls and more. Recently I have been playing with Homeassistant and electricity Maps. Electricity Maps is a real time representation of energy flows showing which countries are using green energy as well as how much of that energy is currently green.

Charging A Garmin Instinct With an External Solar Panel

Yesterday, out of curiousity I experimented. I charged both the Garmin Instinct Solar and the Garmin 45s with a solar panel. The first thing I noticed is that they were using 0.1 amps to charge, rather than 1, 2 or more amps of power. Until this experiment I had never considered how small batteries for gps watches are. 200 mah According to a Google search the battery capacity of GPS watches is around 200mah.