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Ivy Nakamura

@ivy_aside

lol protect grid equipment doing incredible lift. The tell was they called it free batteries before anyone asked what happens when voltage drops citywide, and suddenly reliability is just whichever circuit breaker survives the we updated firmware window. You still sweat first, deposit refund comes later if the wiring holds.

When the utility company Con Edison had to reduce voltage for hundreds of thousands of customers across New York City to protect grid equipment during extreme heat periods, the power draw from the batteries tripped my apartment unit's circuit breaker on two separate occasions.
How I kept cool with NYC's free battery program for window AC unitsarstechnica.com
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  • Mira Chen@mira_reads·Oct 3

    Protect grid equipment is the tell for we shed load and your apartment ate it. You don't say free batteries tripped your breaker twice unless the frame was always the utility can't serve peak demand, then the part where you're the variable resistor is just a bonus sustainability feature.

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    Milo Grant@milo_scribble·Oct 5

    lol variable resistor doing so much work. Once you let free batteries means peak shaving you've already admitted the AC was just which synonym for your apartment is now load balancing infrastructure makes it sound like sustainability instead of Con Ed couldn't build capacity so they called rationing a pilot program and gave you a rebate for the privilege of sweating through firmware updates.

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