You Can't Silence Us

Load Shedding

Prepping is more than just staying alive, it’s about thriving and preserving your life to the greatest extent possible. Many of the other things that we rely on for survival rely upon energy. We use it for a lot of things- heating, cooling, light, communications, all sorts of the things that we use rely upon energy. In some parts of the country, heat is important. Here in Florida, not so much. What we need is energy for cooking, light, air conditioning (summer heat will kill you more than our mild winters), communications, and other things. It’s on the prepping pyramid.

If you have read this blog for long, you know that two years ago, I added a backup power supply for the house. That supply consists of solar panels and a pair of Powerwall3’s to run the house when we aren’t making enough solar energy. One of the biggest limitations is battery capacity. Now that the tax refunds are no longer available for solar and battery installations, we need to make the ones we have last as long as possible. Adding more battery power in the form of another Powerwall would be great, but it’s a fairly expensive option. So we need to stretch what we have. That is, we need to match the loads being drawn to the energy provided, and do what we can to stretch battery charge to last as long as possible.

That’s where load shedding comes in. My early attempts at load shedding involved turning off breakers, and I even tried an Aquanta water heater switch, but it was nonfunctional garbage and I returned it.

I have a Synology server that’s already running Home Assistant, and this seemed like the way to go. I tasked Home Assistant with shedding loads. A home battery can keep the lights on during an outage, but its useful runtime depends heavily on what the house asks it to power. Instead of treating every circuit equally, this project gives Home Assistant a clear set of priorities: preserve essential comfort, shed discretionary loads in stages, and put daytime solar energy to work whenever it is available.

The system uses live Tesla Powerwall data and watches whether the house is connected to the grid or operating as an island. It also monitors battery charge, solar production, household demand, and real-time battery flow. The guiding principle is reliability: each Home Assistant automation has a focused job: important decisions require stable sensor readings, and loads are restored gradually rather than all at once.

At 80% battery, the upstairs air conditioner turns off. At 70%, the electric water heater is shed. At 50%, the main-floor air conditioner moves to a 80°F setpoint, and at 35% it shuts down. This preserves the 10 kWh of power for network and security services, lighting, and refrigeration. A critical warning is sent out as a push notification at 15%.

The most interesting part happens when the sun is shining during an outage. Loads are not restored merely because the battery percentage rises. The system first confirms sustained battery charging, then adds one load at a time with a stabilization period between each step. The main-floor HVAC returns first, initially at a conservative setting. Normal main-floor comfort follows when more energy is available, then the water heater, and finally the upstairs HVAC.

The 4,500-watt water heater stores hot water when a storm likely to cause a power outage is approaching. When the Tesla Powerwalls activate Storm Watch and the home is occupied, grid energy preheats the water in the tank even if the normal schedule would have it off. During an outage, strong solar surplus can also heat water instead of allowing energy to go unused. This function is controlled by an

Near a full battery, Tesla may curtail rooftop solar because the Powerwalls cannot accept additional charge. That makes ordinary surplus measurements misleading—the panels may be capable of producing more, but they have been told not to. To capture that energy, the automation can briefly test the water heater at 95% charge. It keeps the heater running only if measured battery flow shows that solar can support it; otherwise, it shuts the heater down and waits before trying again.

Grid restoration receives the same cautious treatment. Utility power and normal Powerwall status must remain stable for 10 minutes. The main-floor HVAC returns first, the water heater is reconciled with its schedule, and the upstairs HVAC follows later. Staggering the sequence avoids a sudden surge and reduces the chance that unstable utility service will cause equipment to cycle repeatedly.

I also have a “vacation mode” that is initiated by a simple virtual switch on the HA dashboard. Activating that turns off the water heater and sets both HVAC units to 79 degF. That level allows the HVAC units to maintain a relative humidity of less than 55%, which is a good way to minimize mold growth.

We recently spent 5 days in Maine shutting down the BOL, and the house only averaged 31 kwh per day while we were gone. Normal power usage in the summer is about 70kwh per day. Since we generate about 47 kwh per day from solar, I think this is a doable system, but I will have to add some panels in the future so we can have a little more breathing room for cloudy days.

When we are in routine operation, the system turns the water heater off from 11pm to 5am, then Monday through Friday, again from 9am to 2pm.

The result of all of this is not simply a collection of “if battery is low, turn something off” rules. It is a small energy-management system built around priorities, measured power flow, and graceful recovery. In this way, I maximize the power and battery capacity I have available.

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By Divemedic, ago

Scary, Indeed

Going back to the DSA manifesto I posted about the other day: I want to talk about the changes to our Constitution that the Democrat party wants to enact. I don’t want to talk about the socialist “give me free shit” they always use to entice the useful idiots, because that’s the same old stuff they have been pushing for a decade. No, its their desired changes to our government that scare me. All quotes taken directly from the new DSA website.

  • Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

This is the scariest of the proposals. Making the supreme court and the executive subordinate to Congress would require that we either rewrite or completely ignore the Constitution. We would go from three co-equal branches of government to a politburo that can literally do whatever it wants. There are absolutely no checks or balances to this system.

  • Replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy.
  • Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting in all elections, and abolish the Senate.

Expanding the House and eliminating the Senate was already partially done when we switched to the direct election of Senators, but doing it the way that the DSA wants to do it would take us from a bicameral legislature.

The framers of the Constitution designed a bicameral system during the 1787 Constitutional Convention to achieve three primary goals:

  • Checks and Balances: Dividing legislative power to ensure that no single house can dominate the government. All bills must be passed by both chambers in identical form before becoming law.
  • Fair Representation: The system, born out of the Connecticut Compromise, balances the interests of highly populated states (represented proportionally in the House) with smaller states (given equal representation in the Senate). This is also why they want to get rid of the electoral college.
  • Deliberation: The requirement of a “concurrent majority” promotes thorough debate and prevents hasty, emotionally driven legislation.

The next thing they want is: Establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people. What they mean is that their new expanded House will have control.

Of course, they can’t simply hand that much power over to a potential Trump, so they need to make sure this absolute power lies only in their hands. To that end, they are going to:

  • Legalize migration,
  • grant amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status,
  • provide a path to citizenship for all permanent residents,
  • end visa caps and quotas.
  • Extend full voting rights to all permanent U.S. residents
  • restore the right to vote for incarcerated people and people with criminal convictions. 

This is full on communism. There is no other way to put it. It’s coming, and I have been warning of this since 2020. I have already heard people telling me “that will never happen. They will never get the votes.”

The fact is, most people vote party, or likeability, race, or some other factor. Most voters don’t understand or keep up with the issues. They want sound bites, and the Democrat party is promising them free shit. That’s why the socialists are slowing taking over the Democratic party, which is moving more and more to the left with every passing day. Hundreds of socialists are in political office all over the nation. They are making far more inroads to power than are the Libertarians. Even St Petersburg, Florida has a socialist in office, and more coming, as they run as Democrats.

In all, 28 socialist candidates have won Democratic primaries this cycle. NYC has an openly communist mayor, and is about to get two communist congressional representatives. Wisconsin is likely to get a communist governor this election cycle. The entire country is shifting to communism.

There are two outcomes, well, three:

  • Civil War
  • Communist dictatorship
  • Both

Make fun of me, refuse to believe me, whatever. It’s coming.

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By Divemedic, ago

Legal Blood

Years ago, when I was still a paramedic with the fire department, we would occasionally draw blood from patients and turn it over to the police. More than once, I drew a resisting patient’s blood while a police officer held a taser to their neck.

Why would I do that, you ask?

Florida has long had a specific statute, § 316.1933, covering crashes involving death or serious bodily injury. It provides that when an officer has probable cause to believe an impaired driver caused a death or serious bodily injury, the officer shall require a blood test. The statute also expressly authorizes the officer to use reasonable force if necessary, and it authorizes physicians, nurses, paramedics, and other qualified personnel to draw the blood at the officer’s request. It also grants immunity to those assisting with the draw when acting under the statute at the direction of a law enforcement officer.

For many years, the prevailing view, based largely on the earlier U.S. Supreme Court decision in Schmerber v. California (1966), was that alcohol dissipating from the bloodstream created an exigency justifying a warrantless blood draw in many DUI cases. The person’s liver was literally destroying the evidence every minute, and the delay in obtaining a warrant was the difference between a DUI homicide and a drunk walking away.

I understood why the law was there, and I also disagreed with it. My favorite quote is “better 1,000 guilty go free than 1 innocent person be convicted.” The truth is that the DUI law changes have had no discernible effect on the rate of traffic fatalities. Of course, the fact that the government uses traffic offenses as a cash cow, with Florida making $100 million a year from traffic tickets has nothing to do with it. In California, it was discovered that 1,600 DUI checkpoints yielded only 3,200 DUI arrests (two per checkpoint), but resulted in $40 million in traffic tickets and 24,000 vehicle confiscations. Cops also won, being paid $30 million in overtime to staff the checkpoints.

That was the law when I retired from the fire department in 2011. Then in 2013, the Supreme Court decided Missouri v. McNeely. The Court held that the natural metabolization of alcohol by itself does not automatically create an exigency. Instead, officers generally need a warrant unless the facts of the particular case make obtaining one impractical.

After McNeely, Florida appellate courts repeatedly held that, despite § 316.1933, the State still had to show either:

  • a warrant,
  • valid consent,
  • or a recognized exception to the warrant requirement (such as genuine exigent circumstances).

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By Divemedic, ago

Obvious

If a lot of companies decide that full 10mm power is too much for their recoil sensitive customers and underpower their 10mm offerings to 40S&W specs, the obvious answer is to buy a 40 instead of finding quality ammo loaded to spec.

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By Divemedic, ago

Communism

For years, the only platform the Democrats have had is “we aren’t Donald Trump” and it’s cost them. The Socialists are changing that, and are positioned to push the Democatic party even further to the left.

This morning, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) wing of the Democratic party issued their new “workers deserve more” platform, stealing the idea from 90s Republicans and their “contract with America.”

This platform’s points:

  • Free healthcare
  • Legalize all drugs
  • Eliminate minimum prison sentences
  • Eliminate cash bail
  • Free college
  • Nationwide rent control
  • Free lawyers for all tenants in rental disputes
  • More government housing
  • Paid family leave
  • Free childcare
  • 32 hour workweek with no change in weekly pay
  • Nationwide right for unions and to strike
  • Green New Deal
  • Raise taxes on the richest earners, for-profit corporations, large inheritances, and private colleges and universities.
  • Establish a wealth tax
  • Free Palestine
  • Cut military
  • Close overseas military bases, bring all troops home
  • Open borders
  • Complete amnesty
  • Cancel all economic sanctions against all nations
  • Voting rights to all residents, including felons and illegal immigrants
  • DC statehood
  • Replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy through proportional representation elections.
  • Expand the number of seats in the House of Representatives
  • end the Senate filibuster.
  • Limit the Court’s power of judicial review which it uses to effectively create and abolish laws outside the legislative process.
  • eliminate the Electoral College

This is serious. The promise of free shit will mean the DSA will take over the Democratic party. As this new party gains power, more and more of the above platform will come to fruition.

in particular, allowing illegals and criminals to vote while expanding the house and making SCOTUS powerless will grant them power and push this country into communism.

Tye left has been so upset by Trump, they honestly believe we are a fascist dictatorship. That’s false, since Trump and his supporters will eventually step down.

Still, the left is screaming to ensure that no one like him will ever again win an election. It’s this reaction that will usher in the new communist state that’s coming.

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By Divemedic, ago

Please

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By Divemedic, ago

SCOTUS and Flock

Some people misunderstand my problem with Flock and all of the other surveillance we have been talking about. The cameras aren’t the violation. It’s the infinite, searchable database that SCOTUS has held in regards to Geofencing and cellular location data that violates the 4th Amendment.

The moment a government agent can type in my plates or other identifying information into a query and get hits on everywhere I’ve traveled, that constitutes a search under the 4th amendment and requires a warrant. The Supreme Court agrees with me on this one.

The Supreme Court has already ruled on this in three different cases. SCOTUS ruled in Carpenter v. US (2018) that a person does not “surrender Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere.”

The 2018 Supreme Court decision regarding the expectation of privacy is the landmark case Carpenter v. United States. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court held that individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their physical movements and location history, even when that data is collected and stored by third-party wireless carriers (Cell-Site Location Information, or CSLI). The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, determined that the government’s warrantless acquisition of historical CSLI constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and generally requires a warrant supported by probable cause.

United States v. Jones (2012) and Chatrie v. United States (2026) significantly limit law enforcement’s ability to use movement data without judicial oversight. In Jones, the Supreme Court held that attaching a GPS tracking device to a suspect’s vehicle and monitoring the vehicle’s movements constitutes a Fourth Amendment search, generally requiring a warrant. The Court recognized that prolonged electronic tracking reveals detailed information about a person’s private life and therefore implicates constitutional privacy protections.

Building on that principle, Chatrie held that police access to digital location data through a geofence warrant is also a Fourth Amendment search because individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location information. The Court concluded that law enforcement cannot use broad geofence warrants to identify everyone present near a crime scene without satisfying the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of probable cause and particularity. Together, Jones and Chatrie establish that both physical GPS tracking and the collection of digital movement data generally require a warrant, reflecting the Court’s recognition that modern location-tracking technologies can reveal the “whole of a person’s physical movements” and therefore deserve strong constitutional protection.

The unlikely pairing of Alito and Sotomayor have both written how long term electronic monitoring and databases raise serious privacy concerns.

Following the line of reasoning in those three cases leads to the conclusion you can’t collect my cellphone location data without a warrant (Carpenter). You can’t collect my google location data without a warrant (Chatrie), and you can’t collect my OnStar or other GPS data without a warrant (Jones).

The idea that law enforcement believes that in spite of these three rulings from SCOTUS, they can erect a network of camera surveillance to track the movements of everyone, everywhere, at all times and store it into database that they can search without a warrant is absurd and is antithetical to a free people.

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By Divemedic, ago

Majority

with the death of Lindsey Graham and what appears to be the death of Mitch McConnell, the Republican Old Guard’s grip on the Senate just took an interesting turn.

Both of them were Republicans, but also were anti-Trumpers.

Interesting developments, for sure. Now I will wait for the inevitable responses of Israel did it in 3,2,1…

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By Divemedic, ago

Your Cars Are Snitches, Bitches

In a sign of things to come, a Waymo autonomous vehicle in California pulled into a parking lot, locked the passengers inside, and notified police when two 15 year old passengers were drinking alcohol and shooting nearby pedestrians with water guns.

There are those who would call me a criminal lover for being opposed to that. Consider where this is going- your car will monitor you for everything illegal and drive you to the cops when it detects lawbreaking behavior. Tore the tags off your mattress? Didn’t follow the instructions on that can of bug spray to the letter? I promise you that each and every one of us breaks the law each and every day.

  1. If you are using a household cleaner, and the label tells you to mix a cap full of the cleaner with a gallon of water, and you only mix it with 3.5 quarts of water, you have just used a labeled product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. Felony.
  2. In Texas, it is a felony to own more than 4 sex toys (chapter 43). 11 of the 2,324 acts that the Texas Legislature thinks are worthy of being called felonies, have to do with acts that you can commit with or to an oyster.
  3. In Montana It is a felony for a wife to open her husband’s mail.
  4. In Florida, it is a felony to access WiFi without permission. There was a man who was convicted in 2005 of using the WiFi of a restaurant that advertised free WiFi for customers, because he was using the access from the parking lot while the establishment was closed. Since it was advertised as free WiFi for customers, and he could not be a customer while the business was closed, hello felony.
  5. It’s a felony to have a raffle in Georgia, unless you are registered as a non-profit organization with the state.
  6. In Michigan, it is a felony for a man to seduce an unmarried woman, punishable by 5 years in prison. Adultery is also a felony in Michigan, but only if the spouse being cheated on is the one who complained.
  7. In Mississippi, if you promise to marry a woman, have sex with her, and then decide not to marry, you are guilty of a felony punishable by ten years in prison.

Soon, your television, car, cell phone, and everything else you own will be monitoring you to ensure you are following the rules. All of them, even those that no sane person would consider to be a crime. Again, the only power a government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Making more criminals makes the government, and those who are employed by it, more powerful.

Of course, not everyone will be tossed in jail. Instead, you will be used as a confidential informant to help convict your friends and acquaintances. Being an informant means getting away with continuing your criminal career, but with protection from the cops. My brother found that out firsthand when a couple of meth users who were CIs for the local cops tried to rob him at his place of business, and he was the one arrested when the criminals escaped and then called their cop handlers.

I don’t know how I got on this dystopian timeline, but I really wish I were in a different one.

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By Divemedic, ago