same here. 1940's house with slate roof and vermiculite "insulation". You can't just use modern insulation techniques or blown-in foam because that would make exterior wood rot. You need to keep the air flowing the right way to dry out the wood.
Same here... my walls are brick that need to breathe or they will crack and crumble within years if sealed up too tight.
Same goes with the cinder block foundation. If insulated, it moves the freeze/thaw interface inside the block and then you end up with a failing foundation.
I have to clean the eaves of my house myself because nobody I hire will believe me that you can't point a pressure washer at the eaves without water getting inside the walls. "I'll just avoid the vents" doesn't work when you can see daylight between the roof and the wall all around the house.
There are two types of balcony solar. One is bidirectional power flow, i.e., classical balcony solar, and the other is called "zero export", in which a current flow direction sensor on your mains throttles back your inverter if you start to reverse the current flow and export power.
Where I live, in the US, National Grid is okay with balcony solar as long as it's a zero-export balcony solar. Your power utility may take a similar approach. They might also take a "if it doesn't cross the meter, and we can't tell what you're doing, then we can't tell you not to do it"
Anything that requires an electrician to come and modify your mains connections (followed, presumably by a municipal inspection), defeats the main benefit of balcony solar, which is that it is a commodity unit that can be installed by non-experts without any red tape.
Further, the utility's safety concerns do not require any shut off on the mains. Their safty concern is not a new backflow of current; but a backflow of current into an otherwise non-energized grid. Grid-tied inverters will not do this. If the grid goes down, they shut themselves down without any need for an upstream shutoff.
The utility's may have a reasonable business object to back-flow if their meters are such that backflow forces net-metering. Around here, that is a non-issue because net-metering is the law for residential connections anyway. Even in juristictions where net-metering is not the law, I don't find this convincing. The limited capacity of balcony solar means that it won't actually happen in any significant amount, and if it does become a problem, they can shoulder the cost of upgrading their metering equipment.
The simple plug-in and go balcony solar is going to be constrained in many ways. Zero export solar is more sophisticated, yes, does require electrical inspection, but given that it lets you add extra solar panels, battery storage and keep all the power you produce on the house side of the meter. There is some win there. Additionally, if you live where there is time of day rate changes, you can store up cheap energy at night and use it during the day when it's expensive.
Net metering is common, but not everywhere and frequently there's a pricing differential between what you buy and what you sell. My mother leased her solar panels from SolarCity/Tesla. She buys electricity at $0.12 a kilowatt hour, but sells at $.09/kwh. Some of the regulatory shenanigans I've seen regarding balcony solar include no net metering. If you produce excess power, you get no credit for it.
If anyone is replaceable by AI, executives are first in line. Make "decisions" based on expert input, give presentations, sit in meetings and on calls. No liability, no concrete "work product" to speak of, so why not?
Check with your local utility. Here, (MA, USA), we can't run classic balcony solar (feeds the grid when you produce more than you consume). But we can run zero-export solar (never feeding the grid, but dialing back the inverter when you produce more than you consume).
The economics behind battery-backed zero-export solar are interesting because they keep your local solar energy local, and you can extract maximum benefit from the system. Also, if you have enough batteries and TOD rates for grid power, you can store grid energy when it's cheap (overnight) and use it locally when it's expensive.
Our local utility, National Grid, has a program where, if you have the right inverter-battery combination, they will buy power from you during peak-load periods, and you can make a couple of grand a year.
Batteries, especially local ones, change the dynamics of power generation and use. It's amazing and wonderful.
Cherokee Purple.
Black Krim
Black from Tula.
Brandywine
heck, Almost any black tomato is a richer flavor than traditional hybrids.
Heirloom tomatoes are also fantastic for flavors, but they are difficult to grow. Consistent watering, pruning lower leaves to keep disease away, proactive treatment of fungus and bacteria. It's a lot of work, but the results you get when it all comes together, yeah, it makes a fantastic tomato soup, sauce, Caprese salad.
I'm starting seedlings this week. I'm probably going to have more tomato seedlings than I know what to do with. Of course, as problems go, I could have worse ones. The problem I'd like to have is growing too many mini watermelons. For some reason, I just can't get any yield, and the squirrels/mice gnaw on them as soon as they are vaguely ripe.
My partner is not going to be happy when I rip up most of the lawn in the backyard. She'll probably buy me overalls and a straw hat.
That's one of the wonderful things about automotive infrastructure. You can make gradual incremental changes and slowly improve the entire system. It may not be fast enough or cheap enough, but you can still make it happen.
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