Some Information About My Personal Situation

You may be surprised about the fact that I posted very few information on this blog for some time. Let me explain our family situation here at home. I received an email today from a colleague and follower of this blog. This email encouraged me to publish excerpts from the emails we exchanged and to add some thoughts at the end of this post:

Email I received on 2021-10-16:

"Dear Karlheinz,

Perhaps you remember me, I've long been a keen follower of your blog on IEC 61850, and we have exchanged e-mails a few times in the past. ... I am writing to you because 

I remain looking forward to any news from you ... Kind Regards ..."

Email I sent on 2021-10-16:

"Dear ...,

I am sorry to read these lines ... 

I have changed my work (now being retired) to nurse my wife 24/7 … she was diagnosed ALS in January 2017. We are happy that the Lord Jesus has helped us to do that work together with one of our daughters. My wife needs non-invasive ventilation around the clock … we are still together … which is very good.

So, as a consequence I have more or less stopped my business …

Have a great weekend!

Best Regards,
Karlheinz"

Email I received on 2021-10-24:

"Dear Karlheinz,

I am very sorry to learn that you stopped your business because your wife is seriously ill.

To be honest I had realized that the frequency of your posts had declined in the last months... Your blog was a wonderful source of information and it will be missed by the smart grid community. Your posts were real, technical, relevant, useful stuff and not the usual buzzword-laden, over-hyped bullshit we are all used to read these days.

Given the circumstances, I believe no one will say you didn't do what was your duty.

I wish all the best to you and your family."

Some Thoughts to think about:

• Have you ever thought about the electric power in your personal life or the life of the people around you 👪?
  
  
• What could we do to help keeping the power flow? It is more than IEC 61850 ... 
  
  
• Smart(er) Grids are nice ... more important is the need for power in situations where the public grid is down ... In our case we need power for the breathing ventilator 24/7, power for the lifter to lift my wife from chair to wheel chair ... to bed ... power for the nursing bed (move it up and down), power for light, power for heating and cooking, ... and so on. It is more than emergency power ... we need at least some power 24/7 ... we use just PV, batteries and inverters, ... 
  
  
• Did you know that (in Germany) we had in 2019 some 4,100,000 care-dependent people that needed nursing ... 3,310,000 nursed at home (usually in families), 818,000 in nursing homes, ... even in nursing homes it is not required to have emergency power !! ... some have. What about the many homes that need electric power 24/7 to survive ... I guess most of them believe that there is always power ... except for a few minutes per year ... 
  Click HERE for the source of the German nursing situation.
  
  
• One of the most crucial challenges in the future is to provide permanent available power to those homes that nurse people ... 
  
  
• Try to contact your neighborhood, your police station, nearby hospital, fire station, power utility, ... to figure out how and where you could get power to operate the breathing ventilator or other medical devices in case of a blackout! You may be surprised what you get ... almost nothing.
  
  
• It seems to be more important (or interesting) to install hundreds of super charger stations along the German Autobahn ... than to care about a minimum of power to help care-dependent people to survive.
  
  
• We need all-over more electric storages ... small and big ones ... for various applications ... in order to have electric power whenever and wherever we need some ...
  
  
• Let me know what you think ... or report about your experiences ... Thanks.