I just got 10 new 585w panels and inverter for under $5k. A battery is gonna cost me $1500 but at $350 month for electricity, not sure how you can claim it not worth it.
The article mentions more than farmers using the data. Not sure how anyone can take you seriously when the first paragraph mentions oil companies using the data as well..
And what do they use the data for, exactly? If it was vitally important to their operations and profitability, don’t you think the authors would have explained specifically how they would suffer if this data was discontinued?
The reason they don’t is obvious. They don’t use this data at all. The government uses it to monitor their emmissions and browbeat them into funding green initiatives to pay for their carbon sins. It’s used to make charts that congressmen use as props on the house and senate floor when they promote climate regulation. It’s used to make sensational fundraising emails for the Sierra club and eye-catching headlines at NPR and CNN.
But also one guy at the Iowa State extension office used it in a few papers, so yeah, farmers use this vital information, too.
It's fairly simple to keep these devices isolated and if you have a decent firewall, you shouldn't have much to worry about. Keeping them in a separate, internet-only VLAN with peer to peer isolation is typically the standard protocol. That said, in a lot of cases, even keeping the isolated doesn't resolve any privacy concerns. Also, with some devices, you have to open up mDNS.
