Observations, Calculations, and Values
A couple of years ago, I became curious about saving money with compact fluorescent light bulbs. Were all the claims I had heard true? I did the math, based on pricing and data that I found from a specialty retailer bulbs.com, and discovered that if you can accept the risk of having mercury [...]
In the electrical power industry, investments in new power plants have huge upfront costs as well as significant ongoing operational expenses over the life of the facility. To compare the cost of power across projects, people in the industry often talk of the “Levelized Cost of Energy” or LCOE for short. The idea [...]
When I was a teenager, my father’s stockbroker tried to explain puts and calls to me. He introduced me to the hockey stick diagrams that many investors use to visualize these types of strategies. It took a few more years for me to get comfortable understanding how puts and calls work. [...]
I spent some time this week reconsidering the economics of having solar panels installed on my roof.
My utility rates are such that the first ration of power that I consume is around 11 cents/kWh. But beyond the baseline, my rates skyrocket to over 30 cents per kWh. My rates are high enough I [...]
Forgetting about the current real estate disaster for a moment, one way to think about returns in the context of a real estate deal (or any leveraged deal) is with this hand dandly little rectangle diagram.
Notice that the larger rectangle is defined by 100% at the bottom right and in the top left corner, you [...]
This is a quick and dirty model that I put together a while back to evaluate various internet based business models when I worked at an internet company.
The revenue side of many web companies can be thought of as page views times revenue per page view, or quantity times price in the most generic sense. [...]