I’m interested in barefoot shoes but the prices are just ludicrous. I mean, a ballerina slipper for $240. There’s certainly a lot to be said about economies of scale, but theres not a lot of material here and longevity is a pretty frequent talking point. I typically spend less than €150 on shoes.

Somewhere on this fediverse, someone posted a list of some of their successful and less successful shoe purchases from both online shops as well as Amazon sellers. There were shoes in the €50-100 range that seemed like reasonable options.

If you’re reading this and have experiences good or bad, please share them here!

I know this is solarDIY, but it seems like a good place for this anyways. Tl;dr is there a good way to integrate wind and solar without spending a bundle?

Sun only shines during the day, and as distances from the equator increase, day lengths get shorter, and cloudier, and angles get steeper. However, my location has steady prevailing winds. So much so, there’s a wind farm practically in the back garden.

Which has me thinking that instead of a ton of panels and a big battery bank (to make use of sunnier days), a little 1kw or so turbine would go a really long way - especially for steady and/or long-running loads like router/server/modem, refrigerator, heat pump…

I understand that wind turbines make some dreadful power and it tends to be AC. They’re also a bit of a pain to situate but that’s sorta secondary. Let’s say I spin up 10kw of solar, a pile of LiFe batteries, and an eg4 AIO with grid-tie. Is there a reasonable, and safe way to integrate wind? I know one guy who just hooked it straight to his batteries but they were lead acid, and they cooked in a storm. Gave him an excuse to get a big life system instead.