derekeder 

520 Followers
484 Following
159 Posts
Civic tech builder in Chicago. Democratizing power through technology
Partner DataMade, President Chi Hack Night
he/him
Personalhttps://derekeder.com
Professionalhttps://datamade.us
Nonprofithttps://chihacknight.org
Twitterhttps://twitter.com/derekeder

If you care about protecting your fellow residents from oppression from the Trump admin, you should urge your local electeds to cancel your contract with Flock Safety, as we did in Oak Park, IL. I wrote a detailed post on why:

https://derekeder.com/blog/why-i-voted-to-cancel-flock

My civic journey continues. I am joining local government as an Oak Park Village Trustee today!

https://derekeder.com/blog/oak-park-village-board

Latest update from https://ilsolarmap.com

IL now has a total of 3,978 MW of solar operating capacity!

In the last 2 months alone, 1,379 MW have come online thanks to several large utility-scale projects including Double Black Diamond in Sangamon county and Maple Flats in Clay county

Illinois Solar Map

See how and where solar projects have been installed by Census Tract, Place, County, and State Congressional Districts in the State of Illinois

Illinois Solar Map

Chicago Councilmatic is now showing auto-generated summaries for legislation.

You can still scroll through pages and pages of WHEREAS declarations, but now, you know, you don't _have_ to.

https://notes.chicago.councilmatic.org/blog/automated-bill-summaries.html

Automated Legislation Summaries - Chicago Councilmatic Notes

Chicago Councilmatic is now showing auto-generated summaries for most non-routine legislation! To do this, we used a Large Language Model (ChatGPT) to take the ordinance text and asked it to provide a short, detailed, and accurate summary. Here's how we did it.

Chicago Councilmatic Notes

Took our first multi-day road trip with our EV: 1,200 miles from Oak Park IL, to Michigan’s UP.

We learned about DC fast charging and how to find charging stations, the costs and planning involved, and tips and lessons learned for our next EV road trip and yours.

https://derekeder.com/blog/electrification/ev-road-trippin

Electrifying Our Old Oak Park Home #5: EV Road Trippin’

In August 2024, our family took our first multi-day road trip with our electric car: 1,200 miles from Oak Park, Illinois, to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We had to do some research for this trip to be a success, so I’m sharing what we learned with you!

Derek Eder
Do you want to build mission-driven technology? My company DataMade is hiring! https://datamade.us/blog/hiring/join-the-datamade-team-2024/
Join the DataMade team!

Do you want to build mission-driven technology? Do you want to engineer fresh ideas about civic tech? Do you want to extract meaningful insights from data? We’re looking for a full-time, Chicago-based developer to start in August or September 2024. This position will be fully remote. Apply here!

It's been one year since we fully electrified our home and documented the process.

We are saving about $1,600 / year in utilities. Depending on where energy prices go in the next 20 years, we’ll recoup this cost between 11 and 16 years.

Here's how we calculated it: https://derekeder.com/blog/electrification/electrifying-our-old-oak-park-home-one-year-in

Electrifying Our Old Oak Park Home #4: One Year In

A little over a year ago in April of 2023, we completed the electrification of our house. Since then, I’ve received a lot of interest in this project, was awarded a Green Award by the Village of Oak Park, and was even featured in the Chicago Tribune! While the blog posts I’ve written have been useful to reference and point people to, there’s one outstanding question still to address: How much money are these electrification changes saving us, and how long until the upgrades pay for themselves?

Derek Eder
You can now look up campaign contributions to Alders right on Chicago Councilmatic! Wonder why a vote went a certain way? Check their donors! https://notes.chicago.councilmatic.org/blog/alder-campaign-donations.html
Alder Campaign Donations - Chicago Councilmatic Notes

Chicago Councilmatic is now showing campaign donations for each Alder on their detail page. Political campaign contributions are required to be disclosed to the Illinois State Board of Elections, which has data going back to 1994. You can now search for donations, updated daily, by donor name, address, date, amount and type, along with a link to the official filing.

Chicago Councilmatic Notes

Illinois Solar Map is now showing planned projects! Now showing:

☀️ 2,286 MW of operating solar (blue)
🚧 5,625 MW planned or under construction (purple)

Explore by tract, county, place or state district

https://ilsolarmap.com/#/?status=planned

Illinois Solar Map

See how and where solar projects have been installed by Census Tract, Place, County, and State Congressional Districts in the State of Illinois

Illinois Solar Map

https://ilsolarmap.com has been updated!

IL is now has 2,176 megawatts of solar, up from 1,800 in November. A 20% increase!

Illinois Solar Map

See how and where solar projects have been installed by Census Tract, Place, County, and State Congressional Districts in the State of Illinois

Illinois Solar Map