California Driver's License reciprocity with Germany current status

A number of US states and territories have full or partial reciprocal driver’s license agreements with Germany, allowing a US license to be exchanged for German and vice-versa. Among these are:

Alabama	Iowa	New Mexico	Utah
Arizona	Kansas	Ohio	Virginia
Arkansas	Kentucky	Oklahoma	West Virginia
Colorado	Louisiana	Pennsylvania	Washington
Delaware	Maryland	South Carolina	Wisconsin
Idaho	Massachusetts	South Dakota	Wyoming
Illinois	Michigan	Texas	Puerto Rico

California, notably, is not on the list. I believe the current status is as follows.

1. California Vehicle Code §12804.9 does not allow the DMV to negotiate reciprocity agreements with foreign governments, only with US territories.
2. There have been several attempts to update the Vehicle Code to allow this, most recently CA AB 639 in the 2023-2024 legislative session — which was passed out of committee but ultimately not voted on in the House and died at the end of the 2024 legislative session.
3. In the prior legislative session, AB-723 in 2021-2022 made it through several committees and the first few steps of a vote of the House, but was also not acted on before the end of the term.
4. AB-629 of the 2019-2020 session passed in one committee but did not proceed further.
5. The earliest such bill I can find came in the 2017-2018 session, and appears to also be the one which made it the furthest. SB-1360 passed the California Senate and through several committees in the House, but was not brought to a vote in the full House before the end of the legislative session.

 

The Experience in Washington State

The state of Washington passed a law allowing negotiation of reciprocal driver's licenses in 2005, in RCW 46.20.125. The full text of the change is considerably simpler than the proposed changes in California law, which additionally requires a consular letter and driving history.

Washington state and Germany signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 2005 relatively soon after passage of the enabling legislation. It was renewed in 2019, which notes the agreement as having been in place for 14 years.

 

Next Steps in California

The sponsor of the most recent Assembly Bill 639 was Representative Evan Low, who will not be returning to the state congress next year. I wish him well. I am writing to several other state representatives to encourage an effort in the next legislative session.

I believe framing this as a positive approach to mutually beneficial immigration would be productive.

There is recent momentum within the United States in this area. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators publishes a guide of best practices for foreign driver’s license reciprocity, last updated in 2021 after its initial publication in 2009. It includes the treaty and legislative background for such agreements, and samples of a Standard Operating Practice and a Memorandum of Understanding. It also includes survey data of the number of agreements signed each year, which shows consistent interest over time.

If you live in California or are registered to vote in California from abroad and interested in advocating for this change in the California Vehicle Code, please get in touch: denton.gentry@gmail.com. I'm writing to representatives of how it might be carried forward.

Charles Schwab brokerage debit card

When traveling overseas a debit card from Charles Schwab is quite useful:

• no fees for use of overseas ATMs
• refunds fees charged by the owner of the ATM
• withdraw in dollars and let Schwab do the currency exchange at a favorable rate

If you apply for a Schwab debit card, by default it will be tied to a checking account with Charles Schwab Bank. If you don't have a checking account Schwab will ask permission to set one up. This is fine for many people, but if you might at some point move overseas it is a problem. Schwab offers International Brokerage accounts for US citizens living overseas, but banking regulations mean that Charles Schwab Bank cannot do so and will close a checking account if they determine that the holder resides outside of the US.

However, one can also get a Schwab debit card with the same terms and conditions but attached directly to the brokerage account and not through Charles Schwab Bank at all. I had to call Schwab to make this happen, the web form didn't provide an obvious way to do so. A debit card attached to the brokerage account will still work if it later becomes a Schwab International Brokerage account.

The card looks similar but is issued by Charles Schwab Corporation not Charles Schwab Bank, and says "Schwab One brokerage" on it.

Emergency vs Loadshifting Batteries

Our house has 8 kilowatts of solar generation and 27 kilowatt-hours of battery storage, and is on a time-of-day electricity plan where power is cheaper in the early part of the day and more expensive from 3pm until midnight. We use 70% of the battery capacity to power the house during the peak hours each day, reserving 30% in case of outage.

This does work, but one battery is filling two roles with requirements at least somewhat in conflict.

• For load shifting we would prefer to use more of the battery to reduce our energy bill.
• If there is a power outage, we'd prefer to have more of the battery held in reserve than 30%.

Yet the batteries wired in to the house are not the only substantial energy storage on site. We also have an electric vehicle, with as much battery capacity as the house. A more modern EV than ours would have even more battery capacity.

 

Vehicle to Grid

That the substantial battery power in EVs could be useful in grid emergencies has long been recognized. Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) is an idea to make the charging port of the EV bidirectional: charging the EV from the grid as normal, but also able to supply to the grid by draining the EV. In very large numbers, EVs could provide enough power to stabilize grid operation while still having enough power to be used for transportation.

V2G has been slow to catch on, owing mainly to the number of parties involved. Because it entails connecting a new generation source to the grid, it must follow similar processes and permits as a rooftop solar installation. The timeline of a solar install is long: it can be months with roofers / installers / electricians in several waves, and having time enough to apply for the needed permits and interconnection agreement.

Yet when people buy an EV they need a way to charge it almost immediately. Waiting to install an EV charger isn't realistic, so it will be installed to only draw from the grid not supply back to the grid. Designing V2G capabilities into an EV charger in hopes the homeowner will followup with additional permitting? Most consumers wouldn't ever do so.

 

Vehicle to Grid Vehicle to LOAD

Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) is an idea with fewer stakeholders involved: allow the vehicle to supply power to locally connected loads, most commonly by having electrical outlets and an inverter built into the car. This is useful in many situations, like an EV at a job site powering tools or while camping or picnicking.

V2L also allows the EV's stored power to be used at home during emergencies, albeit somewhat awkwardly. It doesn't power the whole house, it can power appliances which are unplugged from the house and plugged into an extension cord from the vehicle. Keeping cell phones charged, running medical equipment, or powering freezers full of stored food is quite feasible. Running central air conditioning is not.

This concept works well for emergencies in that it can power essential needs from a very large battery, especially because the battery is mobile and could go somewhere to charge itself if needed. Natural disasters in the last several years have demonstrated this, notably Hurricane Helene in the US Southeast just last week. EVs are helping supply power in damaged areas.

California, my home state, has a large enough market for automobiles that it has often been able to influence the auto industry throughout the US such as via fuel efficiency standards. A law being considered would allow the state to mandate Vehicle-to-Load capabilties for vehicles sold as of some future date.

 

Transfer switch

We'd very much want our next EV to have this capability. Our use of the batteries built into the home would change to entirely load shifting to further reduce our demand on the grid during peak hours. During a power outage of appreciable length, we'd rely on the much larger batteries in the vehicle to keep food frozen and cell phones charged.

For this to work we'd need to plug appliances into an extension cord from the vehicle, and some of them are hard-wired into the house. The traditional way to handle this is a transfer switch, intended for a generator. This is expensive, and difficult to retrofit. There needs to be an easier way.

Powerwalls and Time Based Controls

We are on a Time-of-Day electricity plan, the PG&E EV2 plan. Our cost for electricity is:

		Summer	Winter
Off-Peak	12am - 3pm	$0.31/kWh	$0.31/kWh
Mid-Peak	3pm - 4pm	$0.51/kWh	$0.48/kWh
Peak	4pm - 9pm	$0.62/kWh	$0.49/kWh
Mid-Peak	9pm - 12am	$0.51/kWh	$0.48/kWh

We are incentivized to keep the power-hungry activities like charging the electric vehicle to the daylight hours where solar is plentiful or overnight where demand is low. Unfortunately however, there are several confounding factors to our energy use which make things more complicated.

1. The house is on a hill, the crest of which blocks direct sunlight for longer and longer periods each winter day.
2. We have two Powerwalls, able to store 27 kWh to supply the house at other times.
3. BUT, when we installed the powerwalls in 2019 we claimed the Residential Clean Energy tax credit which requires the batteries be charged using only solar power for five years.

Combining all of these things, we ended up with an unfortunate confluence in the winter months when the hill allows only a few hours of direct sunlight: there is not enough excess solar to charge the batteries while also powering the house.

We would head into the higher priced times of day with little ability to time shift stored solar production. The batteries were never able to charge. Our power bills rose substantially, calling into question why we paid for this stuff in the first place.

The Tesla app has a "Time Based Control" mode, where it takes the time of day and rate plan into account. However its main focus is in exporting solar production during high value hours by running the home from battery. Lacking sufficient production to charge the battery, this resulted in poor outcomes with Time Based Control. I didn't look at it again for the next few years.

 

Hacking Around It

Instead we've come up with techniques to get things working acceptably:

1. On winter mornings set the Powerwall to reserve 100% of its capacity for power outages. All solar production during the day charges the batteries, trying to reach 100%. The home's needs are met from the grid during off-peak hours.
2. When peak hours start, change the Powerwall to 30%. It then discharges to power the home, allowing the evening load to be partially met using stored solar power.
3. Do this every day. Change the Powerwall setting in morning and afternoon, every day, all winter.

I of course wrote software to automate this, but Tesla has only recently decided to offer an actual API to control Powerwalls. For the first few years I was instead using authentication mechanisms and APIs which a community on GitHub would reverse engineer, and which Tesla kept deliberately breaking. I had to watch for errors from my software or, maddeningly, when it would run without error but Tesla ignored its commands.

 

Changing the Game

At the beginning of this month, our five years was finally reached. I set the Powerwall to be able to charge itself using grid power. This didn't immediately change much behavior, until I toggled it to Time Based Control again.

Now, suddenly, things are much improved. At 3pm every day the Powerwall begins supplying the house energy demand, and all remaining solar production is sent to the grid. At midnight when rates drop, the Powerwall charges itself to 100% using grid power, to be ready for the next day.

This is already better than the system I had cobbled together:

• There were many days when the total solar production could not fully charge the batteries. Now, no matter what, the batteries are 100% charged every day.
• We are on the Net Energy Metering plan from 2019. Sending solar to the grid offsets our use at other times, so long as the house can be powered from battery.

 

Futures

I do want to change the current behavior in one way: instead of charging from the grid overnight, I'd prefer the Powerwall try to charge from excess solar. In summer it will usually be able to do so, and in winter it can try and then start charging itself mid-morning from the grid if it isn't going to make it to full. I'm looking into the Fleet API which Tesla published this year for what might be possible.

However, fundamentally, this stuff needs to be easier for the homeowner. I've been writing custom software and manually intervening for years, just to get a decent result out of it. I should not need to do that, after having paid so much for the system install.

One small provision in the Inflation Reduction Act was to remove the five year solar charging mandate for batteries installed after its passage in 2023; the goal is to incentivize more batteries on the grid. With freedom to charge the battery, it should be able to figure out how and when to charge itself. The behavior of the system over time should inform future operation, deciding when to charge from the grid and when to trust that solar power will provide. Next-day solar forecasts can inform this decisionmaking.

Surplus Energy Response

The phrase "too cheap to meter" entered the energy discourse in the 20th century, referring to the potential of nuclear power. Though originally coined to refer to fusion power, the label instead became associated with all nuclear energy. Seventy years later fusion is not here yet, and fission power has been a solid source of baseload power but could never be described as cheap.

The idea of energy too cheap to meter is a compelling one, we just had to wait for an entirely different technology to deliver it: solar photovoltaic. Panels installed on residences and commercial buildings are typically installed "behind the meter," where it directly supplies the energy demand of the building. The proof that solar power is too cheap to meter is that is not, in fact, metered.

Solar deployment has grown incredibly rapidly, faster than the distribution grid would be ready to accept it all. Deployment behind the meter has been essential because the grid in front of the meter hasn't been able to deploy new capacity so rapidly, and solar deployment continues to accelerate. A post by Ben James argues that solar energy can be deployed so inexpensively that using it completely off the grid, for economic activities which can be economical with free energy so long as it can handle being run intermittently only when the sun is shining, is compelling.

• hydrogen production, via electrolysis of water
• fertilizer production, producing ammonia via air capture and energy
• kerosene production, also via air capture
• ... and other chemical processes made possible by prolific free energy

 

Surplus Energy Response

The electric grid has a notion of Demand Response, when there is heavy demand which stresses available generation — for example, by air conditioning on a hot afternoon. We have reached the point where we also have the opposite situation: we need a surplus response. Many builings now produce substantial excess behind-the-meter power during the day, so much so that the grid cannot absorb it all. We need our buildings to become smarter about putting the excess energy to useful work:

• pre-heat or pre-cool HVAC, somewhat overshooting the temperature setpoint while energy is free
• store hotter water, with a smart water system to mix scalding with cold to get the desired water temperature
• charge electric vehicles for free, with knowledge of when the vehicle is likely to be needed
• charge up batteries in appliances throughout the building, allowing high peak load appliances to be installed in buildings not originally built for them

Yet we can take it even further. Limitless free energy, albeit at limited time ranges within a day, allows us to make choices we would never have otherwise considered.

• heat a pool or hot-tub to be ready for impromptu human use at any time during summer months
• run heat pumps in a sunroom, open to fresh air yet maintained at a comfortable temperature
• indoor urban hydroponics, pre-engineered gardens which are never too hot nor cold and provide generous fresh produce

In building enthusiasm for the energy transition, providing services which seem impossibly luxurious yet are provided entirely by surplus energy would be a compelling outcome.

Getting Started with German Genealogy

This is the second post in a series about conducting genealogical research in Germany. The earlier post is "German Genealogical Research", describing where records can be found.

Taking that first step to actually search for ancestors can be daunting. Therefore as an example, I'll walk through how research of my wife's German family began.

 

Step 1: Parent

My wife's mother, Gundela, moved from Germany to the US in 1958. We knew Gundela's birth date and that she had been born in Hannover. A bit of searching turned up the website for Standesamt Hannover, with "Urkundenservice" partway down the page leading to an order form for:

• Geburtsurkunde Standardformat (birth record)
• Registerausdruck (copy of the birth register)
• Geburtsurkunde mit Geburtszeit (birth record with time of birth)

We ordered these in late 2020, at a cost of 10 Euros each / 30 Euros total. The three documents are shown below. Needless to say this was the only Geburtsurkunde mit Geburtszeit — the one with the stork — we ever ordered.

The Geburtsurkunde Standardformat gave us the full names of her parents Karl and Hedwig. However the Registerausdruck, a copy of the original handwritten register entry, brought even more information. We knew that Gundela had been adopted by Karl, and the Registerausdruck describes the adoption in the block of text in the right margin. It gave a date of December 14, 1940. In 1940, when Gundela was six, the Standesamt updated the record with a description of the adoption in the margin.

The German handwriting in the birth register uses what is now considered an obsolete cursive lettering called Kurrentschrift. After World War II, Kurrent was replaced by a more modern cursive lettering and then by typewriters. We were able to decode most Kurrent writing with some time and the lettering chart from Wikipedia, but more recently discovered Reddit's r/Kurrent with people happy to help with more difficult transcriptions.

 

Step 2: Grandparents

With a date and full names we next ordered the marriage record for Gundela's parents Karl and Hedwig from Standesamt Hannover, costing another 10 Euros. This was a case where the Standesamt did extra work to be helpful: 14 Dec 1940 was the date of adoption, but not the date of the marriage. The Standesamt located the marriage record a few months earlier, in May 1940, and sent it to us.

More Kurrentschrift! The first page of the marriage record contains the names, birthdates, and birthplaces of the bride and groom Hedwig and Karl. The lower half of the second page lists the parents of the bride and groom, my wife's great-grandparents, including their birthdates and places.

In the upper left margin of the first page is an update that the ehefrau (Hedwig) died in 1978 and giving the record number in Hannover. These updates are hit-or-miss: Karl died in 1993 but the marriage record was not annotated for his death.

 

Step 3: Maternal Great-grandparents

The marriage record of the grandparents supplied the birthdate and birthplace for the great-grandparents, allowing us to order the next set of records. The maternal great-grandparents were born in the 1880s outside of Hannover. Their records had originally been recorded at a Standesamt, but records that old are moved to an archive.

In one of the continuing themes of genealogical research in Germany, there were several archives around Hannover: the Stadtarchiv for the city itself, and the Region Hannover archive for the towns nearby. Their records were at the Region Hannover archiv.

We've yet to find an archive with a web order form like many Standesamt use, but every archive has accepted requests through email. DeepL is very helpful in composing an email request. The practices vary substantially from one archive to another:

• Some are happy to send PDFs in email, others always send paper copies as part of their processing.
• Some will send the documents along with an invoice, trusting that it will be paid, others require payment in advance.

This is an example of an email to the Region Hannover archive to request the Geburtsurkunden for the great-grandparents:

Ich bin auf der Suche nach der folgenden Geburtsurkunde:

    Georg Heinrich August Koch
    *: 25. Feb 1884, Otternhagen
    +: unbekannt

    Minna Luise Elise Oltrogge
    *: 19. Mai 1888, Borstel
    +: 22. Jun 1976, Neustadt am Rübenberge

Meine Adresse ist:
    Denton Gentry
    123 Main Street
    Anytown, AA 12345
    USA
Aber PDF in EMail ist besser für mich.

Ich verpflichte mich, alle Tarife zu zahlen.
Ich kann Überweisungen in EUR oder SEPA senden.

The invoice for an Archiv usually requires an electronic transfer to a bank account, none so far have been able to accept a credit card. We use Wise to send a SEPA transfer, an electronic check in Euros, for just a few cents in fees.

Great grandmother Minna's birth record had a note in the left margin which told quite a story: her birth had been out of wedlock, a big deal in the very Lutheran 19th century Germany. The biological father later legitimized the child by marrying the mother and updating the birth record of the child to use his own family name.

 

Step 4: Paternal Great-grandparents

The paternal grandparents were older, born before 1874 and pre-dating civil recordkeeping at Standesämter. Their birth records were in church books. This was our first venture with Archion, which holds digitized Lutheran and Evangelical Church books from much of Germany. We paid about 20 Euros for one month of access, using a credit card.

Church books can be kept for each type of record or held as sections in one book:

• Taufbuch: baptism records
• Bestattungen or Beerdigungen: burial records
• Trauungen: marriage records
• Kirchenbuch: one large book with sections for each type of record

The place of birth from the marriage record led to the correct Church book to look in, and then look for the birthdate.

95. November, der 27.- Mevert, Carl Heinrich, ehelichen Sohn des Friedrich
                       Wilhelm Mevert von Nr 1 in Beeke, und seiner ehefrau
                       Sophia Luisa geb. Heshe von Nr 10 in Luhnde, geboren
                       der sechzehnten der November.

 

It is totally possible to research one's own family genealogy, it is not necessary to pay someone else to do it. It only takes a bit of time and small amounts of money.

EVs Are More Than Their Range

We have a 2016 Kia Soul EV. It uses a 27kWh battery pack, quite small compared to other electric vehicles which commonly have 50+ kilowatt hours of capacity. We've used the Kia primarily as a city car on local roads with only the occasional highway trip. As a city car it has been fantastic, small and easy to park yet large enough to handle our typical trips like groceries and taking kids to school.

When new the car would get 80+ miles in city driving on a full charge. Its battery slowly degraded each year until a few months ago when it began dropping quite rapidly. OBD diagnostics can read the state of each individual cell in the battery pack, enough of the cells had failed for it to be replaced under warranty.

This post is not about the battery replacement process, though we are quite happy with Kia and the warranty support.

This post is about how useful we find an electric vehicle even with fairly limited range, and how little difference it made when its range suddenly increased. The first time we charged the car with its new battery pack its range estimate read 101 miles. Honestly I didn't even know it could display three digits.

We charge the car using solar production in excess of what the house is using. Where before we would charge the vehicle every day, we're now charging it mostly on weekends. It has triple the battery capacity but 5x above the reserve level we like to keep. It can go all week on our usual errands.

It seems somewhat strange to me but our use of the vehicle has not really changed with all this extra range. The new energy ecosystem was already compelling for us:

• Solar panels on the roof produce substantial extra energy during the day.
• Not having to pay for gasoline or oil changes further improves the economics.
• Most trips are short. On any given day we drive just a few miles.

When we talk about the fossil energy system we point out how damaging its emissions have been, and how the cost of that damage is completely externalized from production. All of that is true. Another aspect of the fossil energy system is how ruthlessly it pulls profits back up the supply chain, resulting in enormous profits at the top and almost nothing to the rest of the ecosystem. Gas stations make their profit from snacks, carwashes and oil changes, the gasoline sale merely brings people in while the supplier takes all of the profit. Methane pricing encourages spikes to ruinous prices for electricity distribution operators.

Distributed energy production and distributed ownership of energy production also results in more of the benefits being distributed. Our little electric car is part of a larger whole where one can capture and use the energy from the Sun without some entity in the middle siphoning off the benefits of doing so.

Update: a few weeks after publishing this, both of us parents had conflicting appointments and I had to drive the EV further than its previous battery could have managed. It was glorious. More range is certainly better. Still, our use of the car is mostly just short trips around town.

German Genealogical Research

I'd like to talk about genealogy for a bit. In the process of gradually becoming my father, who was very much interested in family history, I started researching family genealogy about four years ago. However my focus was on my wife's family, whose mother immigrated from Germany to the US in 1958.

In the disruption following WW2 her German family lost track of each other and fell out of contact. We knew the name of my wife's mother and grandparents, and one great grandmother. That was all. With four years of work we've extended her family tree in Germany to identify almost all of the 5th great grandparents back to the early 1700s.

I write this from the perspective of someone in the United States researching genealogy in Germany, trying to describe the resources I've used.

 

Publicly available records

Modern German civil recordkeeping started in about 1874, with a few portions of the country having started a bit earlier. Prior to 1874, all recordkeeping was done by the church: Lutheran being the largest denomination, but Evangelical Lutheran, Catholic, and Jewish records are all available.

Ancestry and FamilySearch have a sizable collection of German civil and church records digitized. Ancestry requires a paid account to access these records, FamilySearch requires an account to be created but it is free. Both have run character recognition on the records to make them searchable.

As a practical matter, Ancestry/FamilySearch/etc do not get yearly drops of new records from German authorities which have reached the threshold for release. Most publicly available records are those captured on microfiche by the LDS church over the last few decades; FamilySearch is owned by the LDS church. Newly released records sometimes appear but it is inconsistent and somewhat haphazard, and usually years after the privacy laws would allow release.

So one often needs to go to the source, not just rely on genealogy sites.

 

After 1874: Standesämter

A civil records office in Germany is called a Standesamt. They retain records according to the Personenstandsgesetzes (privacy laws, often abbreviated PStG):

• 110 years after a birth
• 80 years after a marriage
• 30 years after a death

After this, records are supposed to move from the Standesamt to an Archiv. Many large cities have their own archive, plus regional archives around major population centers, and then an archive at the state level like for Baden-Württemberg or Niedsersachen.

HOWEVER: in theory the documents move to an Archiv, in practice I find many documents remain at the Standesamt years or even decades beyond when they would be expected to move. I generally find the relevant Standesamt first and ask if they have the document. They will say if it has moved to an archive, and provide contact information for that archive.

• Searching for "Standesamt" plus the name of the municipality will often find it.
• Meyers Gazetteer can also be helpful in finding the Standesamt.
• If you can find a website for the Standesamt, look for "Urkundenservice" or, failing that, anything with "Urkunde" in the description. It will probably be further down on the list of options, it is much more common for people to want to register a new birth/marriage/etc with the Standesamt than it is to be looking for older documents.
• If your written German is not up to the task, use deepl.com to translate English and German. Its results are considerably more idiomatic than Google Translate.

Many Standesamt have a web order form which will allow you to pay using a credit card. If not you'll need to make the request via email, and expect to receive an invoice with an IBAN (the bank account number). You can use wise.com to transfer money from a US bank account, convert it to Euros, and send to the destination IBAN. wise.com fees are quite low.

The Standesamt will require proof of legitimate interest before releasing records earlier than the 110/80/30 years described above. Direct descendants have a legitimate interest, but may be required to prove it via a birth certificate, parents' marriage record and birth certificates, etc. English documents are usually ok for this, don't get them translated unless asked to do so. If a document does require translation I've relied on Annika Romero at https://germangeek.com/ for several such translations.

If not a direct descendant, one won't be able to order documents less than 110/80/30 years old. Older documents at the Archiv, and even if still at the Standesamt but older than the privacy laws protect, will be released upon request.

 

Standesamt Document options

The Standesamt typically offers a few options:

• A birth record is a Geburtsurkunde, marriage is a Heiratsurkunde or Eheregister, a death record is a Sterbeurkunde.
• By default an A4 paper form will be sent in the mail. This is slightly larger than US Letter sized paper.
• An A5 option means a smaller paper, with holes for mounting in a memory album called a Familienstammbuch.
• Mehrsprachiger, often labeled "International" means the form will be labeled in multiple languages. This is useful for official proceedings in countries outside of Germany, but otherwise it costs extra and I wouldn't bother with it.
• An Abschrift aus dem Register is a photocopy of the original record exactly as it is, not transcribed into a modern format.

It is often useful to order the Abschrift aus dem Register, which will be handwritten before the mid 1950s. The original registers were frequently annotated in the margins with the dates of marriages, of death, and sometimes even of the birth of children (though this is not common).

For example, on the left is a Geburtsurkunde Standard for my wife's maternal grandmother. It is very brief, only the essential details are copied out of the original register entry. A large "Kopie" appears across it because certified originals are printed on a holographic paper, scanning or copying reveals the hologram. The paper form we received in the mail does not have a visible "Kopie" on it.

On the right is an Abschrift aus dem Geburtenregister, where in the lower left one can see an annotation of her death in Hannover. It is somewhat hit-or-miss: there is no annotation of her marriage, even though it also took place in Hannover. Nonetheless these annotations can be extremely helpful in locating more documents to find further information.

 

Before 1874: Kirchenbücher

Before 1874, you'll be searching Church books called Kirchenbücher. Ancestry and FamilySearch also have a good collection of these upon which they have run character recognition to make them searchable.

Archion has an even larger collection of Lutheran and Evangelical church books, but they have not been indexed using character recognition so you cannot search for a name. If you know the place and date, Archion can be very helpful in obtaining the record. If you do not know the city and rough date, Archion will not help. Archion access is paid, typically for a month of access at a time for about 20 Euros.

Matricula has a large collection of Catholic church books. Similarly, they have not been run through character recognition and are not searchable, but they are available for free.

Records will be handwritten, and very frequently use a lettering called Kurrentschrift. One gets used to it, at least enough to recognize the family name, and Reddit's /r/Kurrent can help transcribe difficult records.

In all cases though, church or civil, the recordkeeping is distributed through towns and regions. There is no central records store, you just have to know where their records would be in order to send your inquiry to the right place. Digitizing and making the records searchable is starting to change this and make records more discoverable, but only for relatively old records which Ancestry and FamilySearch have had for a while.

 

Census data

Genealogy in the US greatly relies on the decadal census, which might not be complete nor entirely accurate but is on the whole an amazing resource to have. There is nothing like this in Germany.

There are occasional census efforts in some of the German states, but not very often and mostly not made publicly available. One of the few exceptions is the Jewish portion of the 1938/1939 census, often referred to as the Minority Census, which was made available for its historical significance and for the benefit of descendants of families persecuted during this time. The non-Jewish portions of the 1938/1939 census were collected but remain in registry offices throughout the country and are not accessible.

There is, however, the Melderegister. Where the US mostly relies on driver's license databases in each state to know where its citizens reside, Germany requires an explicit registration after moving called an Anmeldung. The collection of registrations for a city are the Melderegister, and it may contain information about marriages and children born in addition to where the family lived over the years. The Melderegister of direct ancestors can sometimes be obtained by writing to the Bürgeramt of the city, however they are not retained forever and each city determines its own policies. Archiving Melderegister entries after 55 years and destroying them some time later is a common choice.

 

DNA Matches

In the last couple decades, DNA sequencing has advanced tremendously and is commercially available from a number of providers like Ancestry and MyHeritage. We have found more DNA matches to German relatives via MyHeritage, which has a larger presence in Europe. Nonetheless we submitted DNA tests for both. Note that MyHeritage allows upload of DNA data downloaded from Ancestry, so one doesn't need to buy another test kit but does need to pay for an account with access to DNA matches.

 

Colophon

We visited Germany in July of 2024, to meet several cousins we'd found. The initial discovery was via a DNA match, but the hook to get us talking was the family tree and genealogy. The family had lost contact with each other and we're slowly rediscovering them.

Researching the family tree was also a step for my wife and our children to claim German citizenship via a declaration process called StAG 5. Prior to 1975 citizenship was not automatically passed on by German mothers, only German fathers, but for 10 years 2021-2031 Germany is allowing descendants of German mothers to declare their citizenship by presenting sufficient proof of descent. If this process is of interest, Reddit's /r/GermanCitizenship can be a useful resource.

A subsequent blog post, Getting Started with German Genealogy, gives specific examples of how we got started with our German family research.

Heat Pump HVAC firms

We had a Mitsubishi mini-split heat pump system installed in 2019, to replace a pair of gas furnaces. We love the system, but finding an installer was more difficult than I had expected. Almost every HVAC installer wanted to install new gas furnaces and be done with it, even those which mentioned heat pumps on their site. They might have eventually been cajoled into installing what we wanted, but that wasn't the kind of vendor we wanted.

We ultimately found Alternative HVAC Solutions, which specializes in heat pumps and leads with them as the solution they propose. They did a fine job and I do recommend them for anyone looking for an installer on the San Francisco peninsula.

However this morning I had to SQUEEEE with excitement at seeing another firm proudly leading with heat pumps as their preferred solution: Electric Air. I cannot speak from personal experience about their service, it is just nice to see how far we have come.

I wrote about our heat pump installation in 2019.

The Decapitated Duck Curve

California invested heavily in solar and wind starting more than a decade ago. So far in 2024 renewable sources have met 100% of the state's energy needs for at least part of the day since early March, and continuing through the time of this writing in August 2024.

Solar growth in particular has been robust enough that it started to perturb the operation of the grid nearly a decade ago, the infamous duck curve where demand seemingly drops in the middle of the day:

A great deal of solar capacity in California has been installed by property owners on their rooftops, both residential and commercial, fed directly into the electrical panel of a building. This supplies energy to the building without the grid seeing anything at all. From the perspective of the power grid the demand for electricity simply drops during summer afternoons, more every year as more solar panels are installed on more rooftops.

However California is experiencing something new in 2024: the duck no longer has a head. Or at least, the use of methane to supply power to the head of the duck has abruptly fallen.

the decapitated duck curve

The dip in the middle of the day is still there, a reduction in demand due to rooftop solar generation. However where methane power generation used to spring back up in the late afternoon as solar production falls off, in 2024 the demand only rises partway back above its low point. The head of the duck is no longer there.

The difference is that the capacity of battery storage on the grid has risen rapidly and passed a tipping point. Much of the late afternoon demand can now be supplied from solar sources, shifted in time using batteries.

California's tax incentives now aim for the installation of more battery capacity. Property owners are free to install solar panels on their rooftops to meet their own demand, but the state doesn't need more solar generation and panel prices have dropped well below the prices where tax incentives were essential. Adding more battery capacity will allow the state to continue to carve the duck, by timeshifting more of the prodigious solar power generation to be ready after the sun sets.

Like solar on the roof, batteries installed in a building appear to the grid as though demand is lower. In reality the demand for electricity is not lower, it is simply being satisfied by batteries before the electric meter sees it. Where we've already seen a reduction in gas generation, we'll begin to see a flattening of the demand curve as the buildings on the grid gradually power themselves for even more hours per day.