Friday 30 September 2011

Good Ex

A quick note to say Bryn Gabriel just left after spending the night with us. Wonderful moment for me. She looks very fine and happy. We got the opportunity to meet her partner Lisa as well. More info and perhaps a photo to follow.

Monday 19 September 2011

energy independent

   If you invested a great deal of time, effort, emotion and money into something that depended on the sun, what would be the most ironic bit of weather you might expect on the eve of its implementation? Yes, a force five thunderstorm complete with its own source of mega electricity. At 2:30am the whole house awoke with a light burst more white and brilliant than a summer's day and a deafening, simultaneous, instantaneous crash. I think the dog downstairs threw up on Elda's carpet. And that wasn't nearly enough. Lightning and thunder continued without pause keeping every one in expectation of the next explosion that would surely carry us all away. Remember, this all came by surprise after bedtime and after roughly four months of NO clouds, rain or certainly thunder. Crash! Luckily, I had unplugged the sensitive stuff at bedtime and the only real damage was a defunct internet modem (yet again).
   When the sleepy kids went off to school before dawn, it was still raining but the tempest had passed. The wind was stilled, and the land quiet. We had accumulated some four inches of rain in any open bucket, yet the sky opened peacefully to a beautiful, partly cloudy day.
    The electrical utility was scheduled to arrive that morning to install their meters and allow our photovoltaic panels to begin benefiting mankind, but damage to local equipment during the night caused them to arrive in the afternoon with only one worker. He did what he was supposed to do and by four pm we were watching our electric meter register kilowatt hours positive. A much anticipated moment. Murphy's Law demanded that clouds would form and of course a light rain broke out at the precise moment, but that didn't keep us from gathering a lawn chair to watch the meter creep off the zero peg during a break in the clouds.
    We are finally producing our own energy. We should be producing enough to allow us to look at a new electric toaster-oven going on sale tomorrow, but we may have to wait until spring. The dry summer has overnight turned into the cool, damp winter.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

On the Grid

      For a time I wondered why I seemed to be suffering from such an assortment of unrelated ailments. My headache never seemed to go away. Sure, I'd had plenty to drink with supper so that could have been it. But my stomach never settled down. The pains in my shoulder seemed to get worse, or was it more arthritis? Sleep? Forget it. One day I swear I had a fever. I stayed in bed and proved it with a thermometer. Then a sore throat. I convinced myself I was coming down with something. Then my teeth started aching. Haemorrhoids. And that damned tinitus never went away.
      On the morning of the 7th, everything went away. At the end of one of the last posts, I said if everything goes right on the 7th, it will be a miracle. I was right. And the debate about miracles can continue.
      First of all, a delivery truck had to brave London morning rush-hour to get our new wood stove to Eileen's house by 10am after a five hour drive across southern England. Miraculously, they did it; but the transit van we hired with Eileen didn't consider London morning rush-hour and the delivery man found himself waiting, and waiting. When time ran out, the 250kilo (550lbs) package was lowered to the top of a nearby dumpster where it had to wait before being manhandled down to our transit van. I'm glad I wasn't there. I'm also glad I didn't know about it.
     But the reason I didn't know about it was because our Italian electrical utility company somehow managed to plunge us into radio silence that very morning. They decided to replace the feed line to our neighborhood with a four conductor, three-phase wire. This in an attempt to more efficiently transport electricity from our new solar panels to the grid. Well, somebody crossed one of the wires and when the power came on, a lot of things went off. Like the washing machine. And the water heater. TV. CD players. Microwave oven. The computer battery chargers, in fact ANY battery charger and ANY transformer. The internet modem. And, oh yes, the telephones.
      So there we were. Off the grid.
      And there we remained until I remembered an old fax machine in the attic that had a handset attached to it. Our first call was to the electrical utility company, and so were our second and third calls. We've got power all right, expensive power at that.
      Normal electricity was quickly restored and our meter continues to run, running up the bill; but the foot-dragging and the paperwork required to claim for damages could go on for a year or more. All four houses in the Borgo are effected and all are facing heavy replacement costs. Our water heater alone will require a $500 control panel.
      I can't wait to start making my own electricity. It's going to be the next miracle medical cure.

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Quick notes on the flour-fight video

This was taken on Giles's camera and comes from his Youtube channel. You can spot Alex standing on the handrail, hiding behind the pedestrian crossing sign. Giles rushes off for a pot-shot and returns unscathed. Quite an event. If you look further on the internet, you'll learn that the archery contest which defines the whole week-long shenanigans, ended in controversy and real fighting due to bad judging. A real hoot!

Friday 2 September 2011

Wood heat

    On Wednesday the electric utility Enel will disconnect the electrical supply to our neighborhood of four houses. They must pull about 30 meters of supply cable from out of an underground conduit and replace it with a much heavier conductor in order to receive the 15 kilowatts we should be producing. I'm worried because I remember a roughneck builder breaking this conduit shortly before we fired him from our septic tank job. That defined the moment when we took this project on ourselves some six years ago. I repaired that conduit as best I could and it has survived one line replacement since then, but this is a heavier wire. We will be without power until they get it replaced and we've got a couple of freezers full of food at risk. Wednesday is the day.
     Solar panels, inverters and three phase conductors are all signs of a new and better age of power production, but alongside all this modern trickery is another energy project of ours. Ironically, also on Wednesday, a delivery truck from south west England is supposed to arrive in London where it will meet another delivery van we've hired to transport a newly built wood burning stove/fireplace to us here in Italy. The wood burner will incorporate two internal water heaters which will feed our hot water tank and power our underfloor heating system. This will be used to supplement our three existing hot water solar panels during the winter months. We are just beginning to prepare the cavity which will accept the stove.
     If all these things go as planned on Wednesday, well... it will be a small miracle.