Hear it from the researcher, Tanya Latty; here’s where and when:

Hello Everyone,

First off, I’d like to thank you  all for allowing us to conduct research in your community garden. The data we have collected over the last two summer has been invaluable. I’m happy to announce that I will be presenting the results of our research at two free public talks this month.  Please come along and find out about the native bees in your community gardens. Details are below.

Thank you again!

DATES: 22 and 29th August, 11-12:00
VENUE: St Helen’s community centre,185 Glebe point road, Glebe
COST: Free!

Please RSVP as spaces are limited: tanya.latty@sydney.edu.au

 Cheers,

Tanya

Since 31 March 2015 when the new battery and new solar panels were installed on my house we’ve been collecting data on the Tigo solar panels and Alpha Ess integrated battery and inverter systems.

The data is essential to reviewing the promises about the products’ performance and the best design to stay off grid.

Unfortunately, due to the Alpha Ess being brought to market before software had been fully tested, there are outages when no electricity was available to generate data.

Tigo DOES offer downloadable files, but in order to get hourly values, you have to download each day individually — that’s what makes Tigo time consuming. It’s not like the Efergy energy monitoring system, for example, where you can download hourly values for an entire month.  Although that system is used in the house it is showing values 50% less than the Alpha and appears to be unreliable. The tedious, time-consuming task of downloading each day’s data from the Alpha and Tigo sites had to be undertaken; urk!  My thanks to Marianna Verlage who endured this easily-fixed shortcoming.  The other energy use monitoring system in the house is provided by Wattwatchers but for some reason it or the site which provides access to it, Our Green Home, hasn’t been providing data; perhaps the outages have affected it or the system has not been properly re-installed by the solar and battery folk when those systems went in.  A work in progress here.

What the data tells me is I need another 2 kWh of available battery storage and another five more powerful solar panels with micro inverters to overcome shading and drops in panel power.  That will go in next week.

Winter gives least sunlight so the data for this season, such as it is, is invaluable.

I’m sharing the data we have collected here with you to help you go off the electricity grid.  There’ll be more data in the next few months.

Enjoy.

Michael

My chook, Pesky, looking for a star to steer by

Stars to steer by; we need them, whether we know we’re using them or not.

A pilot needs a harbour light, a navigator a star or compass bearing, a car driver a traffic light or roadside edge.

But inside the mind as we choose how to steer, what happens there?  How do we ‘see’ the star, what thoughts do we have as we choose how to react to it?

At some moment during so many years in prison, Nelson Mandela chose forgiveness as his star.

So it was that when he was released from prison he won more power, and brought more peace, than if he had left with revenge or hate or bitterness in his mind and heart.

When I lose my bearings I try to remember to ask, “What would Mandela say?”  It’s a beaut question to turn to when things get tough, when things are said or done which might damage me or others.

The answer often brings me to a smile, or a moment of peace or silence or, best of all, laughter.

My chook Pesky asks, “What’s next to peck?”   Or, “Should I run away?”.  She is in perpetual zen, always in the moment – of pecking, or preparing to run, or sunning herself.

Just my thoughts,

M

“When Szymborska was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996 “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality,” the Nobel commission rightly called her “the Mozart of poetry” — but, wary of robbing her poetry of its remarkable dimension, added that it also emanates “something of the fury of Beethoven.” I often say that she is nothing short of Bach, the supreme enchanter of the human spirit.”

To hear Amanda Palmer read the poem, it’s here:

LIFE WHILE YOU WAIT

Life While-You-Wait.

Performance without rehearsal.

Body without alterations.

Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.

I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot

just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,

I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.

I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.

I trip at every step over my own ignorance.

I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.

My instincts are for happy histrionics.

Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.

Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back,

stars you’ll never get counted,

your character like a raincoat you button on the run —

the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,

or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!

But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.

Is it fair, I ask

(my voice a little hoarse,

since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz

taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.

I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.

The props are surprisingly precise.

The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.

The farthest galaxies have been turned on.

Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.

And whatever I do

will become forever what I’ve done.

And there’s this one:

POSSIBILITIES

I prefer movies.

I prefer cats.

I prefer the oaks along the Warta.

I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.

I prefer myself liking people

to myself loving mankind.

I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.

I prefer the color green.

I prefer not to maintain

that reason is to blame for everything.

I prefer exceptions.

I prefer to leave early.

I prefer talking to doctors about something else.

I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems

to the absurdity of not writing poems.

I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries

that can be celebrated every day.

I prefer moralists

who promise me nothing.

I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.

I prefer the earth in civvies.

I prefer conquered to conquering countries.

I prefer having some reservations.

I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.

I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.

I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.

I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.

I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.

I prefer desk drawers.

I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here

to many things I’ve also left unsaid.

I prefer zeroes on the loose

to those lined up behind a cipher.

I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.

I prefer to knock on wood.

I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.

I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility

that existence has its own reason for being.

Here is the email I’ve sent to the folk to inform them where we’re up to with getting reduced prices:

NOTE:  individual options designed outside the ones for which prices were sought in the tender still qualify for the reduced price because of the bulk purchase arrangement.  This means if you don’t wish to buy, say, batteries, or you wish only to buy batteries, your preferences can be satisfied

I’ll post another progress note soon.

I hope what we’re doing will be copied by others.

Gotta love that sun,

Michael

R2Me2, my off the grid battery and inverter on my verandah

At the tour of Sydney’s Sustainable House on Saturday 27 June we’ll look at the new off the grid battery on my verandah, called R2Me2.

There’ll be a confession or two by said gizmo as to misdoings, bad conduct(ing) and circuits unknown.

What a bzzzzzzzzz . . .

I’m asked this at least a couple of times a week.  It’s time to share the answer.

My answer is in three parts.

Part One:

You’re not buying the panels, you’re buying the power.  What’s promised by the panel seller or installer or maker may not be what you get.  Sure, you’ll get the panel, but does it give you the power you were promised?  So the first part is to focus, not on the panel, but the promise of the amount of power it will give you.

Back in ’96 when I put mine in I was promised x but after a year it was clear the panels were delivering – x.

Once the panels are on your roof and the installer has moved on it’s difficult to get them back to answer your question, ‘But I”m not getting as much power from the panels as you promised?”  There’s no money in that exchange for them.

So be clear with whomever you buy whatever panels you choose:  say this to them: “What power will they produce?  Will you install them on condition that the balance of the payment will be made when you and I agree the panels are delivering the power you promised me they’d produce?”  If they won’t do that deal then I’d not buy from them.

Why do I say this?  Aside from my experience, and the experience I’ve heard from others, its clear both from a survey by CHOICE and word of mouth that there are many fly by nighters out there selling shonky panels who will not be there for you when they’ve got your money but the panels aren’t producing.

Part Two:

Only buy and have installed panels from a business that’s been going for at least five years.  Many installers only last a couple of years and many won’t be there to honour warranties and guarantees.

Part Three:

Ok; which panels?

Truth is, it’s hard to keep up with the growing number of new panels so my answer about brands is limited by the fact that, although I live and work in the renewable energy sector, I’m not across all those that are available.  And CHOICE has not done a technical comparison of them, nor, amazingly, has any body representing the  solar industry!  (Note:  I rarely use exclamation marks.)

So I’m not going to go on and give a full list as I just don’t have that recent data.  I would recommend Tigo as:

• I’ve had them on my roof for a couple of months and they are producing more energy than they are rated to produce;
• they have a terrific phone and email alert and data service that is the best I”ve seen;
• they have “microinverters’ that allow each panel to produce the power it gets or does not get from the sun without dragging down other panels which are not getting as much or are getting more sun.

But there are many more that I have not mentioned.

If you’re putting your own panels on I’d definitely go for Tigo; they are well-made, but expensive.

Just my thoughts,

May the sun shine on you and yours,

Michael

Pesky in the background, Feisty in the foreground. Confined to the far end of the chook run outside the kitchen, they were sceptical about the workmanship (who was this guy with power tools for chooks’ sake?), and the design for our new house?

Pesky and Feisty got a new chookhouse today.

The Chippendale Hilton.

Mick, the Chippendale handyman, worked wonders and everything was recycled except for a few screws (these weren’t the chooks’ jailors, but things that fasten things to other things).

Mick with the roof going on

Roof half on, frame mostly done

The old chookhouse had housed the chooks for over 7 years.  It was time for a new one that kept them warmer and drier.

All finished, with stingless bee hive on roof. Cluck

A new chookhouse requires close, suspicious inspection

As night fell, and the ancient dangers of the night crept near, and despite their caution of the building, Pesky and Feisty  slowly, ever so slowly, bit by clawly bit, crept in to this probably safer place.

Bronte pool, a calm sea in a calm sky

To Bronte this morn, there to throw myself into the pool.

Twenty degrees in.

Who could ask for more?

And that was that.

Joy in the moment of diving in, thoughts banished, flesh enlivened.

M

We had a terrific information night at Sydney’s Sustainable House on Monday  about making solar power cheaper.

As promised, the survey for anyone to qualify to join the group bulk buying to bring down the price of solar and batteries has been published.

THE SURVEY – If you’re interested in filling in the survey, click to fill it in here.

If you return your survey by Tuesday 2 June we will provide cost information and more news.

Let’s go!

Our lovely, generous sun awaits.

Michael