What, with me banging on about how little I use my diesel generator this morning I thought I’d better check. Turns out, the last time the HR2 Lister ran was for 5 hours on 30th of May, a full three months ago!!!
Since then I’ve generated 3250 kWh by wind/hydro and PV, or around 36kWh per day average, though that table is a little misleading as it has ‘Proven 6kW’ in the header but those figures in that column relate to something else completely and are not included in the totals. The large Proven isn’t actually producing electricity as such, at the moment it is just heating up the ‘Bunker’ which is my plant, freezer and drying room.
And just now it’s drying out my Northern Diver https://www.ndiver.com/ dry suit which has acquired a hole in the bum. Dunno how that happened right enough, ‘twas fine when I last had it on two days ago. Anyway it’s hanging in the warm bunker with a dehumidifier running so I can plug the leak later tonight.
Water water everywhere
Much to my surprise, Ross was up pretty early and keen to go diving despite the weather and having to go and work later. Oh the joy of youthful enthusiasm, I used to be like that once I mean, it was truly wet, grey and miserable, consequently we headed through the Fladda Narrows as the tide was still high enough to go over the causeway and I figured that Loch a Sgurr would have less fresh water ‘run off’ in it.
Well, at least it wasn’t as windy as they were saying, in fact it was glassy calm but boy was it wet, the water was just poring off Raasay. The burns where swollen and peaty coloured ribbons of water cascaded off the rock and heather. That’s us departing our slip, heading into the South Fladda anchorage then passing by the shepherds hut by the Fladda causeway.
Loch a Sgurr though was blissfully calm and without the brown layer of freshwater lying on the surface, pretty clear. Ross and I did around 23 minutes at 30m for a couple of dozen decent clams.
Before he went down to work he made a chili dip and we’ll be having scallops and black pudding for a snack later. They were gonna be tonight’s dinner but one of our neighbours gave us a fine venison stew just as Ross arrived home. As it was still warm, we just ate that
That took us nicely up until midday when the weather improved a little, Ross went to work and I pottered about the croft filling diving cylinders, weeding the drive,
painting some steelwork, extending my remote winch lead and chasing pigs. OK, getting chased by pigs
I just could not believe how much water had collected in their dishes since I fed them 8 hours earlier, a good 100mm!!!! OK the dishes are slightly tapered but even so, that is a lot of water.
Interesting, that’ll be the two cylinders going on at 15:01 when the sky was really overcast. There is a 2.4kW discharge on the inverter and the batteries are at 99% ‘state of charge’. After running for almost an hour and a half with the sky brighter but still 99% cloud cover the batteries are receiving 900W and are at 100% SOC.
And true to form on the West Coast, the evenings are always the best part of a miserable July or August day
well, apart from the friggin’ midge that is