Internetless :-(

I have to say it’s been a bit of a mixed blessing not having any Internet for well over a week now. On the one hand I’m definitely getting more done on ‘the list’ but amongst other things I’m actually missing you all Seriously, I know I went for around three months without posting and hardly missed you at all (just kidding) but now I want to post and can’t

Quite apart from all that, you really do need it to actually do anything these days, especially where we live ‘out in the sticks’. Pig movements, emailing all the certificates for our completion certificate and chasing up a multitude of ‘bits and bobs’ for doing ‘this and that’.

Of course the fact that we’ve had a spell of stunning weather this last 3 or 4 days has helped ‘numb the pain’, but being on holiday has actually made it worse. Had I been working then at least I could do the crucial stuff at work. That’s me half way through my month’s holiday now and counting the days back to work

Another sad loss

As much a part of Raasay as Dun Caan and the school coffee day was Richard Moore, or the ‘Beetle Man’ as he was affectionately know to all. Richard had been visiting Raasay annually since the 1970’s having fallen in love with the place during a university visit as a student. Indeed he even lived on my croft for a couple of years in a caravan, though long before I arrived in 1989.

His nickname came from his passion (and believe me it was just that) for observing, collecting and cataloguing the beetles of Raasay. Indeed he even wrote a few pamphlets on the subject and even a book.   ‘The Beetles of the Island of Raasay in the Inner Hebrides’, which, if I’m not mistaken listed some thousand or more that he’d encountered over his forty or so years of visiting.

Every year since I arrived here and often twice annually in May and September he’d turn up off the bus carrying just a rucksack. He having left all his beetle catching paraphernalia at Arnish and previously posted me a shopping list. To this day I can still recite that list which I received twice yearly written in his precise and neat hand. For Richard was diabetic and very much a ‘creature of habit’.

No sooner had he arrived than he’d be out setting his many traps and investigating the dead carcases of unfortunate creatures. He would ask specially for me to not bury anything for a couple of weeks prior to him arriving. There are several varieties of Beetle that thrive in there, can’t remember their name but he showed me one, it was red with black spots. During the next couple of weeks he’d be a regular sight around the island with his white butterfly net and I guess he was known to everyone.

Richard was due to visit in May but never arrived having taken ill, sadly he died recently in hospital of pneumonia a result of complications from a diabetic coma I believe. It really feels like part of Raasay died in York along with him.

The ‘Beetle Man’ was part of the ‘fabric of Raasay’ as one local put it recently and he will be sadly missed by one and all.

Another grand day out

On a brighter note it was Raasay Primary School’s ‘Coffee Day’ on Saturday, a term which doesn’t do the event justice, and what a day it was.

  

As usual the local business’s provided amazing prizes, Scottish Fuels, Portree Filling Station, Jewson Portree and Colorado Group to name but a few. Raasay House’s David Croy supervised archery and very few people scored any goals against Bradan or Davey The net result was a total, so far raised for school funds of over £3K!!!!!! I kid you not. This is from a community of less than 200 souls for a school with only a handful of pupils, over THREE THOUSAND POUNDS in one day!!!! Well done to all the staff, pupils, parents, ‘customers’ and local business’s for yet another amazing effort.

Settling in

The two wee Tamworth Two are settling in nicely,

  

sharing the hen run at the moment and I think we’ll keep them in there for the time being. Don’t think the hens are too chuffed right enough but they have access to a larger area to the west if they want. The pigs cannot follow them there because they cannot climb onto the decking in front of the house. I built steps for them at their side and screwed a plastic tank onto the decking so they couldn’t clamber across.

Not only that I screwed some plywood over the slats so their wee trotters wouldn’t fall through. All in all they seem to be getting on just fine.

Barmy weather

Talk about changeable!!! Last week we had three days of rain and gales which saw the wind turbine going berserk.

 

 

The three day period 27th to 29th Sept saw 113kWh generated from the wind turbine with an ‘identity crisis’ My turbine started life in 2005 as a Proven 2.5kW but since then I’ve fitted a set of KW3 blades and core so I guess it’s now a 3.2kW. Either way I was having problems with the Aurora 3.6TL inverter so reverted back to the SMA WB6000 and saw an immediate increase in production.

The Aurora had started ‘dropping out’ recently in the gusty winds and methinks this was due to a frequency instability issue with the SSR that operates the ‘phase control’ dump system. In the lighter winds of summer this issue hadn’t raised its head, in fact the Aurora seemed to perform much better. The easily adjustable ‘power curve’ and simple to use ‘Aurora Installer’ software allows the transformerless Aurora to harvest energy at much lower wind speeds. However methinks that the transformer in the SMA inverter provides a degree of isolation that smooth’s out harmonic distortion.

Whatever the reason, the Aurora has been temporarily retired, which will give me a chance to try it out on the Powerspout hydro turbine. I’ve been doing inverter tests recently for Ecoinnovation using a Solis 1500W transformerless inverter and an SMA SB3800, so far the Solis has come out on top but I can’t wait to try out the Aurora.

 

  

The really carp weather of last week was a great opportunity to spend some time in the ‘Power Station’ tinkering with the inverter settings. Sadly SMA’s software is not as ‘user friendly’ as ABB’s for the Aurora, anyway, I did eventually re familiarize  myself with it and changed the mode on the SMA from ‘Turbine’ to ‘MPPT’, which improved it’s output slightly.

The Outback GVFX 3048

I also got my ‘back up’ power supply one step nearer to full integration. This consists of an Outback inverter and a separate 48V 950Ah battery bank installed in the ‘Bunker’. To be honest it’s seriously OTT and unlikely to ever be used in anger. However, as with much in my life it was acquired cheaply, or was given for ‘services rendered’.

The ‘AC input’ of the inverter can now be selected between ‘Generator’ or ‘Island’, position 2 being Harry the Lister and position 1 being the SMA SI6.0H grid. At the moment it’s connected to the ‘grid’ which keeps the 24 forklift truck cells nicely ‘floating’.

The oscilloscope is on loan from a friend near Aultbea and I’d have dearly like to have tried it out when the Aurora was connected to see exactly what was going on. Unfortunately being ‘Internetless’ I’ve been unable to ‘Google’

The south wind that blew so hard for days convinced the the geese to honk their way northwards. As is quite normal they were followed a day or so later by a solo goose who seemed to have got left behind.

 

  

Not quite all the rain left on the back of the gale, the odd shower got left behind to provide some stunning rainbows.

The deluge had however encouraged me to do some more ditch digging and drainage works around the croft.

  

This being a galvanized steel tank I converted into a ‘sump’ for draining the hen field. basically it’s a place to collect all the carp that comes down the drain to stop it blocking the pipework. Still very much ‘work in progress’ at the mo.

The ‘good spell’

Well if the start of October is anything to go by it’s set to be a cracking month. Seriously, with weather like this why would you want to go on holiday. The lack of Internet has kept me outside until late on and I’ve had the pleasure of watching three stags nightly with all their bellowing and shenanigans. The house is so well insulated that you cannot hear a thing inside but once outside in the gloom it’s a different story. There are three of them vying for the attentions of the local hinds. There’s one who’s been hanging around here for months, a large beast with a distinctive head. I suspect he swam over from Rona as his antlers are thicker and wider spread than the local beasts.

He’s the ‘monarch of the glen’ at the moment with six hinds at his heals and he’s ‘seen off’ a smaller chap with a better looking head last night. I missed the actual scrap but I could see him charge the other stag and then issue a victorious bellow afterwards.

In the midst of all this a ‘young pretender’ appeared with a small head and freshly ‘blacked up’ and wandered off with a couple of hinds. I’ve had all of them ‘in my sights’ and am just awaiting one to start munching the wife’s hedge

Sunday

The beautiful day that greeted us on Sunday  had us all wandering up to the broadband mast which is only a mile away ‘as the crow flies’. We did however choose to go the long way around following the deer tracks that on the whole keep to the higher ground.

 

 

Starting at the back of the croft and working our way around to North Arnish

 

and it’s many ruins. All along the way there was much evidence of the ‘rut’ http://www.forestry.gov.uk/newsrele.nsf/web-allbysubject/b0c82b52837567c080257bf000303cc6 

 

Willow trees thrashed by antlers and peat bogs turned into wallows where the stags ‘black up’ to make them look fiercer.

Once up at the mast I checked all that I could, which wasn’t much, so needless to say we still have no Internet so now I’m ‘slumming it’ on my mate’s satellite link at Torran. It’s not a patch on ours but boy, am I grateful to be using it right now.

Yesterday it was off to Aultbea with me mum to see my dad

 

and what a start to the day we had!!! This will be Brochel Castle on Raasay with Mordor to the east

An Outback inverter :-)

Dead boring for the majority of peeps reading this I know, but the day wasn’t all about inverters. It’s just that’s the bit that got me excited the most, I know, I know, I’m really sad.

Down to the beach

The day actually started with a trip to the seaside, that’ll be Screapadale beach for pebbles to finish off yesterday’s mini garden and ‘pebble patch. I couldn’t bear the thought of going last night as I went down a month ago and it was so overgrown that I struggled finding the track. Actually had to get out twice to make sure we were going the right way in the Land Rover.

 

The Bracken was 5’ tall and even getting out of the ‘Old Girl’ was a problem, hence my decision to take the quad.

Well, what a surprise, the Forestry Commission must have been down and cleared it right the way to the shore!

There was even an area cleared for turning,

 

I was most impressed

Outback GVFX 3048e

Once I’d got the pebbles spread out I turned my attention to clearing and burning some heather at the back of the house. A bit of a longwinded process as I couldn’t really leave the incinerator unattended and it was quite slow to burn.

 

 

Still it made a far better smell than the recent barbequed chicken and mink  

As this is right outside ‘The Bunker’, that ‘lean too’ that houses the thermal store and spare battery bank, it seemed like the ideal time to connect it all up.

 

 

This Outback 3kW inverter has been sat here doing nothing since I bought it off eBay over a year ago. It was one of those ‘bargains’ that you just couldn’t afford to miss, brand new and still in the box with just one bid on it at around £600, they’re double that new and it only had a day or two to run. I think the foreign seller and it’s placement in the boating section may have put folk off or caused people to miss it. Also, the G bit of GVFX indicates ‘grid interactive’ which is a bit of a misnomer cos it’s actually illegal to connect this to the grid! Anyway, I stuck a bid on a little higher and even with the £25 delivery it came in at less than £700. Now bear in mind my current SMA SI6.OH was more than three times that price and you’ll know what I mean about it being cheap.

Of course I didn’t actually need it but I did already have  a serviceable 48V 950Ah battery bank  sat in the bunker doing nothing. Well, I won the inverter, screwed it to the wall and connected it to the battery bank and there it’s sat for over a year doing nothing.

Well today I rectified that and wired it all up, apart from a ‘transfer switch’ like this,

 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CHANGEOVER-SWITCH-GENERATOR-TRANSFER-125-AMP-1-SINGLE-PHASE-CO125PE-/262601453762?hash=item3d244430c2:g:Xw8AAOSwFMZWsQ1W

which I still have to buy. This will in effect give me 100% redundancy should my SMA system fail or need service/repair.

 

  

Once the output side was finished I programed the ‘Mate’,

another eBay bargain. This isn’t essential for the inverter to work but it does allow you to alter parameters and connect to a generator. With the inverter ‘inverting’ quite happily I then connected the input side to the generator and ‘hey presto’ it worked a treat.

These Outback ‘off grid’ inverters are very simple and rugged with the huge advantage of replacement boards being readily available along with instruction on YouTube of how to change them. They also have excellent support via http://www.outbackpower.com/forum/ and their network of dealers. The guys behind the company have a proven track record, it was themselves that started ‘Trace Engineering’ the original ‘off grid’ inverter company before selling it to Xantrex when it went down the toilet and then Schneider whereupon it landed in the septic tank   Alpha now own Outback and the founders went onto form ‘Midnite Solar’ another ground-breaking RE company that make probably the charge controllers in the world.

The SMA ‘off grid’ inverter I use is ‘all singing, all dancing’ and has a gazillion functions on it I’ll never use but you pay a premium for it. These inverters ‘do exactly what it says on the tin’ all day long and at a third of the cost. Sure you would have to ‘stack’ two and buy a ‘Mate’ to get the same (actually 50% more) output, but it would still be cheaper than an SI6.OH like mine.

For a simple and reliable ‘off grid’ system this is the inverter I’d choose, I think Studer http://www.studer-innotec.com/en/  and Victron https://www.victronenergy.com/inverters-chargers  are every bit as good but the Outback has component level spares unlike all the others. Why didn’t I buy one? well I did like all the extra functions of the SMA and it’s emphasis on ‘AC coupling’ but in the end I disabled the ‘frequency shifting’ function anyway.

Checking the mast

With autumn on the doorstep and the equinoctial gales around the corner my son and I decided to go and check out the broadband mast that supplies both ourselves and Applecross with the best and most reliable internet this side of a fibre optic cable. Though when Portree gets it so should we because that’s where the signal is relayed from.

It’s a bit of a trek up to the mast, just shy of a mile but a very steep country one at that so we take the quads as far as the ruins at North Arnish.

 

This is the halfway mark on the cable and from hereon in it’s hard work. The mast sits atop the highest peak there exposed to the fiercest of weather.

 

 

 

It must however, at one time have been a good enough path for at least part of the way, for half way up lies the remains of a wall/fence whose outline you can see in that heather mound. There’s also an old iron gatepost here and a wooden one further down.

 

 

On a good day you get a fine view of ‘Number 3’ with just our slate roof and the hen shed visible behind and ‘Calum’s Road’ in the far distance.

 

 

All seemed in order so we just tightened up all the guy wires, greased and checked all the scaffolding clamps and checked the ‘wizardry’ inside.

 

Not that I know what any of it does

Then it was a quick ‘hoof’ back to North Arnish and home, collecting a few stones on the way for the latest project.