PPPPPP

Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

I've been heating with wood since 1976.  ~43 years, doing flue maintenance annually.  Or more often.  Today, I hit a low point in flue condition.

I knew last year that it was time to service the flue pipe but I postponed.  I knew it was time in the Spring.  All that nice weather with a months dead fire and no smoke.

Cool weather.  Build my second fire of the season.  "I'll do the flue pipe next stretch of good weather".

Smokey fire, drawing poorly.  Stove about half full of wood with a poor fire.  House is filling with smoke.  Messed around.  Shoveling ashes. Tapped on the lower flue thinking I could jar an obstruction down.  My hand went about half way into the pipe.  More smoke streaming into the house.  Shut off air supply as well as possible and got some new pipe which has a breakable seam lengthwise.  Put new pipe over old and wired it down.  Smoke situation improves.  I notice another weak bulging place in the next higher section of flue pipe.  Put another new piece over it and go in search of more wire.  Return to better position the 2nd piece and find it too hot to handle; burned my hand.  Wired it down in a sub optimal position.

Now, I have to wait for the fuel to be exhausted so I can take the flue down without too much more smoke coming into the house.  That fire burn down normally takes at least two days.  We have 3+ days of cold weather before us. Maybe I'll get my lash up secure enough that I can burn during the cold spell.  Maybe I'll resort to electric heat.  From the grid.  I barely got the PowerWall charged today; heavy clouds all day.  I considered trying to put the fire out with water.  What a mess that would make.  Maybe the whole flue pipe system will fall down and all the flue gas will vent into the house. Then, I'll move out until the fire is burned out and the smoke dissipated.  Maybe my end will come from smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning.

I guess I should turn this into a blog post.  I'll take a photo or two. I can still see the humor in it.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/zCrGMvRcooaGxXgs6


Later.... it turned out fairly well.  Every single piece of flue pipe was falling apart.  No two pieces held together so I had to make one trip outside for each piece.  Most years, I pull it out, put whole assembly outside, and clean out the inside with a wire brush made for the purpose.  Then replace the bad pieces and reuse the others.  Fortunately, I had all pieces needed in stock.  Will I remember to replenish stock for next year?

Now, the stove is working WONDERFULLY well!  Good hot fire.  Not a hint of smoke in the house.  Ready for the first freese of the season.  Ready for a long cold winter.

Three beautiful sunny days in October!

But, that's out of 12 days in the billing period.

The house has peaked at 101.6 kwh in sales, worth about $6.50
The average per day has been only 52.4 kwh, worth about $3.35
Extrapolating to $100.50 for a 30 day month.

"Across the Road" peaked at 115.6 kwh, worth about $7.40
The average has been 72.9 kwh, worth about $4.67
Extrapolating to $140.10

The BigBarn/Pool/GuestHouse peaked at 95.6 whw, worth about $3.82
The average has been 51.4 kwh, worth about $2.06
Extrapolating to $61.80

37.5 kva transfomer

https://photos.app.goo.gl/3AEB5Y6vR8FKEWMH6

Cloudly, rainy weather will not likely show increased production.  I'm EAGERLY awaiting some sun.  My share of the cost of the upgrade was a bit less than $500; that was covered by my built up credit from previous energy sales.

With the replaced 15 kva, my production (the excess sold to the utility) was limited to about 15kw, with a peak below 18kw.  With the new transfomer, I hope to sell, at times, up to about 40kw.   For that new transformer, I am in the process of adding panels and reconfiguring installed panels to the steeply sloped east and west facing configuration on TwoFaced Rails.

Across the road on another 15kva transformer, where my panel configuration is mainly steeply sloped east and west facing, I see production of ~17kw for 8+ hours per day with cooperative sun.  On sunny days, I can sell as much as 110 kwh; production migh be ~140kwh.  I expect that meter/transformer to be my next candidate for an upgrade.  Perhaps a 50kva.  If so, it should support significant additions to production.

10/18/19  A sunny day and disappointment in increased production.
Top image is for the house (37.5kva transformer), total energy: 115kwh.
Sales to the utility: 94.5kwh (~$6.05)
Bottom image is for "across the road" (15kva transfomer), total energy:  145kwh.
Sales to the utility: 113.7kwh (~$7.28)

In both the above images, the lower lighter green areas represent roof top panels; all panels pointing the same direction, near south.  The dark green areas are ground mounts that point various directions.

Not related but my recent electric bill was -$185.81, down from -$200.90 the previous month.  The 3rd meter, which is credited annually rather than monthly and at a lower rate, should add about $58 to the month's value.   The 3rd meter added about $3.37 to yesterday's production value; $16.59 total for three meters.

10/28/19
Some clarification on the power going through the 37.5kva transformer.
When I had the 15kva installed, peak power supplied to the utility was around 17kw.  After twiddling a bit, my new peak power is around 22kw.  Not too bad but I had hoped for more.  I've increased the number of panels in the north yard from 14 to about 20; the 10 ga wire should handle 4-5kw and I'm seeing peaks of near 5kw.  The roof top is limited by the inverter to about 5kw.  The old aluminum wire that supplies all other PV at the house, south yard and south field, seems limited to 12-14kw.  My disappointment is in the capacity of that wire and I am in the process of installing additional capacity.  I hope for about 100 amps more; 20+kw.  With that added capacity and enough panels, I should reach my goal of 30-40kw at the house meter/transformer.

Soon: additional capacity across the road.  Maybe going from ~17kw to 40-60kw.

W. F. Strong

I watched a rerun episode of a Texas Country Reporter story on W. F. Strong which stimulated me to look up podcasts for Strong's little stories.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/texas-standard-stories-from-texas/id1200840048

They play on NPR's local station but they are hard to catch.  I recommend listening to at least one.

You might be able to find some TCR episodes here:
http://texascountryreporter.com/

For those unaware that I am a movie star

This from the creator/director/something of the movie Quaker Oaths:

Hi friends of Quaker Oaths!

As you may remember, Quaker Oaths is now streaming on Amazon Prime. For the last year, the number of viewers has been steadily going up and up, which has been really exciting to see- total strangers are finding the movie, watching it and leaving (mostly!) glowing reviews.   It's also great because the more views we get, the more it goes up in the all-powerful Amazon algorithm, and then it's more likely to get on people's homes screens as a suggested watch.

So yes, this is an email all about algorithms! 

I'm writing today to ask a favor- 

If you are someone who does Amazon Prime and you have the time, can you please put on Quaker Oaths and let it play all the way through to the end*  and then leave it a short review? My distributor has told me that what puts a movie ahead is people giving it a full watch and then reviewing it- that counts as a verified review. We need 100 of these verified reviews to put us on another level of Amazon Prime-ness. 

And also- spread the word if you can! Think of one or two people you know who can also Amazon Prime this thing- that would really help get our numbers up. Like a chain letter, except you don't end up getting anything later on*. 

I promise this is not about making money, we just want people to see this movie!

Thanks so much for all your past support of the film, I appreciate you all!

-Lucy

*Most of you have probably already watched the movie and don't need to see it again,  but maybe you could just have it on in the background while you wash dishes or sleep or something else fun like that!

**I think that's what happens with real chain letters too

Sunny Day Power

The top image is from the new "across the road" Curb energy monitor sited in the main breaker box for the electric meter over there.  The lighter green lower area is for 43 roof mounted panels.  The darker green is for the new three TwoFaced Rails of 18+19+19 east facing PV panels and the same number west facing.  The roof mount is showing too little energy; with about 10kw worth of panels, it should go up to about 8kw under the conditions we had; it is only doing about 4kw.  I have no explanation except maybe the ~8 year old panels need cleaning.

The lower image is for the house with 26 roof top panels and 131 ground mount panels facing, at shallow angles, various directions.  The mid day step down and later step up is a result of inverters shutting down, then coming back up, as a result of high voltage which is, in turn, a result of the power limit of the too small transformer.

Different Curb displays indicate that the upper image is the result of 143 kwh while the lower is 110  kwh.

I just got the "across the road" Curb working yesterday.
The above well illustrates the peak flattening that is my goal using steeply sloping TwoFaced Rails.  "Steeply sloping" is 65-70 deg from horizontal.  On older rails, I used slopes of 30-45 deg.  Coincidentally, today was the best sun day that we've had in a very long while.  There was a little late cloudiness after about 5:30pm.

In the morning, I'll get Bluebonnet's reporting of my energy sales for the day and report here.

The next morning:
For the top meter, "across the road", my utility credited me with 102.8 kwh.  A bit disappointing since production measure was 143.  The demand was a water well which pulled about 2kw at about 50% duty cycle for about 12 hours.  So, about 12kwh.  A freezer pulls about 300 watts at more than 50% duty cycle around the clock.  I did not realize that the freezer might be using 5kwh/day.
For the "house" meter, my utility credited me with 65.5 kwh.  That meter has quite a lot of load including up to 2.6kw of air conditioning and PW recharging of ~12kwh along with some EV and golf cart charging. I'm a bit surprised  (in the other direction) that the house demand seems to be only about 45kwh; I did some significant EV charging yesterday.