Power to the people

It's been a long and at times rather slow journey, but we are finally producing our own electricity!

A surprisingly small but pleasingly heavy box sat in the porch when I arrived home from work a week or two ago. I unpacked the turbine with great excitement. It is beautifully made, my Stream Engine, with its cast alloy casing, tight coils, chunky magnets and bronze turgo wheel. This wheel is only 5 inches across, and with the fire hydrant flow thundering out of the penstock I wondered how on earth it could capture all that water and all that power.

I managed to pilfer a couple of concrete blocks, cemented them down on their sides, and bolted the turbine on top. From the four way manifold I wrestled four lengths of 2" flexible hose into place, supplying each of the nozzles. These terminate in brass nuts drilled with a 5mm hole, each firing a jet of water directly at the cups of the wheel. Energy Systems and Design, who I am more than happy to name check, sent a selection of these nuts with nozzle sizes ranging from 2mm to 10. We will experiment with these to eek the maximum juice.

Once the plumbing was finished it remained only for me to rudely ignore numerous newly arrived guests, who seemed not to share my single-minded enthusiasm for the imminent realisation of a long held dream. I nervously connected up the cable. Hannah and the children back from school, it was time to release the flow. The family gathered around the door of the turbine house. I turned on the valves. With a mighty roar of water the turbine spun into life, sending the numbers on the voltmeter racing up!

After a day or two the whistling from the turbine quietened down, and now the loudest noise is the rushing of the water. This in itself is not quiet. In the turbine house itself (actually Gordon's old garden shed, more recently our pig house, now plonked on top until we build something better in the spring), it is deafening. But the swine bashed panels hold most of sound in, and I like to hear the energy anyway. Electricity is usually so silent in our homes.

As I feared the power is making only a small difference to our heating. The oil fired boiler is rated at 20-25 kW. Although I have yet to measure the wattage, the turbine is likely to be producing around 0.5 kW, fifty times less. Heating our homes and hot water require huge amounts of power, making lighting and appliance consumption seem slight. Our hydroelectric system is a better match for the latter, and with the PV system we are now planning, could supply most if not all of our needs. Heating will be better met with the wood stove and boiler, to which end we have just built another lean-to shed, ready to store the vast amounts of wood required!

It takes truly scary levels of power production to supply the needs of a 21st century home, and for most of us it simply comes with a flick of a switch and a quarterly, and currently largely affordable bill. I am beginning to stop taking this for granted.

Better without batteries?

The new DC immersion heater is fitted into the water tank, ready to take the 48v output from the hydro-electric turbine. Having wavered from the straight path for a while and toyed with the idea of batteries, I have returned. Batteries are hassle it seems; they need looking after and replacing, contain nasty chemicals, emit potentially explosive hydrogen gas, can be rapidly ruined by an incompetent user, and are hideously expensive: nearly two grand for my small system. I have not ruled them out for good, however. But I am for now setting up with a wonderfully simple system: a cable runs from the turbine to the immersion heater. That's it. No inverters, charge controllers, or monitoring systems. Of course there is no flexibility - the power will only heat water for our domestic hot water and space heating. There are also two concerns - one is that we will be in danger of boiling the water in our tank (unlikely), and the other is that the power will hardly make a dent in this mighty task (more likely).

In either event the system will need rethinking. But for now I am delighted and excited to be getting it up and running in such a clear and simple way. Those enchantingly passionate and geeky folk at Energy Systems and Design have finished the turbine now. It is on it's way.

hydro

The pipe is in, ready to take water from where the burn flows into the garden and carry it with building pressure all the way to the back of the byre. This is a fall of around 20 metres giving a pressure of 2 bar, or 30 PSI in old money. With a flow rate of 8 litres per second (about average for the Camnacar burn) this should provide a constant 800 watts, through the Streamengine. I have plumped for this solid little turbine despite, or perhaps because of it's relative expense. Buy cheap, buy twice (and live with second rate rubbish all the while)! I have a friend already dissatisfied with his second cheap far-eastern turbine.
Hopefully the Streamengine will live up to my expectations. Eccentric Canadian enthusiasts are currently putting one together to meet the demands of our system. Directing jets of water at the bronze wheel are four nozzles, each one controllable so we can make the most of the variable flow of the burn. When it's a a trickle then perhaps just one will be turned on. After rain or snow melt all four valves will be open, and water will still be pouring over and past the intake. This could be seen as an enormous amount of wasted power, but it is not worth designing the system around the sort of flows that are only available for a small proportion of the year. I hope I have pitched it about right with 110mm diameter pipe and 1.5 kW turbine. Time will tell.
To begin with I will direct the output to our 200 litre thermal store via an immersion heater and see how far it goes towards providing hot water and heating for the house. The way we use the power I expect to evolve over time. I don't yet have a grip on what this sort a wattage could usefully do for us. That the stream flows more strongly in the winter is ideal as our energy needs are very much greater then.  Of course space and water heating is the greatest demand, and even with a wood stove and boiler running more or less constantly the kerosine boiler does much of the work. Hopefully the turbine will begin to make the kerosine redundant. Within five years I would like to see that back of that system altogether. Securing a bigger and better supply of firewood and creating more space to season it will help. There is no substitute for well seasoned wood.
I will post more as the hydro system comes together.

Swallows inside

Trauma for the swallows nesting in the roof of the garage - a few days back their nest fell from the rafters leaving three dazed and confused chicks on the ground, and two very anxious parents continuing to fed and protect them. How they avoided being eaten by the cat I cannot imagine. They were at least close to fledging, and could fly about at ground level, but were unable to get themselves up to any kind of real safety. So there they stayed, huddled together wide eyed in the middle of the floor, madly cheeping with gaping mouths whenever the adults returned. It was actually rather wonderful to be working away building my shaving horse (for holding a piece of wood so I can sit and shape it with a drawknife) while watching these beautiful and rather helpless chicks being fed by two spectacularly acrobatic parents.
I last saw them two days ago sitting on the branches of a birch tree away up the garden, so I assume all is well and they are now fully fledged.
A red squirrel was bounding from tree to tree just by the house yesterday, a deer was outside the front door as I went out this morning, and rabbits are advancing on the vegetable garden, so it feels like the wildlife is closing in just now, some more welcome than others...

Take a breath

Such a wondrous time of year: I don't know whether to watch bugs beetling through burgeoning blades of grass, or simply gaze up through unfurling leaves to the blessed canopy above.

as busy as

It's all go, planting and digging, bodging and building.
Main crop tatties went in today, first earlies a week back, on the ground the pigs cleared last year just in front of the polytunnel. I am rather pleased with the long arching raised beds I've formed - practical yet aesthetically pleasing. Behind these beneath the birch and rowan trees I've planted a guild of fruit bushes, marching onions, and mint. I am undecided as yet whether to cover the bare soil between the plants with straw or a green manure - perhaps something to produce some chicken food.
The polytunnel looks great, all straight lines and neat sowings, in stark contrast to last years winding path and jungle feel. I'm told that your polytunnel says a great deal about you, so either I have changed, or am in the process of doing so, eh Tom? Or more likely just expressing another side of my personality. In any case I think we will produce alot more of the right kinds of food this year, rather than taking up so much space growing green tomatoes and pumpkins.
I've also built a chicken tractor to work some ground in the absence of pigs; we've decided not to get any this year as the freezer is full and we want to maximise use of the area cleared by the last lot. Pancetta is still plentiful too, nice and dry now so I hope it will stay good even as the weather warms up.
Our other focus for this year are the bees. We still have one colony, having lost the other over the winter. They left quite a store of heather honey, a consolation being greatly enjoyed by all the family, especially Hannah on her Lenten sugar fast. Not long to go now. We need to get the bees from the neighbouring field onto our land. This would have been easy during the winter when they were not flying, but now we are back to the 3 feet or 3 miles rule - either we step them 3 feet at a time, which would mean them slowly marching past our front door some time in July, or we seal up the hive and take it down the road for a while before bringing it back home. So of course the latter is in order. I will do this soon so that I can get on with multiplying the colony. We will lose out on honey, but I hope to end the year with 4 happy hives. More on this later as I work out how it all happens.

A good blether

There are moves towards a carbon aware/global warming initiative in our community. Funding is available, and there is some interest amongst the great and the good. So I have been taking a closer look at 'Transition Towns' and what's been set up in other communities. Wonderful things have been achieved in towns, cities and glens across the world. People are developing the resilience to survive and thrive in a changing climate (environmental, social and economic), and to lessen their impact on an already battered planet. All good stuff, to be applauded, celebrated, and imitated.
What I think a shame is how dry and depressing is so much of the literature. Transition information seems always to begin with gloomy talk of peak oil and climate change. Of course these are very real aspects of our times, which will no doubt have grave effects on us all in the coming years. But to begin this way in persuading people to join in on all the fun of developing their community is surely to preach to the converted and put off all the rest.
Transition developments include local food networks. People are increasingly interested in knowing about where their food comes from, and are proud to know the growers of their carrots and the curers of their bacon. Folks brag about how ethical and locally sourced their eggs are, or their cut flowers. And rightly so!
In our area some thought is going into how we might begin to source firewood from within the community. We live in a wooded glen, yet much of the wood burned here doesn't even come from this county. At the same time many of us would love to get out into the woods and saw, chop and stack. It's fun, it keeps you fit, it is a pleasing set of skills to develop, and a great sense of camaraderie tends to develop among foresters young and old. It is, in short, a grand day out. Harvesting timber for building and cabinet making is also a real possibility. Our new porch is built almost entirely from timber cut 3 miles away. The benches and boot locker within it will be made from ash cut here on the holding. I'm bragging: I'm pleased and proud!
This stuff is pleasing. And through it we develop a greater sense of involvement with and ownership of our lives. Not in a worthy, isn't this world crazy, we're all doomed kind of way. No - in a fun, friendly, active, interesting, learning, enlightening way. Sharing skills, learning from each other, and gaining delicious healthy food or a hearty stack of firewood is likely to precede an evening of shared food, drink and music, even to become the beginning of lifelong friendships...
Another idea here in Strathardle is to create a lift sharing scheme to make trips into town more enjoyable. Yes, it will mean that less cars frighten the road, less fuel is burned, and our cars will last longer. But surely the greatest and most noticeable benefit will be the blether and the bonding. It seems to me that most environmentally beneficial approaches to life are like this. Let's talk about what we can do that is fun, and friendly, and interesting, and begin here.

Nice and snow

A thin blanket of snow has fallen, a fresh canvas to record last night's garden manoeuvres. Fallow deer are now regular visitors, leaving a bigger more splayed print than the very neat little heart shape of the roe. Between these two the vegetable garden is more or less stripped bare now. I am haunted by the words of Geoffrey Dutton, the scientist, poet and gardener, who remarked that sooner or later every gardener admits defeat and puts up a deer fence. I am fast approaching that time, though of course the deer can be a valuable harvest in their own right, one being equal to much winter cabbage or kale, however sweet this becomes with the frost.
This winter will likely be remembered for many years, so harsh has it already been. Who knows what the next three months will bring? We are all tiring of the snow already, and the greatest falls may well be yet to come. Another good year for the skiing - Hannah and I enjoyed a great day up at Glen Shee after Christmas, reminding ourselves what excitement is to be had so close at hand! Many lochs and ponds look like their ice would hold - I may yet regret passing on my skates. I found myself thinking into the underwater world of the rainbow trout at Butterstone Loch yesterday, still being active, feeding on overwintering insect larvae, snails and perhaps each other. Ice fishing anyone? How entertaining to drill a hole and lower down a line!