oh all right then

When is this party?

Ok - so it's winter and its been windy and I mustn't get carried away and staring at spreadsheets will make you go blind and all that. BUT - the purple area is the required output to meet our party date - the blue bit shows how much the turbine is over-performing. At this rate the party will be March 28 2016. But don't change yer plans just yet.... it gets less windy in summer so that blue bit should shrink. But then again the turbine was switched off for 14 hours this week.

I promise not to do another graph until the month is out!

Actually - I've just realised that I need to re-do the graph as 'actual income' vs 'projected income' cos 'income' is not a direct conversion of power output cos 'income' is higher for the first roughly 21kWh of energy generated. Oh god I guess I'd better explain this.

Based on the amassed evidence of one electricity bill, our house uses about 21kWh per day. For those first 21 kWh I've allowed an additional 'income' of 11.66p pkWh. Of course this isn't really income - it's non-expenditure - but it has the same bottom line effect as income.

If I'd paid more attention at school maths when we did this stuff - rather than daring each other to climb out of the window when teacher wasn't looking (I did very well at this - but was beaten by a pal who managed to climb out of our window and in through the window of another classroom (while a class was on in there too), steal a fire extinguisher, climb out of the window and then walk in through the door of our class and announcing to the teacher that he was checking that all classrooms had a fire extinguisher and sitting down again. Teacher looked perplexed but couldn't work out what had happened - if I'd paid more attention I'd be able to confidently express this as a formula. Instead I'll have to make it up:

income = total energy generated x FiTs + (total power generated/2) x export tariff + 21 kWh x 11.66

So there.

Anyway - revised graph may follow - only i'm losing the will to live - how about you?

Party Invite - 28th December 2017

Sub-Title: The joy of spreadsheets

Sub-sub-title:- the irrelevance of spreadsheets

Sub-sub-sub-sub-title:- about bloody time too.

And other subsub-titles but I think you get the point.

It started almost as soon as we moved here - trying to find a wind turbine installer to survey the croft and offer us a quote. We'd succeeded in this part of the exercise in under a year - rapid progress as we now know.

Then there were long delays as we tried to get a grant from SRDP to help pay for the installation - we failed in this but things have moved on and the Feed In Tariff make the installation of renewable energy better value without public funding support.

Further delays ensued while we gnawed on our knuckles over the cost of the house renovations and the cost of getting the dairy etc prepared for the cheese making. There's been a number of big compromises here on the basis that we 'know' the wind turbine will generate income whereas the cheese enterprise is more speculative - but it's been a big sacrifice by Jussi.

And then came the delays in getting the installers and Scottish Hydro to re-quote, a delay of a couple of months to get a variation on the planning permission and generally getting the ducks quacking from the same hymn sheet.

Actual real work started around Christmas with digging trenches for the cables to run from the turbine to the byre. Then there was a pause (our main contractor's real job involves being in Nigeria most of the time so everything is stop-start :- a very typical Highland experience).

Then Jussi and the Girl went to Hamburg and things really started moving. I mention this so you feel sorry for me having to cope on my own with goats and dogs and cats and guinea pigs and chickens AND wind-turbine installers.

But 20/2/2012 is the day that the turbine was inally commissioned - and here are the piccies - including a shot of the actual generator which sits inside the nascelle - also showing the springs which pitch the turbine blades according to wind speed - very useful round here.

The total cost of the exercise, including planning permission, site surveys, the turbine, installation, groundworks and Scottish Hydro addition work is £31276:48. This is a lot. If the initial estimates of the installers are to be believed we should average a generation of 41.4 kWh per day. Based on a huge number of exceptionally wild assumptions this means that the turbine should pay for itself in 2138 days. Hence the party on the 28th December 2017. You are all invited and I promise the best home brew in the universe.

RSVP

You have no idea how much fun it is to watch the kW hours coming in - and to sit and watch the electricity meter spin backwards - as you'll see - albeit in double vision on account of the beer - when you come to the party. (You are welcome to come and visit in advance of the party of course - bookings being taken now for the summer).

Poppies

I went to the shop today and was asked if I was going to the service at the war memorial. I said "no". It was clearly the wrong answer and no further conversation ensued.

But Jeesh you should have heard the conversation going on in my head as I walked home. So I thought I'd share you a wee rant.

I have no problem with those who want to honour the 'fallen'*, and I have no problem with people who choose to do it by wearing poppies and attending ceremonies. But all too often such services use words like glory and honour and valour and I don't agree with these notions.

Invite me to a ceremony that invites us to learn from past mistakes and I'm more likely to attend.

Invite me to something that remembers the others that were killed, the murdered civilians who were bombed or starved from their homes, or merchant seaman who froze running the north atlantic convoys.

Invite me to something that cries for the fathers and mothers, sisters, brothers and lovers, sons and daughters that were left bereaved by the killings.

Invite me to something that cries out for true freedom of press and information so we can make honest choices about whether a war is just and so that we will never be lied to again - whether it's 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq or soldiers eating babies in occupied Belgium in 1914**, whether it's the flow of information controlled by the state, or controlled by a few powerful people like Rupert Murdoch***.

Invite me to something that spits on the memory of egotists and morons, from the 1st world war generals who sent wave after wave of terrified men over the trenches to certain death or pompous twats like Tony Blair shaking hands with 'the hand of history'.

This rant is not meant to dishonour the dead in any way, it's merely a plea that we learn and try to avoid such wastefulness again. It's a long standing campaign symbolised by the white poppy. Whatever we do we should break the link between honouring those killed and the sort of jingo-ism that it is so often polluted by.

There - time for a cuppa methinks.


* I think fallen means killed. It means killed in appalling circumstances, usually hundreds if not thousands of miles from home, family and loved ones. It usually means killed by having a lump of metal tear through your flesh leaving great holes in your body that you can stare in amazement at as your life ebbs away.

** If ever you are in Edinburgh make a trip to Pitt Street and find the relief over one of the industrial units entitled "The Glory of the German people 1914" It is a superb piece of bullshit propoganda and features German soldiers eating babies amongst other atrocities. How much more sophisticated are we now at spotting when we are being lied to, and how much more sophisticated are the liars?

*** Or perhaps Google?

RBS sponsors low carbon conference

Those lovely people at Friends of the Earth Scotland weren't too impressed, so they came up with this little ditty - well impressive!

Still living

Some of you may be worried that our last reported food experimentation has terminated our existence. Fret not. The Violino di Capri is bloody wonderful. Even the Girl loves it.

Recriminations

Hang it! That is the call this weekend. Hang the violino di capri.

Meanwhile I was regaled by an anecdote this week. A lady, a well respected member of the community was having work done on her house. She couldn't be there at the time and had to leave the house open so that the workman could let himself in. A common enough occurrence and nothing to worry about. Until she discovered the workman was a McPhee!!!

Violino di Capri

No relation.

The freezer is full. Need some other way of preserving the meat. Violino di Capri is our answer.

It's a cured goat leg - called a violin because you're supposed to hold it like a violin while you cut it. Hopefully not like a concert violinist, more like a folk violinist, if you are tempted to hold it like a classical player I whole-heartedly recommend cutting away from you.

The recipe came from here - and for once I followed the recipe. Except that we dont have sodiium nitrite, so I substituted more salt. And I couldn't be bothered to grind 10 grms of black pepper but we had some pre-ground white pepper instead. And we didn't have any powdered garlic so I just used 4 cloves of fresh garlic instead. And we dont have scales sensitive enough for anything less than 10 grams. So I guessed. 10 Juniper berries will be roughly 3 grams innit? (the recipe links used a rather small goat leg - ours was nigh on 3.5 kg)

And then of course will come the hanging in a chiller cabinet. We don't have one but we'll worry about that in the weeks to come.

The lack of sodium nitrite is a bit of a worry. It's a good idea to use it because it inhibits many nasty things like botulism. It also helps the meat keep a pink colour which is generally considered more attractive. My substitute for Sodium Nitrite was extra salt and a darn good anti-bacterial clean down of everything used in the prep. Here's hoping. Death by botulism is pretty unpleasant.

The lack of piccies is due to Jussi having the camera to photograph more goat kids.

I wanted to take piccies