Saturday, October 8th was a day full of rain. There was not much sun on Friday, and there was little wind either. I had to shut off the solar power because the batteries were very low. I also had to use 1 KWh of power to heat the water to a temperature comfortable enough for a nice shower. I have become quite reliant on nice sunny Florida weather.
I stayed home all day, watched the boob tube, and did some small things around the house. I rarely spend all day at home, and I got a little stir crazy!
Total grid power use for the house was 4 KWh. Not too bad considering the lack of sun.
Sunday, October 9th brought some relief from the constant rain of the day before, but there was little sun. I kept the solar feed to the house turned off to give the batteries some much-needed charge. I did manage to get out in the late afternoon to my Thai Chi group, but I took the van. I had not filled it with gas from my return from DC, and I did not want to leave it empty for any longer. I also went to pick up my friend Kenny because he was stranded at his house because he could not drive. He had problems with his teeth, and was on pain medication. Kenny has given me rides more times than I can count, and it was my turn to return the favor.
The traffic lights were not kind to me on Sunday, and the 31 miles driven probably meant about 33 pounds of CO2 put into the atmosphere. There is also a problem with the starter on the van. It has been acting up for a while. It often only clicks when the key is turned, and requires several turns of the key before the starter engages. The problem with this is that the repeated clicking resets the computer, and the van does not run as efficiently as it could. Repair of the starter is now on my to-do list.
Total grid power use for the house was 3 KWh. This figure probably represents the power generated by my system of solar panels on a sunny day.
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| This is where the solar panels and wind generator store power. I am waiting for better battery technology, but this works for now. |
Monday, October 10th was a fairly sunny day. I decided to give the batteries more opportunity to charge, and used grid power only. I did some work on the sliding door for my guest bathroom, and mostly stayed around the house. I did go to the library and to Publix in the evening, and used the e-scooter for this trip. Because the solar was resting, there was probably about 300 watt-hours of grid power used for this trip. This is quite a bargain for 10 miles.
I have neglected to mention my impact due to food for the last few days. There was one breakfast at Ikea with the two strips of bacon, there was a good day on Saturday when I consumed no meat, and there was a good day on Sunday when I ate at Jason's salad bar for dinner. Monday was a frozen chicken dinner. Each day there were bananas, frozen OJ, and several snacks of cereal bars and yogurt. Any packaging from these snacks went into the garbage. Yogurt comes in a type of plastic which Orange County does not recycle. I wonder why this is?
Total grid power use for the house on Monday was 4 KWh. It was almost too hot to sleep with no A/C, but a fan managed to do the trick.
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