Some random pics of my hens

 

Poor old Coriander (ginger hen), seen here in front of her friend Cumin.  She is OK, but I have kept her and Cumin inside the Eglu for a few days to make sure she is recovering from the fox attack.

mad Vanilla  the Cream Legbar. I have decided to go and buy a Leghorn, to get white eggs and also so Vanilla isn't the only mad looking hen!

hens still have not worked out how to get the gate open!

See the Photovoltaic panels on the garage roof and the Solar Thermal tubes on the house roof?

Energy from the Sun

 

A gratuitously self indulgent post, this one! Notice anything different about the woodstore roof, beyond the polytunnel? And can you see the solar thermal tubes on the house?

Thanks to these wonderful bits of kit, for the last week we have been generating around £7 worth of        electricity per day, (thank you, Feed in Tarrif) AND our bought in electricity usage has dropped to less      than 5 units per day. We have also had a seemingly endless supply of hot water! We have had to adjust our usage patterns but that's OK, I don't feel its a hardship to have to wait for the cooker to finish before running the washing machine. The electricity we sell back to the grid then goes off to be sold to other people , thus helping THEM to use truly renewable energy as well. 

Hurrah! *We* are generating clean, renewable energy, which gets sold to Good Energy! How cool is that idea!  Compost Mansions electrons!                                                                                                                                                   

Its wonderful, simply wonderful, to sit and use this computer now, using solar generated electricity, while     drinking a cup of tea made with solar generated electricity, while the washing machine is washing clothes using solar generated electricity and hot water heated by the sun, water which was pumped up from our borehole by, yep, you guessed it, solar generated electric. Between the PV's, the Solar Thermal tubes and   the  woodstore, I feel pretty damn  like the cat who got the cream, right  now !                                                                                            

Sorry, I'll take my grin somewhere else, shall I? ;-))

 

Photovoltaics going up at Compost Mansions.

Well I think I have mentioned it in the past as something we have long wanted to do, but we have finally bitten the bullet and ordered the Pv's.

We are going to have 14, 185 w panels, Sharp NU 185 single crystal photovoltaic panels , each one consists of 48 monocrystalline cells, open circuit voltage 24 volts, with an SMA Sunny Boy 2500 inverter to tie it in to the mains electricity system. There will then be a total generation metre, to record what gets generated.

These will go on the back of the garage and workshop roof. Which rather conveniently faces 165 degrees, so SSE and will be a great site for them. We would reasonable expect to get around 850 KWhrs per Kw installed, so will be getting about 2200 KWHr a year of our own generated electricity.

Some of the tree felling I talked about on here in the winter was to clear shading trees, only a problem in the winter when the sun is low, but it all will help ( and provided lots of lovely wood for the logburner!).

The system will be grid tied (off grid proved to be a bit problematical, with the batteries and the added complication)

So yesterday we did the first part of the install which was to lay armoured cable in a trench from the garage to the house. This involved Ken the Dig and his JCB, and a lot of shoveling and poking of Cat 5 cable inside a sheath to protect it in the trench.

We are doing the gravel drive completely in a few weeks as well, so the mess left behind after the trench was re filled in, doesn't matter for a few weeks and then Ken the Dig will come back and make it all lovely and level and weed free and beautiful ( after we have gone and bought a load of stone, geotextile and gravel)

So , it is all very exciting and I will chronicle the events on here, as they unfold....