Bottom Line: Weather Calls the Shots

You've heard of Chimney Sweeps; how about Solar Panel Sweeps?

It was a cold night, down to -20°C (not factoring in wind-chill). The early morning brought only slight improvement but the sky was clear (one of the reasons behind the cold night since dense clouds hold in some “heat”) so, fortified with coffee, I suited up and climbed the ladder to clear the rooftop solar panels of snow. I had already removed snow from them a couple times during yesterday’s snow squalls, leaving just a light coating remaining. With direct sun, eventually the snow would have melted off on its own as the dark panels absorbed today’s sun rays.  So why do a task that would have been taken care of on its own? In this case the make-work project was not due to my previous life as a government employee but because I wanted to get maximum possible power generation as soon as the sun was high enough to clear the trees that surround the house. At this time of year, with the sun low on the horizon, rising late and setting early, even on a clear day there are only 4-5 of decent power generation so, most importantly, I wanted the batteries to get a full and sustained charge.

Oil-filled mini-heater uses 600 watts.

Peak solar generation means ample power, and a good time to do some ironing, run the laundry machine, the air cleaner, and anything else I avoid using on cloudy, windless days. Today there was excess power so I even ran a heater to supplement the woodstoves. I bought this small space heater (as usual, on sale at Canadian Tire a few weeks ago) which I put in the far corner of the dining room, where the woodstove heat doesn’t as easily find its way to. Same idea as my solar-powered chainsaw and induction cooktop, it’s about making the best use of resources when they’re available.

Other things I do when the temps dip down low include burning beech in the woodstoves (it burns hotter and longer with one of the highest BTU values of the hardwoods) instead of the elm, hickory and ash that take up the majority of my woodshed space. I’ve also learned it’s helpful for the comfort of the whole house to run the basement woodstove even if I’m not going to be down there. I make sure there are suet plugs in the woodpecker feeder and top up the other bird feeders with black-oil sunflower seed rather than mixed seed, since it provides the birds more energy (i.e., calories) which is important in the cold.

Living off-grid, surrounded by forest, you can’t help but be in tune with what is happening in the natural world. It’s not for everyone. Sometimes you can’t always do exactly what you want when you want (especially if it is power-intensive) and other times there are suddenly pressing tasks requiring a quick change of priorities. But sometimes I wonder if modern western life has become too convenient. I’m reading a book about the history of this area and here’s what life was like for the settlers back around 1840:

Their first homes were roughly assembled using the easiest available materials, sod and timber. Historian E.C. Guillet described the living conditions in one of these early pioneer shanties through a quote from a Mrs. Cook in Bruce County, “the shanty to which we went had a bark roof, and this roof leaked so badly that when it rained my husband had to hold an umbrella over us when we were in bed.” (from Owen Sound, The Port City, by Paul White, pub. 2000 by Natural Heritage Inc, Toronto).

The large timbers in the log cabin half of my home date back to those settlement days in the mid-1800s. As I sit here looking at the hand-hewn axe marks on the walls and think about what life was like it sure makes me grateful for how I live and reminds me not to begrudge clearing off my solar panels!

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