2005-04-24
HOMEFRONT
The electrician shows when he does and the replacement for our Georgia O'Keefe Tree has finally arrived | Far less dramatic, and considerably uglier
the new "tree" stands tall between ours and the neighbor's properties | First there is the very mundane setting up of equipment, followed by boring out a new hole for the replacement |
The neighbor comes out to watch the whole event; he's got off from work this day |
Me, I'm getting ready to leave, but they show up early enough for me to keep track of part of the event | Besides, I want to 
document the next chapter in this saga |
The digging seems uneventful enough, save for the fact that they run afoul of some 10" diameter roots, which causes a little bit of a slowdown | The workmen are
swift and efficient | They'd done this before, you can tell | Of course, knowing this makes me no less nervous when the boom bounces the power lines to the house up and down, 
but I feign being unperturbed |
One of the workmen and I talk casually about going off-grid; he seems to know a bit about solar technology, mentions a friend who got PV cells off the internet fairly cheap "...you can buy them on E-Bay" he remarks |
I talk about how, back in the 1970s, when I lived in the Adirondacks, my neighbor, a Clarkson University electrical engineer, conducted a study ~assuming 60% cloud cover all year long~ and then determined that socal heating was cost competitive with the most expensive heating fuel available | He seemed impressed | That said, We're still on the grid, and the treated green pole is no replacement for Georgia O'Keefe's tree | But life goes on |
The electrician shows when he does and the replacement for our Georgia O'Keefe Tree has finally arrived | Far less dramatic, and considerably uglier
the new "tree" stands tall between ours and the neighbor's properties | First there is the very mundane setting up of equipment, followed by boring out a new hole for the replacement |The neighbor comes out to watch the whole event; he's got off from work this day |
Me, I'm getting ready to leave, but they show up early enough for me to keep track of part of the event | Besides, I want to document the next chapter in this saga |The digging seems uneventful enough, save for the fact that they run afoul of some 10" diameter roots, which causes a little bit of a slowdown | The workmen are
swift and efficient | They'd done this before, you can tell | Of course, knowing this makes me no less nervous when the boom bounces the power lines to the house up and down, but I feign being unperturbed |One of the workmen and I talk casually about going off-grid; he seems to know a bit about solar technology, mentions a friend who got PV cells off the internet fairly cheap "...you can buy them on E-Bay" he remarks |
I talk about how, back in the 1970s, when I lived in the Adirondacks, my neighbor, a Clarkson University electrical engineer, conducted a study ~assuming 60% cloud cover all year long~ and then determined that socal heating was cost competitive with the most expensive heating fuel available | He seemed impressed | That said, We're still on the grid, and the treated green pole is no replacement for Georgia O'Keefe's tree | But life goes on |INFO ON GETTING OFF GRID: Two starting points include Rebel Wolf's Energy Self-Sufficieny Newsletter and the outcomes of a PV Workshop that was sponsored by the Maine Solar Energy Association |
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