It’s one of the punctuation points of the year – peak bluebell. And every year, as we remove more of the bracken and plant more trees, it gets better.
So here are a few images from May 2019:
Peak Bluebell – 2019
Author: Ian Mitchell
Tiny steps towards greener energy
Elsewhere we have mentioned that we have a micro-hydro generation system on the farm. It’s not huge, but it makes a small contribution to the growing proportion of UK energy which comes from renewable sources.
This morning I found a site which tells us exactly what proportion of the UK demand we satisfy. Gridwatch.co.uk isn’t a compelling site, but it does have real-time, hard data on where our power comes from at any given time.
This is the picture from today – a sunny day in February 2019:
So right now, the UK is consuming around 40GW of electricity, of which 674MW is coming from Hydro.
And our contribution?
This is the real-time reading from us: ok, it’s the middle of winter, and not much rain recently. Maximum is around 8kW.
Which means we’re creating about 1/10,000 th of the UK hydro energy. We also have solar PV, which is producing 3.3kW right now (middle of the day, sunny, February), which is a bit extra.
This might give you an idea of how much hydro and PV it takes to make a difference to the bigger picture. Like I said – tiny steps.
Sun on a winter’s day
One of the best bits of working here is that when the sun shines, we can enjoy the outside. This is especially welcome in the middle of winter.
Take today for example.
It’s the middle of February, but it’s sunny and warm (well, one-jumper-warm) and a good day for having coffee outside.
It keeps surprising us that taking a break outside is great for giving the brain a rest, looking at the view, and getting fresh ideas.