Late this week here in the Land of Steady Precipitation has been dreary to the Nth power, unless, of course, you are calculating the kilo wattage that the winter freshet is producing at our corporate dam site out back, as “rain man” Bill Rutan is wont to do on his PC. The word that our hydropower plant was inching toward producing 10 kilowatts, a record, oozed inexorably along the architectural grapevine this morning: 9, 9.1, 9.2, 9.52 …etc. Typically, 7.5 is a good number.
Bill can monitor all things green and electric thanks to Spire software, which keeps hourly tabs on water, solar and geothermal power generation on site, which combined accounts for about 40 percent of office needs. Spire also tracks how much juice we are using in each building. On sunny days, for example, the “Gold Coast” office building, (there are a bunch of buildings here) with its solar array on its west-facing roof, is exporting electricity into the Great Greedy Grid.
It is also worth noting that despite this ever-so-gray day, the solar panels are producing a handful of kilowatts.
Ten kilowatts power one hundred 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, or more than twice as many of those more efficient compact florescent versions that we use here. A lot of our electric usage, however, comes from our computers and servers, and we are working on ways to reduce that demand.
The hydropower plant has been operating since 1982, and last year Bill did some maintenance that improved its performance.
So the weather outside may be frightening, but rain or shine we’re making hay.
Update from rain man Bill: At 5 AM this morning (2/26), the hydro peaked out at 9.97 KW. It has been over 9 since Wednesday morning.
