Mammoth

A day of back bliping again but out for the evening walk.I have a free parking place opposite MrBs house, so went there and to my joy, he was there too, busy cleaning off the worst of the mud clumps from his "little" Eicher tractor. He had been out in the forest with it.

Took the opportunity for a Blip but not of his "little" workhorse Eicher but his gentlemanly cruiser, the Eicher Mammut, Type 3423 Built 1972 with 65HP. Spotless of course. And he will be glad I did - he doesn't like people to see any dirt when the tractors are in the garage. Fine when they are in use though. You could eat off his garage floor.

Little chat and then I set off into the rising moon and took a shot I quite liked, so have put that in as an Extra photo.

It was very cool on the walk with a stiff wind which has been blowing all day and negating and warmth from the wonderful shining sun we also had all day.

The combination of cold wind and sum resulted in today being the 8th day in January when Germany has had to give away free, a large amount of electricity as the renewables - wind & PV - work very well but we have little storage capacity and the power stations are not powered down. We do need the other sources for stability but soon nuclear power will end. However what is really getting people's backs up are the coal powered stations that are still being protected despite their awful environmental "footprint". I think alone for this many Germans would have liked to have seen the attempt at a "Jamaica" coalition with the Greens on board, come to fruition.

In 2016 Germany produced too much on 19 days. In 2017 it was 24 days and €180m given away to our neighbours.

I noticed today that our PV was really "pumping" and for the first time since October, I was able to switch on the electric immersion heater to heat up our 300 litre boiler. Today we generated 18kWh, used 8 to charge the battery, used 6 ourselves and sold 4 into the network.

And this "selling" to the network is the problem. The electricity company has to pay me 12 cents/kWh but gives it away free. Many of the older units are getting a guaranteed 40 or 50 cents/kWh. To compensate, all electricity is subject to a surcharge. Which as ever means, we customers pick up the tab. However it is the price for encouraging renewables and although it will rise in the next two or three years, it should then be coming down.

Even more reason to put more research money into storage, look more closely at water power to see if environmental issues can be solved, shut down coal-fired stations and build gas-fired which are totally flexible to changing usage and renewable generation.