Power #2: How Well Do Our Solar/Wind Power and Communications Work?

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Power #2: With the bases and tower built over the prior two seasons (see blog entry, “Building the Power Tower,”)  the second summer’s project focused on installing the power and communications components that we bought from Susitna Energy of Anchorage.  These items were hoisted, tested, repaired, and in some cases, replaced over the next few seasons by the skillful remote power team at H and K Energy of Anchorage who flew out with every conceivable tool they might possibly need for each project they anticipated, as well as for troubleshooting any surprises (since the only way back to their shop or Home Depot was by plane).  We all know how important it is to trust and maybe even like the repair people who work in your home.  It is even more important when, in a remote situation, they sleep on your living room floor and eat with the family!  H and K Energy has stayed with us for several days each, once or twice a year, remaining until like magic, I could call my mother and turn on a lamp.  Over the years, I have come to look forward to their companionability as well as yet another high-tech enhancement.  

(Note:  the following article is much more technical than any other on the site.)

How Do We Get Stuff with No Roads?

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)
 

Brrrr!

Because our home site is remote, everything we use has to be:
(a) local, like wood for building or fuel, or water, from the lake or
(b) expensively transported from elsewhere.  Transport is determined by weather, weight, and dimensions.  This means that shopping lists are developed for needs anticipated a year in advance, and have to include a hefty supply of redundant parts and equipment and dry goods. 

During the winter, the rivers (the –na suffix in names like Yentna, Chena, Susitna means "river: in the Athabaskan language) become “highways” for remote areas, allowing snow machine trailer transport of large, heavy and flammable items, like mattresses, or 55 gallon drums of diesel fuel that are not allowed or are prohibitively expensive to transport by ski or float plane (usually Cessna 182s, 206s, or de Havilland Beavers and Otters).  As of 2011, the planes from Anchorage charge $0.50 per pound unless you charter the whole plane.  Since a whole plane charter costs from $300 – 600, there is an obvious incentive to fill it with over 150 pounds of goods, since a 50 lb bag of groceries will cost $25 to transport by itself.   Each air taxi service has a shed or two at Lake Hood (the largest float plane airport in the world) for accumulated piles of purchases by bush cabin owners like us until time to fly them out.   

The alternative mode of transportation is by snow machine cross country and up river 42 miles, about 3 hours.  That is 42 miles to the boat launch.  Not to Walmart.  Before we bought our own snow machine, our neighbor charged us $300 per day for hauling everything he could carry on his trailer, which holds up to 1000 lbs. He snow machined up river, switched to his truck, stored near a river landing, and then made up to 13 shopping stops (for construction supplies, fuel, furniture, and anything else we could think of) before returning to the pier, loading up his snow machine trailer, securing his truck, and then traveling home, down river and cross country.  That $300 works out to about $0.33/lb for shopping and transportation.  It was well earned and easily paid! 

Power #1: We Build an Off the Grid Power Platform

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

(Power Article #1)  This is one of several articles on this blog describing the power platform my husband built off the "grid" with skillful Alaskan service providers.  This article describes the building process (without power tools).  The other articles describe the cost and functionality of the components we installed (and what worked and didn't), and how much power we use. 
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Building it piece by piece

Want Power?

For many city/suburban people, the conundrum to overcome in installing wind or solar power is the upfront cost and pay back time vs current monthly utility bills.    On the other hand, in dilapidated towns in northern India, with, presumably, unreliable energy, every hotel we stayed in had solar powered water heaters dating back to the 1970s. For us, out in the bush, closer to Rajasthan than Rochester, we had fewer cost/benefit issues to debate.  Want power?  

Two choices: 

A: gasoline or diesel powered generator or B: some combination of wind and solar power.

 As a matter of fact, after we bought our remote property in South Central Alaska, the first building goal, before cabin, outhouse, or any other structure was power for communications. Since my husband is not retired, the determiner of how long we could stay out in the boonies was the quality of communication technology.  His goal was not heat but Internet, not water but a phone.  As the project evolved, it seemed like many a man’s dream:  he could pee behind a tree (well, a million of them) while checking his blackberry.  From a wife’s perspective, those are two of the worst scenarios combined, but I digress.

The Land is Prepared for Buildings But I'm Not Prepared for this endeavor

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Although my husband had the vision to anticipate what this property could become and what it would mean to him, I definitely didn’t.  Our first few seasons felt like the absolutely bleakest way to spend a summer, like some chain gang of convicts clearing swamps for future county roads to nowhere.  I was hot, sweaty, bored, humiliated, sore, and lonely, particularly when he would disappear for a week at a time on business.  I had absolutely no confidence that Bryan had any idea of what he’d gotten us into.  One day, when the weed whacker’s head spun off, sending in who knew what direction all the little screws and washers under ferns and devil’s club leaves, I sat down in the middle of the forest and cried.  “What are we doing here?  You don’t know anything!” 

We didn’t have any of the right tools and we invariably broke the old ones our neighbors loaned us, in what started to seem like a canny plan to get new replacements from hapless cheechakos, as neophytes are known.  We certainly were naïve.  Each replacement required expensive arrangements to fly them out by air-taxi, along with anything else we suddenly realized we’d need, although we as yet had no place to store them.  Weren’t husbands who bought land in Alaska supposed to intuit all this stuff?   

Long Term Food Storage

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Those of us who have lived in Hurricane vulnerable parts of the country get annual reminders at the onset of storm season every June.  Media and supermarkets offer pragmatic lists of supplies to keep on hand. My family took such suggestions seriously, and the resulting preparation came in handy during ice storms and flu season as well as hurricanes and flooding.

I encourage people in the rest of the country to follow suit for whatever reasons make sense to them. I’ve been astonished to read how few households maintain even three days (9 meals) worth of food. For $20, $50, or $100, think of the shelf stable foods that could have enhanced the quality of life for the millions of people trapped by extensive 2010-11 power outages in areas as disparate as San Diego, Cedar Rapids, Tennessee, and Vermont.

The flowers are bok choy, Siberian
wallflowers, and asters 

In Bush Alaska, we stock up on long term food and supplies, primarily because to reach a supermarket we have to fly to one and we don’t do that very often. But, like “Hurricane Alley” residents, many Alaskans, city or rural, are wise enough to be prepared when a tree falls on a power line or a snow plow can’t get through. In one story that sounds like the Arctic version of Gilligan’s Island, friends flew out with another couple in their ski plane for a winter weekend at their hunting cabin. An unseasonably warm storm struck and it rained for days! This softened up the lake ice so much that it was not safe for the ski plane to depart until the temperature dropped for a sustained period, so the foursome was stranded in a very small cabin for s-e-v-e-n-t-e-e-n days. Fortunately, they had bulk storage of grains, pasta, and beans, but surely after a while the menu got pretty dull and the Canasta games pretty boring.

Below is information that I think may be useful for urban or rural folks who can envision a variety of reasons to bulk up on food supplies. You don’t need to be a “prepper”; you might want to have food on hand in case of inclement weather, illness, power outages, transportation glitches, food price inflation or a sudden influx of guests. Some of the products and information are based on personal practice and others are based on websites (see two listed below).