Social media is evil.

[Robin4]

@Kath9 from Albany made a great comment today! She said...."Hang in there @Airbnb - this to shall pass!."...and it will.

My concern is that social media sites...and I guess we could put the CC in this category, search for dud content.

If I use America as an example, over here in Australia we only see the best and the worst of America, we don’t get to hear or see that vast middle ground where nothing newsworthy happens. For that reason outsiders tend to see the US as a nation of extremes.

For argument sake, a Utube video will show a street interviewer in Chicago, Memphis, Wichita, asking those that pass on the sidewalk, “Where is Australia?” and half of them don’t even want to volunteer an answer they just shrug their shoulders. Of the other half, 50% of them will say it’s in Europe or in the south Atlantic ocean, only 5% will have a stab at where on the globe Australia is.

We in Australia look at this and go….”You have to kidding, how does the bulk of that nation actually make it to adulthood!

The thing they don’t reveal is 80% of the people stopped knew exactly where Australia was, the video producer just didn’t think that 80% was worth showing in the video clip.

We don't get an accurate representation on social media, we see the extremes.

Airbnb has done sh*t loads of good, I have loved my association with Airbnb, and they have never done the wrong thing by me.....they send me guests and pay me....all 370 of them over the past 4 years, never missed once!

I am cross that the management try to fudge their way around issues, but @Kath9 has a good point, the company have been good for us, sure it hasn't been perfect, and there are many legitimate complaints in any business venture, Christ, I copped enough in mine! Running a business is hard, you can't be all things to all people.....and at times I think we need to remember that! 

Social media does not necessarily makes us better informed, it just polarises us!

Cheers.......Rob

[Kath9]

@Fred13, you're welcome. As an actual editor in real life, trust me, I was having convulsions over it too (and it was too late to edit it!). Anyway, glad I could help - you should be able to acrobatics on that scaffolding now 🙂

[Fred13]

I bet you can now appreciate my concern? 😄

 

(The scaffold  is only a lousy 8 feet off the ground!  LOL)

[Robin4]

@Fred13 

Hey Fred, that's not scaffold! That's called 'walking the plank'. I sure can see your concern.

There is no way I would work on that, you are a brave man!

Have a look at the catwalks I put up just to clean my solar panels every now and then.......

I have got myself set up with a tap and a hose reel with a water mop and I give the panels a once over every 5 or 6 weeks to keep them efficient.

I am presently experimenting with 3 large (about standard door size) old mirrors to reflect the late afternoon sun back down onto the panels to get around the 'shading' from a large tree on the western side of the array! Not sure how effective it will be yet, but the mirrors cost me nothing so, it's worth having a go at it....even if I just get an extra 3 Kws out of system it will be worth it! On a good day I can get between 37 to 45 Kws, this was an exceptional day....

Costs nothing to get it from the sun, so why not.

Once again, so impressed with your handwork Fred and you are making great headway, thanks for that and show us a bit more from time to time.

Cheers........Rob

[Fred13]

My goodness, what a fantastic bank of panels. I am running the island with only 5k system, which thus far has proved more than adequate; though we do not have Air Conditioining (the BIG power hog) since the island always has a cool breeze.

[Robin4]

@Fred13 

Yeah Fred, I can understand in your location there would not be the need for a major electricity source. My location is a bit different.

We produce almost 4 times more electricity than we need during the summer months and we export that surplus back to the grid.

During the winter months we produce about 2/3 of what we need. One an overcast day production will be down to 18-20 Kws, and if we have guests in, we sometimes chew through as much as 34 Kws over a 24 hour period, running 3 hot water services and 16Kws of air conditioning/heating.

The reason I have such a large system, (23 x 350w panels) we get a credit of 16c pr Kw for what we export back to the grid but, it cost 38c pr Kw for what we import.

I need to put in almost three times what we import to end up the year without having to pay an electricity bill. 

Cheers......Rob

[Melodie-And-John0]

Love the Array @Robin4 ,  The raised sidewalk is pretty cool also, make maint and cleaning a little nicer.  The Mirrors should help, certainly worth a try.  I would love solar but its not a great choice for upstate NY, were not known for having an abundance of sunshine around these parts.   

[Robin4]

@Melodie-And-John0 

John it was desperation really that drove me to solar. Our state went green a decade ago because they didn't want the expense of replacing their aging power generation system. So their rationale was....'we will get people to make their own and buy electricity from them' and they offered all sorts of incentives for the populous to put in wind and solar. 

It worked John, but at enormous cost......when, as a government, you are going to buy electricity at 44c per Kw, guaranteed till 2026......what can you sell it at?

Here was one of my quarterly power bills!!!!

There you go John....$2,000 for three months of electricity! How would you like a bill like that?

To make matters worse, Airbnb guests are environmental vandals! They would come in at 1.00 pm on a 50 f winter afternoon, put their bags down and say how wonderfully warm it was in the cottage. They would then go out for the afternoon and evening....but not before they wound the thermostat up to 90 f so they would have a nice toasty environment to come back to that night!

So, I put my 8 Kw system in, I don't care how much power they use now. Except for cooking hotplates, I have got rid of all gas and wood burning appliances around here. I have to buy gas and firewood.....electricity is free....a win/win for me and the environment!

I guess that qualifies me as a ' greenie'!!

Cheers......Rob

[Melodie-And-John0]

Wow @Robin4 , Rob, that bill is awful!  I thought we were being robbed by NYSEG, our bill averages about $110 US a month.  I looked into putting in solar a few years ago but everyone wanted to put panels on the  roof and our home is not a good candidate for that due to the age (200) and the fact it has a 100 year old standing seem roof that wouldnt work well.  I actually have most of the gear to build a 5Kw wind turbine which is a far better choice for this area (I live near giant windmills), its on my to do list but probably won't happen soon!  My list is about as long as your Hard Drives full of Movies at this point!  JR

[Robin4]

@Melodie-And-John0 

John, I also have a wind turbine. It is an Italian Pravac vertical axis unit....

It has 3 blades and this photo will give you an idea of the size of the blades.....I am 6 ft tall. Here it is in operation with a smaller unit I experimented with, but turned out to be useless

https://imgur.com/a/cGv83xr

The turbine is connected to 2 Fisher Paykel 750 watt pancake washing machine motors, giving the turbine a generation capacity of 1.5Kw/pr Hr. The beauty of this type of generation John, it is totally silent unlike the propeller blade versions, and it will still produce electricity at midnight when every solar array on this side of the world has gone to sleep! 

This we use primarily at night to save us having to drag too much power from the grid.

The ridiculous way the government have set up this power buyback scheme. I can get a

'solar'  feed in tariff but, I get nothing from my excess wind power, I simply have to dump it.

The other point I should clarify, when the government went green a decade ago they offered wonderful incentives to get consumers to install household solar systems. For any system installed before September 30 2011 the government guaranteed 44c per Kw until Dec 2026 and the power distributors topped that up to 50c pr/Kw. Many of us jumped on board and I put in a 2Kw system on the other side of the property to get advantage of that. 30% of South Australians went solar and the government realised they had been too generous and any systems installed after Sept 2011 the feed-in tariff dropped to 12c and one had to shop around from one power retailer to the other to get a few cents top up on that, which is what happens now!

When I put in my additional 6 Kws I had interfered with my original agreement and I lost that 50c feed it tariff and I now get 16c as a feed- in tariff. 

I would like to have put in a battery storage bank, but at may age John, I will never reach the break even point. I would rather put the $8,000 a 1,000 amp/hr storage system would cost into holidays and enjoying myself rather than paying off un-required power storage!!

John, I would encourage you to look at alternatives....admittedly saving $110 per month is not much of an incentive to look at alternatives but, the rest of the world is going to become like us as greenhouse emissions start to bite. For much of the year my state not only satisfies it's domestic and commercial demand.....we are net exporters of green power to the national grid! We don't use an ounce of gas or coal from one day to the next! The only thing that wrangles with us is, we still have to pay to support the infrastructure.....the poles and the wires. The less the government gets to sell, the more they increase the supply charge to maintain the network!

Cheers.......Rob 

[Melodie-And-John0]

@Robin4,   Rob, I Love the idea of the VAWT's, they definitely do well on flatter more open territories and they are truly silent compared to the Horizontal Axis.  Our State decided in its infinite wisdom to provide incentives, fund and attract Corporate wind generation putting in  large 1.5 Mw and bigger units in wind farm configs.  Its Ok but not the way I would rather see it done, we would be far better having 750 10Kw Turbines on farms and homesteads in our county than 35 great big ones that dominate the skyline a little more than is necessary.   Governments find it far easier to make sweet deals with a few big companies instead of all the work it would take to do so with the many citizens who could be far more invested in the solution than "If you wanna be green, Pay more taxes" or buy a Toyota Prius.   

We can literally see 24 of the biggies in three different directions from our yards (if you look closely at the pic, you can see one about half a Kilometer away), they are pretty good neighbors but I do want my own!   I hear you on the battery bank, pretty expensive and in many cases, more maintenance!   I will get there someday but it wont be this day, stay well Rob, JR

[Robin4]

@Fred13 

If you get a moment I am sure I am not the only one who would love to see your progress as you reach for the stars.....literally. I know I go overboard with photos but a picture is worth a thousands words, and I would love to see how your work is coming on.

My fetish with pictures is from another site I am involved with. There are people who try to provide knowledge and there are people who want to build up a huge social following, and should have been authors rather than  correspondents on a social site. A sizable part of the site is filled up with 'experiences' that belong in a novel rather than what they proffer to be their past!

My feeling is a photo lends authenticity to ones statement......not that I am doubting you for a mili-second Fred, would genuinely love to see your progress.

Cheers......Rob

[Fred13]

I like when you start those pictoral posts on what is happening in your personal life, encourages others to do; especially during these times when we finally have the luxury of time on our hands. I will post more as things progress.

[Inna22]

@Robin4 sadly, most Americans probably don’t truly know where Australia is. When we went to Tasmania, most people I mentioned it to Thought that we were going to Africa or just didn’t think anything. Having said that, when I was moving to Chicago from Russia, most of my friends thought I was going to Texas. Don’t know how they zoomed in on that one location. I think geography is a common issue around the world. But so is media Misinformation – to your original point.

[Sarah977]

@Robin4 @Inna22 There's a Canadian news spoof show called This Hour Has 22 Minutes (referring to the fact that in every hour of commercial television programming, there are 38 minutes of commercials and 22 minutes of programming). One of the comedians on the show, Rick Mercer, has a segment called "Talking to Americans" (you can watch the videos online) where he goes to various places in the US and interviews people on the street, asking them a question (some of which are total BS and hilarious). One was "So how big is Canada?"  He got answers like "It's a little bigger than Texas".

Also, in spite of the fact that most Candaians and Americans have heard of the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, the vast majority don't know that Mexico is part of North America- they think it's Central or South America.

[Kath9]

@Robin4 @Sarah977 @Inna22, I don't know what it's like these days (I would hope somewhat better with the internet), but when I was travelling around America 30 years ago, it was pretty bad. I had honestly never met people anywhere in the world, including the poorest, most underdeveloped countries, who knew so little about Australia (or the rest of the world for that matter). I had questions like, 'oh, did you drive here from Australia?', 'does the sun set in the west in Australia too?' and 'What language do people in England speak?' Many people thought Australia was in South America or was the same as Austria.

@Sarah977, to your point re Canada, I think the funniest question I ever got in response to me saying I had lived in Canada was 'Canada... Canada... Isn't that a state somewhere near Montana?'