Business Advice Memoir Retirement

Stop and Listen to the Wind

Stop and Listen to the Wind

This is a strange day in a constantly strange year. What is making this day so much more strange is that I was awoken at 6am, somewhat earlier than normal given that I was up until 11:45pm watching Brian Williams trying to once again recap the strangeness of the day yesterday in the news. The reason I woke up early was that I heard a strange sound that I couldn’t easily identify. I lay in bed trying to identify the sound. I have heard critter noises and rainstorm noises and generally unidentified noises since I moved to this hilltop, but this one had a strange rhythm to it. Finally I felt I had narrowed it down to being related to the wind, since I had noted that the weather app was indicating higher than normal winds. I have heard about Santa Ana winds for many years, but I have never experienced them. This hilltop always attracts a nice cooling breeze that seems to come in from the ocean, but the Santa Ana is quite different. These winds come in the opposite direction, created by high pressure zones captured in the Great Basin of Nevada and forcing winds to crest over the small mountain chains that run inland along the coast of Southern California. Those winds run downhill from the mountains to the coast and do so with great vigor, gusting to a high level of 85mph or higher during a consistent 25-35mph breeze. These winds are as hot and dry as the Great Basin itself (if you haven’t been there, it is a large grey area that is as moon-like as any place on Earth). The combination of the hot and dry air compressions create big-time wildfire risks as they create not only the perfect conditions for fires, the winds themselves make fires all the more dangerous.

I now know why I put umbrella sleeves on all three of my outdoor umbrellas as well as added Gravibag sandbags on the umbrella bases (I actually spent the time and money to build a concrete stand for my spa umbrella and bolted it into the rebar-hardened base). This is some wind and it is coming at me from the mountains, which, while somewhat scary-crazy out on the front driveway, is at least fairly calm on the leeward side where the deck is situated and the work for today is focused. In the meantime, I have to go through the inconvenience of keeping the front-facing doors locked since the wind will simply blow them open otherwise. I do not worry about the steel dumpster out front since it weighs about 2-3 tons empty and probably has another 2-3 tons of deck debris in them already with more coming into it every day. I will want to keep those big heavy steel doors locked down at night from now on since it was the banging of that heavy door against the side of the dumpster that created the eerie sound I heard from bed.

I find myself thinking about what might blow down or rip off due to the wind. The biggest issue is the shadesail, which is big and, as the name implies, is liable to catch some big wind even though the material is both a permeable surface and it was put up with an anticipation of needing to withstand such winds. So far the shadesail is definitely in the wind, but it seems to be holding up well with the hardware that keeps it tight and still has some give to them (remember the lessons of the willow and the oak in the wind…some flexibility is critical). The patio palapa has been up for several years now and seems to be holding it head well since it is oriented to be with versus against the wind, not necessarily by brilliant design (though I’m sure it was considered), but more by the good fortune of how the patio is oriented. Everything else is about the trees and tall cacti. These high chaparral trees like Mesquites, Live Oaks and Paloverde trees are designed to take the wind. I worry more about the mega-tall cacti that inhabit various parts of my yard. These monsters are beautiful affairs, but they are somewhat unnatural in that they thrive on the more highly watered environment I create for them. We will see how they bear up in the wind.

I have just received an automated call from San Diego Gas and Electric telling me that due to the high winds they have shut down the grid for as long as 72 hours since they don’t want winds to knock down wires and start fires. It’s a complicated environment to manage and the risks of wildfire and high dry winds are the big risks. Meanwhile back at the ranch, when the grid got shut down last night my Tesla batteries, which had been automatically placed on Storm Watch by Tesla (which means they were being held at full power and not used to reduce peak usage as they normally are so that they would be ready for full backup), kicked in seamlessly and drove my overnight energy needs without a glitch or notice. In the morning as the sun started shining, the solar panels started kicking in to recharge the batteries and/or support the household needs. When I looked at the Tesla app at 9am I saw solar generating 3kW with 1kW going to the house and 2kW recharging the batteries, which were inching up to 66% charged. And then it all suddenly shut down at 9:15am.

I spent the day doing three things: getting a COVID test at Cal State San Marcus, trying to wrestle the deck rehabilitation work forward (tile ordered, trench drain returned, glass railing smashed and carted off, and new glass railing being bid) and talking to a combination of Baker Home Energy (the installer of my solar/battery system) and Tesla to get my system back up and running. The three became connected when the deck crew decided they had work to do without electricity and I was aiming for a Baker call-back, so we chose that moment to go get tested. The test went quickly and well. The deck progress is what it is and the best news was that nothing bad got added to the problem list today. As for the energy fix, it required two different Baker troubleshooters looking at my installation schematic and panel photos and one Nevada-based Tesla engineer looking at the central station signals coming from my Tesla system. Both of them were giving me remote instructions. Remember when the pilot gets shot and a non-pilot has to land the plane by being talked down by an air traffic controller? That was me today running between the panel box in the downstairs utility room (where the Solar Gateway switch is located) and the Battery Gateway and batteries outside on the garage. I literally had to flip switches in specific sequences in five different panel boxes and on two wall batteries. Turn this off, wait five minutes, then turn that off and then turn them all back on in the opposite order. Then wait and see if the problem is fixed. I felt a bit like Gary Sinise in Apollo XIII where he has to get the electrical sequence in under 2 amps. It is the modern equivalent of kicking it and hoping that will fix everything.

Strangely enough, it all did actually work. When I asked why (which seems like a logical request from someone who paid as much as I have for this modern technology), it is clear that these service people just want things to get better so they can get on to the next homeowner who needs to kick his Tesla battery. So, I am left listening to the wind howl past me and have no understanding of what just happened. That’s pretty much the same thing we do when we go in for a COVID test. We have to take the “experts” at their word and not ask too many questions. In other words, we are forced to stop and listen to the wind and hope that our experts are as expert as we desperately want them to be.

1 thought on “Stop and Listen to the Wind”

  1. Way too complicated for me. My engineer brother and my retired National Grid brother-in-law could deal with it. The latter has a Tesla now. Bon chance!

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