every little helps / we don’t stop when we’re tired…

The fuel shortage continues, but Friday we heard that it was increasingly likely that even the drip feed would stop.  With less than a week of diesel left we had some hard decisions ahead (aka Department closures).  The hospital held a crisis meeting and advised all staff that we would have to make (unspecified) sacrifices to keep the hospital open, and needed their full co-operation.  The mood was remarkably positive and it was a greed an ‘SOS’ would be launched.  Meaning everyone went to social media asking for donations of diesel.  When you burn around 100 gallons a day, that’s a lot of donations, but every little helps. The solution would almost certainly mean no AC (daily temperatures are still above 30 degrees). Many folk did come forward, which brings a lump to your throat, but it wouldn’t be enough we needed more.

That ‘more’ was the brainchild and site knowledge of my mate who realised since our batteries blew up in February, we had 25 solar panels sitting idle (its complicated).  If we moved all 25 of those panels from their current location to another roof space, and connected them in a particular formation, we could get a little more energy from the sun.  But we would then have to relocated 23 battery cells (there used to be 24, until February this year).  And these are not glorified car batteries, but 2 feet tall and 85kgs each!  So, coupled with ‘power-austerity’ we might have a way of turning the big generator off for a few hours of the day, and so stretching the diesel a little longer.

Saturday morning we started with removing the panels, which took us half the day, by which time I was literally drenched in sweat.  A quick lunch, after which I had dried out, and we got all the panels onto the other roof.  We were arranging solar panels, so of course there was no shade up there on the roof and there were no clouds in the sky either.  By the time we’d finished part 2 of the task, I was again drenched in sweat, so remembering the beer shortage was over, I had a well-earned beer!

In the ideal world, we would have learned from the previous day’s experience and started really early before the sun was high.  But I was so knackered, I couldn’t get out of bed, so I had another long day in the sun, beating down from a cloudless sky!

Someone once said ‘don’t stop when you’re tired, stop when you’re done’, I couldn’t quite live up to that but did spend another hour disconnecting the 23 battery cells to make them ready to move.

Moving the batteries, I am pleased to say, was not as arduous as I imagined, mainly because we brought a couple of guys in to help (cold drinks, lunch and a little something did the job).  But nonetheless it was pretty tiring and I did work up a proper sweat – though not difficult when its 30+ degrees anyway!

Monday night job done, ready to try the new process tomorrow.  Again I slept very well.