For the next 11 days or so I'll be #traveling and this account will mostly be a #TravelBlog
(Not that I'm very active on here anyway but hopefully this will build a habit).
So I'm travelling to #Nepal for work, to install some power monitoring hardware and custom #RaspberryPi #IoT loggers for a site which will have #PV + #battery plus a novel inverter designed to provide UPS islanding (coming a bit later in the year from a project partner, I'm just gathering the before and after data).
It's the furthest east I'll have ever been (previously Berlin) and also by far the furthest from home (previous Toronto).
Home is the damp, cold, beige little island known as Britain. I'm never sad to leave)
Not that I travel much, and rarely flying these days as I took a #NoFly pledge for my own transport, but given this is for work, is intercontinental, and is overall contributing towards the goal of more stable #EnergySystems and a #ReneableGrid.
So I've made my peace with the roughly 1.16tonnes of CO2 that the flights are going to add to the atmosphere (according to Google Flights estimator at least, better models may exist
How do #TravelBlog people usually do this?
Hashtag every post?
Leave everything all in one thread?
A thread per day/topic?
A mix of all of the above?
A massive thank you to my partner Emma for driving me to Manchester airport to start me off on this journey.
And a very un-thank-you to the snow which decided to dump itself all over the Peak District between Sheffield and Manchester yesterday. Did not need the extra stress of going an extra hour around via Leeds by motorways.
Made it through security with 3 Pis, an extra modbus energy meter (a bunch are already out there but we needed +1) cool little DIN mountable 4G routers and a bunch of odds and ends, and the only thing I forgot to separate from my bag was my (empty) metal water bottle so it got rescanned.
Manchester airport has water fountains/refill stations though so that's nice.
They're hidden away by the loos though and not signed.
Forever surprised that UK airports never seem to make announcements in multiple languages...
Even before the great brexitening.
Doubly surprises that Emirates don't at least make their own announcements in Arabic as it's their own airline...
Ok Emirates do make onboard announcements in Arabic and English.
I guess they don't get a say in the terminal.
Oh hey the advertisment boards in Dubai Airport are running on #RenewableEnergy ( #pv obviously)
Not the whole terminal, or the whole air port, or even the climate control...
Just the adverts...
Aim big...
Although in fairness most of the roof space of this terminal IS covered in #PV
But there are plenty of buildings which aren't (yet?) including both the other terminals (fancy curved roofs so probably never gonna change) and loads and loads and loads of flat roofed utility buildings.
And that's before you even consider using panels on a load of the scrub land and huge parking areas around the airport.
Not actually in the runway zones, I get that would be a safety nightmare for both maintenance and risking crashes with live power systems.
But there's so much marginal land they could canopy with PV.
@devanubis Yep, makes you really wonder why they are not running more of #PV.
To my knowledge I’ve only ever heard of one fully PV operated Airport. It’s Cochin International in south India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochin_International_Airport#Awards_and_accolades
3rd unpack / security scan / pack cycle of the journey complete, 2nd in Dubai DXB alone.
I'm glad I'm not bringing most of this back with me.
At my hotel now, a UNESCO heritage site recommended to me by my dad who's been to Nepal quite a few times doing work with the Himalayan Trust.
I caught some sleep on the flights but I'm probably on a grand total of 9 hours since getting up on Wednesday (Thursday night was last minute coding until obscene AM because of course...)
So I'm going to sleep now at ~21:00 local time and hopefully that'll help my body clock sync up in the morning.
@devanubis I once forgot I had a small screwdriver in my bag and got into a discussion with airport security as they wanted to confiscate the tools because they could be used as a weapon 🤦♂️
All the custom made electronic prototypes however were fine. Didn’t even care about the lithium ion batteries 🤷♂️
Howard
Valentin Sawadski
Dean Sas