Tim, You OK?

Thanks for asking. I’m fine. I’ve been at my house in DE since Friday afternoon, so I don’t know any more about the situation in DC than you do. We had storms in DE last night, but they weren’t too bad. I hope the car and apartment in DC are OK, but I have car insurance and there’s nothing in the apartment that wasn’t “extra”, anyway. Well, except the toaster and the coffee pot. (The car wouldn’t normally be there, but my wife flew out of Reagan National on Friday so we had two cars there.)

Note to Joe, my solar system has a disconnect so it doesn’t work during a power outage. I have what’s called a “grid-tied” system, so if the grid goes down the power company doesn’t want me sending power back into the lines. Might be dangerous for their linemen. If I got different inverters and set up a battery bank I would be able to use my own power even if the grid was down.

I’d need different inverters because mine get their “clock” from the grid. IOW, the panels generate DC and my house runs on AC. My inverters have no way to “know” what 60 cycles per seconds is without the grid providing it at that frequency. Other inverters have an internal clock. That’s something I’d have asked for if I’d have known more about it at the time, although I suspect they’re considerably more expensive.

The batteries are for night time.

If I had that, I could “go off the grid”, meaning I don’t sell power to anyone, and any extra power I generate goes to waste.

Or I could stay grid tied, but have a switch that isolates my system from the grid whenever the grid goes down. People and businesses with back up generators have those. That way they’re not going to electrocute anyone who tries to work on the lines.

Either way, that’s the difference; I have no ability to store power, and my inverters don’t work if the grid’s down.

I’m kinda worried about one of my cats. She’s got a bad tooth, or something. I watched her try to eat tonight and she took a bite of “wet food”, chewed it, made a yowling sound, spit it out, then walked away from the food while her brothers ate like pigs. Once they had reduced the plates to little, tiny bits of food she went back and ate the tiny pieces, presumably without chewing them.

I went to the store and got her some baby food. She got half a jar down, then her brothers noticed she was getting something they weren’t getting, so they proceeded to eat the rest of it. She does look more comfortable after having eaten that much than she did before.

I can’t get her to the vet, and I have to be back in DC on Monday. We have someone coming to feed them while we’re both gone, but I don’t think she’ll be able to spend enough time, or even be able to, get some food into Aggie, so I’m trying to decide if I should let her be alone for 3 days with very little food, which she’d probably survive, or take her in the car for 2 hours each way (which she hates) and keep her cooped up in an apartment with no familiar smells in it until I come back to DE on the 5th. The point being, either one will be traumatic for her. The subtext being, you can have pets in my building, but you have to pay for it and I don’t.

It’s probably better to keep her eating, so I’ll probably take her.