Humming birds and geese have returned, snow no longer threatens (despite snow in the lower-mainland last week!). Winter if finally over! And what a winter it has been. Storm after storm brought hurricane force winds, downed trees, flooding, snow, ice, and power outages.
But what about the GRIP Network during this time? Thankfully throughout all the storms of last year the equipment stayed undamaged and stable. Power outages both on the island and on the mainland caused a few outages, especially for those in the West Bay Landing community, but that falls into BC-Hydro's hands. GRIP's main repeater station on the ridge above Hope Point had power problems of its own. The Hope Point station runs on solar and wind power, however the wind generator had been removed in late fall for a replacement and solar stops being effective when the sun gets low enough to be blocked by some trees to the south of the station. A new wind generator had been ordered, but alas it was delayed several months on order!
In order to keep the system running I had to hike up the ridge with a can of gas to manually run a small generator to charge the batteries. Every week. From mid October until late March I hiked up that steep path carrying fuel over 20 times in all the weather noted above. I hiked up in the torrential rain and watched the land erode away, I watched the streaming water turn into frozen waterfalls on the cliff faces during the cold-snaps, I hiked past tree after tree that had been toppled or snapped by the winds, and of course, I got snowed on. Particularly memorable is one hike where 1.5ft of snow had fallen near the top, in rapidly lowering temperature, with 120km/h winds. The snow had been packed tight or drifted into chest-deep drifts, making the already interesting path all the more so. And of course always dark comes early.
Just before the new year the new wind generator finally arrived, but this of course means taking the tower down, a job for 6 people that we managed to pull off with 5. It is always a nerve-wracking exercise to raise and lower the tower, far too many things can go wrong during such an operation.
Alas despite the amazing resilience shown by all the equipment through the repeated train of storms that hit us, the heavy rain and wind of the last storm of the year finally caused a short in the power system at the primary tower, resulting in a surge that destroyed all three radios and the control computer!
This happened on the 1st of January, so for the first 7 days of the new year I was up the hill 5 times as I assessed damage, removed parts, and put up temporary workarounds with what parts I had available, and then more permanent replacements as new parts arrived.
As 07 continued a bit of help from the new wind generator and, eventually, the sun's position higher in the sky helped the solar power generation, until finally as the rain clouds cleared up this month the system is once again self-sufficient.
This was the second winter for the GRIP Network, and by far the more difficult, but now spring and summer are headed our way and we can look forward to much more comfortable weather!
Labels: Outage, Winter
