Best Posts

basically I agree with your point of view, but at least, it is a moralistic point of view, imported from the western world. here, in south east asia, the rules are a little bit different. more than 50% of the population considers itself as poor, governments are corroded by coruption, that means "money rules" - which is also a common saying here in the philippines. one of the easiest ways to make some cash is dealing with us, the foreigners, searching for luck and love (and property), carrying a big wallet around. I find it not surprising that even your wife/gf tries to get a (secret) benefit from you, specially when you know that her family will always be the nr. 1 in her life and nobody else, even if you look like Brad Pitt and have money like George Soros - and I do not whine about that, I do not critizise that, for me tbis is simply a fact, a reality I have to deal with in a country full of poor people, greedy for money. so I try to take things in my own hand instead of relying on others, specially when it comes to big deals like buying property. be careful, watch closely, that's all I say. and if, like in your example, the foreigner is buying whatever and has no money anymore for the hospital, I would recommend him to be triple careful here or better try his luck in another place.

 

3 nights ago two of my sisters in law were waiting at the intersection of Palinpinon Road and Legarda Street when some guy drove up on a motorbike and shot a food vendor 3 times. This happened about 20 meters away from where the girls were. I've been watching the news but there has been no mention of the incident or what happened or whether the food vendor survived. Makes me wonder how often this happens that we are unaware of.

 

Go out, no one will care if you are over 60... you may not get in the mall and some other places but get out and get some fresh air, no checkpoints !!

 

Our Road to Solar Power

Around 7 or 8 years ago we started to consider the alternative power sources, mainly due to the prevalence of “brown-outs” in our area. During this period we were also experiencing repeated failures of electrical goods (TV’s and computers). However, at that time, solar power was relatively expensive with solar panel efficiency less than 20%.

About 4 years ago, after the failure of yet another TV, we bought and installed servo driven AVR’s (Automatic Voltage Regulator) in an attempt to protect our electrical goods. These will maintain an output voltage of 220V as long as the input voltage remains above 150V.

As these enable monitoring of the supply voltage we were very surprised at the huge variation in the supply voltage - generally 160V-200V but sometimes as low as 90V and very rarely reaching the alleged supply voltage off 220V.

Another consideration is the reduced degradation of modern N-type panels. 8 years ago standard panels lost about 1% of their output each year but with the newer N-type panels degradation is reduced to around 0.4% providing better yields in hot climates and longer lifespan.

The Tangerine Tosspot swung the final decision for us to take the plunge and after 8 weeks of operation (>1.3MWh consumption) we are extremely happy. The system is a 12.6kWp grid tie hybrid consisting of a 12kW hybrid inverter, 20 N-type 605W bifacial panels (6E, 8S, 6W) with 3 x 314AH, 51.2V, 16kWh batteries (48kWh in total). Installed in a week with the minimum of disturbance by a local company who I would definitely recommend.

The system works exceptionally well – Remaining battery power (SOC – State of Charge) at 6 a.m. has not yet dropped below 60% and is generally around 70-75%. On a sunny morning the batteries recharge to 100% SOC by about 10 a.m. – For Info; We have 3 ref’s and 2.5 freezers running continuously 24/7 plus, in the morning running a 2HP jet pump (90 mins), 2 x 6kw water heater (20 – 30 mins each) and twin electric hob (>1 hr) plus numerous rice cookers and kettles for coffee. On very cloudy or rainy days it can take until around 1 p.m. to reach 100% SOC. After the batteries are charged then the system automatically adjusts to powering the household usage (e.g. If the boss is baking then it will adjust to the power requirements of the 3.3kW oven) without depleting the batteries.

If, at some stage, we have an extended rainy period depleting the batteries, the inverter can be programmed to recharge the batteries at a suitable time when the grid connection is turned on.

So, all in all, a robust system with fully (and remotely) programmable flexibility in operation.


Main Benefits

1. Stable voltage at 230V irrespective of the load

2. Zero brown-outs

3. Zero bills from Noreco (we have a grid tie but so far it’s not been turned on) – Noreco added P5.60 charge to a zero bill for reading the meter

4. ROI in just over 6 years - If you factor in the cost of replacement TV’s and running multiple AVR’s then the ROI is reduced to less than 5 years.

5. Peace of mind – not having to worry about low voltage damaging equipment or the power going off halfway through baking a cake. Perfect pies & pizzas every time because the oven got to the right temperature quickly and maintained it.

 

So far I've tried the custard and lemon pies, they were very good. Today I had the baked chicken with dressing for lunch, it was a delightful surprise. I'm a big guy with a big appetite, and I found that one serving left me pleasantly full. In the States I always looked forward to Thanksgiving dinner because I loved the dressing. I couldn't understand why we only had dressing on Thanksgiving and not the rest of the year. Joy's chicken and dressing brought back memories for me of Thanksgiving dinners in the US. The chicken was moist and tender, and the dressing was just wonderful. Now, I need to say, I'm the only American in our house and everybody else is Filipino. They had never even heard of dressing before, and it was their first time trying it. Their first thought was, "don't you put that on your rice?". No, you don't put it on rice, it's dressing, you don't need rice (LOL). They liked it okay, but let's just say if there was a choice of menu it likely wouldn't be their first choice, it is just a dish that they are not used to. We bought several of them, and I'm happy it's not their first choice because I will gladly eat them all and then order some more.

 

The situation seems to get more curious by the week. In a conversation with one of the staff in Mia's restobar last night, she said that she was worried about her house in San Miguel barrio, in Agan-an, being taken by the government. When I asked why, she said for the development of a new runway to the existing airport. Unsure if any of you know but over 49 houses were dismantled, a couple of weeks ago in Maslog, near the beach front in Sibulan. Official reasons were that the owners, the Bouffard (Ramon) brothers from Bais, wished to reclaim their land, adjacent to their extremely long fishponds. They roughly lie NE to SW, which would be a more sensible direction than the existing runway pattern(W to E), if the Bacong project fails to come to fruition. Anyone else hear of this?