ForFar Walkabout, Rock Party, and Wind Lectures

We began our morning with a walkbout the grounds of Forfar with Ricardo. Ricardo has been with Forfar for going on 22 years and manages the facility maintenance. He gave us a tour of the electrical, water, and waste disposal systems at the station. During our stay the students will make some evaluations of the stations energy usage and make receommendations regarding conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy projects.

After our walk we took a trip with Pete Davidson to a local qurry site to collect stone for our footers. This brings new meaning the to term "rock party"


After our morning rock party, we then headed into the classroom to learn the theoretical aspects of wind energy. The class went well but by 4:00 PM eyes were glazing over so we headed outside to play with some of our toys; the hand held anemometer, the Kill-A-Watt, and the Solar Pathfinder.

Classes Begin

We got things rolling in the classroom today, starting with an overview of the Skystream turbine, and our initial objective of determining the status of our equipment which had been shipped to Forfar.

Fortunately all the delicate components seem to have arrived in good shape. Unfortuantely we are missing some of the rebar needed for the foundation peers. Seems to have gone missing in transit. We are blessed though, in that our local goto guy, Pete Davidson, knows where and how to get most everything so we will work past this.

Once we completed our inventory we headed out to site the turbine. Using a two string lines for marking the axis of the turbine foundations we shifted, rotated and ended up with a location that we are all happy with. Pictures you see Henry acting as the Tower anchor, Aaron, as the west anchor, and Elizaebth making sure we've all got it right. Jason serves as the south anchor, Tommy serves as the turbine head, and Joel serves as the North anchor. We're thinking of patenting this new turbine siting method.

Sunday a day of R and R

The staff offered us wonderful opportunity to go out for a snorkel trip today. The weather and water were fantastic. Tommy and Mike stayed behind at Forfar the rest of us had a great day in the sun and surf. Our Captain and First Mate are Sage and Linsey. Competant boaters and spearfishers, and good company.

Happy to Be Here

We were all happy to be on Forfar. Here's some of the gang chillin on Saturday evening.

We Made it to Forfar

We all arrived in Ft Lauderdale on Friday. Yeah! Depending on arrival time we all spent 12 - 24 hours there and this was long enough. We caught our plane at 1:30 PM on Saturday and we had good flight over to the island. Here we are all ready to go. Left to right we have Mike Russo, Tommy Adkins, Joel Atkins, Jason Rainey, Carl Adams, Elizabeth Farrel, Henry Levine, and Aaron Shaeffer. W also got a bonus rainbow to greet us as we approached the Andros airport.

What's Happening at Forfar Station on Andros, Bahamas

I'm headed off to Andros Island, Bahamas for the next 5 weeks where I'll be teaching a class for Hocking College. The course is part of the Alternative Energy program and the students and I will look at four technology areas: Wind, Solar PV, Solar Thermal, and Micro Hydro. For me this is a change from my day job for Dovetail Solar and Wind where I work as Dovetails project manager for Southwest Ohio. Many thanks to Dovetail for granting me some time off to do this work, and escape the Ohio winter.

Our big project for the 5 week term will be the installation of a Skystream 3.7 wind turbine on a 70 foot tilt up tower. In addition we will also do some work on the existing solar hot water heating and PV systems at ForFar Station. Where is Forfar ?

It has been a great deal of work just to get ready for this trip. I'm used to coordinating projects locally but it adds a whole new dimension to orchestrate one that is located 1500 miles away. One thing we will have to deal with is limited availability of hardware on the island. In Cincinnati, where I'm based, we have all the big box stores (Lowes, Home Depot) etc, and hundreds of specialty suppliers. Not so on the island, so I've tried to make sure we have everything we will need once we get there. We shall see :D

Today I will pack my tools, and the last few bits of miscellaneous hardware to take with me. I'm a real believer in packing light so this trip will be a big exception. I expect my checked luggage will weigh in excess of 200 lbs. Ugghhh!

I fly Friday to Ft Lauderdale, and then on to Andros on Saturday. I'll meet the students again and will post again with more info on them and the class as it unfolds at Forfar.