Storms and Power

As part of my wish to use less fossil fuel in my daily life I am slowly converting Tani to outside solar lights and indoor solar skylights. I am planning to put in an induction cooktop. I am looking into replacing the gas hot water with either solar powered or electric. This, of course, will all be done as I can afford it. And when/if I can ever afford it I will have insulation put in the roof and maybe even have double glazed windows put in. I use an electricity supplier which tells you what percentage of the grid is powered by renewables, which means I can usually choose to use my greedy power appliances when the grid is cleaner. And I have bought that bench top oven and now a bench top grill so I can cook for two people with small, less greedy appliances. I briefly gave thought to getting rid of the proper oven, but then I remembered that I do quite a bit of batch cooking and even, in a dim, distant memory, have visitors occasionally. 

We have had quite a mighty storm overnight. It started late yesterday afternoon when a storm passed through. Fierce but brief.  Calm returned to Mount Helen. At some point overnight I was woken by wind and rain and banging noises which persisted until around now. At around 5:15 the power went out. By the magic of modern technology (which is to say, my phone) I checked the Powercor website.  It seems that power is out over most of Western Victoria. This is not good! I thought we had a large torch, but if we do I can't find it.  Fortunately the magic phone also has quite a nice, bright torch. Equally fortunately, it gets light relatively early at the moment. It is light enough to see outside but it is very gloomy in the house.

Even more fortunately, we are not yet an all electric household. By deploying the box of matches that I usually use to light the fire, I managed to light the gas stove so could boil a saucepan of water for a cup of tea. If/when we do go all electric I will need to buy a small gas inside burner. We do have a gas barbecue which I could use if really necessary but I wouldn't have wanted to go outside this early morning in the dark, wind and rain.

The weather has settled quite a lot, although it is still windy. There are reports of trees down all over Ballarat, damaged roofs and buildings, a certain level of stormy chaos.  Fortunately in my immediate area there doesn't seem to be much damage, although Brandy and Whiskey are unimpressed that their water fountain isn't working.

The storm is now making its way towards Melbourne and then, I assume, to the east of the state. Perhaps it will blow itself out before it gets there