The Potato Post

The Mulvey's, up in Wilmington, asked the community for help with planting last week. So Suzy and I brought our potato hooks, gloves and hoe over there and went to work. It was real weed-pulling-and-digging work, but after a few hours we laid in two long and fairly straight rows of white potatoes. 

Potatoes are the most popular vegetable crop in the world. I noticed that the seed potatoes I was planting were certified by the State of Maine, yet another apparent example of government overreach. Not only does Maine have a Potato Board, they have a Seed Potato Board too. They also have a Value Added Tax on potatoes, which, I suppose, pays for all this bureaucracy. 

Government Certified Potatoes Taste Best

Maine, along with Vermont and Quebec, is known for eccentricities. There used to be a tax on mahogany quahogs, but it was repealed in the mid-80s. Perhaps this tax was a casualty of reactionary right-wing Republicanism Down East. If so they need a better marketing strategy. "Repeal the potato tax" is a slogan that would have fired up the base nationwide. 

The Maine Potato Board

Anyway, the Potato Board members (and their staff, who are not shown) don't get a salary but they are reimbursed for expenses and, incidentally, are state employees entitled to retirement and health insurance benefits.

I don't know of there's a UN High Commission on Tubers but there is a US Potato Board, with a $20 million budget, full time employees - the whole bureaucratic apparatus. I was disappointed to learn they aren't an appendage of the $150 billion/year US Department of Agriculture, because it would have made a better story. Somehow these anarcho-potato growers were permitted the freedom to associate and they pay for it all by themselves through voluntary fees. (Say, maybe that is a better story.)

Certifying the humble potato seems a bit pompous and smelled like rank marketing hype to this cynic. Not so. The late blight is a killer of not just potatoes. This algae-like pathogen (an oomycete) spreads rapidly and precipated the famine that killed a quarter of the Irish in 1845-1852. It'll wipe out your crop, quickly spread to your neighbors then destroy theirs, too. The oomycete devastated the potato crop here two years before being exported to Ireland, probably on potatoes shipped to Europe via Boston or NYC.

Maine's potato industry is nearly as large as their lobster industry. A crop failure over there would be an economic catastrophe over here, because they'd immediately declare a disaster and sponge up all the federal government pork-barrel spending earmarked for the northeast. We don't want some potato algae to jeopardize, for instance, our half-million dollar broadband grant. The USDA provides some of that money. They have jurisdiction over our broadband, no kidding. 

So the Potato Board was established in 1945, at the height of Maine's potato industry - I hope they refer to this as 'peak potato' - to cultivate disease-free potatoes. Why the State was compelled to charter it is puzzling but the organization seems to get the job done with a modicum of competence. 

We ate potatoes and they surrendered unconditionally.

The greatest generation had a knack for thinking things through, these people really knew what they were doing back in the 40s. The Board bought a farm in Homestead, Florida, and experimented with potatoes down there. This was a brilliant move because if something went haywire and the oomycetes hit the fan, no worries, it's way down in Florida. Also, Florida is a breeding ground for bugs and pathogens, so they were testing under the worst-case conditions. The fact that someone on the Board had to occasionally travel down there in the winter, all expenses paid, to oversee the operation, was purely coincidental. 

Potatoes were eaten by our most loyal patriots.

There's nothing like the taste of a fresh potato. I hope the ones at the Mulvey's (and our little patch) do well. On that note here are two recipes. 

Salt Potatoes are a regional dish. Take a few pounds of small potatoes - early ones are best, but any will do, and scrub them. Don't peel them. Boil enough water to cover them but add two cups of salt to the water first. Let them boil for a half hour. Don't test for doneness by poking, they will be cooked but firm, not mushy like boiled potatoes. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil. 

Salt potatoes were invented by the Irish who worked at the the salt springs near Onondaga Lake. They would draw up the salt water and boil it down, leaving behind salt. Well, the Irish grew potatoes and it was easy enough to bring some to work and make good use of that boiling water during lunchtime. 

Onondaga Lake has a tragic history. Mining companies began its pollution by dumping wastes into the lake. That practice stopped but a quarter of the water in the lake is still supplied by discharge from the sewage treatment plant. At one time this was the most polluted lake in the US, and it is ringed with Superfund cleanup sites. The Onondaga Nation wants their lands back, asserting that the US treaties were invalid because they were signed by individuals who didn't represent them and none of them were ratified by Congress anyway. They also mention that the US was a horrific steward of the land and water. The natives have a good case and they aren't going to settle this one out of court for a token casino, either. 

Lake Onondaga commentary, 1946

Lastly, a recipe for roasted potatoes with (promise) no sordid history. Clean and dice several potatoes and put them in a bowl or pot. Coat with olive oil, maybe 1/4 cup, then sprinkle with salt and pepper, some thyme and any other seasonings that you like. Dice up a few carrots and a couple of small onions. Toss them into the pot and smush everything around until well coated. Dump it out onto a baking sheet and bake at 400-450 for about 45 minutes. Check every 15 minutes to ensure the temperature isn't too high or low and shuffle around the potatoes so they brown evenly. 

Roasted Potatoes

Take them out and serve. Potatoes, not the chips, fries or other processed monstrosities, are good for you. They have lots of fiber, vitamins B and C, and minerals such as potassium, copper and manganese. We eat lots of potatoes here, alone or in soups. I even munched some potato chips down at the fire station one night but don't tell anyone.

Whiskey Rock

The universe seems to contract in the North Country. 'Breaking news' in the outside world, such as the mess in Ukraine, seems rather trivial compared to, say, protecting the garden from deer. I recall an article in Adirondack Life about a man who lived alone in the Adirondacks and kept a journal for decades, throughout the 1940s. There were no references to World War II in it.

Decluttering is essential to the pursuit of happiness. At first it seems counter-intuitive, because all that stuff is supposed to make our lives easier. But soon you realize that the things we think we own actually own us. It's the same with events, tragic as some may be, there's usually nothing we can do about them so we become merely event-collectors and spectators. But spectating enables the news industry to exploit catastrophes by charging more for advertising based on higher ratings. 

The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, condemned the "habitual indulgence" of news, calling it a stimulant. He said it was important to know about important events but not "in the fresh condition as news".

Thomas Merton (1915 -1968)

When you lose the need to hear about events immediately you have a different perspective on them. It becomes easier to separate the clutter from the few truly important news stories. Dwelling on tragedies that we don't control adds empty complexity to our lives; there's no value in them, except perhaps entertainment. And to be entertained by someone's tragedy is as wrong as making a buck off of it.

The Number One Story on CNN

Around here deer, weather and taxes are more important than a celebrity's misstep or a accident halfway around the world. Even a big ol' rock is more newsworthy than today's most popular news story on CNN - Michael Jackson's hologram performance on the Billboard awards.

An Adirondack rock star

We have an intimate relationship with rocks here, gardeners and hole-diggers encounter a prodigious number of them. The boulder in the above news article is a glacial erratic (so named because its composition differs from native rock). Upstate New York was covered in a mile-thick glacier 50,000 years ago. We get so much snow here that you can actually visualize managing a mile of ice, by the way. 

The receding glacier

When the Laurentide Ice Sheet finally melted it not only created one hell of a mud season (we can visualize that, too) but it left the small rocks that we line our garden beds with and stupendously massive ones that we can only marvel at.

That rock on the front lawn of the Saranac post office is impressive but we also have a giant erratic within morning-walk distance from Woodman's Lee. It's called Whiskey Rock, although it's not marked anymore. It has an interesting history. 

The Prohibition Party was active in this area a century ago, often fielding candidates for local elections. Back then there were big temperance meetings where bottles of alcohol were rounded up and ceremoniously destroyed.

Whiskey Rock

That's where Whiskey Rock came in handy. They'd come for miles, the stern-faced abstainers, the sinners who'd just swore off 'John Barleycorn' and curious onlookers. I suppose they'd light a big bonfire, wood being about as abundant as rock, and the leaders would get to preachin'. Then the bottles that the newly-converted purged from their pantries would be ceremoniously smashed against the rock.

True patriots and kid lovers don't drink

All this fervor died out after the 18th Amendment was ratified in January, 1919. New York and (of course!) Vermont were opposed to ratification. Those were the quaint old times when the Constitution had to be amended to authorize the federal government to usurp our freedom. Now it's normal for the government to just interpret the Constitution, yielding our right to privacy (warantless surveillance, NSA's domain), permitting corporations to essentially make candidates their employees (Citizen's United ruling), eliminating the rights of due process (targeted killings of US citizens), etc. The  last ratified Constitutional amendment, involving Congressional pay raise protocol, was in 1992. It was filed, no kidding, in 1790. There are many proposed amendments (including one that addresses Citizens United), but none can survive our currently polarized system of government. 

Our neighbor, Canada, also got caught up in the temperance movement but their Prohibition lasted only a year and was repealed in 1921. Quebec never banned beer or wine.

Those Québécois are as fiercely independent as Adirondackers - these are French-speaking, inherently defiant, people. They didn't go along with Dry Canada: 78% voted to permit the sale of beer and wine. Because Canada rescinded Prohibition a decade before us, anyone who needed a drink could head up there and drink legally. They might also run some liquor back to the US while they were at it. 

So, despite Prohibition, booze was readily available. As for demand, well, alcohol seems to be awfully popular in the high latitudes. The Scandinavians say that when the sun shines late at night everyone is so happy that they stay up and drink. But when it gets dark early, everyone is depressed...so they drink. The law that implemented Prohibition, the Volsted Act, didn't ban the consumption of alcohol, just the sale and distribution. Once a bottle made it to your hands, you were free to drink it legally. Smuggling became a huge business and soon big operators organized into mobs. 

Just as today, the North Country simply disregarded current events. Most went about their lives as if Prohibition was only applicable for city people downstate. There were many unguarded border crossings at the time, so smuggling was a convenient way to supplement income during the agricultural depression that preceded the Great Depression. 

Legs Diamond, a couple of weeks before he was murdered.

Occasionally a romanticized mobster, such as 'Legs' Diamond, would be sighted around Saranac Lake. Legs was a Brooklyn mob boss but his brother was up in Saranac recovering from TB, so the North Country became his territory, too. 

The untimely demise of Will 'o the Wisp

Big time local smugglers, such as mason (and race car driver) Pete Tanzini, dubbed 'Will o' the Wisp' by the cops, lived in Saranac Lake. He ran the Adirondack Booze Trail - Canada to Saratoga, and beyond, clear down to Albany. Mythology asserts that NASCAR was inspired by hillbilly bootleggers outrunning the law in the Appalachian mountains, certainly not little Italian immigrants in upstate NY. Anyhow, Pete changed tactics soon after he was nabbed (by a 14 year old police dog). Either the cops found a fast car and driver up to Pete's skill or (more likely) Pete's car was loaded down with booze. So he bought and operated the largest still in New York, out of a secret room he (the mason) crafted in his Saranac Lake basement. By the early '30s, organized crime was manufacturing so much alcohol in the US that they were actually smuggling it into Canada. 

Unfortunately Pete got crosswise with Legs and he disappeared, probably rubbed out, in 1930. Legs was offed in Albany soon after. They say the cops did it but everyone suspected that a rival, Dutch Schultz, was behind it. As customary, both widows eventually died of gunshots, too. 

But Whiskey Rock silently awaits its continued transport whenever the current (Anthropocene) interglacial period ends. Until then it silently remains the object of bottles and folklore.

A Failed Paradigm

The Cluster of Adirondack Park School Districts

Public education in these parts costs $25k per student, annually. NY has the highest per-capita pupil expense in the nation, but, jeez, $25k is half the yearly tuition at Harvard med school! So when the Universe provided an opportunity to find out what's going on, I jumped on it.

The AuSable Valley Central School district held a budget hearing last night. Only 12 people showed up, and 9 of those were employees. Even before the Superintendent, Paul Savage, started his presentation I had my answer: Finances are out of control because we, the people, don't care. If we did, the place would be packed. We'll have an opportunity to vote on this budget in a week and it'll be interesting to see the turnout for that. 

While citizens are working two jobs to make ends meet or are in a catatonic state watching "Judge Judy" reruns, the education-industrial complex is busily cranking out new and expensive programs. These are easily marketed to state legislators. Especially the politicians who'd like to circumvent the fundraising grind and seek the largesse of a few big donors. No worries, the voters are too preoccupied to notice or care. 

As with the US Congress, the NY state legislature has a lower turnover than the Politburo of the old Soviet Union. All one has to do to be a rep-for-life is accumulate enough cash to inundate Judge Judy's drivel with $500 TV ads. The school textbook industry is probably spring-loaded to provide financial assistance to any candidate who's willing to support them in return.

$85 for an Algebra One book...but it does have a cool-looking cyber fish on the cover.

Thus we have an exciting new mandate called "Common Core". Of course, it's for the children and to preserve our world class standard of living. Suddenly all those overpriced textbooks purchased just last year are obsolete. All must be scrapped to conform with the new standard, but that's merely a collateral detail. Common Core's noble goal is to graduate students who are actually prepared to enter the workforce or a university without a year or two of remedial training. The new books are head shakingly expensive (the nine employees in the audience grumbled about being ripped off when S raised the question) - but if we just buy them now perhaps our students will outperform their Spanish and Polish peers in math next year.  

The US ranks 16th of 21 developed nations in math. 

When school districts have to buy $85 algebra books, guys like Mr Savage have to cut back on math teachers to pay for it. This isn't hyperbole, two "math/science/social" teaching positions are being eliminated in the proposed budget to offset a 25% increase in the book budget. This is tragic because a perfectly good algebra book can be obtained for free, online. I suppose if one really wanted to buy a spiffy new textbook so our kids can compete with the top tier countries, they can order the algebra book that Canadian high schools use and save 42%. Perhaps the mandaters ought to take a field trip to Canada. There's a Canadian high school only an hour's drive north of here. They spend half of what we do and rank 6th in math. We rank 16th.

Canada gets better results with a cheaper book - and it, too, has a fish on the cover!
This one appears to be staring at a sucker.

This is just one tiny example, the system is riddled with junk like this. The Superintendent and School Boards are on the receiving end, and on the front lines when having to explain the costs to the few taxpayers who question it.

So I'll vote for the budget and against incumbents. If we get rid of enough of them we can address the utterly failed paradigm of public education.

Solar Energy

Instapark 10 watt solar panel charging a 5200 milliamp-hour lithium-ion battery pack

This setup costs about $60 and it will charge iPhones in about an hour on a sunny day. It'll also charge an iPad Air, with its stunningly high capacity (32400 mAh) internal battery, but if the battery is real low, it'll take all day. Maybe two or three. And those had better be sunny days. 

Daffodil Desk Lamp - 1.25 watts (250 mAh)

The 10 watt solar panel will also charge a battery pack that can power USB devices (such as our little desk lamp, above) and to recharge phones at night. The off-grid alternative is to use a vehicle's 12v cigarette lighter plug, but you have to do it prudently or risk damaging the battery and being unable to start your car - especially in subzero weather. Running the engine for an hour just to charge batteries is environmentally sociopathic. 

Solar power is addictive, for individuals and countries. Once you see how easy, inexpensive and liberating it is to generate your own power you'll get hooked. The same phenomenon occurs in countries - last year natural gas-fired units led the new generating installations in the USA but solar energy was second. By 2016, solar will be first. 

If you do get hooked and want to power more electrical appliances off grid, you'll need to know a bit about electricity. We are conditioned to unconsciously plug in an appliance and turn it on. Many people auto-pay the electric bill, gripe about the withdrawal from checking every month. That's about the extent of their electrophysics experience. If appliances don't work when switched on, and there's zero mechanical aptitude within hailing range (more common today because fewer kids have the time or motivation to learn how to fix things) then we complain, call customer service, or discard it and buy another one. Often, all three are done. Society has learned to plug, play, and pay the electric bill like good, obedient consumers. If the power goes down then it's an easy descent into victim-hood and FEMA-blaming.

It doesn't have to be that way, a little knowledge of electrophysics combined with some curiosity and common sense can get you through any power outage, even a perpetual one such as here in off-gridistan.

Even immortals cannot escape the grasp of the NTA

The subject of electricity often invokes fear and boredom in the plug-and-play, victim-and-blame world. We occasionally run into sensational signs like this but you won't be generating anywhere near the energy required to run a tram. Electrocution is certainly a hazard, but you are 100 times more likely to die of an infection, so it's important to keep risks in perspective. 

Electricity is the management of electrical charges: storing, transporting, and converting the charges to a useful (and often, useless) product such as light, heat, an MP3 or (ahem) a blog post. Electricity flow is similar to water flow (this is known as the hydraulic analogy). All you need to know are two basic concepts: volts and amps and we'll derive a few others from those. The hydraulic analogy involves considering the charges the same as water molecules. Volts, for instance, are similar to water velocity - the swiftness of a river, for instance. A fast river, like the AuSable after it rains, is similar to high voltage. When it doesn't rain for awhile the AuSable has a slower flow - lower voltage. 

Volts are named for the Italian dude who invented the battery, Alessandro Volta, about 200 years ago. He noticed he could make frog legs twitch by applying electrical charges to them. Most electrical physicists and engineers are a bit eccentric, tortuing frogs is normal behavior for them.  

 

Volta immortalized on a 10000 lira note, worth about $6 in pre-Euro days.

Volts are like water pressure - when you stick your hand in the river you feel the force of the flow. A cell phone is a 5 volt device. A blow dryer runs on 117 (nominally, 125) volts...in the US. An electric stove or air conditioner nominally requires 220 volts.  If you put your thumb over a squirt gun nozzle, you can easily stop the flow. Low pressure...low voltage. If you put your thumb over the nozzle of a high pressure washer, you can't stop the flow and you'll injure your thumb. (I know this firsthand...literally.) That's similar to high voltage. So the first hydraulic analogy takeaway is that high voltage can injure you but low voltage can't.

Testing, not tasting, a 9 volt battery.

This is why you can touch the battery contacts on a flashlight battery and not even feel it. It's only 1.5 volts (12,000 milliamp-hours, mAh). You can touch your tongue to a 9 volt (500 mAh) battery and feel a slight tingle (the tongue being more sensitive than a finger). We actually used to do stuff like that in grade school science class. If that were attempted today one of the students would tweet it to a parent, who would tip off CNN and they would helicopter a news crew to the scene. EMS would be activated, the school would go into full lockdown, the resulting lawsuits would take out the insurance sector and crash the stock market. 

I definitely wouldn't advise it but if you touched higher voltage, say, 115 volts from the household outlet, then you will get a heck of a shock, as some of us kids of the 60's could attest. Back then the electrical code didn't require grounded outlets or even polarized plugs. The code has been changed, products are better insulated and many circuits have ground fault devices, so electrical shocks are now rare. That's a bit of a pity as kids can grow up without ever getting zapped, a teachable moment for the survivors. 

Now you know that you're not going to even feel 12 volts on a car battery (40,000 mAh) unless you have a really long tongue because the terminals on those batteries are far apart. So, provided our wires are small in diameter, we can safely fool around with 12 volts or less. That's the typical voltage for off-gridders, but I think 5 volts (for those USB gadgets) is also handy. 

Only a stamp. Alas, no French currency
immortalizes the man who discovered current.

The wire diameter is important because of the next important concept, amperes, generally shortened to simply 'amps'. While Volta was zapping frogs, André-Marie Ampère was experimenting with electrical charges. Back then, science was the domain of the idle rich, as most commoners 200 years ago had to work day and night just to survive. Ampère had all the time in the world to fool with wires and electricity. He discovered that the two wires carrying current repelled or attracted each other and the force was related to the direction and strength of the current. Ampère's wife, Julie provided a timeless assessment of engineers as well as her husband: "He has no manners; he is awkward, shy and presents himself poorly". 

Back to the hydraulic analogy. Recall that volts are analogous to water pressure. Amps are similar to the diameter of the pipe or the width of the river. Big pipe or wide river means lots of amps. 

Long Beach Freeway - example of high, albeit slow, flow

Another way to think of it is to consider a small country road and a giant freeway. Our road has a speed limit of 10 MPH because Irene washed out half a bridge three years ago. It's an example of low capacity, or low flow. Compare that to the Long Beach freeway, a multilane monstrosity in LA. The capacity is much higher than our little bridge.

One lane bridge - example of low (also slow!) flow

Using a highway analogy, volts would correspond to the vehicle speed and amps would correspond to the number of vehicles. The vehicles are similar to electrical charges. So the freeway can move a tremendous number of cars (charges) per minute - even at a crawl. Our one lane bridge-constricted road can move only a few per minute. The capacity of the road (cars per minute) is analogous to amps. 

Armed with a basic understanding of amps and volts we can now discuss the art of the possible when living off grid. With an unlimited budget you can do anything, but our goal is to conserve resources and live simply. The first step is to identify essential electrical devices and determine their energy requirements. Energy is measured in Watts, which are simply volts multiplied by amps. 

Watt, on the right (shown with another inventor, Bolton) on a 50£ note

James Watt wasn't rich or eccentric, but he wasn't into electricity, either. He perfected the steam engine, which ushered in the Industrial Age. Watt invented a well known unit of energy, horsepower, and patented the first copying machine. The modern unit of energy, the Watt (which ironically replaces horsepower), is named for him. 

Many electrical appliances indicate the wattage or amperage. 

Most appliances have a label indicating the wattage or amperage. This is the key to determining if it can be used in your off-grid abode. This typical blow-dryer, for instance, uses 1875 watts. Divide that by its rated voltage, 125, and you see that it'll require 15 amps. If you run it for an hour, you'll need an 15 amp-hour, 125 volt, battery. If you run it for five minutes then you'll need five-sixtieths of that or 1.25 amp-hours at 125 volts. 

Don't bother shopping for a 125 V, 1.25 Ah battery. First off, they don't exist (you could make one, but that's for another post). Secondly, note where the yellow arrow is pointing - you need alternating current, AC. We'll get to that in a moment. Thirdly, you shouldn't discharge batteries all the way - that'll greatly shorten their lives. There are exceptions, but off-gridders typically use lead-acid batteries, the usual ones found in cars, except designed for deeper discharge. What that means is that your battery load shouldn't exceed 10% of its rated capacity. Stated another way, multiply your power requirement by 10. So now you need a 12.5 Ah battery. Here's one (14 Ah, but close enough) on Amazon for about $65, with shipping (they are heavy). 

Now we have to bring in one more character, but we're saving the best for last - Nikola Tesla. 

Tesla on the (former) Yugoslavian 100 Dinar note
 featuring an actual equation and a motor schematic. 

Tesla was the exponent of electrophysical eccentricity but he wasn't born into wealth. He was a brilliant scientist and inventor and somehow figured out that alternating current was a more efficient method of transmitting electricity. This concept is so counterintuitive that it took a mind like Tesla's to think of it.  

Batteries produce direct current, DC. Back to the highway or river analogies, it's obvious that all the little water molecules are moving in the same direction, as are the cars on the freeway. Tesla somehow realized that electrical energy can flow rapidly back and forth, and by doing so it can be transmitted at high voltages and low current. As the electrical energy got closer to the user, it could be fairly efficiently converted into lower voltage and higher current. That's the system used for electrical grids around the world today.  

Now back to the blow dryer. It is designed for home use, therefore it runs on AC. If you plug an AC appliance into a DC circuit, it won't work and it may break. Fortunately, there's a device known as an inverter that will efficiently convert DC to AC.

This is a 2500W inverter, about $180. You connect it to your battery and there are outlets on the back to plug in household appliances. So now, for about $250, we have a battery and an inverter. All we need is a solar panel to recharge the battery.

Recall that all we're doing here is running one blowdryer for five minutes a day. We'd need more capacity to use other appliances, but the process is similar - find the energy consumption, estimate the daily use and add it up. Size your system for at least that, typically you'd triple your calculation to account for overcast days when solar panels aren't too effective. Solar panels come in many sizes but for our blowdryer application we'd need one that'll recharge the battery in a day. 

We've consumed 156 watts by running the blowdryer - that's 1.25 Amp-hours at 125 volts, as previously noted. Our little 10 watt solar panel would need nearly 15 hours of sunlight to recharge the battery. So that's out. But Instapark sells a 30 watt panel for $100, and 5 hours of sun is a more practical target. 

Now we're done with powering the blowdryer, total cost is $350 for the battery, panel and inverter. I don't see the business case in those economics, but a lot of people can't survive without a blowdryer, so perhaps its worth it. A more useful appliance, say a refrigerator, would involve a similar process. 

This is a Sundanzer DCR50, $650. It's quite small, about 2x2x3 feet, but it runs on 12v DC and only uses 9.6 Ah per day, 114 watts. That's less energy to run a refrigerator all day than using a blowdryer for just 5 minutes. The most important part of off-grid energy design is to research the energy requirements and buy the right appliances! You wouldn't need an inverter to run this, just a 100 Ah 12 v battery ($200) and the 30W solar panel mentioned above. The whole setup costs close to $1000, but you'll be completely independent of the power grid. 

Comparing the energy use of appliances gives an idea of how long they can be powered off of a battery. It's not an exact calculation because there are inefficiencies in any power distribution system, even a USB cable connecting a cell phone to a battery. But you can account for that. The lowest power consumer in this post is the desk lamp. It puts out a lot of light - equal to at least a 60 watt light bulb (back when those were legal). But it only draws 1.25 watts. Dividing that by its voltage (it's a USB device, so it runs on 5 volts DC), yields 0.25 amps. We'll use milliamps to eliminate the decimal, so multiply 0.25 times 1000 (milli) to obtain a handier value, 250 milliamps (mA). If you run the lamp for an hour, you'll consume 250 ma per hour, or 250 mAh. 

Anyhow, the battery pack way up at the top of this post has a capacity of 5200 mAh. So, it can power our lamp - theoretically - for 5200 mAh divided by 250 mA, or 20 hours and 48 minutes. In practice, the battery may be over-rated (companies are known to fudge the numbers for marketing purposes) and the lamp may draw more than 250 mA for the same reason. So you always knock down the value to be on the safe side, hence the classic engineering term 'safety factor'. I think the lamp would be good for at least 15 hours. That's rather impressive, by the way.

As for the iPhone, it consumes a variable amount of energy depending on the applications it is running, the type of cell network (phone calls and roaming increase power consumption) and screen brightness. The range is 0.7 to 2 watts, divide that by volts (it's a USB device, 5 volts) and you get between 140 and 400 ma. So our battery pack can power the phone for 13 to 37 hours, depending on usage. That's also rather impressive.

The same calculations can be done with the higher power devices. The refrigerator (9600 mAh) can't run off the Instapark battery because the battery only produces 5 volts. Also you'd be discharging the little battery so quickly that you may damage it. The 100 Ah battery referenced above will theoretically run the refrigerator for 10 hours but in practice you shouldn't do that as it'll wear out the battery. This is the reason people add solar panels and batteries to their systems, in addition to increasing capacity the systems last a lot longer. 

Pistou

Soupe au Pistou

There are many versions of pistou and perhaps this one is not authentic French Provençal pistou. But I did make it in Paris and our Parisian friend declared it excellent.

Start by mincing a goodly amount of garlic then add some more and mince that. Dice an onion and sauté in olive oil and cumin seeds. Add salt so the onions behave properly. Don't measure anything, just eyeball the quantities. Over-measuring leads to underperforming.

Next, cut and clean a leek or two. I cut them in half lengthwise then in half again crosswise. Then I fan them out and clean them carefully, using plenty of water because the stalks seem to trap sand. Chop up some celery and a carrot or two, then add all that to the onions when they are translucent or start to brown. Add the garlic, turn down the heat and stir until the carrots soften up a bit. 

Add vegetable bouillon and a can or two of cannellini beans, a large can of diced tomatoes and a couple of diced potatoes. Don't dice everything the same size, this is a rustic dish, not an institutional formulation. The bouillon should cover everything by about an inch. Add thyme, lots of it, and other spices that you like such as oregano. I add cumin. Bring to a boil then let it simmer for awhile. Stir occasionally, tasting as you go and adjusting seasonings. 

When the potatoes are softened (check them with a fork, if they are crunchy then they aren't done), add a half box of penne or so, give it a while to cook and serve with a salad.