Put Away

This is the sky that I was shaking my fist at last weekend. While they don't show up in the phot, little snowflakes were falling (no accumulation). 

All of the leaves are now gathered. At least those that I gathered. There's a school of thought that says "leave the leaves." I pick up the leaves for the most part, because I don't think that letting them get matted on the lawn will be helpful. But the last bits I mulch so there's a light leaf cover. 

Today marked the day when I was planning to bring the leaves to the leaf dump. Showed up 10 minutes after they opened. On a Sunday. Bad move.  There was a line a mile long, and Kiki & I abandoned it. The van is sitting in the garage, stuffed to the gills, and ready to go tomorrow when it will hopefully be possible to approach the leaf dump. Not Plan A. 

Another little piece of learning: It turns out that you want to clean your solar panels periodically. There's a miracle solution that is specifically designed for the task (so you don't damage them). That, and a very soft brush (on the end of the same pole that I use for clearing snow off of them), and you have everything you need to take them from Before to After.

Before:

After:

Our solar production on our last energy bill was lousy. We'd had a hailstorm (sadly not the band) which included seriously golf-ball size hail. I took up the offer from our solar provider to run a drone over it to check for damage. There wasn't any. 

I think we're looking at a combination of factors. 

1) One of the trees in our back yard has grown significantly. While it's not a problem for most of the year, in the fall the sun is coming in at a very low angle from the south, and, unlike in the early spring, it still has leaf cover, which is shading some of the panels.

2) The panels were pretty dirty (see above).

3) Kiki is driving more to get to a new job. That takes electricity.

4) The plug-in hybrid Chrysler Pacifica is a bigger vehicle than the old plug-in hybrid Kia Niro. While it has more electric range, moving all that weight has got to eat more energy.

5) We now have a deep freezer which we bought to contain some of the bumper harvest from this past summer. Another energy vampire. 

All of which left us with a surprisingly expensive Xcel bill. Here's hoping the clean panels and the fact that all the leaves are down now combine to change that a bit. Not peak solar season November - February, but hopefully it gives us a little kick. The expense of running the freezer is a good reminder that we need to actually eat last year's produce before it gets freezer burned so that we can turn it off.

That is all.