Backyard Summertime Nature in New Jersey.
It was much cooler, so I spent the morning catching up on yard work. The electric fence (not charged yet) is already helping the Forsythia and Lilac shrubs we planted earlier this spring. They have new leaves that the deer haven’t nibbled. I am in the process of installing a drip hose to water both these shrubs and the daffodil patch (using rainwater collected in barrels). The grass hadn’t been mowed in two weeks, so that also had to be done. Also lots of mile-a-minute vine weeds needed to be pulled. The walkway from the front to the patio was overgrown with tall Cosmos and Sunflowers that needed to be trimmed back. Time-lapse video recorded with a Garmin VIRB-360 camera and the video processed with Photoshop CC (including the Little Planet view).
After the yard work I did my daily walkabout with a Nikon 1 V3 camera and 70-300 mm VR lens. The deer wondered why I mowed their lawn. In addition to the last week being hot, we only got 0.42 inches of rain. The water level in the pond is way down. Kermit the Bullfrog was only partially submerged in the middle of the pond in a section that is normally a couple feet deep. I only saw one Hummingbird Clearwing moth (white legs) feeding on a Bee Balm flower. The only recent new flower is a bright red Indian Paintbrush. Finally a beat up Monarch butterfly.
Daily Electric Energy Used (48.2 kWh) from Sense and Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (71.9 kWh) from SolSystems and Locus Energy. Cooler outside and the sun was out most of the day for a net surplus of 23.7 kWh. Laundry used 3.7 kWh.
One note — the WaterFurnace Symphony software indicated the system used 3 kWh, however the Sense Energy monitor indicated that the geothermal heat pump used 5.4 kWh. I tend to believe the Sense numbers since they more closely the energy being recorded at the external power company (PSE&G) meters. I’ve asked the WaterFurnace folks in the past about the discrepancy, but they didn’t have a good answer. The Sense folks told me they thought that the WaterFurnace/Symphony system was only measuring one phase of the energy even though the system is powered by the 220V circuit (using two phases). I wish an electrical engineer that understands this better would correct me here.
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