The Zeiger Family Homestead Blog

We’ve long known the day would come: last week, the wind generator controller’s circuit board failed.

I’m still cackling with glee over our new solar array, which has made our wind generator all but redundant to our off-the-grid electrical system (see Power Shift: An Early Unveiling). “Flipping the switch” on the array relegated the wind generator to a back up system, completely reversing the previous roles. After years of difficulty keeping the generator on line, this appealed to me greatly!

When we redesigned the system, we assumed that we would eventually need to replace the wind generator. The company, Southwest Windpower (SWWP), basically cut and ran to India years ago (see My Wind Generator’s Company Goes Missing). A lot of people use their generators in our neighborhood. I know of at least one neighbor who had to ship their machine to India for repairs. I don’t want to do that. Just shipping them to Arizona for repairs in the old days drained funds unreasonably.

So, we decided to go ahead and run our generator as long as we could, then figure out what to do. Now, we’re figuring!

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Black Moon

Recently, with clear nights and the autumnal equinox tipping us back toward more darkness, the night sky has become quite interesting over the homestead. Clear views of the Milky Way, frequent, early auroral displays, and simple star gazing have us craning our necks skyward. Early this morning, we might see a Black Moon.

Although I’ve known about a Blue Moon, a second full moon in a single month, for most of my life, I don’t think I’d ever heard of a Black Moon, a second new moon (also called dark of the moon) in a month.

Right now, we’re ideally positioned for moon gazing. The moon currently rises just before dawn in the valley between “The Mountain With No Name” and “LC Mountain,” the mountains that dominate our view. This means that we should be able to make out the rising moon, even though Earth’s shadow will completely cover it (or mostly—0.1% illumination!). But, with the sun rising, we may be able to just make it out.

Of course, technically, the moon will be new at precisely 4:11 p.m. this afternoon; At that time, we’ll have to hike over the ridge to look for it in the west.

I guess a black moon is pretty rare, although it happens every 32 months, which kind of deflates the claims some make that it presages the end of the world.

Wind Generator Problems, Yet Again

Black Moon

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