My time in Brighton
A view from Brighton mole
My time in Brighton went fast. While I was not in the office, I trained for the cycling challenge. On a bank holiday weekend my friend came over for two days. The next weekend I had to go to Harrogate (north of Leeds) to meet Nick. A day working together with him was probably the most productive day in England. He gave me a great feedback about my work and explained his vision about the projects I am working on. It gave me an excellent boost.
We started the day with the community implementation model. The main idea is to develop a practitioner’s handbook. These guidelines will support all involved parties in the process of implementing community-scale renewable energy systems. As Nick told, he has created the skeleton for this model and I have to build a body around it. I will not be able to finish the practitioner’s handbook during my internship, but I hope to add at least ‘muscles’. We also discussed the water metering system. I have to finish technical report that will be used as the guidelines for installations in the future and a training manual for communities. It covers everything from the list of components and hardware installation process to instructions on how to use Steama portal. This software allows remotely control the metering system – a key innovation. Yet, we need to install valves on the distribution pipes and reed switches that controls the valves through the system brains – Bit Harvester. The report also includes a brief guidelines of payment and billing system that will be developed in the future to charge end-users for the water or electricity services. The only way to scale up RE projects is to commercialize them, but for that potential investors need to see the return of their money. It was time to be proud that I will have finished at least one document knowing the reasons for the delay. We also chatted about the proposal for a wind/solar hybrid system I started in Nepal, but it is no longer in forefront. I will return to it later, but there is just no time at the moment. Depending on where I will go (back to Nepal or Kenya), Renewable has selected feasible sites for such system.
On Saturday morning, I had a short walk around Harrogate and breakfast with Nick. Then I got to Leeds by train and spent a half day there. I planned to do some sightseeing and shopping, but ended up only shopping. Walking from shop to shop is kind of sightseeing. On top of my list was cycling equipment, but I bought some running gear as well. The centre of Leeds was very busy. I had heard there are not too many sunny days, so I believe everyone tried to get out of home. On my way back to Brighton I realized that I have not taken a single picture during my 3 day trip. It just slipped out of my mind or maybe I have finally learned to enjoy something without a million pictures. On Sunday I wanted to test the gear. Despite the weather I did a 140km ride. Some 60km from home a nasty rain caught me. I was completely soaked and regretted cycling so far away. The only real problem was my ice-cold feet. I was worried about catching a cold, but the next morning everything was fine. One step closer to the big challenge.
The mist during my 140km ride
Cycling event ‘Earth Wind and Tyre’ also was my opportunity to engage with the team in Brighton. I mentioned that I would be happy to help them and they assigned me to solve some of their problems in logistics. I mostly worked on the route. It was already created by CEO of EDF Christian Egal. He came up with the idea to organise a fundraising bike event that would include cycling along several wind farms. Using Google Street View I checked all route – 200 miles. I had to make sure that at no point the route goes off-road and also find safe spots for feed stops and then create a map that rider would be able to download on their smartphones or Garmin devices. I also prepared a map in Google Earth showing all points where we should leave road markings. This sounds like an easy task, but it was so time-consuming that I actually got frustrated. Several times we changed the route and the location of feed stops and then the software did not work or we were not able to download the cuesheet for Garmin devices. At the end it took me two weeks to do this. Everyone else was so busy with other matters, so I felt like doing a huge favour which was good. And I was going to cycle in the event myself.
Cycle to Southampton
On the last Saturday before the race, I went for a really long ride. I wanted to rise endurance, so I decided to cycle to Southampton, knowing it was slightly more than 100km away. It scared me a bit, but the weather was good in comparison with the previous weekend. Besides, if I got too exhausted, I could take a train back to Brighton. Before I got on the bike, I was thinking about a short excursion in Southampton. A silly idea! When I got there, the only thing I wanted was some nice food. In a Chinese restaurant I ordered a veg soup and deep-fried chicken dumplings. The meal turned out to be a disappointment and the service was so bad that I wanted to leave a feedback on TripAdvisor. After spending 50 minutes, I cycled back. Everything went smooth and I got home after 9 hours 45 minutes and 213km. Amazing achievement for an amateur! More valuable was the confidence I gained before the challenge.
Brighton Beach
The next week was also my last week in Brighton. Nick allowed me to go to Latvia after the cycling event and work from home for a while. I could easily continue developing my projects there. Two weeks after the earthquake I realized that it has left some emotional side effects. I got angry for trifle matters and felt under pressure without a reason. Since this was not typical for me, I really started to worry and decided that the best remedy could be seeing my friends and family. My internship was halfway, but I hoped to go back to Nepal if the situation improves or to Kenya otherwise. The decision will be made when I return to Latvia, but until then let’s get ready for the Earth, Wind and Tyre!
