Three years gone, Six months to go… (almost anyway)

I remember being told by my Mum that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And all my good intentions at the time last year to blog bi-weekly definitely have made my path to the hot place a little bit more easy. So, in penance and to try blogging again here we go.

A lot has happened since September last year, and I'm not quite sure how best to do this, so I've decided to give a bit of photo diary of the last 12 months to give a taste of what's been going on both in PhD-world and my own.

In October/November I was working on the stability analysis of parallel inverters, using small signal stability analysis, the results of the analysis match the simulations relatively well, hopefully these will also match the experimental work as well. Below is the pole-zero plot for the parallel inverters.

Pole-zero plot for parallel inverters

I met one of the founders of Learning Planet, Justin Wickham, in London to discuss the pico hydro scheme they are looking at. You can see more of the area Learning Planet are in here or have a look on their website www.learningplanet.org.uk.

 

The School in Dhawa renovated by Learning Planet

My cousin Helen got married at the end of October, so we headed over to Ireland to celebrate.

Helen and me at her wedding

I helped on the sound desk again with Horfield Theatre Company for their October pantomime, Franky Panky and had a lot of fun - with innuendo and a lot of childish humour. I'm getting a little bit better on the sound, although every so often the wrong person's mic would be turned up… A fun fun week nonetheless!

Franky Panky's Poster

I had a "cruise" to Bruges with my little sister, which was fun - especially all the chocolate!

Me and a bear in Bruges

During November and December I wrote a paper on the experimental turbine work I'd been doing, and submitted it to the Journal of Applied Energy at the beginning of January. It was finally accepted in June, and published here in July! The paper that I presented at WREC was also published in Renewable Energy Journal in July this year as well, here.

A figure from the Applied Energy journal, the slug of water that's ingested by the turbine in one rotation

In the last weekend of November, Hannah and I went to Salisbury to celebrate two years. We had a fun couple of days and saw Stonehenge, the Cathedral, Avebury and the Uffington White Horse.

The Stone Circle at Avebury

I spent Christmas with my parents and sisters, which was great.

With my family at Mount Edgecombe

Back in the lab, I started working on an improved control system to try and reduce any current spikes when the two inverters connected together so that switches won't go bang when the inverters are connected to a grid. This improved control did what it was supposed to in the simulation.

Reduced current spikes on paralleling inverters

I had another family wedding in Ireland, my cousin Gillian got married in early February and Hannah and I headed over for the weekend. Unfortunately snow made our journey back delayed… (I blame Gillian's sister, Jenny, who flew back with us!)

Gillian and Alex's wedding

I found an IEEE conference in Kathmandu that would take place in late September, known as ICSET. I wrote two papers for this conference, one on the turbine testing and the other on a simulation of a off-grid pico hydro network, submitting them by the end of March, which were approved. I'm off to Nepal on the 17th September, which is going to be amazing.

A simple model of an off-grid pico hydro network

I also attended and presented at the EWB research conference at UCL at the end of March, adding to the stress at the time, but really enjoyed it and was interested to hear some of the other projects going on in the EWB universe.

AC grid with distributed generators connected with inverter front ends

After submitting the papers, Hannah and I went off to India for two weeks, and had the most fantastic time. We spent a week in Kerala and a week in Bangalore, and had some amazing experiences, spending a night on a houseboat, riding on an elephant, and visiting some beautiful parts of the countryside.

On a houseboat in Alleppey, Kerala

On returning from India, I started to build some electronics, starting with a simple inverter, four switches and an inductor-capacitor filter. I built a simple control circuit in analogue components to control the output current to a reference sine wave from a signal generator. The circuit managed to produce a relatively good output.

Inverter Mk1 and Output

At the end of April, Hannah and I went to see one of my favourite bands, Feeder, in Cardiff. They were absolutely amazing. Enough said.

At the Feeder gig

By the beginning of May, it was time to do 'Living Below the Line' again (see last years version here). We raised money for MRDF and this time, there were a good 10 of us that did it.

Pasta Dinner during Live Below The Line

Once the original inverter worked, I built a second checking it worked with the basic controller, and then used a real time controller called dSPACE which can use MATLAB models to control things, allowing quick changes to be made to the model and be able to see the result of it. Both inverters worked controlled by the dSPACE which was great.

Parallel Inverters with dSPACE

The Olympic Torch came to Bristol in May, and we went down to the Harbourside to see it. The city was buzzing, and we had a fantastic time watching it arrive.

Olympic Torch arriving in Bristol

I ran a quick tour of the Hydrolab for the University of Bristol's Open Day in June, and showed some of the potential new students around and demonstrated the turbine rig. By the end of the day, my voice was hoarse, but had talked to many hundreds of people.

Turbine rig running

Obviously with London holding the Olympics, I wasn't going to miss going to see some events. We went to see the Beach Volleyball on Horseguards Parade and some Hockey in the Olympic Park, just a most fantastic experience.

Beach Volleyball at Horseguards Parade

Once each of the inverters worked individually, I connected them together, to see how they would work in parallel. They synchronised without blowing up, which was always good, and now in my work I'm trying to improve the performance of the system.

Parallel inverters

Every year Bristol holds an International Balloon Fiesta in Ashton Court, on the outskirts of Bristol. We went to the Nightglow, where the balloons light up to music, and saw a mass take off with Tim, who had come over from New Zealand.

Balloons at the Nightglow

We had a few days in Cornwall, camping. It rained, well it was Cornwall after all, but had a few nice and sunny days, especially down on the Lizard and ate some rather tasty ice-cream too…

Lizard Lighthouse in the sunshine!

A couple of weeks later we returned to Cornwall for a school friend's wedding. Again it rained, and it didn't really let up this time. Argh. Still, we enjoyed an ice-cream in the rain.

Hannah eating an Ice-cream in the rain at Lanhydrock

As well as the Olympics, we also got some tickets for the Paralympics, this time for the swimming, athletics and also saw some judo and table tennis. If anything, we enjoyed this more than the Olympics, the atmosphere was just incredible.

The long jump in the Olympic Stadium

And straight from the Paralympics we headed to the Small is Festival 2012. I had been asked to do a little workshop on pico hydro, and so designed a workshop to build a little crossflow turbine and test it, the workshop went really well and I had a very inspirational weekend. And it didn't rain!

The workshop at Small is Festival

So, hopefully now you're all about caught up with me and my life. I'm really sorry it's taken so long to do this, but I hope I'll be a bit more regular. Not long to go with the PhD now either. Times are scary and fun!

SAM

Two years on

I can't believe it's almost October again. Another academic year has started and this means not only another new intake of fresh meat for the university, but one year less of my PhD. Time doesn't half fly. According to my plan I made at the end of last year, I'd have built a system and be testing it now, and then after Christmas being saving the world. I have a feeling that might not happen now though.

As not much photo-worthy has happened over the last few weeks, I've included some of my favourite photos from the last year here, ones that I've not put in any blog posts before.

An advert for Tena Men I saw in a service station toilet, it made me chuckle a little...

I have to say the work I've been doing over the last few weeks hasn't been the most exciting in the world. I've been writing a paper on the Turgo testing I had done over the June and July. The paper's been quite difficult to get on with, as there have been several gaps I've needed to fill in. Well, not gaps as such, just bits that make the paper read better. At the moment it sounds a bit like a bad GCSE science report - I did this, then I did this, then I did this. A little bit disheartening, but with a bit more work I will hopefully getting it reading a lot better.

The inside of L'Arc de Triomphe, as seen during our trip to Paris last November.

Apart from writing a paper, I've spent a lot of time reading papers. In fact I'm in the process of sorting through over 60 papers that have different methods of droop control, that can be used to help connected inverters into parallel. The problem I've found is that there are a few different methods, with several people publishing papers on each different method. Some of them have slight tweaks which makes the method different, an extra term in the equation here or there, a slightly different mathematical relationship. But I'm not really sure how many different adaptions there are to each one. So the aim of the exercise is to identify as  many different techniques as possible and record the salient points from each and then chose which ones to take forward into a model. This is going to take me a few more weeks, but I'm hoping it will be a worthwhile exercise. Fingers crossed!

Looking out to sea during our stay at the Lighthouse near Lynmouth with my church friends in January.

A birthday cake for Hannah's friend Lydia - I was quite proud of this one, as it was modelled on Lydia's cat Patch.

This month we also had our Harvest Messy Church. These are every quarter, and pretty much every time I cook, principally because it means I'm well away from kids then (slightly loose tongue + children = problem). I also actually really enjoy cooking, and rarely get a chance to cook for a large number of people. We normally cook for about 80 people, and this time we made a soup, packed full of British harvest vegetables. It was good fun, and I was surprised how many of the children actually enjoyed it. Some even came back for more. Who says children don't like good healthy food?

A white rhino we saw in Longleat Safari Park, during the joint birthday trip in March.

Today, I was invited back to Atkins, where I worked before starting my PhD. My friend there, Marie Adeyemi, was going to launch a program called Atkins Aerospace CARES, a corporate social responsibility initiative. Marie has done a fantastic job in convincing the management at Aerospace to allow this to go ahead, and even give the project a budget. They hope it will get Atkins people linking up with charities and NGOs, doing pro bono work and consultancy for them and encouraging a better team spirit in the company. Part of it is to encourage people to take sabbatical's, rather like me. I felt a bit awkward as I had left once I returned from my sabbatical year. However, it was great to see everyone there again. There were some faces I knew and some I didn't. It's strange how it sometimes feels you haven't left at all. Especially when the receptionist asked me if I had just forgotten my pass again (a rather usual occurrence for me!).

My eye, the wrinkles are really starting to show now…

Looking back, this year has been busy, and I've achieved a lot. I've presented at a conference, winning best paper in topic, I've built a small turbine and tested it, getting an amazing efficiency, I've travelled many thousands of miles including two trips to Nepal. However, time doesn't stop. I've got so much more to do in the next year, and if I don't get it done, then i'll be in real trouble. So, here's to the next year being productive, fun and memorable!

SAM

Busy Bee

Over the last 3 weeks since returning from Nepal I have hardly stopped. I completed 36 experiments over 2 weeks, looking at the extremes again, this time with angle included. To get to 30 degrees angle, I had to make a few alterations to the rig, as I wasn't able to get the jet into the cup from the original position. It also showed me a simple way of moving the position of the jet in the cup. Previously I had been moving the jet itself up and down, and had to ensure each side was at the correct angle and the cross beams were level, but I found I could move the wheel up and down, so I could keep the jet in the same position. This has saved me time and a lot of hassle. Sometimes I wish I saw these simple things before though...

From these tests, I've found that both 10 and 20 degree inclination angles of the jet produce a good efficiency, and that aiming towards the top of the cup is best for these. I also did some optimisation tests, culminating in doing 11 tests in my final day at uni - a very long and tiring day, but this meant that I have found the optimum position for the jet in the cup, and now should be able to get a good consistent efficiency from it. Hopefully now the main part of the testing is complete, there may be a few tests left to do, but the main part is done, fingers crossed!

Testing in the hydrolab

As well as testing, I've been working on the paper for the Renewable Energy Journal. Although it is based on conference paper from WREC, I have had to modify it, so it is more of a coherent story. Also, the journal allows us to give more details of the analysis and background to the research in the paper. I have had a lot of help from Julian in this - he said he was in paper writing mode - which has been fantastic, as he has had many papers published in Renewable Energy, as well as other journals, so can add his experience of this. It's now just about ready to go, I'm just waiting for the formal invite.

Outside uni, in the three weekends there have been, I've not been in Bristol at all. The first weekend I went home to Cornwall to see my parents, who I hadn't seen for a long time. I had a great time at home, even if was just for a short while. We went for a wander up on the moor and Mum cooked a roast. What more do you need from a trip home - apart from maybe your clothes washed for you!

This was then followed by 2 weddings. The first was Olly's wedding in Sevenoaks, who I went to Paris with at the beginning of June. I was one of the three best men, and had the responsibility of holding the ring - very very scary - and making a speech. The speech went OK, principally because I decided not to force too many jokes into it. Olly had asked me to do a little in French as well, he was marrying a French girl, but I decided that my French was not up to scratch and so gave a translation for all the French people (thanks Google!). So, I'm sorry Olly that I didn't speak any French, something I felt bad about when everyone else who gave speeches spoke both languages. Olly had all the men dressed in Ascot Morning Suits, which sadly involved a top hat. I looked very silly as you can see below. It was, however, a really good day, and I was very glad to share it with Olly and Aurelie.

Posing for photos at Olly's wedding

Me in the top hat (yes, I know I can't smile with my teeth very well hence the strained grin, sometimes I feel like Chandler in Friends!)

The second wedding was a friend of Hannah's from her undergraduate course. This was out to the north of Bristol, about an hours drive away. Hannah's friend, Rachel, was a wedding planner, and so her wedding was of course very well done. The little church they were married in was a beautiful little country church, and the reception was in the venue that Rachel worked. Again, it was a really fun day, but I have to say at the end of it I was very glad to sleep!

Rachel and her husband Chris

And now, I'm off to Nepal again. This time for a month. I'm hoping to get back to Ilam to see how Amchowk is now with electricity. I'm also planning on meeting up with a few NGOs to have a chat about some pico hydro projects they're interested in, and hope to visit a few current and potential sites whilst I'm there too. And, of course, visit my adopted family there, see Bibek hopefully and get to travel around a bit, and relax.

Photo from Amchowk last year

Relaxing Nepali times are ahead!

SAM

Inconsistency

Firstly, a bit of exciting news. I got an email from the organisers of WREC a week ago saying that I was awarded the best paper in the hydropower applications section of the conference, which was fantastic news. I've now been invited to write up the paper for Renewable Energy Journal, which I'll do over the coming weeks.

Notice on WREC Website for best papers

Certificate for best paper in hydropower applications at WREC

I wish sometimes things would be a bit simpler. I've been doing a lot of testing recently, and by that I mean sitting in the lab hours on end recording torque and speed readings at different positions. Each run of the turbine I do takes about half an hour, when you allow for getting the right flow rate to produce the right head at the nozzle, then waiting for all the air to purge from the system before actually recording the data, which may only take about 10 minutes or so. However, I have managed to be fairly productive, and got all the variables extreme testing that I wanted to do done. I then went on to consistency testing and found that my results are fairly consistent, less than 5% variation which is quite good. But this has also shown a problem. During the initial testing I managed to get a maximum efficiency of about 85%, during the extremes testing this was down to 80% and now during this consistency testing I've got up to 88%. Why is this variation happening?

Well, I think I've found what it is due to, slight changes in position. With the jet a little bit too high, the efficiency drops off quickly, and with my aiming system, I've not been able to be more accurate in position than about 5mm. I've also found that all the pipe I have is slightly bowed, so when it is rotated about its clamped position it gives hits the cups in different positions. Now I know what's going on, I can at least fix the rotation of the pipe and so should be able to make this more consistent. It is quite frustrating though…

Photo of the testing as the jet hits the cup

I've decided to look at the angle the jet hits the cup at as well, an reduced angle would mean increased change in momentum at the cup giving more torque and power, but may have an adverse effect in terms of how the jet interacts with the cup, as it may cut it off earlier. Whereas, with an increased angle there will be less momentum of the water in the direction of rotation, but it may be able to enter the cup better, ensuring more of the water works towards generating the power. So, I'll have to do these experiments, a further set of 24.

A couple of third year undergraduates here had done some work on cup design and had designed what they thought would be a more efficiency cup, so I had this rapid prototyped and tested it against the standard cups. We got a good step change in efficiency. Unfortunately, however, I managed to break them, I didn't design out all the stress razors, and the cups fractured along one of the plastic layers which is really frustrating. But still, a bit positive that it provided an increase in efficiency.

Rapid prototyped cups

Comparison with bought in cups

I've been busy outside uni as well, being me. I was in Paris at the beginning of the month for my friend Olly's 'this-isn't-a stag-party-it's-more-of-a-pre-wedding-bash'. There are three of us best men, but as we're all fairly quiet it wasn't a raucous bash. In fact Olly organised it himself - and we went out to a restaurant to eat from their tasting menu - 5 courses with 5 different wines. The food was amazing, pricey too. Then I spent a week being backstage at the Redgrave for Sweet Charity. It was fantastic fun, I do enjoy doing things that are completely different from my day job, and this certainly was. However, it did mean I spent the week being totally knackered! The day after it all finished, Hannah did the Race for Life [race for life] in Bath and so I stood around in the rain for a couple of hours watching people walk and run around 5kms. I think they managed to raise a lot of money, so that was brilliant.

Eating the tasting menu at a good (but pricey) restaurant in Paris (L-R me, Olly - the groom, Olly's brother Andrew)

I'm off to Nepal now for a week, my Nepali sister is getting married so I'm off to be at that. I actually have a trip planned for the middle of July too, that time is for a month, but I had bought the tickets before I knew about the wedding, and I have to be back for the beginning of July for Olly's wedding. All go still!

SAM

Back to work…

After the excitement of being in Sweden, the last couple of weeks have been fairly boring. Work has been mainly consisted of testing, I've been doing a more accurate test regime, looking at the extremes of all my variables to see which are most important and which may affect the efficiency of the turbine most. To do this, I've had to modify the rig slightly, so I can more accurately measure and move angles and positions. I've a series of 12 tests to do now, which will map out the combination of variables that is most important. This should be finished in the next week hopefully…

I've also been getting further frustrated by the analytical modelling. I still seem to unable to model it using the different physical effects that are quantifiable. I've tried another method over the last couple of weeks, using the cup as the stationary coordinate system and sweeping a stream of water particles in and out, but that still brings up inconsistencies which I really can't get my head around. I think the only option I really have open to me now is use experimentally derived constants to match the theory with the experiments. Definitely not ideal and not really what I wanted to do, but I will do this so that I can have a model to progress on to the next stage and then try again later to derive the whole thing from geometry and fluid mechanic equations.

I've also been looking at the electrical side of the project a little more. At WREC I met someone who presented a paper on parallel connected inverters and he gave me some pointers about how to model these types of systems, so I've done a lot of reading on these and the concept of virtual impedance control schemes for inverters.

On the more fun side of things, I've been getting ready for another musical, this time Sweet Charity with Bristol Musical Comedy Club (BMCC). This is the first time for a long time I've worked with a new company, which is fun, although getting to know how different people do things is quite hard at first. BMCC don't have a parish hall that they're based in, so perform in professional theatres, this time it's the Redgrave Theatre. This is going to be another new experience for me, setting up and working in a proper professional theatre. I've spent the last few weeks visiting the rehearsals and building some of the set, which has been good fun - I enjoy getting my hands dirty, it makes sitting at a computer for the rest of the day more bearable.

I went down to Cornwall for a few days for my Mum's birthday, which was great. I really haven't visited home as much as I should have over the last few months, so it was fantastic for all my family to be in one place again.

Mum and her birthday cake (don't count the candles!)

The next few weeks are going to be fairly hectic I think. Alongside all the work I'm doing at uni, I'm off to Paris for my friend's 'this-isn't-a stag-party-it's-more-of-a-pre-wedding-bash', then there's the performance of Sweet Charity in the first week of June, straight after coming back from Paris, then after a week's rest and relaxation, I'm off to Nepal for a short visit to go to Rachhu's wedding before returning for three weeks and then back to Nepal for my annual month-long trip. I've got to try and wrap up all the turbine work before I head away as they're going to be doing some modifications in the Hydrolab, which is annoying. Finger's crossed it all goes well!

SAM

Sweden Bound

So, WREC starts tomorrow, so I've been preparing my presentation over the last week. As I've been doing the living below the line challenge I've not been the most happy and smiley person this week, the lack of food has made me slightly more grumpy than normal (many would say this is a great feat as I'm fairly grumpy most of the time anyway!) and so the pressure to get a good and coherent presentation together hasn't helped the situation. However, after a couple of iterations during the week and a practise on Friday I'm quite happy with what I have. I'm going to be giving my presentation in the first hydropower session of the conference on Thursday morning, which means I'll have most of the week to see how everyone else does theirs and see what the style and level of the presentations are. I've also been thinking about the awkward questions that I'm likely to be asked so that I can have useful responses to them. The questions I think most likely are:

- Why don't people normally use these turbines at low head as they're not new technology?

- How big will the turbine be?

- What is the advantage of this compared with the axial flow turbine (the normal turbine used at low head pico ranges)?

- What about using pumps as turbines?

I've also learnt a bit more about what you need to do in a conference to present your work. You don't necessarily need to give all the data that's in the paper, in fact you can give more data than the paper and any new information that you've learnt. I thought I'd be able to only present what I'd initially written and so focussed my presentation on that, however I've been told that people aren't that interested in that, more what you're doing now and what you're going to be doing. Let's see how it goes…

As well as preparing for the conference I've been doing some further testing on the turbine. I've a new nozzle - 20mm diameter jet, which produced a fantastic 85% efficiency on the turbine. I have to say I breathed a sigh of relief. I was beginning to get concerned that my turbine choice I had made was fundamentally wrong. So the good efficiency measure is great news. Now we have to go forward with a organised testing regime, covering all the possible variables in the design - jet velocity (head, flow rate), jet inclination angle, jet impact location and so on - and see what affects the efficiency most, finding the optimum location. I'm still struggling with matching my model to the results - when I reached 85% the model was fairly close, within a reasonable error, but when the turbine moves away from this optimum point then this consistency with the model drops away dramatically.

So, to combat some of the problems with the model, I've been looking at further improvements, trying to implement some sort of 3D flow in the cup, as I've seen in the experiments that it is certainly not two dimensional flow. To see this yourself, if you put a spoon under a tap, as pictured below, you can see that the flow goes in all directions. This also happens in the turbine. However, form initial runs of this model, it doesn't seem to solve the problem, so I think I may have to come up with a completely new strategy. More frustration definitely!

Spoon and turgo cup under a 'jet' from a tap - see how the flow goes pretty much everywhere!

I've also been looking at some of the electrical building blocks I'll need to use in my system. Firstly the phase locked loop controller, that is used to synchronise two AC signals together. Once this was done, then I used it to control two independent voltage sources to parallel them up - replicating two generators connected together. I've managed to synchronise two units together - as you can see on the graph below:

Trying to synchronise two AC generators

Two problems have appeared though. The time to synchronise is quite long, about half a second, which is not really acceptable. There is also a 100Hz ripple in the frequency, as you can see the line is not at a constant frequency. This would not cause a big problem, but is annoying. I've tried filtering this out, but this causes a slow reaction in the control of the sources. So, these are a couple of problems to overcome.

I've bought my tickets to return to Nepal in July, which I'm really looking forward to. It's been almost a year since I was there last, and I can't wait to see all my friends again and just relax back into the wonderful culture and lifestyle that the Nepali's have. I met up with Tim Mitchell, a member of the Rotary club (Rotary Club) who does a lot of work with the Pahar Trust. The Pahar Trust are an NGO that build schools and medical posts in rural Nepal. They are also interested in electrifying them, and so after the IMechE presentation in March he came to talk to me about using the technology we're looking at to provide power to their schools. This is quite exciting as it could provide the possibility of test sites at the end of the project. So, I'm going to try and meet up with the Project Manager of the Pahar Trust when I'm out in Nepal, and maybe visit some of their projects.

I went home for Easter, as it had been a long time since I had been back to Cornwall. It was great to see my parents again, and Mary came down from up north for a few days, so all the family were together, quite a rare occasion. Hannah and I also decided to take a few days off on May Day bank holiday weekend, as we weren't that keen on watching THE wedding. So we booked a cottage just outside Abergavenny and plotted a weekend of walking, cycling (my choices) and shopping (Hannah's choice). We went to Brecon and found the Nepali shop there - I wanted to buy something, so bought some chiura and muri. Not very exciting, but still necessary. We went walking around the black mountains and climbed Sugar Loaf, which was blowing a gale on the top.

Climbing up sugar loaf

Near our house was Llanthony Priory which was destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries in the mid 16th century. It was a very beautiful place to sit and relax, and quite interesting as I'd been reading some books about the dissolution period of British History.

Llanthony Priory

We cycled up the valley we were staying in up to the pass. Doing this we climbed over 300m, which almost killed both of us - I think I definitely need to improve on my fitness. But we had a really good picnic at the top of the pass, and then freewheeled most of the way back down the valley in 45 minutes, when it took us almost 3 hours to cycle up it!

The road to the pass - very very very tiring to reach it, so much quicker to go back down!

On the final day we went for a cycle on the Brecon Monmouth canal, much easier to cycle along and a nice relaxing time. We didn't want to expend too much energy though as we were starting to live below the line at that point, so we wouldn't be able to replace any lost calories with excesses of chocolate, as normal.

So, now I'm just about to head off to Sweden for my first conference. I'm nervous as anything, but looking forward to it too. Sort of!

SAM

Living Below the Line - Day 3

Halfway through the week today. It's not been as hard as yesterday was, I haven't had to battle as much with temptation until after lunch when there were a load of trays of free food from a meeting. That was a bit tough.

Breakfast was porridge again, and once again it tried to empty itself all over the microwave, but I just about managed to save it, and scraped it all back into the bowl.

Breakfast - Porridge

I spent most of the morning working on my turbine rig in uni (see here) adding a few extra functionalities to it, to allow it to more completely cover the speed range I'm interested in. This meant wiring up a switch to allow it to short circuit the generator and open circuit the generator. This allowed me to distract myself from the thought of food until lunchtime. Lunch, again, was chickpea and cauliflower, with chapattis (I forgot to take a photo, so here's the one from Monday).

Lunch - Chickpea, cauliflower and chapatti

The afternoon did drag a bit more. I was writing notes to accompany my presentation for the World Renewable Energy Congress Conference next week. Then, later on in the afternoon I attended some undergraduate presentations on low carbon technologies. Some were good, some were not so, but all gave something to think about. Tea was jacket potato and vegetables in tomato sauce, which had a strange after-taste to it, but not in a completely bad way.

Tea - Jacket potato with vegetables in tomato sauce

After tea, I cooked some chapatti with Hannah for tomorrow's lunch. We're just over half way through now and I'm getting in to it a bit more. I am hungry, and struggling a little with temptation - a piece of cake would be great now - but overall it's going OK. Tomorrow is another day though!

SAM