Wildlife notes

Nothing out of the ordinary to report. More chicks have hatched and the sickly California sealion is still here. I found him in the grass with the gulls this morning and encouraged him to head back down to the boat ramp. I didn’t feel good about it and hope when my time comes, I am allowed a comfortable and safe place to lay.

Facility work

This January a summary was written about our power production on Race Rocks comparing what was produced from burning diesel and from the solar panels. For a summary of the amount of diesel burned and tons of CO2 produced here in 2025 see the January post.

Since it was so windy, I decided to stay inside and download the last 6 months of data from OpticsRE (the online software package that displays the data) before it was overwritten and update the summary graphs. I was reminded of this task recently when I discovered another corroded solar panel connector. Last year at this time to help recoup some of our solar production a technician came out and replaced all the connecters, which made a big difference. It is described in the post from June 18 2025 and can also be seen in Figure 1 below. The light blue bars are lower than they should be from February to June 2025 then jump back up in July after the fittings were replaced. We are experiencing the same thing this year – the dark blue bars are lower than they should be. Since the entire solar array and battery storage system will be upgraded in a few months, we will just limp along at reduced capacity until then and take advantage of excess power days when the generator is running.

Figure 1. Energy (kWh) produced from solar each month from 2023 to 2026.

Figure 2. Energy (kWh) produced by the generator each month from 2023 to 2026.

• data download and summary
• solar panels not cleaned due to high winds
• cleaned inside windows and organized

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 2
• Private: 0

Weather

Partly cloudy. Steady westerlies 29 to 34 knots, gusting 40. Daytime temperatures 11 to 15 degrees.