Project start Nanumea

Our return to the Tuvalu outer islands this time is aboard the MV Baldur, an ex-livestock carrier which was in use for a number of years ferrying cattle and sheep to and from the Chatham Islands off New Zealand. She is one of the few locally owned and operated vessels available to charter and, while smaller than the Komaiwai, has enough freight carrying capacity to be useful moving teams, tools and equipment going forward.

MV Baldur

We are still lowest on the priority list for access to the wharf. Finally on Thursday afternoon we are able to bring her up alongside and begin loading replacement cement for Vaitupu, our tools and spare equipment for Nanumea. It is a struggle to get access to the port forklifts and our cargo is strewn all over the port. The forklift driver asks Shane which flat rack we need loaded and he points to the one buried seven deep. Suddenly the forklift is out of fuel and its smoko time. He disappears and we hope he is coming back.

He does. And by 3am Friday morning, we have loaded as much gear as we can, having to leave behind 3 flat racks of cement for the ship to collect on return through Funafuti for Vaitupu. We rush back to our accommodation, shower, decamp and our generous landlord Pita delivers us and our trailer load of gear to the port. By 4am the hammocks are up and we’re all fast asleep while stevedores keep loading food supplies which we’ve offered to transport for local stores on Nanumea. We are hoping this earns us a few credits and some leverage when we ask to keep unloading on Sunday (Church day).

Sleeping quarters on the Baldur

Arrival Nanumea and loading the whale boats

We arrive Nanumea about 9:30am Saturday morning and the first task is to unload the whale boats which will be used to transport cargo through the narrow channel into the lagoon. With a 1-2m swell rolling the ship, even this is a wild affair and we’re all apprehensive about whether we’ll be able to unload gear at all. The crew are optimistic and familiar with local conditions. The smaller whale boats are more manoeuvrable in the channel entrance than the larger lighters which were being used by the Komaiwai. Even then, waves are breaking in the channel entrance and the pilots have to time their move. I decide to wear my lifejacket… just in case.

Saturday and Sunday are spent unloading our tools and spares and then loading the McConnell Dowell tools which need to be returned to Vaitupu for completion of the array foundations there. We spend another half day sorting through damaged food crates and salvaging what we can. We’ve now consolidated the food crates from 3 islands (Vaitupu leftovers, Nanumea and Nanumaga). There were some very happy and well-fed rats living in the Nanumea food crate. And now some very happy and well-fed pigs gorging themselves on creamed rice, tinned peaches and muesli bars.

Salvaging what we can from the Nanumea food crate

Supplemented with some fresh supplies from Funafuti (eggs, onions, potatoes and cabbage) I am sure we will have enough to keep us going here and to carry forward to Nanumaga. Especially if we can source another 20kg tuna.

And it’s not just our food which has been affected by the project delays and harsh conditions. All of our equipment has now been sitting on the wharf and out in the sun for up to 6 months and much of the waterproofing has disintegrated. Cardboard is a perfect rat nesting material and mould flourishes in moist, dark places. The gear shifting, unpacking, cleaning and repairing process is now a significant part of our work. We have brought some spares with us, borrowed from the Niutao equipment which was still in Funafuti. As we begin to put everything together it will become evident what damage is likely to affect completion of the system and we will make plans for any additional equipment or works. 

Rats nesting in the battery rack boxes

Washing all the workers t-shirts which smelled of mould after 6 months

Despite these challenges, work started on site Tuesday with our team of 10 local workers and progress has been fast. Array cabling is almost complete, inverters are mounted, 6 out of 10 battery racks are in place and loaded and work will begin on array framing construction Monday. It’s going to be a busy few weeks but we’re all just pleased to be working again and seeing some progress.

Eagle-eye view of the site, new powerhouse and generator building

Inverter room well underway

Meanwhile, in our evenings we’ve been bringing out the new toy which we brought with us this time – a quadcopter. The kids have very quickly worked out what it is and what it does. Their smiling faces remind us to forget about work for a few minutes and launch ourselves off the wharf into the water. None of us are sure how long we’ll be out here this time so these moments are very special.

Piloting the quadcopter with an audience

Afternoon shenanigans at the wharf

Island sunset

Return to Tuvalu

We have been gone for almost three months and I’m surprised at how excited I am to be back in Tuvalu. It means that we are starting again, that Cyclone Pam hasn’t defeated us.

In early March 2015 the largest tropical cyclone that this region has experienced in 30 years began building in the warm seas north of Vanuatu and north-west of Tuvalu. At the same time our small team camped on the outer Tuvaluan island of Vaitupu were testing the solar system we’d just finished installing, packing our tools and saying our farewells.

Our passage forward to the island of Nanumaga aboard the shipping vessel Komaiwai II was scheduled for 10 March but she found herself wallowing in Funafuti lagoon, dragging anchor and trying to weather the storm. On Vaitupu, we hunkered down, helplessly watching the storm surge wash almost completely across the island and then spending the following days trying to help with clean-up efforts, waiting for news of how the other islands had fared and whether we would still be moving on.

Debris washed up on the soccer pitch at Vaitupu

Almost two weeks later, the Komaiwai II was safely out of harbour on an aid mission loaded with medical and food supplies and what project cargo she had been able to load. No decision had yet been made to suspend works. There was reportedly some damage to the reef passage but we were pushing on to Nanumaga as civil works were complete and all that remained was delivery of the last 100T of solar equipment.

Getting off Vaitupu wasn’t as easy as we’d hoped. After an aborted attempt to load on the lee side of the island we managed to load the lighter direct from the reef with the excavator and then have the lighter towed to the lee side for loading to the ship. The team, our tools, hammocks and spare food were on the move again.

Our course plotted from Vaitupu to Nanumaga

How to survive the Komaiwai: dose on sealegs and sleep for 30 hours

Unfortunately when we arrived in Nanumaga, it was quickly apparent that the damage to the reef passage was extensive and would halt all unloading operations. The concrete ramp used to transport cargo onto the island had been completely broken up and large chunks were now blocking the reef channel. Without being able to unload the remainder of the solar gear on Nanumaga, we would not be able to go ahead with the install. There was nothing we could do.

A section of the ramp in Nanumaga passage

The Komaiwai II continued on her mission to deliver aid supplies to Niutao and Nanumea, confirming similar levels of damage to the reef passage and ramp on Niutao. With two islands now suspended and no certainty around timing of cargo re-delivery, the hard decision was made for us to return to New Zealand.

And so for the past 3 months, we have been working toward program restart, and making the most of the chance to eat avocadoes and blue cheese and drink as much barista coffee as our nervous systems can handle.

But Nanumea is now ready for solar installation and there is an agreed solution for the array location at Vaitupu. We are also working with NZ MFAT on solutions to deliver solar cargo to Nanumaga and civil and solar cargo to Niutao. Our plan is to install the system at Nanumea and Nanumaga while a civil team works on Vaitupu and another prepares to head in to Niutao. It’s like lining up dominoes and holding your breath.

And so we flew in to Funafuti Tuesday morning and it feels different being back – even just arriving at the airport and seeing familiar faces, having people to say hi to, to catch up with – coming back is very different to just coming. And it feels busier than it did in January – with the slightly cooler and calmer weather, the harbour is filled with fishing boats and the hotel with Taiwanese, Korean and New Zealand workers. We are staying this time at a guesthouse halfway to the port. It’s nice to have our own space.

Congestion in Funafuti harbour

We spent the first day breaking into our container stored at Funafuti wharf, rebuilding bikes and cleaning mould and rust from all our work clothes, tools and equipment. Ours are the first fat-bikes in Tuvalu and we’ve already had 4 offers to buy them when we leave. There is a business opportunity here.

Our next job was to survey the condition of all our gear stored at the port. A further 3 months sitting exposed to the elements has not been kind. Weatherproof coverings on cargo stored on upper level flat racks in particular has almost completely disintegrated. The gear itself is OK but structural cardboard is now soggy mush and we are trying to think through the practicalities of handling these pallets up to 7 times going forward – onto a vessel, on and off forklifts in the hold of a ship, out of the hold, onto a lighter, off the lighter suspended from an excavator, onto tractor forks and finally to site. We are just going to have to take extra care at every step and work closely with those handling it so they understand how fragile it is. Lots of ratchet straps and ply?

Funafuti port - the uncovered racks are ours

We spent the following day sourcing plastic covering materials, labelling cargo and trying to get assistance from the port authority to move gear into lots destined for loading to various islands in sequence. With the Komaiwai II still in Fiji, we are working with the only sizeable local charter which can move us and our gear – the Mackenzie. They will load us, our tools and some spares pilfered from the Niutao cargo for transport to Nanumea. There they will collect the McConnell Dowell tools destined to go to Vaitupu, return to Funafuti to collect a McConnell Dowell team and deliver all to Vaitupu. It’s still a work in progress from that point forward. Logistics remains our biggest challenge out here.

Meanwhile back at the port, our next mission was to open our Nanumaga food crate which was discovered out in the open, uncovered and looking very soggy. No-one was keen to tackle this one and for good reason – the smell of rotting cardboard was horrendous.
We cracked the lid and jumped in (literally). Wads of cardboard started flying over the edge of the box, then rusted tins and bulging bags which had proven inadequately sealed. Of course all the foods which you can readily buy out here – like rice and corned beef – were absolutely fine. And so is the Spam – thank goodness!

Salvaging the least suspicious of our food supplies

Our Nori sheets? Still good.

Our plan is to take it all with us and start moving forward with the best of what we have. The food has now been out here for 6 months and some of it is starting to tick past its use by date. There is little point saving it for later. We need to start eating from the supplies we have and worry about resupply when we run out. Tomorrow is another day and we are on Tuvaluan time now. But it feels as though we are adapting better this time around. We are more familiar with how things get done and more determined than ever to see this project through.

Wild weather in Tuvalu

At about 10:30pm Monday night it hit. We’d been waiting for it since about 7; the promised high wind/cyclone that has delayed our ship yet again and has left us all packed up with nowhere to go.

We’ve been working 6 ½ day weeks for the past 4 weeks with a goal in mind to be finished here and ready to move on to Nanumaga in line with delivery of our equipment and ferry schedules. After all the delays in getting our equipment unloaded here, and the realisation that logistics will be one of our biggest challenges out here, it seemed sensible to work harder and faster, giving ourselves the biggest possible window filled with the most potential transport options to move on.

On Thursday morning we had news that the Komaiwai was unbelievably running ahead of schedule and might be ready to sail past Vaitupu for a pick up as early as Saturday morning. All our hard efforts seemed worth it. We could be finished. We could be ready and packed in time. We worked until 11pm Thursday night and were back on site by 7am the next morning.

And the site looks incredible. The new Vaitupu powerhouse is an impressive piece of engineering; the result of months of planning, agonisingly detailed calculations, measurements and drawings and a shipload of the finest German technology that money can buy.

The finished inverter corridor in the powerhouse

Amidst the frenzy of finishing last week, we opened its doors to the local community. On Thursday the primary school students and their parents came to visit. Still dressed in our sweaty, grubby work clothes, we were presented with beautifully made floral wreaths and a woven basket of coconuts that we devoured within minutes of their all heading home for lunch. 

On Friday morning the high school students arrived; ferried in by their Fijian teachers and primed with good questions. Thankfully no-one asked if the generator amp setting on the master Sunny Island was drawing the correct current from the generator… we were still tinkering.

Fifty visiting 16 and 17-year olds crammed into the battery room

That night we celebrated everything we’ve achieved here so far with a spectacular feast. Hosted by our wonderful Fijian housemates, we ate crab and reef fish and breadfruit cooked in coconut milk and chilli and fresh made roti and a local fern, which has become our primary source of greens. The boys were dressed in brilliantly loud and colourful shirts and I finally had an excuse to bring out the Tuvaluan outfit which I had had made in Funafuti. As the night warmed up and our gin ration stretched, we sang songs of farewell and safe passage. We have been promised that if PowerSmart comes to do a project in Fiji, we will be feasting every night.

Celebrating with our Fijian housemates

And so like sad prom dates, we are waiting at the curb for the limo. And a cyclone is coming.

It rained horizonally for most of the day on Tuesday. The sparser of the coconut trees by the wharf, trying to stand solo against the wind, look weary, and someone has started moving boats off the harbour ramp. Apparently one was swept up on the water and came crashing down again. It has holes.

By 8:30am Wednesday morning, it’s high tide. There is a crowd gathering in front of the meetinghouse above the wharf. Some of the locals report that they’ve not seen weather like this since the storm of 1991. Waves have been pushing higher all morning sweeping rubbish up onto the streets. Two coconut trees have given way and come crashing down. With each set that comes in, the marker pole at the end of the wharf disappears in a spray of white and another wall of blue appears just behind it. There is no conceivable way that a little barge with a 40hp engine would make it through that harbour entrance unscathed. On a day like today, no ships will even be allowed to fix to Funafuti wharf; they are bobbing like corks in the middle of the lagoon, waiting just like us.

Storm watchers

Vaitupu harbour under siege

Assessing the storm damage

Easy to reach these coconuts!

Weather report released Monday night…

Tuesday and Wednesday: North to north-easterly winds 15 to 25 knots gusting to 30 knots over open waters. Seas rough with westerly swells 3 to 4 metres. Thursday? Westerly swells 4 to 5 metres.

This afternoon we wanted to see for ourselves what damage this weather is causing. As we head to the western tip of the island we see pig pens washed away and outdoor kitchens being reinforced in anticipation of high tide which is due tonight. At the tip of the island, we traipse through the mud and peak out through the Pandanas palms. Something doesn’t look right. I realise that the horizon isn’t flat. It looks like a rolling mountain range; all dark green with snow-capped peaks. There is a point on the horizon where the very western-most corner of the reef is reaching out into the ocean and a great pyramid of water is pushed into the air. The wave peaks and breaks from this point, rolling toward us. I’ve never seen waves like this. My sandy, coconut tree covered, 2m high atoll, perched in the middle of this enormous ocean, feels very precarious right now.

Team outing to check out the waves on the western tip of the island

And to top it all off, we are on diesel rations again. We are down to our last 235L of fuel and the generator will only come on for 3 hours tonight and then another 3 hours tomorrow morning. With it our communications with the rest of the world as the satellite uplink relies on the generator and reasonably clear skies. I will try to get this post out tonight but it may be a few days before you hear from us again. It’s time to hunker down. To drink too many cups of tea and spend half the day scurrying to the bathroom. Or perhaps to bring out the scotch whiskey and work on our fantastical stories of the Tuvalu storm of 2015. 

Building a mountain of empty diesel drums

Solar 101

Shane has been running night classes for local workers and the technicians who will be responsible for managing the system when we leave. It’s been a chance for even his team to further grow their understanding of what we are building here; how the component elements fit together like building blocks to efficiently deliver the energy capacity that is needed here. We’ve been asked by a few people to put it in writing so this knowledge can be shared. So here goes the not-too-technical guide to off-grid solar. Or the long answer to the question “so what exactly are you doing out there?”

Electricity flows like water through a system that allows you to store reserves and pump it in different directions to manage availability and meet demand. This is the starting concept for class #1.

 

Reusing panel boxes as educational supplies

Just as rainwater is captured, pumped into tanks when it’s raining and then pumped in the other direction when it is dry, so energy can be transformed and moved to where it is needed.

In our system, solar panels “catch” the sun’s energy like buckets in the rain. This energy travels along underground cables to the solar inverters that convert the energy from direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) that we use in our homes. All this energy then goes to the multi-cluster box (MC Box) which acts like a big controlling valve at the heart of the system.  If the MC box is the heart the system the battery inverters are the brain. And one battery inverter rules them all. The master battery inverter decides where this energy goes. Direct to the village? Or if the sun is blaring and more is being produced than used, excess energy can be sent to the battery inverters that transform it back into DC, charging the batteries, which act as tanks.

At night when the sun goes down and everyone turns on their lights and start watching Masterchef Tuvalu, the master battery inverter changes the direction of flow and starts drawing that excess stored energy from the batteries and using it to power the village.

And if the Tuvaluans are unlucky enough to have a few days of torrential rain with no sunlight, the master battery inverter is clever enough to send a message to start the generator, which acts like a pump drawing another source of energy into the system.

How your Solar electricity plant works

So how will having this system change energy use on Vaitupu?

Vaitupu is currently powered by a 110kW generator, which operates 18 hours a day (from 6am to 12 midnight). Over this 18-hour period, this hungry beast consumes 250L of diesel. Over a year that’s enough for me to drive my car 1.2 million kilometres (or 60 people to drive their car 20,000kms)! And that doesn’t include the energy used to transport the diesel to this tiny remote island.

And while the village load rarely exceeds 50kW at any time, a generator this big is needed to manage peak demand in the morning when everyone’s freezers go into over-drive and to provide some redundancy. So there is a lot of diesel being burned and not all of the energy that is being produced, can be used.

The current energy load profile for Vaitupu is hinted at in paragraph above. At 6am every morning when the generator comes on, all the fridges and freezers that have slowly been thawing over the past 6 hours, turn back on. And they have to work very hard for the next few hours to cool everything back down again. Things start to settle around 11am and then there is another peak in the evening when everyone gets home, starts cooking dinner and turns the lights on. The current load profile from an average day is plotted below.

Average daily Vaitupu village energy use

Once the solar system is turned on, it is expected that the load profile will level out. There will still be a bump in the evenings but no more morning peak and less work for all those exhausted refrigeration motors; fridges will now come on for a few minutes every hour; food will stay frozen; fans will keep running overnight keeping mosquito’s at bay and visiting Kiwi’s will be able to sleep.

Back at the powerhouse, the battery state of charge will slowly go down overnight. And then when the sun comes out in the morning, the solar array will start pumping energy into the system fuelling the village and simultaneously recharging the batteries.

For the geeky geeks, here is a graph from a day last week in Pukapuka (Cook Islands); a system that Dean installed December last year. The blue line is the village load. Red line is the solar energy utilised by the system. Light blue line indicates what potential solar energy was available to harness on that day. But batteries were already charged by 11am and the system was clever enough to only draw in what was needed for the rest of the day to cover village load and keep topping the batteries up ready for the next overnight drain.

And here’s another cool graph.

Worked it out yet?

This is how energy flows through the system. Overnight, energy is being drawn from the system at a relatively constant rate and the battery state of charge slowly drops. When the sun comes up, suddenly there is a lot more energy coming into the system than going out. The batteries are charged by 11am and the solar inverters slow down the draw from the array. Throughout the remainder of the day the system draws enough energy to power the village and keep topping up the batteries. Then the sun goes down and it all happens again.

Note: each line represents a different cluster of batteries and their different rate of charge. SMA charge algorithms were charging the batteries at different rates this day.

So that was class #1. Still following? Time for class #2.

I said before that we are harnessing energy using component building blocks which allow us to package it up into the most efficiently transportable resource so that we can distribute it where it is needed or store it up to use later.

Power = voltage x current – these are our electrical basics.

Simply put, voltage is like pressure and current like flow. You can have a skinny pipe with high pressure but low flow sending the same volume of water down the line as a fat pipe with low pressure. The same applies with electricity cables. The voltage at which you choose to move electricity around has a lot to do with the cost and practicality of cable thickness.

Even working with relatively thin cables is hard work

When solar panels are connected in series, the voltage of each panel is summed together. If each panel has is rated to 34 Volts and 8 Amps, a string of 10 panels connected in series will deliver 340 Volts at 8 Amps. Connect two of these strings in parallel and you have 340 Volts at 16 Amps.

At the front end of the system on Vaitupu is the solar array comprising 1,608 solar panels. Each solar panel has a voltage of 38V and can produce a current of 8 amps at full power. The electrical configuration of the array comprises strings of 24 panels connected in series delivering 912V-open circuit voltage at 8A. These are then paralleled going into the inverter to raise the current to 32A resulting in a total solar inverter capacity of 410kW across 15 inverters.

The solar panels are connected to solar inverters. These inverters change the direct current (DC) energy from the solar array to alternating (AC) energy that can be used to power homes.

At the other end of the system is the battery bank comprising 576 2V batteries. 24 of these batteries are connected in series to produce the equivalent of a single 48V battery with a current capacity of 3,670 Ah. Two of these banks are then connected in parallel to produce a 48V 7,040 Ah battery cluster weighing just under 10T. Vaitupu has 12 of these battery clusters and is the biggest system we will build in Tuvalu.

This is what 120 tonnes of electrical storage looks like

The batteries are connected to 36 battery inverters. These inverters change the DC energy stored in the batteries into AC energy that can be used to power homes. These inverters have the technology move energy bi-directionally. They can charge the batteries when the sun is shining, or draw energy from the batteries at night to power the village.

Everything is connected to the multi-cluster box, which runs the show.

The whole system is based on series and parallel. The solar panels are connected in series and parallel to raise both the voltage and current, the solar inverters are connected in parallel. The batteries are connected in series, and then in parallel. The battery inverters are connected in parallel.

Why? Series allows us to build the voltage up high enough that transmission of the energy becomes practical; we would need a cable as thick as my leg and as heavy as a tractor to transmit 38V (and very high current) electricity from the array. And having many of the same unit running in parallel creates redundancy in the system. This redundancy means that in the event of a failure in any part of the system the system as a whole will continue to operate. It also means that this section of the system can be shut down and isolated for maintenance without having to turn the power off completely.

Just like Lego after all.

On Friday this week we have the 6^th and 7^th form (Year 11 and 12) physics students visiting the site. We’re excited to open the doors and let people see what is being built here. Hadley will be fielding the hard questions. 

A big first week on site

What a week! It feels as though an eternity has passed since the Komawai reappeared on the horizon with our two missing comrades and remaining equipment aboard. It was only 8 days ago.

The unloading process recommenced last Saturday and after almost two weeks holding our collective breath, there was a shared sigh of relief with the arrival onshore of our crates. In two of these; our much longed for food supplies. In a third; our bicycles. And last but not least, the tools we’d need to start work.

By Monday night we were loading the civil equipment for McConnell Dowell that will now go on to Nanumea including a tractor, trailer and one of the excavators. In the fading light, finally independently mobile and re-energised on spaghetti, chocolate, muesli and tinned peaches, we started to feel like ourselves again.

Finally have our transport

On site Tuesday morning, the chaos started to give way to order.  By mid-afternoon I’d realised that my most valuable tool through the months ahead is going to be my steel hunting knife that Shane made me buy the day before we left. I can tear through the most stubborn packaging tape. And I’m learning to open my own coconuts.

By Tuesday afternoon, tool boards were up, building mark-out was complete, a mountain of packaging had collected behind the powerhouse and the first battery rack jigsaw puzzle was spread across the floor. Under torchlight Tuesday night, we measured and marked drilling holes for the first array. We were underway.

Array team stalled by rain on day one

Our schedule over the next 5 months has us partially completing the system on Vaitupu before moving on to Nanumaga, Nanumea, Niutao and returning to Vaitupu late May to complete the main array. Groundwater issues discovered when clearing the site in November resulted in McConnell Dowell halting work on the main array foundation until an engineering solution is agreed with MFAT and the local Kaupule (council). The McConnell Dowell team is due back here after we leave to complete foundation works. Our hope is to have the powerhouse fit-out and smaller battery charger array complete by the time we leave here in just under 3 weeks time.

Site overview - powerhouse centre, SIC array right and main array left

And we think that is achievable. Our local workers have earned our immediate respect for their positivity and strong work ethic. By Thursday morning our team had grown from 5 to 15. And they would work 14 hours a day if we felt we could keep up with them!

In efforts to manage our enthusiastic workforce, we have split off into three clearly defined teams: Hadley’s electrical team, Roger and Marty’s array team and Heather’s battery team. Shane likes to think that we are all his team.

In the inverter corridor, Hadley has been orchestrating a fine ballet. Alongside him, File keeps asking questions about what all the equipment is and Vilium, Aneila and Paka are unflinching when told that half the inverters now have to be taken down and moved 200mm to the left (thanks to the inaccurate drawing). The electrical crew now have all the inverters mounted, the multi-cluster box in place and cable tray ready to fill. Visible progress is fast but will slow from here as they begin the complex cabling process.

Outside, camaraderie in the array team is at an all time high. Three days in and they’ve knocked up a 50kW array. Working out in the heat, regular coconut stops are essential. One of the local boys scrambles up a 20m high tree like it’s a staircase. Epati, Bean, Konza, Ety and Sammy have lanolin dripping down their arms from the freshly lubricated bolts. Dropping one in the sand earns a jibe from Roger – “fall behind and you’re next up the coconut tree”. On Monday they start tightening fastenings, grouting trestle feet and digging trenches for the cabling. Another 360kW still to go in May will be a walk in the park.

SIC array framing went up in a day

In the battery room it’s all I can do to stay one step ahead of Bob, Eddi and Puaa. When we opened the first battery rack on Tuesday my only head start was a technical drawing and some notes from Dean. I try to anticipate the next question and am grateful for their patience when I demand for the seventh time that we recheck the diagonals to make sure it’s square. It’s a slow process but they will be a well-oiled machine by rack number 12. Just in time to move onto Nanumaga and start all over again with a new crew.

Hot on their heels, the battery loading team of Peter, Fata (Greenstuff), Teanua and Polevia are carefully and steadily lifting and positioning batteries. At 200kg each, a dropped battery will crush your foot. One rack holds 48 batteries and each must be lifted into place and slid onto the rack in the right position ready for connection. The dangerous process of connecting batteries is on hold until we can clean many of the connecting cables that have corroded in transit and storage.

At the end of week 1 we have 3 ½ battery racks built, 2 ½ now stacked with batteries. The 55kW Sunny Island Charger array is up. The inverter corridor looks almost finished with 36 Sunny Island inverters, 12 battery disconnect boards, 24 Sunny Island Chargers and 15 Tripower solar inverters and switchboards all hanging. The multicluster box is in the building, cable tray is up and the real work begins tomorrow.

And in the background of all this activity, the import of what we are here to do has become evident. The ferry is running late and we’ve been on diesel rationing for a week now. Generator hours have been cut from 6am to midnight down to 8am to 10pm. But today the generator is struggling. It’s 7:30pm and it’s died for the third time today. We suspect that it won’t be coming back on again tonight.

A growing obsession with food

Once the ferry leaves, Vaitupu is almost a closed system for another month. Except for fish, all food is now either packed into the shelves of the six little stores across the island, growing 20m up in the air or scampering through the underbrush foraging for scraps.

Our starting frame of reference is New World or Countdown – 20 isles filled with every conceivable packaged food, more than 100 different types of bread, fresh fruit and vegetables transported from every corner of the globe, a meat isle so large that the chicken section alone has 7 different flavours of skewers and the sausage section offers varieties as obscure as lamb with sage and fennel. With a plastic card we can walk out of that store with almost anything our heart desires. And then go back again tomorrow to find the empty slot on the shelf full again.

As our adventure stretches into week number three, we are like newborns having to rebuild our relationship with food. Where it comes from? How it gets to us? What our bodies need to run and jump and to concentrate on site measurement calculations and precision excavator driving?

Still waiting for our crates to arrive, we’ve been emptying the stores. There is a store which stocks tinned pineapple but there are only two tins left. Yesterday the island ran out of sugar. And I think I bought the last box of Weet-Bix on Friday. The shelves are thinning out but there is plenty of rice, palm oil and grape soda. There is also jam, Sao-like crackers, sweet biscuits, tomato sauce, soy sauce, tinned mackerels and corned beef. We cannot yet bring ourselves to eat the corned beef as it looks, smells and tastes exactly how I imagine cat food to be.  And I cannot describe my excitement when I found I could buy onions and garlic – the starter and key flavouring in every meal since.

In our first days here, we treated ourselves to a sampling of the local food. A platter prepared by a local family filled with rice, breadfruit, cassava, fish and chicken, much of it cooked in generous amounts of oil. I couldn’t quite face day 3 of the same so we’ve since been trying to cook for ourselves, a task which has only been possible with the assistance of our fabulous house-frau, Lily.

Our staple dish is fried rice. Onion, garlic, rice, a tin of soggy mixed vegetables and lashings of soy sauce. It’s actually pretty good. As we start to navigate the pathways by which other food is procured, our menu expands. From the hidden freezers out the back of little stores, Lily has helped me to find chicken bits, pre-cooked pork sausages and a 2kg bag of the fattiest lamb chops I’ve ever seen in my life. BBQ’d with a side of fried rice and a glass of coconut water; we chewed every morsel off those bones in absolute silence.

The makings of "fried rice"

Lamb chops but not as I remember?

Then there is tuna. If the weather is good, local fishermen will head out early and can be intercepted at the harbour about 7am. At $2/kg, the freshest tuna I’ve ever eaten is also the cheapest. We managed to get a 7kg tuna last week. Roger enjoyed every minute watching my butchering the poor thing into steaks. There was a handsaw involved. We were still eating tuna and breadfruit fishcakes 4 days later – Lily’s special recipe.

Gutting our tuna

Lily preparing breadfruit for her fishcakes

And so while the cupboards look bare, we are far from starving. Each new ingredient that we come across is worthy of celebration. There is bread baked on the island; “donuts” would be a more accurate description. The day I found a bottle of tomato sauce coincided with our first sampling of Lily’s fishcakes. Today I discovered the last jar of vegemite on the island and lunch was different to yesterday and the day before. You don’t need a brimming pantry afterall.

But what we crave more than anything else is fresh fruit and vegetables.

Last Wednesday Lily produced a pawpaw from her garden. I’d seen a few trees around and had been asking where I might buy one. Not easily it seems. That pawpaw tasted like a swig of cold beer after a long day herding sheep. And then on Friday she produced a bowl of bananas. We had these sliced on top of toasted slices of stale donut on Sunday morning and were sure we were brunching in a posh café in Ponsonby. And there was a cucumber for lunch in one of those early days after we arrived. I crunched it down without a thought and only now realise I should have savoured every bite.

Stuff does grow here but it’s just not available in neatly refrigerated supermarket isles. And it may not be simply a matter of money needed to acquire it.

Vaitupu is more fertile than I’d prepared myself for. It was described to me as a sand and coral atoll with little or no soil. But the vegetation is thick and lush, bursting with ferns and vines beneath a canopy of coconut trees, breadfruit and Pandanas palms. Beyond the main village where most people live in small concrete block houses, families own a “plantation” on which they grow coconuts. A very few families also grow pumpkin, capsicum, bananas, pawpaw and even tomatoes.

It feels as though you could grow anything here

We would gladly pay $50/week to have a delivery of bananas, pawpaw, pumpkin, fresh eggs, capsicum, cucumber and tomatoes. The fact that we can’t suggests that there is no local demand for this food that might motivate someone to start producing it beyond their own needs. There are hundreds of chickens but no eggs? Is it too hard to save them from the rats? There is an agricultural centre on the island of which the locals are very proud. On it a plantation of coconut trees in neat rows… surrounded by acres of bush comprising mostly coconut trees? The only other vegetables that are grown in any quantity are taro and cassava alongside the road to the High School.

Best bananas you've ever tasted!

We’ve wondered why there isn’t more effort put to producing greater quantities of fresh produce on the island since the land is clearly fertile and the climate conducive?

But why produce what is not needed immediately or can be sold/traded for those items? Taro and cassava are vital staples in the local diet. Eggs obviously are not. And coconuts can be traded with Funafuti for money to import rice, soap, soda pop, laptop computers and Internet minutes. Coconuts travel well. Paw paw would not.

And while our being here presents a current demand for these non-staple foods, we are also a short-term market. We will be gone in a month and who will pay money for cucumber and capsicum then? In the meantime I’m thinking of putting a poster up on the wall of the guesthouse:

WILL TRADE CHOCOLATE, MULTIGRAIN BREAD AND CANNED PEACHES FOR COCONUTS, PAWPAW, BANANAS, CUCUMBER OR TOMATOES