Stuart McCall noticed a 74 per cent drop in energy
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
While many Canadians were looking up on Monday during a solar eclipse, an Ontario producer was looking at the power inverter at his farm.
Stuart McCall, who owns McGrows Farms & Gardens in Garson, Ont., used the rare occasion to study the impacts of a solar eclipse on his solar-power generating station.
"I thought, here's an opportunity. It may not come around for many, many years in the future, but certainly it's great opportunity to record what you're seeing during an event like this,” he told CBC yesterday.
At 9:30 a.m. Monday morning, the farm’s power usage was 8,750 watts. The total capacity of McCall’s generator is 10,000 watts.
Then at 2:50 p.m., shortly after the strongest point of the eclipse, the power usage measured at 2,250 watts.
Just before 3:30 p.m., the power was back to 5,500 watts, CBC reported.
The changes had no impact on the farm, which produces greenhouse cucumbers, tomatoes and flowers.
McCall also noticed that the temperature dropped by seven degrees, from 29 C to 22 C, during the eclipse.
“It was just interesting,” he told CBC. “I’d love to graph this some time.”
Farms.com has reached out to McCall for more insight into his findings from the solar eclipse.
Eclipse may have impacted farms elsewhere
Researchers from Missouri studied the impact of the solar eclipse on livestock and crops at the South Farm Research Center.
During the solar eclipse, it appeared chickens were getting ready for a snooze.
“They started getting ready for bed but then it was over,” Tim Reinbott, a professor at the University of Missouri’s College of Agriculture, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It happened too quick for the chickens.”
And Bethany Stone, a professor of biological sciences, found that a drought-stressed soybean opened up when the moon passed over the sun, according to the Post-Dispatch.
Top photo: Stuart McCall/CBC