The articles is here. (with a video)
As far as the potential applications, Clanet waxes futuristic. “I can imagine [designing] a car. The faster it goes, the more it deforms and the less friction it has with surrounding air, so it can go even faster. It would be a fantastic car.”
This is very cool.
I had a very nice surprise waiting for me when I got home today.
Previously, I posted that I played a very small part in receiving data from one of the satellites (Pollux) that formed part of the Atmospheric Neutral Density Expirement on STS-127. Henk, PA3GUO did a nice video about it as well.
Today, the postman delivered an ANDE-2 mission patch which flew on STS-127 (which I also happened to see on the launchpad last June), how cool is that!
Congrats to Robert Mullins and his team on getting 1st place and winning the Ericsson Mobile Application Awards 2010.
Been real busy at work with a project proposal. We finally got it submitted last Friday. Consequently I do not have as much done with the new machine to replace the dell dimension desktop. I started look at it today and I realised I had run out of spare sockets on the RIGrunner in the shack. So I need to sort that out first but it will require me pulling everything off the desk to do a bit of rewiring (sigh).
So rather than tackling that today, I first installed a 190 Litre Single Water Saver Kit that I got from ecostore.ie. It is 1/4 full already with todays showers. After that I moved my battery bank to its new home (with help from EI8JA). This is also going to require some rewiring to get the Inverter output back to the garage to hook back into the house wiring (where it moved from).
PV Panels are hooked up again, and the bank is being charged, but no AC available back in the house yet. Oh, lucky me, I’m “off” tomorrow, I wonder what I will be doing?
Pretty much what it says. Last Wednesday Xastir got OpenStreetMap support in CVS courtesy of Jerry Dunmire, KA6HLD. Even though Jerry says its early days yet, it is “good enough” for me already. Way to go Jerry!
I’ve not been in the shack all that much recently (being part of the organising team the the Irish IPv6 Summit kept me busy) so I have not been doing much checking up on the PV installation and how it is working. Today, after assisting the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group set up a station for the EI2GEO special event station, I got to sit down and do some investigations. I have a second 60 Watt solar panel that I mentioned before. We hooked it into the battery system on Jim, EI8IG’s camper van to keep the battery topped up via solar power, and ran the radio from the same battery bank. This evening I dropped out my little 850 watt generator to keep the battery topped up overnight (and to give it a good run).
Today over a 12 hour period between approximately 08:00-20:00, my rrdtool graph says the system produced an average of 148 watts. 148 x 12 gives 1776kw, or approximately 28.5 cents of electricty (including vat). If we have about 7000 more days of sunshine like today (unlikely) then the system will have “paid for itself”. While it doesn’t seem like a whole lot, it is currently averaging about 1/6 of the ESB bill (over 30 days).
That is the first part done. Next I intend to replace my power hungry dell dimension desktop (approx. 125 watts, 24/7 or approx. 48 cents per day ) with a more efficient machine (approx 20 watts or approx. 8 cents per day). To do this I have purchased an Intel Pine Trail base D510MO a 40GB SSD drive, 4GB of ram and a DC powered case (I already have a DC supply in the shack, plus I can experiment with it in the car as well).
Thus far the machine seems to be able to do most of the tasks I need it to do, time will tell though as I need to get 6 RS-232 ports operational on it to control all the items I have running.
As an aside, we recently replaced the old washing machine (at least 10 years) with a super duper A rated new one. Initial testing seems to suggest that it is no more efficient than the old one. My suspicion is that I tested the old one (which I no longer have) in late Autumn, where it would have the benefit of taking hot water from the cylinder (Central Heating). The new one doesn’t have a Hot water input, so has to heat the water itself.
… has moved. New url http://lhspodcast.info/
I have been catching up on episodes lately. Richard has a new noise-gate (the lack of one never bothered me before) and they are reducing the length again. Personally I think about 1 hour is enough, but that is just me. Keep up the good work guys.
Amateur Radio was recently presented to members of the European Parliament. The theme was Amateur Radio benefits Society with a focus on Emergency Communications. It generated an interesing post from the EU Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid & Crisis Response, Dr Kristalina Georgieva. Ireland was of course represented at the event by committee members of the Irish Radio Transmitters Society. Looking at the pictures of the event it was interesting how many different comissioners were there. Next Saturday the Global Simulated Emergency Test (GlobalSET) takes place (I’m participating myself), given the increased profile of emergency communications at such a high (political) level. It will be even more interesting to see if there is increased activity this year.
Ok I admit, I’m a bit of a solar power junkie. I’ve been experimenting with PV panels a while now (here, here, here, and here). I have a small 10 watt waterproof solar panel (the irony eh?) which I got a number of years ago that I use to keep a few GEL Cells topped up by leaving it in the window of the upstairs bedroom. I have a pair of Evergreen ES-180RLs (24volt) which have been mounted on the shed roof for quite a while now, also, last year I picked up a pair of 80 Watt Panels (12 volts, off ebay) and a second hand 60 (12 volt) watt panel.
At the moment I’m using them to keep a battery bank charged. I have a 1500 Watt inverter/charger that I can run off the bank. I split one of the circuits in the house so that I can plug it either into the consumer board, or the output from the inverter. This circuit has on it, the central heating pump and burner, fridge, fridge freezer and one double socket in the kitchen, i.e. an extension lead can be run to the TV/Radio Shack. This is just the way the house was wired, so I took advantage of it. I also have an external 220v connection that I can feed in the output of a generator. The inverter is plugged into this, and if it is receiving power from a generator, it can power the house circuit mentioned above and re-charge the battery bank simultaneously. My only issue with the inverter is that when the charging circuit is running, it generates an awful racket on the HF bands. I’ve used it a few times during power outages, Watching T.V. when the rest of the housing estate is in darkness is interesting, and generates interesting questions afterwards (how come you had lights on etc.). I also can run the items in the shack directly from the battery bank, but, to be honest, it’s a bit messy, and not very efficient.
The 60 Watt I bring with me on AREN events, as its useful at keeping the battery in my X-Trail or the Mobile Command Post (MCP) topped up:
The 60 Watt panel works surprisingly well for this purpose. On several (rare) sunny events in the last 12 Months, we didn’t require any generators or external power at all on the day.
Anyway, back to my main point. I happened to visit John Ketch a few months back, and he was particularly happy with the advice he got from Nigel in mysolarshop.co.uk as to panels and other items. As I had been thinking about getting a grid-tie inverter to experiment with, I took Nigels details and in February I rang him.
Our initital conversation was not what I expected. I outlined the various bits and pieces that I have, what they were doing etc, and said I was interested in getting a grid-tie inverter. Nigel said to go away and think long and hard about what I’m trying to achieve and come back to him after I’d done that.
So, I go away and re-examined what I wanted to do. Between the server and radio gear I leave running 24×7, plus the usual stuff like alarm clocks etc, I have about approximately a 400 Watts of continuous load in the house. So I decided to do several things. Replace the server with something that uses less power, more intelligently use the radio equipment i.e. only switch it on when a satellite is visible, and see what contribution a grid-tie inverter could make to offsetting the usage.
Typically, I’m tackling the last one first. So my plan was to split the panels, and use the two 24 volt panels with a grid-tie inverter, leave the two 12 volt panels to charge the battery bank. So I rang Nigel again about a week ago. This time things went better, in that I actually convinced Nigel to see me an inverter! I went with a Steca Grid 300 from mysolarshop.co.uk.
Now,before agreeing to the sale Nigel pointed out that though the inverter does automatically shut down should the grid fail, it does not conform to EN50438, which the ESB require in order for any installation to be approved. I looked at the specs, and decided that in the grand scheme of things, my (potential) 300 watts isn’t going to make much of a difference, and that if he didn’t tell the ESB, then neither would I.
This morning at 08:00 when I plugged it in, the inverter was producing approximately 60 Watts, which I think is very impressive given the low light levels. It will peak somewhere between 180 and 200 Watts (based on yesterdays performance) about 13:00, and still be putting out 60 Watts at 20:00. I’m monitoring both the general house consumption and the output of the inverter with an Envi CC128, so it will be interesting to watch it over time.
So there you have it, I’ve gone “Gorilla”. Many thanks to Nigel in mysolarshop.go.uk for the advice and assistance.