How is the show going? Generating plenty of new business I hope.
Lots of leads, a couple of good sales. A lot of piece work that will keep things rolling. Overall, I think it's mostly exposure for us, but the couple of good sales we've gotten have made it really worthwhile. Today is the last day, then a few days of catchup/follow up and then I'm off to Mexico for a week ! I'm tired!
How is the show going? Generating plenty of new business I hope.
Lots of leads, a couple of good sales. A lot of piece work that will keep things rolling. Overall, I think it's mostly exposure for us, but the couple of good sales we've gotten have made it really worthwhile. Today is the last day, then a few days of catchup/follow up and then I'm off to Mexico for a week ! I'm tired!
I'm a dealer for Victron for the marine stuff, but it all crosses over to their solar lines too. They have some of the best inverters and charge controllers around. And they are making some huge strides in batteries. I'm actually amazed at what they are doing with physical designs and chemistry on the 'traditional' AGM batteries. The new 'supercell' AGMs can be treated almost like a Lithium battery - you can routinely take them to 70+% discharge without damage, and you can do more than 300 cycles to complete discharge. I was really thinking I would switch the boat to lithium next year, but I'm thinking the supercells now. They take more space and weight, but the cost is about 30% of a lithium system.
Okay, so long term update. Nope. Lithium still wins. This is from our facebook page,
Left to right is a traditional 8D from Full River at 260AH, the old LiFePo4 200AH, and the new 200AH LiFePo4. These batteries are small. The volume of the new batteries is about 1/3 of the AGM, and most impressively, they weigh 48 lbs instead of the 170 of the AGM - 1/4th the weight!
When the new battery showed up, I really thought they had made a mistake and shipped the wrong one.
How is the show going? Generating plenty of new business I hope.
I'm a dealer for Victron for the marine stuff, but it all crosses over to their solar lines too. They have some of the best inverters and charge controllers around. And they are making some huge strides in batteries. I'm actually amazed at what they are doing with physical designs and chemistry on the 'traditional' AGM batteries. The new 'supercell' AGMs can be treated almost like a Lithium battery - you can routinely take them to 70+% discharge without damage, and you can do more than 300 cycles to complete discharge. I was really thinking I would switch the boat to lithium next year, but I'm thinking the supercells now. They take more space and weight, but the cost is about 30% of a lithium system.
Okay, so long term update. Nope. Lithium still wins. This is from our facebook page,
Left to right is a traditional 8D from Full River at 260AH, the old LiFePo4 200AH, and the new 200AH LiFePo4. These batteries are small. The volume of the new batteries is about 1/3 of the AGM, and most impressively, they weigh 48 lbs instead of the 170 of the AGM - 1/4th the weight!
When the new battery showed up, I really thought they had made a mistake and shipped the wrong one.
The Tesla solar roof looks compelling. Cost is $30-$35k, saves on electicity and roof is supposedly good for the life of a home (no more replacements). Payback should be less than 15 years, compared to a conventional roof.
Batteries are the key to the zero carbon future, there’s little argument about that. But today’s batteries are less than ideal in many respects. They cost too much, are too big, weigh too much, function poorly in low temperatures, are prone to catch fire under certain circumstances, or simply don’t last long enough. Battery researchers at dozens if not hundreds of labs around the world are seeking answers to all those concerns. Here are four new developments that hold promise, according to Renewable Energy World.
I'm a dealer for Victron for the marine stuff, but it all crosses over to their solar lines too. They have some of the best inverters and charge controllers around. And they are making some huge strides in batteries. I'm actually amazed at what they are doing with physical designs and chemistry on the 'traditional' AGM batteries. The new 'supercell' AGMs can be treated almost like a Lithium battery - you can routinely take them to 70+% discharge without damage, and you can do more than 300 cycles to complete discharge. I was really thinking I would switch the boat to lithium next year, but I'm thinking the supercells now. They take more space and weight, but the cost is about 30% of a lithium system.
Batteries are the key to the zero carbon future, there’s little argument about that. But today’s batteries are less than ideal in many respects. They cost too much, are too big, weigh too much, function poorly in low temperatures, are prone to catch fire under certain circumstances, or simply don’t last long enough. Battery researchers at dozens if not hundreds of labs around the world are seeking answers to all those concerns. Here are four new developments that hold promise, according to Renewable Energy World.
I'm certain someone will show up and explain to us how silly and impossible it is, but hey.
That's ok.
Making progress isn't easy and doesn't get a free pass from skeptics.
There will always be resistance and challenges and that's a good thing.
If the critique is legitimate it does a couple of things (based on empirical evidence) it validates or invalidates the work (reproduction/falsification)
Maybe
Either way I'll be shining my shoes and having a cup of coffee most mornings.
apparently the folks at g tech have been working on this for six years
i can appreciate the effort
Solar Cells Made Obsolete
3D rectennas aim at 40-to-90% efficiency
PORTLAND, Ore.—Now before you get all excited by the headline, which is not click-bait according to the researchers, a new kind of nanoscale rectenna (half antenna and half rectifier) can convert solar and infrared into electricity, plus be tuned to nearly any other frequency as a detector. The invention was made at Georgia Tech (Atlanta) and peer-reviewed in today's issue of Nature Nanotechnology.
Right now efficiency is only one percent, but in the paper (DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2015.220) professor Baratunde Cola and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech, Atlanta) convincingly argue that they can achieve 40 percent broad spectrum efficiency (double that of silicon and more even than multi-junction gallium arsenide) at a one-tenth of the cost of conventional solar cells (and with an upper limit of 90 percent efficiency for single wavelength conversion).
apparently the folks at g tech have been working on this for six years
i can appreciate the effort
Solar Cells Made Obsolete
3D rectennas aim at 40-to-90% efficiency
PORTLAND, Ore.—Now before you get all excited by the headline, which is not click-bait according to the researchers, a new kind of nanoscale rectenna (half antenna and half rectifier) can convert solar and infrared into electricity, plus be tuned to nearly any other frequency as a detector. The invention was made at Georgia Tech (Atlanta) and peer-reviewed in today's issue of Nature Nanotechnology.
Right now efficiency is only one percent, but in the paper (DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2015.220) professor Baratunde Cola and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech, Atlanta) convincingly argue that they can achieve 40 percent broad spectrum efficiency (double that of silicon and more even than multi-junction gallium arsenide) at a one-tenth of the cost of conventional solar cells (and with an upper limit of 90 percent efficiency for single wavelength conversion).
.... Solaren hasn’t released many details about the system. CEO Gary Spirnak says that it’s conceptually the same as communications satellite technology: it uses solar panels to generate electricity, which gets sent to Earth in the form of radio waves, which are received by antennas on Earth
...
Another common concern is safety. Will beaming down massive amounts of power harm birds or airplanes that cross the path of a beam? Or what if the beam isn’t aimed properly and sends its power into the middle of a city? According to the government report, these concerns are unfounded. In the system that it analyzed, the intensity of the beam would be “approximately of noon sunlight,” with the power absorbed over a wide array of antennas. “Because the microwave beams are constant and conversion efficiencies are high, they can be beamed at densities substantially lower than that of sunlight and still deliver more energy per area of land usage than terrestrial solar energy,” which by comparison only generates electricity about a quarter of the time, the report said. The intensity would be less than the intensity of microwaves allowed by appliance standards to leak out of microwave ovens, the report claims. If the beam were to wander over a city, the results would be “anticlimactic,” the report said.
Same problem with the tinfoil hats (it would get blamed for every three-legged puppy born on the planet) but it's harder to find a wavelength that would get thru the atmosphere without excessive absorption. Also energy conversion from electricity to beam is much less efficient, and it would be harder to build lasers capable of handling the required power.
Okay. In that case we just need to continue working on the efficient collection/conversion to electricity of sunlight down here on terra firma. Also the dispersion of the means of this collection/conversion. Seems the project that started this particular conversation is a move in that direction.
Same problem with the tinfoil hats (it would get blamed for every three-legged puppy born on the planet) but it's harder to find a wavelength that would get thru the atmosphere without excessive absorption. Also energy conversion from electricity to beam is much less efficient, and it would be harder to build lasers capable of handling the required power.
Because it's microwave radiation. There are people afraid of cell phones; think of what the tinfoil hat industry would do with this even with the proposed safeguards.
Because it's microwave radiation. There are people afraid of cell phones; think of what the tinfoil hat industry would do with this even with the proposed safeguards.
