Surplus electricity

It's a simple fact that the pure concept super-capacitor is completely simple its principle of operation and basically like pouring a giant chip for power purposes. The precision of the distances of the electrodes across the dielectric makes it a bit different than smearing paste across a film and rolling it up and putting it in a tube.

How about the "thyrototron"? It's another example of what is a solid-state device, or at least insofar as it doesn't have any moving parts if you don't count plasma as not another state of matter, nice clean AC output from DC input, ideal and maximal efficiency.

I never heard of one of those before, yet it made a lot of sense as soon as it fit being "an ideal electrical component".

The simplicity of the concept doesn't have much bearing on the reality of trying to make it.

Metallised film capacitors are made by evaporating metal to create metal vapour which you let condense onto the surface of a plastic film - the metal layer is about one atom thick. Thinner and it won't conduct electricty. Thicker and you are wasting metal. You wind two layers of metalised film together to make your actual capacitor.

There not a lot of room for creating more precise clearances.

Plasma has a nasty habit of chewing up anything that it touches.

Usually because the people touting them skip over the realities of making them work and keeping them working.

Mercury vapor is a usual idea in components like "thyratrons" and "thyristors" (if not so much) about vacuum tubes and gas-discharge tubes. You'll know that thyratrons are in wide usage and very long-lasting and efficient. Thyristors are basically boring and not really in the same class.

The idea of the proper supercapacitor is that this is not the usual 5 farad capacitor called a "supercapacitor" of old-fashioned construction. The idea is basically there are two opposing plates, and each plate basically has a dense array of spikes. Now, the ends of these spikes are so that they're separated from the other spikes on their side by a given distance, and separated from the opposing spike by a slightly smaller distance. Thusly, it does "implement a capacitor", and it's "super" in the sense that it's ideal since it's essentially all one piece, or solid-state, and the precisions in tolerances affords that the breakdown voltage is about the same for each pair of spikes.

There was a note here about design details in outline of the thyrototron, that I thought up last year, the supercapacitor idea was written to Usenet about two decades ago.

Certainly not. Metalizations are hundreds or thousands of atoms thick.

The sheet resistivity of a single-atom film would be absurd.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Or, benevolence. Perhaps if people were far more aware of their own mortality...

I think that may be low if installation costs are considered. I saw a Stirling engine design many years ago that was at that price/performance point -- but, not many folks in "developed" countries could deploy such.

Driving ~4K miles per year is about 10-15 miles daily. So, could handle that ON AVERAGE. But, would mean storing it on the days you don't leave the house to cover the needs of the days when you are out-and-about, burning more than a single gallon.

It's the "limited range" problem from another perspective.

"Inspired" creatvity doesn't seem to be on the horizon. Perhaps "brute force creativity" might be practical (try stuff and see if anything turns out to have practical value)

That's specious reasoning. I'm sure many people would NOT want to "go to work" (despite having to work) if their employer was receptive to their remaining "at home".

I much prefer sitting outdoors, "thinking", than sitting in a cubicle doing the same thing. And, having to deal with interruptions from fellow workers, meetings, impromptu encounters, etc.

NOT having to commute to $WORK doesn't contradict the need for roadways. Or, transportation.

But, the sort of independant/individual transportation on which we presently rely is wasteful of time and resources (including HUMAN resources).

We have a very poor "public transportation" system, here. The city isn't laid out well for starters. And, the mass transit layered atop it is woefully deficient.

When I was in school, the only time I missed having access to my own vehicle was when I wanted to travel to outlying areas. But, for normal transportation "around town", public transportation was far more convenient (busses ran frequently, subway handled longer trips that would take too long on a bus, etc.)

Here, a 20 minute trip in a personal vehicle might take 2+ hours via bus. That's simply impractical and leads to lots of people driving as sole occupants of their vehicles (the number of vehicles seems to track the number of residents in each house).

It would be practically infinite. Evaporation is directional, meaning that every little hummock casts a shadow. To reliably get a continuous coating on a polymer film, you need to (a) sputter it, so that collisions with the background gas cause the metal to come in from all directions; and (b) use a film thicker than the maximum surface texture.

And then you have to not stretch the film afterward, or the metal will crack and be flaky ever after. I spent an unpleasant couple of weeks in

The next batch used carbon-loaded ink, which would take a hard crease without cracking. That was some kind of relief--slap 'em together and they just worked.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

A 25 Kw solar power station is about two palettes of panels, a professional industrial inverter, and material of mounts and wires, each about 1/3 the cost.

Running at about 600V keeps it out of "high-voltage" territory, while 25 kW is enough to get a nameplate, yet just less than that involved in a sub-station. I.e., fees involved with grid inter-tie are minimum.

Notions of battery storage and the like, for example flooded lead-acid the most mature, temperature agnostic, and cost efficient electrochemical battery store, adds about another chunk of cost, as does a generator, or matters of grid inter-tie, or here a "gasoline machine".

So, a "power system" that occupies about 40x80 feet and a service vestibule and generator house is less cost than, say, about the cheapest motor vehicle on the market these days.

That and a week or two of assembly and inspection.

Motor vehicles can be welded together from tubing and panels usually for accounts of chassis and frame, the most expensive part of a usual flatbed trailer is the details kit, after the axles and suspension. Many accounts of modular kit cars may be defined simply as "whatever parts there are", and the "at cost".

I don't have time nor much respect for minding people's "benevolency" toward each other, here there's a "mind your own business", "live and let live", and "do the right thing" account, benevolency goes without saying as being good neighbors, not communists, "equal rights", then the "equal protections" bit is against criminals and criminals.

The strong middle class exists or there's one of two sorts natural reactions, or both, neither good for productivity nor opportunity.

It's agreeable that being an independent professional is a usual sort of account of quality, here there is a recognized acknowledgment of quality for quality's sake.

Here one of the perceived problems of anarcho-capitalism is that it's anti-competitive, so, it's deemed to not fit the mores of the great experiment in governance.

So, usual accounts of "gasoline machines" as a natural sort of component of "power systems" has that just like any other matter of private utilities, it pays for itself.

Are mirrors sputtered?

I guess they are optically flat before they are aluminized.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

A 24KW *PV* installation takes a lot of real estate. Here, the "easy" way to get a solar installation approved is to mount it on a rooftop. So, you need a relatively large house (on a par with the area occupied by the panels) for which a good view of the sky is available during the entire daylight hours. Note that you also need "accessways" to make sure you can service ANY individual panel -- without having to dismantle much of the array.

In places where weather might bring large hail, you have to fear the damage that can cause to panels. Or, vulnerability to microbursts, etc.

You have to be able to clean the array if you don't have regular precipitation.

The array must support any potential snow loads.

The array complicates the servicing of the supporting roof structure.

etc.

We'll put a few KW on the south side of the house, mounting the topside of the panel AT the roofline with the low end supported beyond the extents of the house (like an awning). This provides the requisite exposure AND lets the mass of the house block the microbursts we experience "from the north". This approach puts an upper limit on the surface area that can be exposed and, thus, a limit on the power available.

Of course, that only works for *us*. Other nearby houses wouldn't be situated to take advantage of a similar installation.

However, as the array is not "roof mounted", this requires architectural drawings and inspections instead of a "one click" approval process.

A Stirling engine on a parabolic collector would be more space efficient. But, pose other logistical problems (not the least of which being the eyesore it would represent in a suburban setting)

Batteries are also consumables. You have to budget time and money to replace them periodically.

So, likely a 3000+ sq ft house.

Most practical residential installations, here, are in the 6-8KW range. Of course, most residences have sustained demands in excess of 10KW (air conditioning) so the math works in the public utility's favor.

By a *licensed* "solar installer".

The idea here about making one of these supercapacitors, the visual I get is like this one item from floral arrangement, it's called a "frog", so basically what it is is like a bed of nails, the idea is that with two frogs carefully aligned their pointy bits pointing together and at a constant distance apart, then it's a matter of skin effect and capacitance that it results a capacitor, if also "condenser" is a different idea though for many purposes not different.

So, anyways the idea is just to make a UV-sensitive hardening reaction to separate the conductor and dielectric, then just make a UV hologram inside the uncured supercapacitor, then in goes a liter of resin with the properties of UV-curing the conductor spikes by the hologram's outline, then slowly run charge through that to draw the remaining conductor from otherwise the dielectric medium, then UV-cure the rest of it.

Otherwise it's also just a usual account of stacked vias with a very simple lithography (it's polka dots).

Or a pair of florist's frogs in a frame, ....

For examples, ....

Around here one can do their own electrical work. (The usual idea is to be sure and ground the arrays, vis-a-vis these other ideas about "floating ground" and non-sense about smart-meters and Ethernet over power lines. This has a usual idea of isolating the service drop in a little out-house, where of course if there's grid-intertie then there are just some crossbar switches behind a door with a lock only the power company and the owner have, the service vestibule.)

Of course, it's recommended to get professionals for any sort of skilled activity, ..., then though the practice of contracting the work usually involves matter of license and bonding, since insurance and liability.

Lots of software engineers have no idea that real engineers have quite a bit involved their "licenses".

The "smart-meter" principle of operation is essentially very simple. In usual practice it's a node.

The next sort usual component in the power system is a "line conditioner" a.k.a. "surge protector", though "line conditioner" involves the idea of the quite cleaner the power.

Float glass and well-polished glass and silicon surfaces are pretty nearly atomically flat on short length scales, i. e. what you’d call roughness vs. waviness. So both evaporation and sputtering work fine.

Plastic film has lots of small scale lumps and bumps from the stretching process.

To get aluminum or gold to stick to glass, you need an adhesion layer, e.g.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Seems like that would be no improvement over a multilayer stack, and far harder to make.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I wouldn't know how advanced "holographic lithography" is for the "free-form 3-D IC" vis-a-vis the usual idea of sandwiching layers. In this example there's no traces only vias, with an idea that most of the equipment would be the same.

In the old days, the "lathe" was called "tournos".

Seems like that would be no improvement over a multilayer stack, and far harder to make.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

The maintainable flooded lead-acid battery cell does expect maintenance, and there are the risks of off-gassing and as well the dangers of exposure to lead and sulfuric acid, besides the usual hazards of electrical circuits, while though among electrochemical battery technologies it operates in the widest temperature range where lithium croaks, and if not discharged very deeply, the flooded lead-acid battery has an arguably indefinite lifespan.

There's a usual idea to switch banks one for charging the other discharging, though that would double the cost of otherwise a usual "it all goes to the same place" approach.

Also, the "waste-stream" (and the recycling) of the flooded lead-acid batteries is in a better place than the lithium technologies', which of course have their own economies with regards to smaller form-factors for mobile applications. That said the usual old idea for mobile applications is "golfcart" and "forklift" batteries.

The lithium batteries as flammable essentially have the catastrophic sort of notions as "the compartment" or "the mail" or "the cargo hold" or "the pocket" where failed lithium batteries have bad failure modes, though that's as old hat as alkaline batteries, if not the "inextinguishable" part.

Cost-wise if not pound-wise, and risk-wise if not convenience-wise, flooded lead-acid batteries are competitive.

The "deregulation" is very bad in the electrical circuits themselves, although I suppose that's "dysregulation" or "disregulation".

In a monoculture, anybody's "the weakest link".

"What happened?" "Oh, a crow sneezed and the chicken farm died."

Not to change the subject (never!) I've measured some capacitances on some uP chip power pins and got substantial values, up to a micofarad. They look like regular flat parts so I doubt there were added caps inside, so I assume the capacitances were internal to the chip. Like a big, really thin layer of SiO2?

I'm setting up to measure the rail capacitances on some Efinix parts.

Some people here want to put a lot of tiny bypass caps on the backside of boards but still within the FPGA BGA footprint. That's nasty and messes up xray inspection of the balls.

If the chips have substantial internal C, we don't need extreme bypassing (which I think we don't need anyhow.) A few caps on each rail should be plenty.

I did just take out the ferrite bead and extra caps between the 1.2 volt V_core and V_pll on one board and that worked fine, or maybe better.

The world is over-bypassed.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Around here, when you hire a contractor, the first thing that they ask is "Do you want a permit?"

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics