Ray's PV water heating

 https://rmenke.blogspot.com/2019/07/diy-solar-water-heater.html

Ray is now heating water with DC electric power from a string of three serial panels.  His electricity has a cost of about $.03/kwh.  The three panels are dedicated to heating water and can not be used to sell power to the grid (or otherwise used) without reconfiguring.   The $.03 is the amount that he would  be paid for excess power converted to AC and sold to the grid.

If Ray needed or wanted more water heating power, he could go to four or more panels in series (instead of the three he is using) or maybe put in two parallel strings (total of 6 panels).  To avoid attempting to switch DC power, which is much more arc prone than AC, Ray depends on not using enough power to over heat the water in the old electric heater.  The higher the voltage, the more likely is arcing, so it is possible that Ray could use the AC switch in his heater, designed to handle 240VAC, to switch the ~100VDC from his three panels.

My water is now heated with a standard AC water heater but retrofitted with about 3kw heating elements to replace the original 4kw elements.    The smaller elements allow my heater to have a chance of operating from my PowerWall battery if the grid is down; my single battery PW has a maximum power of 5kw.  My water heater is on a timer that starts about 9am in order to prevent night time heating from the grid.  My cost is about $.06/kwh which is the amount that I would be paid if the power was sold to the grid.  Night time water heating would cost me about $.10/kwh if I allowed heating at night.

My water heater daily power is about 3kw for less than an hour.  So, 3kwh or about $.18.  Ray's power/energy consumption should be about the same and should cost about $.06 whether from panels dedicated to heating water or not.

If Ray wanted to consider how to automatically switch his DC power (via built in thermostat), he could look at fewer panels in series.  One panel for 30-35 VDC or two for 60-70VDC.

A lead from Texas Country Reporter

Texas Country Reporter episode 1798 has a story on James Evans, a present day Big Bend photographer with a studio in Marathon.  TCR tells us about lamp shade photographs that were first made, promoted, and sold by earlier area photographer W. D. Smithers.  The Smithers lampshades are now highly valued collector items.  Evans is now doing lamp shades in the Smithers style. 

http://www.texasescapes.com/ClayCoppedge/W-D-Smithers-Ways-of-Border.htm

https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/photopublic/fullDisplay.cfm?CollID=15885

https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00286

https://www.jameshevans.com/

Not closely related but episode 1794 had a story on the W. R. Dallas rustic furniture business.  An old business that is being perpetuated by a present day person.

Not closely related, but I'm reminded of my first exposure to the rustic cedar furniture that was used in the original Indian Lodge CCC project in the Davis Mountains.  A 1960s Indian Lodge expansion used replicas; I have done a bit of research on that (REALLY beautiful) rustic furniture.  I eventually learned that the CCC built a furniture factory near Bastrop to make use of local cedar wood; that CCC factory provided cedar products for many CCC projects of the period (1930s).  During probably the 1970s and 1980s, a Smithville business, Texas Cedar Products, sold vacation cabins and some cedar furniture out of Smithville.  I have a treasured coffee table that we have had about 40 years.  And Texas Cedar Products built my now burned guest house.  There is currently a cedar lumber business, Wampler, operating near Bastrop that supplied cabinet lumber for our remodeled bathroom.  More recently, Wampler supplied the wood for construction of burial boxes for both Jean and her sister.

https://wamplermfg.com/

May  29, 2022

I recently had the very great pleasure of staying in one of the old CCC cabins up hill from the Chisos Mountains Basin Lodge.  I was surprised to find apparently original pine rustic furniture.  I theorize that it may have been made in the same CCC Bastrop furniture factory.  I would love to learn more of that facility.  Location, projects worked on, time period, etc.

Feb 2022 cold event

Living on the Edge 

The Feb 2021 event left me in a world of hurt.  5+ days below freezing.  Lost water supply in the first 24 hours.  At the time, I was able to tend a wood stove fire; I burned a lot of wood but the warmth of the house was not seriously threatened despite the grid failures.  Eventually, I found about 6 steel pipe breaks under the house.  I VERY slowly recovered.  First, getting cold water in bathroom only after a couple of weeks.  Had to rig an outdoor shower with a 120v water heater.  That served me several months.  Eventually, I found a plumber willing to work and he, eventually, got normal water in the house.  As I recall, that was late summer.  "Normal" being hot water in bathroom sink and bathtub, in kitchen sink, and to clothes washing machine.  Cold water in bathroom, kitchen, laundry room.

For 2022, a ~2 day ice storm was forecast.  Not wanting to have to tend a fire, I had installed two mini-split hyper heat pumps.  12k and 9k btu.  Those turned out to be insufficient to keep the house very warm under the experienced conditions.  A 3rd (18k btu) unit is ready to install.  The big threat this episode was  ice induced local power failures.  That did not happen but I was prepared to burn in the wood stove.  The wood stove was held in reserve in case of the power failure.  The Power Wall carried me through (barely) the power failures of 2021.  The PW now goes into "storm mode" when the forecasts indicates.  Normally, the PW charges only from PV power.  In storm mode, it additionally charges from grid power and does not discharge while grid power is up.  That is, it tries to maintain a full charge in order to be prepared for a power failure.

The event started early Wednesday morning.  Early Friday morning, the lowest observed temperature was about 24-25.  I lost water supply in the early morning hours of Friday.  I think/hope the frozen place is at the pressure pump about 1/3 of a mile from the house.  Most of the ice failed to materialize and I had no power failures.  I had some concern about poor PV performance due to ice covered panels; we had relatively little ice.  The sun came out before noon Friday and I briefly observed about 24kw of PV production.  Recent "good sun" production has been only about 21kw.  So, the ice seems not to have limited PV production.  The PW has remained at near 100% charge for more than two days.  I have some PW augmentation that might double the capacity of my (still single battery) PW to near 30kwh.  BUT, I have been pulling about 5kw to try to keep the house warm.  In the event of a power failure, I could not expect the PW to take over for longer than about 6 hours.  I believe power failure risk has now declined to near zero.

If/when I get the 3rd heat pump installed, I should be able to keep most of the house warm down to 5-10 deg.  I need to keep working on increasing the number of PW batteries to three.  I'm near to committing to replace several of my 1940s vintage double hung wood sash windows.

Over the past few years, I've experimented with using EV batteries to augment the PW battery.  Tesla has resisted making it easy to use their cars for V2H (vehicle to home; powering a home from the car).   It can be done but only through the DC-DC that supplies the 12v battery.  That power source is limited to 1-2 kw.  Ford seems to be promising V2H capability for their announced EV pickup truck.  IF Ford delivers and Tesla does not, I will buy a Ford.  Individual PW batteries have a capacity of about 13kwh.  Both Ford and Tesla pickup trucks should have 100+kwh batteries.

Corn, Corn Meal, Mush, Scrapple, Liver Mush, Olmsted.

As a child, I knew "Mush", aka "Corn Meal Mush", as a hot breakfast cereal.  Just corn meal cooked/boiled in water with some pork fat.  Or maybe butter.  Left over mush could be sliced and fried and eaten with other meals.  Frederick Olmsted wrote of his travels across early Texas (and other parts of The South) 1852-1857.  He described in detail Texas life of the time.  Corn was a prime dietary feature for both humans and animals.  In the middle of summer, dried corn on the ear was stored away in corn cribs and great efforts ensued to keep the rodents and insects out of it.  As needed, it was ground for near term use in cornbread, mush, and hoecakes.  Travelers, such as Olmsted, were generally put up by widely separated farmers and the travelers shared the food of the farmers.  As the harvest of the next corn crop approached, the previous crop not yet fed to humans or animals was likely used to make moonshine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted

 https://www.eater.com/2015/9/1/9211867/scrapple-goetta-livermush-what-is-it

I had previously made some comments on other (than corn) subsistence crops.  But the comments got lost somewhere along the way.  To replace: Hogs and cane are similar to corn.  Hogs are killed at "hog killing time" which is late Fall when it is cool enough to avoid hog meat rotting while waiting to be processed/cured.  Hogs parts/products were preserved for a year or more via smoking, salt curing, sugar curing and combinations.  Hog fat was rendered and put to long time use in cooking, soap making, etc.  A side product is "chittlins" (fried pork rinds).  Sugar cane ("Ribbon Cane" is a favored variety) was processed into syrup.  Syrup making requires effort and equipment and was mostly performed by a specialist in the community.  Like a miller.  Families grew a patch of cane, then harvested and hauled it (in the Fall/Winter) to the syrup maker who typically did the work in exchange for a fraction of the product.  Like millers did with corn and other grains.  In The South, syrup made from cane is typically called "cane syrup", or maybe "ribbon cane syrup", but is sometimes called "cane molasses":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molasses

In early 1800s up until transportation became faster and cheaper, in Texas and the rest of The South, Cotton was the cash crop.  EVERYONE grew cotton.  Most other crops were for home or local use.  Cotton was sold.  Other crops allowed the cotton farmers to feed themselves.  Emigration to Texas was, in large part, due to old farm land in other parts of The South being "cottoned out".  With repeated, not rotated, cotton planted year after year, the soil lost it's ability to produce profitable cotton crops and became almost valueless.  At least in the short term.

SuperCharger Service in Columbus

 

Approaching the Columbus SuperCharger, I thought it had been ICEed by a monster Ford pickup truck.  But, no, it was a Tesla Energy guy doing some service.  A very nice and loquacious guy.  Works out of Houston but sometimes covers SuperChargers across the USA.   Some of his tales:

1) Power cables get swapped out regularly.  See new cables hanging on the right side of the truck.  The connectors do get worn out in normal use.

2) The guy allows that Tesla drivers, in general, are pretty nice.  He has been "cussed out" only twice.  One was a S Plaid driver that took exception to having his charge necessarily temporarily interrupted.  The repair guy was informed that he was fired by the disgruntled Plaid driver.  Though the Plaid guy was not a Tesla employee.

3) A Tesla employee was fired after visiting Boca Chica and taking (and distributing on FaceBook) some photos taken from the wrong side of the property line.  The Tesla employee was "off the clock" and visiting Boca Chica for his own edification.  Much as I have done.

4) The rentacops that SpaceX has been using at Boca Chica have been causing SpaceX some trouble.  They have been denying public access to public roads.  I think I was turned back there by a rentacop while on a public road.

5) A common act of vandalism is stuffing something in the SuperCharger connector wells.  So that the "nozzle" can not be properly mated to the car.  The guy reported that, in most cases, he can just dig out the foreign material.  I've encountered such vandalized nozzles but did not try to do the digging myself.  Next time, I'll give it a try.  Understanding that the connectors are not hot until properly connected to the car.  Dental or lock picks seem like ideal tools.

6) He reports that, in California, repair folks such as himself, may be given Model Xs for their work.  For a while he had a Model Y but expressed a preference for a ICE pickup.  I imagine the Xs and Ys driven by Tesla Energy people are not allowed to accumulate many miles and are sold at a modest discount as "demos".  Just like "loaners" offered to customers having repair work done.

7) The guy reported a problem he had witnessed near Houston where a big utility scale battery was being installed.  The problem: when multiple chargers/inverters are being used, it is important to see that the two split-phase legs go to the same places on individual devices.  For instance, I now see I probably crossed them between the old PW battery and the new battery I am attempting to install.

 https://photos.app.goo.gl/EzNayp4juoTna1u48

I believe I've seen a Tesla service person at only one other SuperCharger.  In Cheyenne 6-8 years ago.  That guy had flown into Denver, rented a small ICE car, and driven the ~100 miles to Cheyenne.

 

Genealogy

 https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/139099268

Power/Energy Confusion

 I have been told that an EV may use 200wh per mile at a certain speeed and that that means the power needed to maintain that speed is 200w.  

The above is in error; I will try to clarify.

First, assume that speed is 30 mph which will make arithmetic simpler.  Getting a measure of the energy used in an hour will allow us to both determine average power and allow us to determine total distance that can be traveled on that energy.  At 30mph, a car travels 30 miles in an hour.  If each mile consumes 200wh, the total energy consumed in an hour is 30 x 200 = 6000 wh.  If that 6000wh was consumed uniformly over the hour, power supplied during that hour was 6000 watts.

This is of interest because of a contention that playing a radio can significantly reduce EV range.  The contention is that a radio can consume up to 1kw.  AND that an EV might have it's motion powered by as little as 200 watts.  That type of audio system requires additional amplifiers and speakers to consume that additional power.  The practical upper limit for audio power is determined by the DC-DC converter that converts (typically) ~400vdc from the main/"traction" battery to "auxiliary battery" voltage of 12-14vdc.  That level of audio power is possible.   But, I contend that typical radio powers are 10-20 watts.  Maybe 100-200 watts if played at max level.

So, according my my estimates, playing a radio at normal levels might reduce range by about 1/3 of 1%.  That effect will lessen as speed and motive power increases.  Increasing speed will increase the 6kw necessary to keep the car at a constant speed thereby lessening the fraction of total power consumed by a radio.