22MYDGrey

It got to Dale with 33 miles on the odometer.  A 90% charge looks like it will take range to 299-300 which implies a "drive it til it wont go no mo" range will be about 330 miles.  That is about the same as 18M3DP when it was new.  Now, with about 75k miles, 18M3DP has a 90% range of about 250 miles.

The photographed "window sticker" seems to reflect current pricing.  Since I ordered the car in January or so, prices have gone up.  I paid a total of about $72k with a sales tax bill of about $5k not yet paid.  The car is currently worth about $10k more than I paid.  FSD went up from $10k to $12k.

I believe it has 2170 cells rather than the new 4680s (or whatever).  The VIN MAY indicate for sure.  I will try to get the new cells on 22MYDWhite which is due for delivery near the end of the year.

I haven't figured out how to access the trailer hitch receiver.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/tTtDsneau2mBzDeZ7

I just took 22MYDGrey on it's first short trip to gauge SuperCharge costs.  About 50 miles to the Flatonia SuperCharger and 50 back.  GFD!  It cost very near $.10/mile!  More than $.09.  $100 per 1000 miles!  My home charging costs me between $.03/kwh and $.10/kwh depending on what meter and when.  That is about $.01/mile to $.03/mile.  I don't think I'm going to be comfortable taking that car on long trips.

10/3/2020

With less than 4k miles on the odometer, the 90% charge range seems to be down to 275-280.

ERCOT grid power alert

 This afternoon, July 11, we are at risk of having insufficient electric power.  Due to heat peak of around 110 deg.  I wonder if Bluebonnet will take my power contributions in consideration when they decide how to do rolling blackouts?  I doubt it.

In the winter of 2020-2021, I was subject to rolling blackouts.  It did not make much difference since PV production was low due both to cloud cover and snow cover of panels.

This time of year, I produce up to about 900 kwh/day; that can be enough to power up to about 20 of my neighbors.  Cutting me off the grid would only worsen things.

Stupid (or dishonest) politicians.

 

https://youtu.be/UduPjk9gonw

GM should be famous for their successful efforts to postpone the EV revolution.

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

The early part of the story is well told through the documentary video:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

The main weakness of the documentary is that the players are not well explained.  Though the above wikipedia article does well describe the players.  It may be best to have the wikipedia article before you when viewing the video.  I maintain a stock of the DVDs; ask, if you wish to view.

A synopsis:

Under California government pressure, GM introduced a very good EV, the "EV1".  They, and other automakers, successfully brought change in the California "zero emission" rules which resulted in GM taking back all leased EV1s and crushing them.  MUCH more egregious was GM's suppression of the NiMH cell chemistry for EV use.  The EV revolution was postponed for about 10 years due to that chemistry being unavailable for EV use.

The REAL story, as opposed to the Biden's version:

The EV revolution, now well underway, was brought about SOLELY by Tesla with much opposition from the major automakers.  Until only very recently, the majors seemed not to realize that they are headed toward bankruptcy.   The EV/Tesla opposition has been insidious and aided by mainstream media which takes every opportunity to "muddy the water", misrepresent, obscure and prevaricate.  The clear (to me) bias is almost certainly due to the big advertising dollars that both automakers and big oil spend while Tesla spends ZERO on advertising. 

This story offers quite a bit of support to my view:

https://www.teslarati.com/gms-invest-1b-evs-mexico/

Similar vintage from Inside EVs:

https://insideevs.com/news/563883/biden-ignores-tesla-musk-responds/

PV Panel Cleaning

 I found a window washing guy that is willing to clean panels and enlisted him to do all panels associated with my house meter.  Cost for about 300 ground mount plus 26 roof top was just under $800.  Per unit cost was about $2 per panel of ground mount and about $5 for roof top.

The really big question right now is:  "Is cleaning cost effective?"  "Will the cleaning justify it's cost with increased income?" Right now, the prospects of cost effectiveness seem poor.  This time of year, that meter has been producing peaks of about 200kwh of surplus energy on very good days.  Since the cleaning, we have not yet had a very good day but the production on poor days seems about the same as before the cleaning.  More here after we see some good days.

My revenue on good days has been about 200 x $.06 = $12.  The benefit of the cleaning is expected to last no longer than a year.  So, to break even, I'm looking for increased sales of about $2/day on average.

The higher the value of the energy, the more return on cleaning cost.  Those Bluebonnet customers that offset only some or all of their use see a value of about $.10/kwh while my value is $.06 since I sell essentially all of my production.

My window cleaner:

https://ktswindowcleaning.com/

The following directed to the window cleaner, Kevin:

This is all stuff posted earlier in the blog but which is now difficult to find.

Due to many considerations, I currently think my ground mount "two faced" rails are the most attractive ground mount panel configuration.  Typically, most of my rails are made from three joints of 2 3/8" used oil well pipe sitting on top of five posts, also 2 3/8".  Total material for a 90-100' rail is slightly more than four joints; typical length of a joint is 30-33 feet.  Cost per joint is around $25.  The ~100 foot rail will support up to about 28 east facing panels plus an equal number that face west.   The pipe material cost per panel is around $2.  Most other schemes for ground mounts cost around $100 while roof top mounting might cost $400/panel.  The ~100' rails can be serviced with a single run of 10ga wire on a 30 amp breaker.  This takes advantage of the fact that east and west panels will not produce well at the same time; the wire needs to be big enough only for either one side or the other.  It may also be attractive to share a single inverter for one east panel and one west panel.

I've recently found that Fayette Electric Coop has some disincentives for customer PV production which, in my case, would reduce my income by 30+%.  Bluebonnet Electric Coop seems to be the very best of nearby utilities in support of customer production.

7/10/2022

The verdict is in!  Yesterday was a good sun day and any improved production due to cleaning should have been evident.  There was no noticeable improvement.

Before the 7/2 or 7/3 cleaning, a good sales day was 190-200 kwh.  Yesterday (July 9), I sold 192.7 kwh.

So, I will not be doing any more panel cleaning.

StarLink/SpaceX

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zEtLzpKuoNPzcNud7

Over the past few days, I have been installing and testing my new StarLink ground station.  In the photo, it is sitting on a glass top table on the apron of my pool.  The above link is to higher resolution photos.  The cable runs to the lower floor of the pool building where my main router is situated.  Feeding into my main router, internet access is provided to my entire LAN.  Performance and ease of use is SUPERB.

I ordered the station when I first heard of StarLink, 2-3 years ago.  Last week, I finally received as did quite few in Caldwell County.   The residential model is currently priced at about $600 for the station hardware plus $110/month for the service.

SpaceX has single handedly brought about a revolution in rocketry just as Tesla has single handedly brought about the EV revolution.  By claiming otherwise, President Biden has proven himself either extremely poorly informed or dishonest.  SpaceX has enormously brought down the cost of launching mainly by developing reusable rockets.  I think some of the SpaceX rockets/boosters have now been used 13 times; launched 13 times.  Had it not been for SpaceX, we would still be at the mercy of Russia for servicing the International Space Station.  SpaceX has developed a near a monopoly on affordable launches.  NASA was slow to recognize.

I've long sought a way to invest in SpaceX; it is a privately held, not publicly traded, corporation.  The best I have found is the Baron family of funds.  BPTIX and BPTRX hold about 5% of assets in SpaceX.  StarLink is a subsidiary of  SpaceX but is expected to soon be "spun off" into a publicly traded company.  It is hoped that the value of my Baron investments will increase, perhaps explode, after the IPO.

StarLink, increasingly, is offering internet access to much of Earth's surface.  That is accomplished through an enormous constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites.  Right now, there are thousands of operational satellites; the completed system will be tens of thousands.  Right now, SpaceX puts up to sixty satellites in orbit from a single launch.  Traditional satellite internet service is provided by a relatively small number of large and complex satellites placed in geosynchronous orbits.  Meaning the satellites stay above fixed point on the Earth.  LEO satellites are much lower (giving much faster response due to shorter signal travel distances) but they are in continuous motion  relative to Earth surface.

My impressions of my StarLink ground station:

1) It is exceedingly easy to self install.  Contributing is the lack of a default wifi password.

2) Latency is well under 100 milliseconds.

3) Bandwidth varies wildly as you might expect when it must constantly shift from one satellite to another as the satellites march across the sky.  I typically observe around 100 Mbps but that can go as low as about 10 Mbps.  Others, in other areas, report 200 Mbps or a bit higher.  My old wifi provider ranged from zero (during much longer periods than I find acceptable) up to about 6 Mbps.  With about 2-3 Mbps being common.  Depending on where I am in my LAN, the signal may have to go through up to four wifi bridges (or links).  That is in order to make my LAN extent a mile or so.  Those bridges cut my usable bandwidth down to single digit Mbps; that is, less than 1/10 of the bandwidth StarLink is providing.  A pretty good solution might be to move my main router to my house where most of the demand is.  But, that's a major LAN reconfiguration.

https://www.spacex.com/

https://www.starlink.com/

https://www.baronfunds.com/

John Wesley Hardin

 My great uncle, Frank Patterson of Junction, famously told and retold the tale of having an encounter with John Wesley Hardin during his youth.  Patterson lived from 1879-1969.  I met "uncle Frank" only once about 1953 when he was retired from Texas Rangers and Kimble County Sheriff in Junction.  John Wesley Hardin (I've been reading about him) lived from 1853 to 1895.  JWH was in prison from 1878 through 1894.

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

ONE of my pending "things to do" is visit Hardin's grave:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1346/john-wesley-hardin

The story was that Frank was roaming brush land and practicing shooting a pistol.  Frank and friends unexpectedly met JWH and friends.  JWH opined that Frank had a poor quality pistol and gave him a better one.  That pistol and the story remained in Frank's collection long after Frank's death.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29924103/cabot-frank-patterson

JWH went to prison before Frank was born.  And was killed only a year after his release from prison.  So, if the story is true, it would have had to occurred about 1894-1895 in the year before JWH was killed.  Frank would have been about 21-23.  Not the youth that I had understood.

Frank is believed to never have talked of his involvement of the Povenir Massacre of  Jan 28, 1918.  Frank left the Rangers a couple of weeks after the event.  But he was in Ranger Compay B under Captain Fox before he left the Rangers.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/porvenir-texas-details-massacre-mexican-americans-u-s-soldiers-rangers-n1059146

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porvenir_massacre_(1918)

36v battery charging

 For quite a while, I've maintained a 36v battery bank made up mostly of the surplus hoverboard batteries that I run in golf carts.  I have a golf cart charger that can supply ~9 amps that I have on a timer so it only charges when there should be good sun.

36v lead batteries can tolerate about 50 volts while typical 36v lithium batteries can tolerate no more than about 42v.  Two chemistries can be used in batteries.  Lithium Iron Phosphate, known as "LFP" and Lithum Cobalt which might be known as "Lithium Ion".  LFP cells, with nominal voltage of about 3.2v, can tolerate about 3.5v.  While LC can tolerate about 4.2v.  Four LFP cells in series can make a 12v lead replacement battery.  Twelve LFP cells can make a 36v battery while only ten LC are used.  For both LFP and LC, a charge voltage limit of 42v works nicely without killing the cells.  In both cases, it is best to use a battery management system to insure individual cells do not exceed their upper limits even when the total voltage remains below the 42v limit.

My 9 amp charger has been modified so as to not exceed 42v and I use it to charge both LC and LFP 36v batteries.

This post was stimulated by my observations this morning.  I took my spray golf cart out this morning to spray mesquite.  I nearly exhausted the battery as evidenced by the cart slowing down and stalling under load.  That condition is best detected by a volt meter but I have not configured an easy to use and reliable volt meter for that range.  Recently, I have been using a clamp on DC amp meter to detect charge current.  That is, to insure that charging is taking place.

So, this morning after I hooked up the mostly depleted golf cart, I noticed that a fully charged cart was discharging at about 19 amps while the depleted cart was charging at about 38 amps.  I should have expected that but I was surprised at the high current.  Most of the wiring connecting various batteries in the bank is only 14 gauge which should not handle current higher than about 20 amps.