Turquoise Energy Report #172 - September 2022
Turquoise Energy News Report #172
Covering September 2022 (Posted October 9th 2022)
Lawnhill BC Canada - by Craig Carmichael


www.TurquoiseEnergy.com = www.ElectricCaik.com = www.ElectricHubcap.com

Feature: Successful Tests: Magnetic Variable Torque Converter with Planetary Gearset Moves Miles ZX40 Truck (see in Month in Brief, Electric Transport; also see Video of test prototype working. This design works really well -- will change the automotive industry!)

Month In "Brief" (Project Summaries etc.)
  - Cabin - Halbach "Array" Magnet Rotor Configurations - Great Variable Torque Converter at Last! - Power Outage Preparedness

In Passing (Miscellaneous topics, editorial comments & opinionated rants)
 - Proactive Approach to Democracy - Asteroid Dimorphos: Ahrrrg, Monochrome Again!!! - How Famines Develop Rapidly - Satellites or Armed Drones? - Smol Thots (Planetary Carrying Capacity Chart, more...) - ESD

- Detailed Project Reports -

Electric Transport - Electric Hubcap Motor Systems
* Variable Torque Converter with Planetary Gear: a Magnetic Method - Assembling the unit - Installing batteries and getting the truck running again - Halbach Magnet Rotor Configuration: Double the magnetism (for axial flux BLDC Motors, too!) - Installation - Tests: Problem; then SUCCESSFUL OPERATION - Video on Youtube - Improved with Halbach magnet rotor.
* Sprint Car: Tires, TK15 Coulometer to track state of charge, volts, amps
* Thoughts: Unipolar Electric Hubcap Motor With Halbach Magnet Configuration

Other "Green" & Electric Equipment Projects
* Gardening: Some Fall Harvesting - Salal berry Rake

Electricity Storage: Batteries
[no reports]

Electricity Generation
* My Solar Power System:
 - The Usual Latest Daily/Monthly Solar Production log et cetera - Monthly/Annual Summaries, Estimates, Notes




September in Brief


   Solar power generation for the month was 406.02 KWH. That's well over double most previous Septembers, with the sunny weather and 18 solar panels instead of 12. (If - when - I move the 3 panels from the lawn up onto a 45° frame on the carport roof (sunniest place), the figures should improve still further!)

   On my 'cabin' I almost finished another 1/2 of one of the outside walls. (In the meantime someone up the road has put up a whole larger house this summer, and it's ready for the siding, windows and doors. Mine is taking 'forever'.) Further work awaits Perry removing his RV... very soon. Hopefully the weather won't be too miserable to continue with the next section. Then in the spring I'll pull out the travel trailer too, and finish the last wall. Then there's the floor, walls & ceiling and the whole interior...


Half a wall with concrete footing, framed, sheeted and wrapped


Some siding done by the end of the month.
(There's no more loose siding: the rest is covering lumber piles!)
The 5 full pieces here had been covering my utility trailer in the bushes. The spruce needles left
black dots of pitch all over them and they took much longer to clean with Comet than to install.

   I'm going to have almost no 120VAC wiring inside, and what there is will be shielded. Just a plug or two on the east wall. Instead for lights and plugs I'll use a 36VDC system with the solar panels and batteries, and a plug-in adapter to maintain charge when there's no sun or if I'm using too much power. If indeed AC power fields are what's keeping my tinnitus going (and if so, doubtless that of many, many other people), it'll also have grounded alume (AKA aluminum, aluminium) walls and steel roofing to shield it from the field of the high voltage power line by the highway only too close by. (If a cell phone won't work inside except by a window, I'll know it's good!) I'll sleep in the cabin, but I suppose I'll still have to do cooking and most things in the house. So it might not eliminate the tinnitus, and maybe not even reduce it definitively. If it doesn't I can make a point of spending some whole days in it to see if that works. It's worth trying to find out. It's almost impossible to spend days away from AC electric fields unless one goes camping in the woods or something - even most campgrounds have power lines these days.


Halbach Magnet Rotor Configurations

[12th] I ran across the Halbach concept, again, this time in a youtube video, where it was shown for a homemade axial flux BLDC motor in a way that finally got my brain in gear. In everything I've seen before all the magnets in the "array" were clumped together inline in a row. Somehow the term "array" confused me, I didn't understand the concept and I lost interest. In this video a flux diagram was shown with the usual sort of 5 magnet cluster, but this one shows the idea clearly. (If the top figure is a Halbach "Array", why is the bottom one not an Alternating "Array"?)


   On his actual axial flux rotor the magnets only touched (if at all) at the inner corners. Wait! A Halbach "array" will still work, with gaps between the magnets? on a rotor? This was never mentioned. Then I could actually use it in my own axial flux rotors - Awesome!
   Basicly by adding "sideways" magnets between norths and souths, most of the flux comes out one ("front") face, while very little comes out the opposite ("rear") face. This might virtually double the strength of the permanent magnet rotor's field facing the stator, and hence increase the torque per amp of motor current.
   In addition, with little flux through the rear, a steel rotor to carry that flux between magnets is evidently not needed. A steel magnet rotor need only be thick enough for mechanical strength, not magnetic flux capacity, so the motor can be a little lighter.


   In another application, such a rotor should also obviate the need for the Piggott type type axial flux alternator with a magnet rotor on each side of a thin iron-free stator. One rotor with a greater field should be sufficient, which would simplify the one shown here (from TE News #124). Or, two rotors could match a stator an inch thick and more instead of 1/2 inch. That would hold a lot of copper windings! Or such a higher powered unit could more simply be two rotors and two 1/2 inch stators. (Or one rotor with Halbach configured magnets on both sides between two stators.) Thinner stators should make for better cooling of the coils.


   And a Halbach configured rotor in the torque converter I was making would have much more flux too. After initial tests of my new torque converter I added six thin magnets (3/8" x 1/2" x 2") on their sides to my existing rotor between other magnets. It definitely increased the flux - see next.


Great Variable Torque Converter at Last: prototype made and tested!

   Well, this is a major "ultra efficient EV" component I've been trying to create since June 2009, with various half-baked ideas and various results but none really satisfactory. Finally last month I conceived the best pieces, put together in the right configuration to make it all work: a planetary gearset, with magnetic coupling between two of its elements. I described it in theory in last month's issue, and built one for the Miles ZX40 EV truck this month. Some short "jury rigged" tests proved it works well, smooth and effective, and making the magnet rotor "Halbach" tweaked the magnetic-mechanical proportions into what appears to be a good balance. Charts (see detailed report under Electric Transport) show the theoretical efficiencies, even under various magnetic coupling strength scenarios, to be well over 90% when crusing at typical vehicle speeds, which is better then the 80+ percent of today's "improved" automatic transmissions.

Operation

   Consider at low vehicle speed the motor turning at 50 RPM and the planetary gear body virtually stationary, balanced between moving the truck wanting to push it backward and the magnetic drag pulling it forward. The gear reduction ratio is then the 5 to 1 of the planetary gear.
   Now consider driving at 50 KmPH using the same torque. The drive shaft is then turning about 1100 RPM (for the test truck). The difference of turning between the motor and the planetary gear body for the same torque is still 50 RPM. But they are both spinning. For 1100 RPM output, the motor is turning at 1140 RPM and the body 1090 RPM in the same direction. So the gear effective ratio is 1140/1100 or 1.036 to 1.
   At higher motor torque for acceleration, the RPM of the slip increases, making higher effective gear ratios at the same speeds for more torque and power to the wheels. The higher the vehicle speed, and the lower the power required, the lower the percentage losses and the nearer the gear reduction approaches 1 to 1 with everything spinning in unison.



Jury-rigged prototype under truck
RIGHT to LEFT:
* EV Truck's Drive Motor * Kludged Motor Shaft
* Alume Disk (turns with motor shaft) * Magnet Rotor (turns with planetary body)
* Planetary Gearset (5 to 1 reduction)
* Truck's Drive Shaft to rear wheels, with "U" Joint
* Improvised Hanger/Bracket to Hold front end of Drive Shaft for Tests

   Remaining to be measured are the levels of magnetic drag of these particular coupling rotors, and how warm or hot the alume disk gets owing to the magnetic slip. But it looks like losses will be only a very few percent when underway. What is still needed is an RPM meter on the motor shaft so the slip can be measured. (The output shaft RPM can be determined from the vehicle speed.) The theoretical charts indicate that it would probably be almost superfluous to lock the two disks together at higher speeds with any reasonable configuration.


Torque Converter Videos

   I made a video and uploaded it to Youtube. But it seemed people got lost in my long theoretical explanations first part, which I actually made before I had the truck running, and never got to the actual tests in the truck. So I did a second video, which was just the first one without those parts. The viewer will probably "catch on" to the operation just from seeing it work.


Short version (8 min) - truck tests only -- https://youtu.be/aqG2Ol4y9Jw

Full version, with theory (21 min) -- https://youtu.be/9KWASx5C6ZE

Or search youtube for "TurquoiseEnergy channel" (TurquoiseEnergy one word, or you won't find it.)





   This torque converter can replace an entire vehicle transmission. Its exact operation (to match a given vehicle) depends on the planetary gearset's design ratio and the strength of the magnetic coupling.
   For the truck I picked a 5 to 1 reduction gearset. With the 2.2 to 1 reduction in the truck's rear differential, that would give 11 to 1 - plenty for the motor to start the truck moving. Then as speed increases and torque drops, the variable torque converter gets near 1 to 1, so in the truck overall it might be 2.3 to 1, and at 100 KmPH on the highway the motor would be turning just 2300 RPM. Its 10 KW motor is rated for 10000 RPM peak or 5000 RPM steady, so it's in a good range with higher efficiency.
   Before thinking of the truck, for the Sprint car I ordered a heavy 7 to 1 gearset, to be connected from the motor straight to the CV shaft to the right front wheel with no further reduction. 7 to 1 ratio with the 3.6 KW forklift motor should allow the lightweight car to start moving uphill or from in a pothole and accelerate well. (And if that's not enough, the ratio can actually increase to up to maybe 10 to 1 with the planetary body turning backward at low speeds.) But as the speed increases and the reduction ratio drops toward 1 to 1, the motor is turning the same speed as the wheel (or not much more, say 1050 or 1100 RPM at 100 KmPH, depending on torque required). This suits this motor which tops out at around 2000 RPM. (Whether a 3.6 KW motor can actually keep the car, light as it is, moving at 100 KmPH is another question, but if any drive train arrangement will make it work, this is the one!

Fabrication & Tests

   Having pulled it off the Miles ZX40 cargo truck at the end of August, I disassembled the planetary drive assembly. I enlarged some holes on the gearset and rethreaded them for 1/4"-20 bolts. (#10-32 screws to take the whole torque of the body? Good grief!) Four holes in the magnet rotor made long ago fortuitously lined up with those and I bolted then together. Well, that was simple!
   I drilled a hole in the side of the "hat" shaped magnet rotor to stick an allen key through. Otherwise there was no way to both mount it on the planetary and tighten the clamp that holds the motor shaft. Both had to be done "first".
   I contrived to put together the alume disk assembly on the motor shaft using an SDS "taper lock shaft hub" and drilling some holes in a huge, heavy washer that fit onto its taper, as well as in the alume disk. I got the disk well centered when I drilled the bolt holes.
 I put the assembly back together with the disks on it and tightened the motor shaft via the side hole with an allen key and a flashlight.

   Then I had to get the truck running again. I removed the 72V lead-acid battery charger. (New chargers?... later.) After that I made better mounts for the two 36 volt, 120 amp-hour lithium ion battery stacks and mounted them. I wired them up (in series, 72V) and in testing found that it was in fact the charger of the 12 volt battery, a DC to DC converter, that had drained the drive batteries over time and destroyed 3000$ worth of them. It was turned ON all the time! It had an "enable" input and should certainly have been turned on and off with the ignition key. (Thanks, Miles! One of many small "features" creating big headaches for customers. Small wonder they went out of business.) I unplugged it - problem solved for now.
   The motor wouldn't run because the brake fluid was empty and there's an interlock. (notwithstanding that I had replaced the brake line to the left rear wheel a couple of years ago. What year vehicle was this again? 2009? TWO brake line leaks, Really?!?) I filled the reservoir. From experience I knew I just had to wait.


   I connected the planetary/magnetic drive to the motor and rear driveshaft under the truck. I made a little bracket to keep the front of the rear drive shaft from dropping down. Good enough for a test or two!

   3 days later, on the 19th, the brakes worked if I pumped them, and the motor ran. (It has an "idle" speed/torque if you're not pressing the pedal.) But the truck didn't move. I put a video camera on the floor pointing under the truck at the drive, and tried a few more times. I started thinking there just wasn't enough magnetic force to do anything. If so the number and diameter of magnetism rotors needed was going to make the idea prohibitive. Was it another disappointing failure? But it turned out that the alume rotor had come loose and wasn't spinning with the motor shaft - just rattling.

   So far it was all just a theory. I had only a feeling and a hope that the magnetic drag force between the two rotors would be sufficient to make the truck move, and more than very feebly.
   That evening I managed to position the disk and tighten its set screw under the truck without removing the assembly. I started the camera, got in and turned the truck on.

*** Lo and Behold! When I pressed on the pedal, the truck moved! ***
Both directions. Smoothly. Without pressing down hard and revving it up much.

Now the theory was a machine!


   Next I tried running it over a couple of pieces of wood. It had trouble with a 2 by 4 without taking a good run at it, suggesting the magnetism was a little light. But it was in the ballpark, and I had just found out that I could make a Halbach magnet rotor with a greater field from the same magnets, so that wasn't too concerning. A thicker alume disk (than 10mm) would also increase the interaction. The mechanism had quickly moved out of the camera's field of view. So I made a way to mount the camera upside down on the side of the truck looking underneath, to stay with it as it moved.
   The next morning I opened the garage door and backed out. I came to a virtual stop and then backed up the shallow slope a little farther. I was pleased that it did start moving fine going uphill - it wasn't so feeble as the 2 by 4 test might have suggested. Then I drove in again. I only went 16 feet each way, but the video showed the variable torque converter principle: as the motor started, the body of the planetary spun backward, but as the truck picked up even a little speed it stopped and reversed direction. (and then spun fast as I took my foot off the pedal.)
   The alume rotor was warm, maybe 40-45°C. With stronger magnetic force the slippage and hence heating should reduce, so again I wasn't much concerned.

   That was it for tests until it all had a proper housing with two rear steady bearings. But while it was apart, since the magnetic force seemed a bit light, I would add 6 thin magnets on their sides to the magnet rotor, to give it the Halbach effect: a larger magnetic field to the front with a reduced field to the rear. By September 30th I had split three magnets with the angle grinder and epoxied them on. I don't think I need to resort to changing the disk to copper or increasing rotor diameters and the number of magnets, but there are such places to go if necessary and I don't see how this torque converter can fail to be practical! (Assuming I build it well enough, of course.)
   The next day (with the epoxy still slightly tacky) I put the assembly back together. I could feel that it was notably harder to turn the magnetic rotors against each other except very, very slowly. I'm not sure it would even want more magnetic force than that.

   On October 2nd I was fitting it for the rear bearing (seeing the wobble, this became two steady bearings - one at each end of the planetary) and a housing, and then decided to try just a short move with the camera running. With the Halbach magnets added the body of the planetary almost stopped even just "iding", moving slowly - the planetary's design 5 to 1 reduction. That seems like about the right amount of magnetic interaction. Above that speed it's going to be turning more and more with the rest and headed for 1 to 1 reduction. Barring unforeseen glitches, it's going to work great once the housing is done!

-----

    With the excitement of finally creating an automatic variable torque converter transmission I didn't get anything done on the "Plastic Recycling 2.0" project. The oven needs the foam insulation (which didn't even like 150°C) replaced with fiberglass. One mold needs the burnt plastic scraped off and the big plate mold (17" x 36") still needs to be finished. Then it should be ready to produce plates/tiles/slabs and so on. One project at a time, I guess!


Power Outage Preparedness

   After a windstorm in the night, the power went off around midnight on the 2nd/3rd and was off until the next afternoon. Being concerned as it had already been off several hours when I first got up, I started running freezers and fridge, one at a time, from the 36V battery system with inverters.
   The 600W inverter that I had tested to run the smallest freezer with, this time would alarm and quit. Humpf! - a "nominal 36VDC" inverter that seemed to cut out when the voltage fell to about 35.9? - gee, thanks! I got out the 2500W one and more extension cords and got the freezer going. Later I connected an unused ground wire in the #10-2 cable to the DC outlet I had plugged the 600W inverter into, to double up the minus wire, and after a couple of tries got the 65(?) watt freezer running. Two freezers, maybe 65 and 115 watts, plus the two inverters themselves brought it up to 210 watts.

   It was dull and raining and the charge controller wasn't even keeping up with one freezer. Part of the problem was the long, thin charging cord to the batteries (#16 AWG extension cord). Using the (2500W) inverter to power the soldering, I replaced that with a considerably shorter #14-3 house wire cord, in which I doubled up the 4 wires (counting the bare ground wire), giving an effective #11 AWG two wire cable. That helped perk up the charging. Then I turned off one grid tie inverter and with alligator clip leeds, connected its 1000W (my old 2012) solar panels on the roof in parallel with the three panels on the lawn, which were probably in tree shadows as well as the heavy overcast. That perked it up to 200 watts or so - almost keeping even. I'm sure that wasn't optimized output from the 9 panels. (And shows the weakness of having three separate solar panel installations when wanting one maximized DC output.) In mid afternoon I switched from the larger freezer to the refrigerator - also about 115 watts as long as the 400W defrost coils don't come on - and got it cooling again. Then finally the mains power came back on.
   Switching power back and forth between 4 units would wear thin pretty fast, and carries the danger of accidently leaving one unplugged and having food thaw out - or simply running out of battery & solar power, especially in winter. The fridge with its 400W defrost coil could really be a killer. Hopefully if the power does ever go off for a long time, by that time I'll be down to the two very small 65-75W freezers, having reduced the amount of frozen food I have. (Why do I keep buying more? But they're not as full as they were.) One of them will be turned down (up?) until it's a chest refrigerator instead of freezer. The higher power units will be turned off.

   While the power was out, I kept flipping on the light switch every time I entered a room, of course to no effect. There is no question but that there will be much inconvenience if the power does go out for a long time, even with all the prep so far. I hope others are doing things to be ready, because the weather keeps getting more chaotic causing vast crop failures, civilization is failing in front of us and more and more we see some hard years - maybe a couple of decades - coming. The social changes will be immense.






In Passing
(Miscellaneous topics, editorial comments & opinionated rants)


Proactive Approach to Democracy

Interesting quote under a video comment. Seems like how many "underhanded" projects in "democratic" societies have been prosecuted for a century or more.

"We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back. -- Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the EU Commission 2014-2019

   First, people will only "kick up a fuss" if what's been decided seems to be against their best interests. But they may not anyway, not because it's not understood, but because it's not worth any one individual's time to take time and money out of his life to "kick up a fuss" and fight a bad move that only affects him (along with everyone else) just a little.
   And if it's an agenda being diligently pursued, people can fight and win the case, and then when everyone not invested in it and not being paid heaves a sigh of relief and moves on, the proponents just bring it back in slightly different form a year or two later. The fight has been knocked out of everyone, and no one has more energy to rise up again to protest.
   So, adverse decisions and actions pile up and make things a little worse bit by bit and only over decades do people start to think "Hey, society wasn't anything like this when I was young!"

   This is a huge problem with today's essentially negative approach to everything. No one except the people at the very center of the governing structure has any positive power or influence to effect changes or even to provide input. Everyone else can only protest - another negative approach. The talent, leadership and organizational energy from the whole of the general public - from the most thoughtful and caring citizens, those knowledgeable in countless different special areas - is cast aside, wasted.

We need to switch to a positive, proactive approach.

   As I've suggested before (and am sure to do again), people must form "ad hoc" organized local teams or committees, often outside of all existing institutions and organizations, to study in depth something they feel is important to them. If practical (except for unique local issues) they then link by internet with similar groups in other locations, and together present well thought out, well researched and clear recommendations to government. Then government acts as a coordinating agency to enact what these most interested and intelligent members of the public have together agreed upon, issue upon issue, as the members of the many and various teams most interested in each aspect of organized society find important to themselves or to society.
   And if these teams perhaps continue to meet for some time, they may measure the results of their original deliberations for potential revisions. Or a new team may be formed to look at it anew. This sort of review of results of often ill-conceived legislation passed today just doesn't happen, and it is rare for any legislation, whatever its results intended and unintended, to be repealed or improved.
   We might take the examples of IEEE and ASHRAE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air conditioning Engineers. ASHRAE groups hold local dinner and other meetings and events. They are voluntary, non-government, non-corporate bodies - just people associated within a field - yet they set standards in the electrical and HVAC fields which are generally adopted by governments everywhere without political comment, and they amend them when they need modifications. Can we not extend this to many other areas of interest - professional, economic, social, health, educational and cultural?

   There are of course further aspects to the reform of our societies, but I see them as resolving themselves in the future. Some can be addressed via the internet, but so far have not been.

   One should be able to readily find the background and real views and attitudes of all those running for an office at one web location, not just hear the opinions of opinionated mass media, who more and more today themselves have a stake in the outcome and can't be relied on to provide information that is in any sense impartial or fair. Today we have duplicitous "politicians" who say one thing on camera to the public and something entirely different to each different audience - to power brokers behind the scenes. They often have no intention of doing what they told the public. Such behavior should be exposed. What stances have they taken in previous issues? Do they make decisions contrary to citizen groups' wishes? Are they giving away public assets to their supporters? Do they have a criminal record? Honesty and sincerity should be assets to a politician, not liabilities or even disqualifications as they are today.
   Special interest lobbying should be become obsolete as organized citizen groups bring more balanced views on each issue. The needs and wishes of the public and society at large should prevail over special interests.

   All voting should be by choice ranking (AKA "transferable vote" and other names). While one can pick holes in any voting system if one tries, ranking the choices and recounting as many times as necessary (or having runoffs) to find the 50% majority consensus is the only one I've seen where there is never a reason to vote any way except according to one's true desires. No "strategic" voting for something you don't like best in order to prevent something even worse. No voting for a "party" rather than the best qualified person. (More aspects to our systems being essentially negative.) In general today's politicians and political party managers don't like choice ranking because it is also the system least susceptible to manipulation and to big political party hegemony over the electoral processes. And of course the voting system must be honestly administered. Democracy is over when it isn't.

   And of course the three branches of government should be separated. One should vote for a civic, state/provincial and national chief executive separately from one's legislative representative. And many reforms could be suggested for the composition of our legislative bodies. They should represent a cross section of the whole of society, not be a bunch of clones beholden to a particular party line or philosophy.

   I should shut up here (if not sooner) - I could go on with these known ideas largely kept from us by today's politicians and political systems. The key new idea which is being presented to us all is that of having organized peoples' committees/societies/groups/teams, linked together by internet to form national consensuses on all manner of national interests, and these clearly expressed desires coming from the public being carried through to becoming the policies of the government, which would then much better represent the people who elect it. Government of, for and by the people, in well organized channels.





Asteroid Dimorphos: Ahrrrg, Monochrome Again!!!

   NASA decided to test the idea of diverting the course of an asteroid in case one is ever heading too close to the Earth by crashing a space probe into one. They chose one called Dimorphos, orbiting a larger one called Didymus. (the only asteroid with a moonoid?) It took a series of images as it approached at high speed. Thus we have a few very detailed images of this asteroid from close ranges. The scene below is clipped from the "penultimate" image, the last one before the crash. To a casual glance - and I'm sure that's all anybody at NASA or JPL will give it - the surface is a jumble of rocks.
   I was pretty sure the orbit of this pair was too close to the sun to host the sort of very alien airless world life detected (even if no one seems to recognize it) on Ganymede and other airless worlds in the Jupiter and Saturn regions, and of which a seed was captured by a very high altitude balloon searching for alien life ("panspermia") in 2015 (TE News #85). And yet, the scene on close examination doesn't seem to be lifeless rocks.
   So here is the original monochrome image, and below it one I've colorized to highlight a few of the features. (The brightness of each feature is unchanged, but the gray has been shifted in hue, eg ++green,-red,-blue.) Especially the green object with folded down 'jagged' edges has every appearance of being a leaf. By their shadows, yellow objects especially seem to be flat and off the ground rather than boulders, also suggesting leaves. I thought the red objects looked like leaves coming from central roots. and there are some things that look like striped stems. There's more of the same in the full image, but I thought this area was a good illustration. (Consider in viewing that gravity is next to non-existent and the contrast between light and shadow is very high because there's no atmosphere to scatter light.)

   And now I go back to my decades long lament: WHY oh WHY do NASA, JPL et al think that monchrome images show us enough and that color images are somehow "unscientific"? The only craft that have gone to the outer solar system that had proper color cameras were the Voyagers in the 1970s, and they opened our eyes to many fascinating new worlds. (And they only got color because of a couple of left-over color cameras from the Mariner mission to Mercury!) Oh wait... and the recent "New Horizons" probe to Pluto, which also showed us a fascinating sphere that monochrome wouldn't have done justice to. But there are still no color images below "continental scale" of any outer solar system world.
   Billions of dollars for space missions and they can't even throw on a 39.95 $ color camera?!? Again I am reminded of a monochrome "picture of a cow" that our class was shown in high school. It looked like a piece of abstract art. Blotches of white and black. I was trying to visualize some artist's abstract rendition of a cow. Only after every feature was carefully pointed out to me (and just as the teacher was snatching it away from me) did I suddenly recognize that it was a perfectly clear, sharp photo of a cow standing in front of a fence! (Other students had similar reactions - that sudden "OOHHH!") A color image would have been perfectly clear and unambiguous.
   Likewise, a color image would have immediately revealed the true nature of this scene. this and many other planetary images in which we seem to be blind to their true nature in the pathetic monochrome renderings we've been handed.
   Well, as my mom once said "Scientists are blind." She should know. My dad was a mycologist (and often "blind") and they were in the university's social circles/faculty club so she knew plenty of them.









How Famines Develop Rapidly


According to Michael Yon, From Video: "You're Going to See a Lot of Starvation!!! | Jordan Peterson 2022"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdtWB8sE4q0&ab_channel=JohnnyBigger

(The above video was excerpted from another much longer video by Jordan Peterson:)
" Cometh the Horsemen: Pandemic, Famine, War | Michael Yon | #274"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7gAEkzIgvw&t=490s&ab_channel=JordanBPeterson

Yon:

When people are hungry within 48 hours they're going to hit the streets, right?
And they'll start robbing the stores. Then they'll start robbing the trucks and the trains and the boats, and so then supplies stop going.

Then governments always start taking food from the farmers. [<snip> ...and control the food.] So people start robbing from the farmers as well, right?

And then the farmers say, hey, I'm either bankrupt or I'm not making any money. And so the farmers stop farming. So that's how you see we get into the second season of this, right?
And so the famine creates more famine, just like fire creates fire.

And as [peoples'] nutritional, you know, resources diminish, so too does their physical resiliance. And now they're open to disease. Many - if not most - of the people who die in famines actually die from [<> ...diseases] -- they call them "famine fevers".
<> ...and these sorts of things often lead to more war, right? So it's a recursive sort of, you know, the factors just keep... <> it's almost a fission reaction, right?

Jordan, I would not be surprised if by 2025 a billion people aren't dead. I mean, we're really headed into the most epic famines that have ever happened in human history.

======

Peterson thinks Yon's predictions are dire, but Yon isn't looking very far down the road thinking only to 2025. As we are supposed to hit 8 billion people before the end of this year with climate mayhem and failed crops just getting underway, digging out the dregs of the remaining petroleum and other presently needed natural resources and with the present people in positions of leadership in most nations in it for themselves or actually bent on destruction and depopulation. Probably around 6 billion will be gone before 2050. Well, that's almost 30 years with aging populations through the civilized parts of the world, so an awful lot of us were or are going to die of old age anyway. Still it's not going to be pretty. We should foster and preserve all of nature and ecology that we can in the coming decade or two. What if deer, kangaroos, wildebeest, elephants and so on (not to mention the predator species that eat them) become extinct in the desperate human hunt for food?
   In a "steady state" condition the world might support 3 billion people, but it's going to dip way down under that owing to our degradation of the environment and ecology. Some people think one billion or even fewer, but I expect it'll be closer to two. (And after all according to official figures it's just 95 years since we first hit 2 billion people.)
 
But again this is all part of Christ Michael's "Correcting Time" plan to rehabilitate the few planets whose spirit leaders followed Lucifer into rebellion, now that the Lucifer Rebellion has been terminated and the unrepentent arch rebels eliminated by the Ancients of Days. (...in or about 1984 Earth time, and with their own agreement/acceptance that, as they were unwilling to repent, there was no further place for them anywhere in the universe.)
   With better (human) leadership and global cooperation, this die-off might be put off until the world was at 10 billion or more people but the sooner it happens, the more will be left of the world's ecology, the more species will remain and the more people will be left by the end of it. If it was to hit 10 or 11 or 12 billion before the population crashed, little would be left of nature and ecology and those remaining (if any) would probably be small isolated groups of people eking out meager livings, all fearing each other and unable to resume any sort of global civilization. (It reminds me of a bit in Matthew 24: "If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened." These would seem to be those days.)
   With a collapse from the present population, a new and better civilization can and will rise from the ashes of the old. People will have learned a huge lesson that this world can only provide a good quality, prosperous life to so many people at a time, without overshooting the global carrying capacity. And with good birth control now available only wanted children will be born into good (and small) families from where they will be raised to be productive and contented human beings and at last population and ecological overshoots (the sad endings of dozens of previous human civilizations) will be ended. So will wars.

   Techniques of obtaining "free" energy which have been withheld from us so far owing to our social and cultural immaturity and the immensely destructive uses to which it could be put, will be rediscovered and adopted, freeing the world from petroleum resource dependency and depletion. And sometime in the coming decades in the midst of our crises, a new Divine Son, the avonal son Monjoronson, will appear. He is in fact already present on or about the planet as a spirit being but he will not materialize until he will be welcomed. Unlike Jesus he will appear as an adult, and he is expected to stay on Earth for 1000 years and help guide our development into the beginnings of a golden age of Light and Life. (I'm sure we need all the help we can get!)





Satellites or Drones?


   On the evening of the 13th at about 21:30-21:35 PDT, I happened to be outside and I saw a string of lights, "stars" traveling across the sky, one after another in a perfect straight line. I counted 32. They seemed to go from the west-southwest to the east-northeast, passing a little to the southeast of me, seemingly very high up. They were moving too fast to be satellites. At first they might have been every 3 or 4 seconds or less. One light in the line (5th or 6th one?) was missing, making a double length gap. Gradually they became more spread out, passing by maybe every 7 or 8 seconds. or longer. From where I was they appeared from behind a tree branch, one after another. I thought maybe I heard jet engines, but it was high tide and with the crashing ocean waves sounding covering other sounds, I really wasn't sure. But airplanes don't follow each other in a straight line anything like that closely.
   The direction said they started over the Pacific Ocean somewhere (or Asia?) and that they were headed toward the Northwest Territories... or over the pole and beyond toward Europe or Russia. I don't know what they were, but in today's political climate this unique event was disquieting.

   Then on the 15th I read about US Army Conducts Drone Swarm Exercise with Armed Quadcopters. (Zerohedge.com Sept. 14th, 8:20 PM) There were 40 drones in that - just about the same number I saw. So I thought probably this was another drone swarm exercise, with another batch of the same drones. So they would have been lower and slower than I had thought, with the loud waves masking their noise? I expect then that they flew from a ship nearby off the coast and weren't going as far as I imagined.
   Coming after Biden's inflammatory speech with the blood red background and marines standing behind him, I fear reader comments under the article are right, which suggest the drones are going to be used against Americans - that would doubtless be any and all who have expressed criticism of the 2020 US elections and present government - a new "night of the long knives" to silence thousands of critics all at once. Before the 2022 US elections in November. To save democracy from MAGA terrorists (adverse votes). Doubtless they have been compiling a list. Canadians won't be left out I'm sure. Everybody has a cell phone and their location can be pinpointed at any time. Sudden death without warning from the sky. Think communist purges; Argentina, Chile, Pinochet.

   Well, some are saying these fast-moving in-line objects are Elon Musk's "starlink" satellites. They certainly followed an undeviating straight line. Even if they are I will not retract the above paragraphs. I will be very relieved if I'm wrong!




Smol Thots


* I heard somewhere that humans account for 32% of the total land animal mass on the planet. Livestock makes up 67% and wild animals 1%. The percentage of wild animals has plummeted in recent decades. (I suspect this statistic only includes mammals - it wasn't specified.)



* Someone made this chart of the "carrying capacity" of the Earth. (See Collapse in a Nutshell", youtube channel "TheGreatStory" by Michael Dowd) At the left we start with a low population, which gradually grows.

   Then there are two scenarios. With the green line, the population wisely stops growing before it gets too large. No more resources are consumed annually than nature can replenish.

   With the red line, the population continues to grow. When it becomes too large it starts consuming more resources than are being replenished, and starts degrading the ecology to sustain itself. When it has finally used up all the resources, or at least one or more necessary resource, there is famine and the population crashes, and afterward the degraded environment (dotted slope) can't support as many people as it could before.

While illusrative, I would object to some of the details:
(1) The population on the left was never "minisule". If the North American natives had an estimated 50 million hunter-gatherer people before the Europeans came, why would the whole Earth only have had 10 or 20 million for most of a million years as most scientists seem to suppose? Surely it (Asia, Europe, Africa) would have supported closer to 500 million primitive hunter-gatherers?
(2) The "overshoot" looks almost like a part of a sine wave. In fact, collapses of civilizations are generally extremely rapid compared to the gradual growth and the line should go down very steeply, practicly straight down.
(3) The "loss of carrying capacity" should drop during the overshoot, after which it should (we hope) begin to recover, which isn't shown. There is some "point of no return" (like making most species extinct and cutting down every last tree on Easter Island), and a "point of very, very slow return" (like the present harsh desert the overpopulating Anasazi people made from a pine and juniper forest). But short of those, it should gradually recover after a population crash. I expect that will be the future scenario, although we are losing species at a great rate at the present time.
   Many have estimated 2 to 3 billion people as the maximum carrying capacity. I lean toward the lower figure after the crash (others say still lower) and the upper once things improve again, but it is certainly a maximum. (According to one chart, we originally hit 2 billion in 1927 and 3 billion in 1960. Then 4 billion in 1974, 5 in 1987, 6 in 1999, 7 in 2011, and are expected to hit 8 billion this year. And over half this bloated population can only eat thanks to mining non-renewable resources which are now becoming quite depleted. This is a runaway train that can only end in a trainwreck.)


* It's interesting to click on youtube on a video of some old celebrity. Soon you are seeing video suggestions for all kinds of people you haven't heard anything of in decades - or some who were famous before I was born. (Colonel Saunders was a real person? Looked just like his picture. Virgil Earp, Wyatt Earp's nephew, talks about being a sherrif in the old west? Gasp!)


* The UN and the West were lamenting that because of the fighting in Ukraine, grains from that country weren't reaching nations where starvation is reaching epidemic proportions - North and Central Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh... Russia kept saying that for humanitarian reasons it wouldn't stop grain shipments from Ukrainian ports and would even lend minesweepers to help clear mines laid by Ukraine around their own ports. Finally an agreement was worked out with Turkey as an intermediary (I presume to ensure that the ships weren't being used to smuggle weapons into Ukraine), and the grain began to flow.
   Of the first 80+ shiploads of grain leaving Odessa, all but two went to European ports or to USA. Only 3% of the grain went to the starving countries cited as being the reason Ukrainian shipments were desperately needed. Is that pure hypocrisy, or is Europe, without having admitted it, also in desperate need of grain? A desperate Europe can doubtless afford to pay more for it than desperate Egypt, Central Africa, Pakistan and the Middle East.
   Sure enough, TFI Global had a headline on Youtube on the 14th, "Europe is Staring at an Intense Food Shortage".

* Furthermore, Russian grain shipments were supposed to be un-sanctioned too as part of the deal, but so far they haven't been.

* As Ukraine counterattacked and took areas in the undermanned Kharkov region, residents fled with the retreating Russians and headed across the border into Russia, fearing reprisals from the Ukrainian forces or administration - and no doubt future fighting in their towns - and of possibly being conscripted into the Ukrainian army.

* RT-Russian has a map of Russia full of green dots showing places/homes where Russians have volunteered to host refugees from Ukraine/Donbass.

* Putin said there would be referendums in Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson to see if they want to join Russia. People in these areas wanted them - have wanted them for some time. The USA said in advance they wouldn't recognize the results regardless of anything. Zelensky says if anyone participates or votes in them, they will face 5 years in jail. Congratulations! You have ensured a virtually 100% "Let's join Russia" vote. Who would vote to be part of Ukraine and face prison time if they win the vote? Any slim chance that Kherson or Zaporizhzhia might vote to stay in Ukraine just went out the window. [29th] International observers were there. The results came in. Only in Kherson was the vote under 90% to join Russia at 85%. In Donetsk it was over 98%. If Ukraine had treated its own citizens with common respect, no doubt the results would have been quite different, or the referendums would never have been needed.
   I am not in favor of the limited choices offered in the referendum: Join Russia, "Da" or "Net". But if more choices were offered it should have been on a choice ranking ballot. For example, Donetsk could have been offered "rejoin Ukraine", "remain an independent republic" (or perhaps "form a new republic of all the Russian Ukrainian regions"?) or "join Russia". In this case I have virtually no doubt the end result would have been the same, but we might have learned more about the more exact sentiments of the peoples. Some might have preferred to remain independent, and the less than 2% "Net" might have become, say, 15% whose first choice might have been for an independent "Eastern [Russian] Ukraine". (In Kherson, "independence" might have been very popular.) And with more choices revealing more about the real sentiments of the affected people, it would be harder for the West and Ukraine to scream "Not Fair, Not Fair!"

* Putin announced a partial mobilization of Russian forces, calling up of reservists, following on the retreat from Kharkov area. The former head of defense of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) (whose name I've forgotten) said right from the start that Russia hadn't committed anything like enough troops for their operation to succeed. Looks like he was right.
   I guess if you're fighting with fewer forces than the enemy but great equipment and tactics, you can win your attacks even against fortified positions and inflict great damage, but still not be strong enough everywhere to hold the lines against a concentrated mass attack at some point(s) along a long front. As some commenters have noted, ending the whole thing faster via increased force would result in less pain (and lower costs) overall and for all. The retreat has been called a sign of weakness and failure on Russia's part, and this is apparent. If they didn't have adequate forces to hold the ground they took or at least a reserve to quickly counterattack, they should have been recruiting earlier. It can also be said that in war, what you least want or least expect the enemy to do is usually what they do. Churchill (somewhere in his WWII memoirs) said something to the effect that wars consist largely of a catalogue of blunders and disappointments. OTOH, even this small mobilization of reservists has caused apparently considerable commotion inside Russia.


* As Europe heads into an extreme energy crisis that is crushing their entire economies, Putin reminded them all they had to do to end it was drop the sanctions and open the Nordstream 2 pipeline, already built and sitting doing nothing. All they are doing by supporting Ukraine is prolonging the fighting and causing severe crises for themselves. (Soon after that the Nordstream pipelines were blown up!)

* Why Europe continues to fight the US or international "deep state" proxy war is beyond me. Especially puzzling were the unexpected moves of Sweden and Finland to join NATO. I think I have the answer: bribery of or threats (or both) to top officials including the leaders in those countries. Maybe the old "I have a wad of money in this pocket to do it our way or a gun for you and your family in this one. Which do you choose?" trick. Anyway some kind of heavy pressure from USA. Nothing else makes much sense to me. The idea that they are suddenly terrified of an attack from a Russia that seems quite bogged down just with Ukraine which they had good and explicitly stated reasons for attacking, seems ludicrous.


* The fact that Europe has become so reliant on Russian methane (AKA "natural gas") and oil is probably the best indication of how far down the road of using up these non-renewable energy sources the world has traveled, as well as to how high the population has bloated. "Peak oil" is way behind us. Without the Russian contribution, there doesn't seem to be enough readily accessible fossil fuel anywhere in the world to meet all the needs. OPEC raised its "production cap", but it brought little more oil on line. If there even is more, new extraction and refining facilities need to be created in order to deplete the remaining reserves faster.


* Those running Washington DC who have left the US southern border wide open as millions of unknown migrants come flooding in - and even flown them in by the planeload - destabilizing the country like never before, don't seem at all to like having governors of southern border states shipping even a few of them - drips in the bucket - into the northern states where they live. They're calling it "criminal acts". ("We welcome illegal immigrants but they can't stay here!")

* I feel sorry for those migrants as well as the Americans being overwhelmed by the flood. The USA is falling apart before our eyes. They've been promised more than US citizens are now able to procure for themselves or will be able to give them. Will they not all soon be starving, the population and the migrants alike? It seems almost like a trap.


* Near the end of the month both Nordstream methane gas pipelines were blown up under the sea. Now it doesn't matter what Germany decides about maintaining sanctions against Russia or not: Europe is screwed. Germans and other Europeans are going to freeze to death this winter. They will burn down the remainder of Europe's forests in quest for firewood. Countries will collapse into chaos.
   The USA is selling liquified methane ("LNG") to Europe at exorbitant prices. Biden, in mid February, publicly threatened to "shut down Nordstream 2" "if Russia attacks Ukraine" and to a question of "How?" just said "I promise you, we will do it." Few are buying the story that Russia blew up its own 20 + 15 billion dollar pipelines... the "plausible deniability" is implausible and the escape goat is escaping!




ESD
(Eccentric Silliness Department)


* Real versus Imaginary Numbers:

McRancher: "Yessir, I have over 50 head of cattle on this ranch!" -- McJealous: "Ya? Well, I have 5000 head of cattle on my ranch!"


* Q: Why is it that whatever you're looking for is always in the very last place you look?  A: Because after that you stop looking.





   "in depth reports" for each project are below. I hope they may be useful to anyone who wants to get into a similar project, to glean ideas for how something might be done, as well as things that might have been tried, or just thought of and not tried... and even of how not to do something - why it didn't work or proved impractical. Sometimes they set out inventive thoughts almost as they occur - and are the actual organization and elaboration in writing of those thoughts. They are thus partly a diary and are not extensively proof-read for literary perfection, consistency, completeness and elimination of duplications before publication. I hope they may add to the body of wisdom for other researchers and developers to help them find more productive paths and avoid potential pitfalls and dead ends.





Electric Transport

Variable Torque Converter with Planetary Gear: a Magnetic Method
(It Works Great!)
(Plus Miles ZX40 EV Truck Renovations)


The Truck (in 2016): The test vehicle for the torque converter


Variable Torque Converter Project Review

   As I recall I started the "variable torque converter" project in June 2009 when I realized that the "Electric Hubcap" axial flux BLDC motors I had started creating the year before couldn't have the torque to start a car rolling directly coupled to a wheel, but couldn't safely or efficiently rev up to higher thousands of RPM during high speed travel if they were geared down a lot. Axial flux BLDC is the most efficient type of motor in various EV operating conditions including in regenerative braking, but they're most efficient at lower RPMs, eg, under 2000. And at lower RPMs rotor inertia isn't a serious problem. A continuously variable automatic variable torque converter sounded like the ideal solution, and I was sure there had to be some relatively simple way to make a good one. The designs others have come up with were anything but simple, effective and efficient. They include:

* The fluid torque converter (anything but efficient and with only a limited range of ratios)
* special steel belts and cones (Honda cars)
* a V-belt and centrifugal varying pulleys (snowmobiles, etc.)
* Constantinesco's 1920s variable pendulum mechanism that worked well but put heavy stresses on the materials (apparently wore out fast).
* an amazingly complex gear system that had to have a second motor spin a small gear to vary the main ratio (AFAIK only a sample prototype was ever made)
* Toyota's dual planetary gear system, which again was driven by two motors and an engine rather than by a single motor - complicated.

   In fact I was sure there must be multiple ways it could be done. But I had no idea what any of them might be. Apparently neither did anyone else, or someone would have already built something better. On actual examination good solutions were elusive. So I seemed to be (as I often am) in uncharted territory.

   While I blundered down many blind alleys, I consider that some of the ideas in 2009, 2010 and beyond had merit. They were components of potentially good ideas. My first idea of a magnet rotor driving an alume disk on the car wheel by magnetic drag had the essential "magneticly variable" part, but it started with 1 to 1 gearing that didn't actually magnify the motor's torque when the wheel was turning slower than the motor.
   The idea of slipping a planetary gear body backward to increase its gear ratio was also a good one, but I was trying to drag it to a stop as speed increased. The idea was it could have an "infinitely" high ratio dropping down to its designed ratio. But I wasn't actually getting that, mostly just making heat. It could have worked by having a generator slow the body and return the power the batteries, but that seemed too complicated to build. I didn't come up with the idea of having it slip forward against another of its own gears to reduce the designed ratio until much later. Then I finally realized that if it could be made so that all the elements spun in unison, it would start from some higher ratio and finally at highway speeds all elements would spin at or near 1 to 1. This was a key concept. But I still hadn't combined the ideas. And the fabrication situation was complicated by wanting to drive the chain I had made connecting to the differential of the Sprint car, which was of course off to the side rather than in-line, using what is naturally an in-line mechanism. Putting the "in line to wheel" planetary gear in the Chevy Sprint (seemingly an unrelated side project) started also lining things up in my head.
   Finally I realized that the plan from a very few years ago for combining a planetary gear with all elements spinning and the big centrifugal clutch should work with the new in-line drive in the Sprint. But the project got put off by difficulties of construction and layout, and other events and projects. And the big clutch was mechanicly cumbersome and I was pretty sure it would be noisy and would wear out quickly - but if it did the job, it would be worth it. It could be improved later for production if it made for a good variable transmission.

   Then just last month (August 2022) I thought of using a planetary gearset the same way (all elements spinning) but with magnetic drag rotors between two elements in place of the centrifugal clutch. The potential quietness and smoothness of operation with no mechanical wear were much more appealing. I searched around my shop and storage and soon located all the needed components. Nothing had to be made from scratch and nothing had to be ordered. (Wow!) And then I saw that there was room under the Miles ZX40 electric mini-cargo truck to install the whole mechanism, and furthermore to do so utilizing what I had already fabricated for the truck just to put a fixed 5 to 1 reduction planetary gearset on it. So it not only seemed like a highly promising design concept, but it also looked like it should be a rapid fabrication to the point of initial prototype testing instead of a long, drawn out project that would get put off and put off again by other priorities.


Jury-rigged Planetary-Magnetic Torque Converter
being tested under the truck

   And within a month I've proved it works. In retrospect a design quite plain and simple, where in the future people will look and say "Of course that's how it's done!" Yet no one else has ever come up with anything like it, and it took me over 13 years. My vague 2009 variable torque converter conception was finally vindicated in tests on the 19th and 20th.

Videos:
Short version (8 min) - truck tests only -- https://youtu.be/aqG2Ol4y9Jw

Full version, with theory first (21 min) -- https://youtu.be/9KWASx5C6ZE

Or search youtube for "TurquoiseEnergy channel" (TurquoiseEnergy one word, or you won't find it.)


   As per the theory, in the brief actual tests in the explanatory video, especially the last test, one can see the body of the planetary gear start to turn backward, then slow to a stop and reverse direction (adjusting the "gear ratio" on the fly) as the speed and torque changes. More work is of course required to make it practical and roadworthy, but the use of one highly efficient automaticly variable gearset with magnetic rotors to replace an entire vehicle transmission will allow more optimized electric drive motors to be used, operating in their optimum RPM range at all vehicle speeds. This will reduce vehicle energy consumption, reducing required motor size and power and increasing range, and hence improve the entire automotive industry.
   AFAIK no one else else has come up with such a fabulous and simple design. The result is surely worth all the years it took to get here. Of course it wasn't my only project in all that time. Sometimes one experiments and sometimes one does other things and waits upon inspiration and a more advanced concept before proceeding. But without the effort of trying things out and pushing the bounds to flesh out possibilities, the inspirations for how to go farther won't come.


The Fabrication

   I got something of a mental block about starting building this. Probably too many disappointments. over too many years. But I told myself "a little bit every day and it'll be done before I know it!" (Then I can start on installing batteries and chargers to get the truck running again.)

[4th] I had previously pulled the gearset and shaft out of the truck. Now I pulled the extended motor shaft off the planetary.

[5th] I fit together "assembly #1", the alume disk on the motor shaft. It's a very long shaft taking up the length of the original transmission on the truck, with one end to fit the motor socket splines and the other to fit into the planetary gear input (sun gear). I was "lucky" how well these parts fit together, except I've tried to "standardize" my experiments with 1.0" shafts and I bought those washers exactly because they did fit on the taper of SDS taper lock hubs. So only the "almost" fit of the alume disk over the large part of the SDS hub was completely fortuitous. I turned the 1" shaft down (long ago for something else) a bit much in the area where the hub must sit, but it should be close enough, and again it was fortuitous that it needs to sit right where it was turned down, with maybe 1/4" sliding room to play with magnet gap adjustments.




Before I finished I roughed up the end of the shaft with the grinder because it was so prone to slipping, the planetary having a socket with just a clamp with one screw and no key slot or even set screws to affix it more securely.


[6th] I had to drill a hole in the side of the "hat" on the magnet rotor. Otherwise there was no way to both mount it on the planetary and tighten the clamp that holds the motor shaft. Both had to be done "first" - unless the allen wrench could go in through the hole. I went into town to find some hardened #10-32 machine screws. They only had the same cheap ones I already had. I finally decided they were ridiculously small for the amount of torque they needed to withstand and drilled out the holes to the same depth and tapped them for 1/4"-20 bolts. That's much better.




   I mounted the magnet rotor and then re-attached the shaft, with the alume disk on it. The hole for doing up the clamp bolt seemed to work - if I shone a flashlight into it to see when the bolt's hex socket was lined up. I got the shaft in pretty tight after I cut the more and more rounded end off my allen key.
   The disk had to be brought farther down the shaft to get it close to the magnet rotor, and the shaft was turned too small in that area. The SDS hub slit was closed to nothing and it was still loose. I put a long set screw into the hole for one and tightened it up with around a 4mm gap. (At least, I thought I tightened it - see later.)


   I cut a flange off the side of the rear steady bearing to shorten it a bit. The output shaft from the planetary gearset could stand to be about 2 inches longer. Now I have to kludj the truck's high-torque main drive shaft to the gearset with less than an inch of shaft and the two were never made to fit together. Why does everybody make such short shafts on their equipment?

   Next question: was the force needed to turn the rotor against the disk enough to balance the planetary and get the truck to move from a tough spot, instead of just turning the two rotors against each other without it moving? Was it anything like enough force?

   Well, the only thing to do was to build the housing and see. ...Or could I just jury rig something up all in the open for a quick test? It just needed to hold the truck's drive shaft in place. That would also keep the assembly from moving backward and falling out of the motor shaft. Yes, that should be sufficient for initial tests before discovering a lot of work had to be redone - or even, was in vain!

Hmm... I guess putting in the batteries and getting the truck motor running is next!


[9th] I wired up and connected the balance charger unit to the battery stack that didn't have one yet. (It had been in parallel with the other stack in the Sprint.) Charged it to test it.

[11th] I removed the "Delta Q" 72V lead-acid battery charger from the truck before installing the new batteries. It's the wrong type for lithium ion cells.
   I reinstalled the front battery stack. The negative cable turned out to be about an inch too short! But, but ...I had had one in there before and it reached! I looked at the three stacks. On two the bolt was on the right end of the bottom block. On the one in the Sprint it was on the left, gaining just the needed couple of inches. That must have been the one I had used! I thought that to flip the bottom block around (seemingly a simple thing) without shorting the screws to the next block up as they were undone - not to mention the screwdriver - I would have to disassemble the entire stack. But I looked and found that on the bottom, negative end, block only, the screws were from the bottom instead of the top. I could change it - whew! (I would still have to pull the stack out again to get at them.)

[12th] I changed it, but in the process decided the bits of alume and thin plywood under it for a mounting were inadequate underside protection. I'd like to seal them off from the road. I spent a fair while scraping and brushing out road grit (and or lead acid battery overflow crap) from the inside of the angle iron frame. I cut a new piece of 1/2 inch plywood to cover the entire opening, and put the alume bars to mount the battery on top of that. This of course raised the battery stack up 1/2 inch and now it wouldn't fit under the steel floor cover. It held it up off its seatings.
   After pondering this a while I decided to abandon the steel, which fit flush with the rest of the floor, and fit a piece of 3/4 inch plywood that would fit over top of the opening. That would be just high enough. And I started to think that after all, the steel floor over the batteries was always a bad idea. The high chance of shorting out cells when pulling it off or replacing it was always there. And I noted that the original hold-down screws (which had never been in place since I bought it) had to be put in and removed from under the truck, right between the golf cart batteries and the frame, somehow reaching up past the top of the battery. It must have been horribly awkward.

   I see more and more why Miles went out of business. It wasn't the products per se or the prices, it was the little thought given to various practical aspects of the designs, leading to needless big headaches for their customers. (Randy of Canadian Electric Vehicles, who designed and made the somewhat similar "Might-e-truck", held it in contempt. He especially didn't like the motor controller needlessly being exposed to the road with its dust, dirt, salt... I agree. And when I bought it I had had to replace the rotation sensor on the front of the motor which was also exposed to road dirt. ...I should put a sheet metal guard in front of the motor.)
   It should be remembered that before I bought it, there was no such thing as a proper factory made highway electric car available. They were just starting about that time, and there weren't any used (affordable) ones.

   Later I cut another piece of plywood and repeated the whole process, but stopped short of putting in the other battery.


Halbach Magnet Rotor Configuration

("We now interrupt the regularly scheduled program for an important announcement.")

   I watched a video where someone made a small axial flux BLDC motor. Except for extensive 3D printing and using air core coils, it bore some similarities to my earliest Electric Hubcap prototypes and had a similar efficiency he measured at 53%. There was however one key thing: he made the magnet rotor as a Halbach "array". Somehow I had missed the significance and the practicality of this configuration before. I had thought all the magnets had to be touching each other, as per all the theoretical Halbach diagrams I've seen. I thought they would be magneticly almost impossible to epoxy into such positions, and I didn't have any wedge shaped magnets to form them into a rotor. (Much less any wedges with both "through the thickness" and "across the width" magnetized magnets that could end up providing just the right diameter rotor.) And I think the word "array" confused me. So I didn't really think much about the whole seemingly impractical idea.

   But then I saw that on his actual rotor, his regular rectangular magnets weren't touching each other except at the inner corners. So, they didn't all need to be clumped together after all! In spite of using much larger magnets I should be able to hold them in position and epoxy them securely.
   This has application not only in axial flux motors, but potentially in this torque converter: one could probably get more magnetic interaction between the magnet rotor and the alume disk with the same magnets and the same size disks. If the interactions prove to be weaker than desirable with this rotor, I'll try making a Halbach configured magnet rotor. (Not to mention on the new unipolar "Electric Hubcap" type motor, should I ever get there. If I ever do it's going to be a fantastic motor!) One thing I could use to make one is some magnets with a square profile instead of rectangular: They need to all stick up the same height from the rotor disk, regardless of orientation.)

   Looking further, in video someone putting cube magnets with holes in them together onto a bolt didn't seem to have any notable trouble with the magnets wanting to do anything odd or strongly repel. Of course, they couldn't twist themselves sideways on the bolt. The difference in force between the weak side and the strong side when the 5 bolted magnets were touched to a metal drawer was remarkable.


   A question occurred to me: If the field is mostly on the outer face, is a steel plate backing rotor still required? Or if not, what then might the rotor be made of? Or perhaps with the weak rear field, a 1/8, 3/16 or 1/4 inch thick steel rotor would be fine? The 13 inch unipolar motor rotor maybe 1/8 inch thick, just enough for physical strength? Ah, a web site had my answer: "Does not require laminations or back iron". It also mentions my original concern: "Because the magnets are arranged with each one repelling its neighbor, the process of assembling the magnets and ensuring the adhesive or fixing method is sufficient is relatively labor intensive." Again, if the magnets don't have to actually touch each other, it shouldn't be too hard to make a good assembly jig and epoxy them into place. (As I've mentioned, in my planned new technique both the rotor and the magnet bottom surface will be "savagely" roughed up with a grinder to give the epoxy an excellent grip on both. The outer epoxy and nickel electroplating on the bottom of the magnet will be entirely ground off so there's nothing to delaminate.  Safe to 3500 RPM maybe?) OTOH, with the common 1/2 x 1 x 2 inch magnets, putting half of them on edge could be made easier if they could simply stick out the back of the rotor instead protruding farther toward the stator than the magnets lying flat. That would best be done with a non-iron rotor - perhaps the whole thing molded from epoxy?

And now, back to the program...
Yes, that's the garage FLOOR under the battery        
holders - all completely exposed to the elements!       

[13th] I got the second battery installed. Also the 7 to 1 planetary gearset for the Sprint car's variable torque converter arrived at the post office. (Nobody will ship valuable items through the mail and they charge much extra for courier delivery, but half the time they show up here at the post office anyway. Then I get the collect bill from Fedex that seems to include both "brokerage" charges plus the cost of mailing it.)


[14th] I wired up the batteries. In between the two stacks, the "36V" point, I mounted a fuse holder for a 400 amp fuse. Then a wire to connect the "+" of the front stack to the fuse holder, and another from the other side of the fuse holder to the "-" of the rear stack. I cut off the connector terminal from the "+" wire, the "72V" point, and crimped on one with a larger hole for the 1/2 inch battery bolt. The cable was just about the right length.

   At the "-" or "0V" wire, it finally dawned on me that I should put in a shunt for a voltage-current meter, just as I had just done in the Sprint. I couldn't use the TK15 type coulometer that I had used in the Sprint. Those were rated 80 volts max. The "72 volt" truck could charge to up to 84 volts. So I used a dual LED display voltage-current meter I had bought earlier (200V max), that had a 200 amp shunt. (bought so long ago I looked through the whole electronics lab before I found it.) I think I can estimate how high or low the battery is pretty well by the voltage. If it's over 79 that's pretty charged (although at 20°C, 84V would be 100%). If it's 70V it's getting down there and if it's hitting below 66V while underway it's overdue for a charge.
   (In fact I had a choice of 100, 200 or 500 amp shunts as I had bought three of these units. If the truck's Curtis AC35, 72 volt motor is indeed 10KW, then 10000W/72V=139 amps max.) I made a plywood mounting piece to hold the shunt. (The negative cable had a couple of inches to spare by going to the shunt instead of direct to the battery terminal - I hadn't needed to change it. Sigh!)
   At the end of the day it was all together but it was getting late I and didn't put the fuse in. Also I hadn't mounted or wired in the meter, so nothing was connected to measure using the shunt. (Do I do that next, or press on with the torque converter?)


[15th]  When I had a few months ago (at long last) measured the current with the ignition off and discovered the the batteries were being continually depleted instead of sitting idle, I had thought it must be the truck's (unplugged) 72 volt battery charger drawing current. But having removed it, when I connected the new batteries, I found something was still drawing the same tens of milliamps continually from them! It turned out that the charger for the 12 volt battery is "on" even if the ignition is "off", holding the 12 volt battery under the seat at 13.4 volts by drawing from the main batteries!!! This fine little feature from the manufacturer has destroyed around 3000$ worth of my batteries by totally discharging them over time when I left the truck sitting unused. (If anything was to be lost I would much rather it was just the one small 12V battery - and even that one would probably last better if left idle than under continuous charge! Again, small wonder Miles went out of business!) Now, where is said charger so I can rewire it properly through the ignition switch?

   When I connected the fuse, the motor wouldn't turn. There's an interlock sensor switch on the brake fluid and it won't start unless you're pressing the brake pedal. The main reservoir was empty. No brakes. Again. Hmmpf! I had already replaced the brake line to the left rear wheel 2 or 3 years ago when it was running. Where else was it leaking out over the months? I refilled the cylinder. The pedal still went to the floor. Past experience says it eventually refills the lines by itself and the brakes and truck (motor) should start working. I had lots of brake fluid and could worry about it later. In the meantime it might take a day or two for the fluid to percolate down.

   I routed a wire from the batteries and shunt up onto the dash, via some holes, under some trim, and by drilling a small hole in the dash next to the speaker. (Wait, speaker? The truck has no stereo!) Then I figured I might as well make a small panel to mount on top of the dash for both the voltage-current meter and the bicycle speedometer (the truck's original speedometer having no transmission to plug into any more). There seems to be some "scope creep" going on in this variable torque converter experiment! Oh well, it all needs to be done.

[16th] I located the DC to DC converter that charged the 12 volt battery, under the passenger's seat. It plugged in with a 5 wire plug, so I simply unplugged it. One problem solved. One wire was labeled "enable". WHY in God's name would they enable it with the ignition OFF?!?
   I connected the 72 volts through the multimeter on "amps" across the fuse holder. No current after the initial pulse (which occurs to charge the capacitors in the motor controller). The way it should always have been but wasn't. I left the DC to DC unit unplugged and fastened the fuse for the 72 volt main power into place, reassured that the batteries wouldn't be bled to death if I left it that way.
   Then I checked the voltage with the test leed still in the "10 amps" socket. ZAP! A new fuse for the blown one didn't fix it. On October 3rd it was either throw out my fine Fluke multimeter or fix it. I thought maybe a chip in the meter was fried. But I tried to short out a power supply across the meter on amps, and nothing happened. That said there was no connection. With a magnifying glass I found a tiny broken trace on the circuit board from the "-" test leed. I bridged it with a thin wire and solder, and the meter lives on! (YAY!)

   The brakes still hit the floor so I couldn't try the motor yet. (Might I actually have to bleed them? But the level in the reservoir had dropped a bit.)
   I decided the "project creep" was getting out of hand, and to wait until later to wire in the Volt-Amp meter, the speedometer, reroute the 12V charger's "enable" and the 72V battery charger. (two @ 36V... Actually I got four 40 volt, 10 amp power supplies in case I want to charge at 20 amps instead of 10.) All the batteries should have plenty of energy for initial tests of the torque converter, and there should be some "feel" for how hard the motor was working even without an ampmeter. And of course the truck should move - easily and smoothly on the concrete floor, then with more challenge on the rough lawn and hills.

   I put the assembled shaft in and held it propped up with a block of wood. For a first test it just needed something to hold the rear end and the drive shaft up - but something that still would allow it all to turn. I had an old piece from the truck that had held the original transmission. I ended up using just a bracket from that, and a long bolt and a piece of 1/8 x 1 steel strap 6 inches long, bent into a "U". This sufficed to form a circle around the rear driveshaft and hold it at about the right height. Unless the final housing has something else to replace it, I plan to also leave this assembly in place just in case so that if the rear driveshaft - which will now have only a very short overlap with the planetary's shaft - should ever become disconnected, the front of it can't drop to the ground and act as a pole vault to flip up the whole rear of the moving truck.


   The brake pedal still went to the floor so I couldn't try to test it. Maybe tomorrow? (How long was it last time after filling the cylinder before I discovered the brakes were magicly working again? I wasn't using the truck - Can't remember. Hmm, could it have been a week or two rather than a day or two?)

[19th] Finally the brakes were grabbing enough that if I pumped them a bit the motor turned. But the truck didn't move. It didn't even feel from inside like it was trying, even on the level cement of the garage where I could push it easily enough by hand. And instead of being silent as expected, there was a pretty loud noise. A video set up on the floor beside the truck showed that the motor turned one way and the planetary gear housing turned the other (1/4 as fast we presume). including when I revved it up a bit. Not enough magnetic interaction, I presumed. But the noise was pretty loud.
   I decided to try again. This time I went forward (into less space) instead of backward, and I revved it up harder, briefly. The truck lurched forward a bit. In the video one could see the drive shaft twist. Then for some reason it (both shaft and truck) went back to where it was. It seemed to me the join between the planetary gear output and the rear drive shaft seemed to be slipping. It was a weak point, sort of hacked together, and there were a couple of set screws I hadn't bothered to do up. The key slipping against the inside splined shaft might explain both the noises and the reluctance to move, and why it might only move forward.
   I tightened the set screws, but the result was the same. I'm still puzzled why the truck would only move a bit, and then go back to where it started. I could push it easily enough, and it didn't do that. And what was the noise? It certainly didn't sound good.
   I tried a fourth time, in reverse again and with revving higher. This time (probably just with the higher revs) the drive shaft twisted a bit. and then went back as I stopped. Again I could still push it quite easily.

   I tentatively concluded:

(1) that there was just enough magnetic interaction to budge the truck on the level cement, at least if well revved up.
(2) that it wasn't nearly as much as needed.
(3) that the drive shaft might be jamming on the bolt heads in the loop I made to contain it as soon as it starts to turn. Of course it needs a proper bearing to hold the front centered and freely spinning. That might explain why the truck would start to move but then stop again, but looking at the videos I'm not at all sure.
(4) that the drive shaft turns back again owing to inertial forces as the disks and planetary gear spins decelerate when I stop pressing on the pedal.
(5) In one video I saw some pretty serious vibration up at the motor end of the shaft. It probably explains the noise, and says that the housing for the whole unit is a must soon rather than later. (This is probably the vibration I thought was caused by an unbalanced shaft when I first made it just before the batteries were all murdered by the truck.)

   As far as magnetic interaction, changing the rotor to a Halbach configuration should produce a good increase. When I started I had mistakenly thought that the ring gear would have low torque acting on it, like the sun gear driving it. In fact, in a 5 to 1 gearset, the speed reduction and torque on the body/ring is 5 - 1 = 4 times the input torque, at 1/4 speed. So a lot more magnetic interaction is required than I had at first assumed. It can be done.

   Looking again at the videos, I couldn't really see the gap between the two rotors. Inspection revealed that that was because the alume rotor on the motor shaft had come loose. It was both touching the magnet rotor (making all that noise) and not always turning with the motor shaft. That explained a lot of things. Too bad about the shaft being undersize and there being only one setscrew to hold the rotor in place. All other conclusions needed to be placed on hold until I could get it to stay in place long enough to test again. After that they were thrown out the window.

It Works!

   Late in the evening I went into the garage and managed to get an allen wrench in and tighten the rotor hub without disassembling the whole thing. I tried again. GREAT ZOT!, it moved! and without all the noise, which obviously would have been the rattling and vibration of the loose disk. With the motor at "idle" speed the planetary's body just turned backward, but with a little push on the "electron pedal" the truck pulled forward. or backward. Perhaps the magnetic-mechanical balance isn't bad after all.
   Observing the video, the planetary body was still turning backward as the truck moved. So the effective reduction ratio was greater than 5 to 1. Pushing my luck, I wondered if the truck would crawl over a 1 by 4 board. I found a small piece of 3/4 inch plywood and a short 2 by 4 with rounded corners and put them in front of the left front wheel. It went up the plywood fine, and then already moving skipped over the board. Backing up it didn't want to go back over the board without a run at it. Just revving it up a bit didn't get it over. This time once or twice the truck started moving a bit with the motor at "idle" speed, not pressing the pedal. And at one point, I observed (in the video) the body of the planetary slowing down as I backed up instead of staying about the same or speeding up - a lower gear ratio when there was lower torque.
   The mechanics being rather kludjed I didn't want to push the pedal too hard, rev very high or test for very long. It all needs to be redone properly now with the rear bearing and a solid housing. I still worry about the short and mismatched overlap connection between the gearset output and the rear drive shaft. That little bit carries the most torque. But it works!

   The fact that it wouldn't go over the 2 by 4 without a run (or more "oompf" from the pedal than I wanted to give it) probably says the magnetic coupling, tho it works, is still rather too light. Unfortunately it wasn't in the video. With the truck moving now and the camera not following I missed being able to review the actions of the mechanism for most of this run. I should probably make a mounting on the side of the truck to hold the camera pointing at the mechanism and move along with it. It should be great to see the planetary's body stop turning backward and start going forward as the truck gains speed. (I'll also have to put a transparent side or removable cover on the housing so the workings can be seen.)
   I didn't think to check the alume rotor right after to see if it was getting warm. I trust the tests weren't long enough to heat it significantly.

[20th] I contrived a way to mount the video camera upside down on the side of the truck with a small piece of plywood, two C-clamps, and an odd bolt I had noticed earlier with one end "lag bolt" threads and the other end 1/4"-20 TPI: camera tripod threads. I opened the garage door and backed the truck out of the garage, accelerating a bit into the uphill slope on the lawn. I stopped (the mechanism didn't come to a total stop) and was gratified that the truck would still start moving again easily with the back wheels going up the shallow slope on the lawn. (I only went about 16 feet, concerned about potentially damaging the "ckludjy" mechanism or having something come loose.) Then I drove forward back into the garage.
   The video showed the body of the planetary spinning, slowing and reversing direction both ways as the speed and load changed - exactly as intended.
   The alume disk got warm even in that short time, maybe 110 or 120°F (40-50°C). I have no idea how much energy that heat represents compared to the total energy that was used in moving the truck. Probably a few percent? 10% or more? But again I think that more magnetic coupling rather than less is the solution. In spite of more potential for electromagnetic heat with "X" motion, the magnet rotor and alume disk ideally wouldn't get moving so fast relative to each other, which I would think should substantially reduce heat. (And if needed, maybe some heatsink fins on the back or outside of the disk would help dispell any heat that was generated. That would probably be for a production model.)

[21st] I got my video clips together, made a few more short snips of explanations, spliced and edited everything together, and uploaded a 21 minute video about the torque converter to youtube.

[23rd] For more magnetism I started by splitting three new magnets (2" x 1" x .375") down the middle to mount on their sides for the Halbach configuration effect. The .375" size, now the width, should fit between magnets already on the rotor. That should magnify the magnetic fields by 1.5 to 2 times.
   I made one pass at a time and then let them cool so as to not heat them up and cause them to lose magnetism. It was tedious. (The dust, with the reactive neodymium, still burned, glowing red - some of it stuck to the magnet. I touched some after it stopped glowing to wipe it off and burned my thumb.). After the first magnet I realized that if there were several to do, I could go from one to the next to the next so the first one would be cool again by the time I got back to it. I simply stuck the magnets onto a thick steel chunk (brake rotor disk) and their own magnetism held them securely.
   The other thing that could help with flux would be a thicker alume disk. That might improve things by maybe 1.5 times as well. (19mm / 3/4 inch thick alume?) Also the alume you buy is usually an alloy. Pure alume would be better. (Soft drink cans are pure alume because it forms best from a 'chunk' int a can shape. But I need a forge to melt them into a rotor!)
   And the 12 magnet motor rotor I used has only 6 poles, the polarity of the magnets being
N N S S N N S S N N S S . I could probably make a more optimized Halbach rotor with 12 poles that would also have more flux.
   Double what it has now would probably be notably better, considering the trouble it had climbing over the 2 by 4. Triple or quadruple should be excellent - maybe even too much, limiting acceleration with too low reduction ratios. But somewhere near triple should be attainable without going to two magnet rotors.

[28th] I dismounted and disassembled the unit. I used a hacksaw to cut the epoxied polypropylene strapping/webbing cloth from between the magnets where magnetic polarity changed in order to have bare rotor to epoxy on the skinny sideways magnets, 'I':
SIN NIS SIN NIS SIN NIS. When I got a chisel under the separated pieces of epoxied PP, they popped off distressingly easily. Wow! The epoxied cloth had been a continuous ring around the rotor, now it was 6 short patches, each covering two magnets. How easy would it be for the magnets to fly off?
   I somewhat savagely roughed up the bare spots for the new magnets with the edge of the zip disk in the angle grinder. I had already thought to get some fresh epoxy resin from the building supply that was both newer and probably a better brand/formula than what I had, but I hadn't put it on my shopping list and forgot to get it. (Drive back to town again?, sigh!)


   Finally I ground down the protruding edge on the 6 skinny magnets, formed because when splitting them in half I had snapped them off before the grinder was totally through. (Hey, it was tedious cutting, eh? And the deeper in, the tougher/slower the cutting.) Then I tapped them all over the 'leveled' contact face with the edge of the running zip disk to roughen it up.


[29th] Bought the epoxy, the best looking of two choices at the building supply. "System 3 - G2". "Bonds to wood, metal and concrete. SUPERIOR STRENGTH ON THE TOUGHEST-TO-BOND WOODS" (180$ for 3 US pints - it had BETTER be really good stuff!)
   I rubbed solvent on each rotor face and the magnet face to be glued before applying the epoxy, in accordance with the instruction on the epoxy. And I peeled off any loose plating anywhere on the magnet. It proved surprisingly easy to epoxy each magnet to the rotor. Although the magnetic forces were strong, if the magnet was slid in from the outside, it repelled from the magnets on each side rather than clamping onto one of them. (If it attracted it was the wrong way around.) It was attracted to the rotor metal, so as long as it wasn't lifted up much above the steel it didn't tend to suddenly flip and jump out. (I tried to lift them a bit to keep from scraping off the epoxy as I slid them in.) When it was pushed in just past even with the other magnets, it stopped wanting to pop out to the outside. So it could just be put into place and it would center itself between the other two magnets. They didn't need some jig to hold them in place while the epoxy set.
   I didn't mix much epoxy, but I saved the rest and the brush in the freezer to thicken it up around the new magnets after they had set in place, and coat the unplated, unprotected faces. Because of the kerf of the zip disk when cutting, the new magnets didn't stick up quite as high as the others and so were slightly recessed. I don't think that's a problem - in fact, given that the cuts weren't all exactly 90° so they didn't all sit quite square, it's probably an advantage.

   The 6 skinny magnets were cut from 3 full size. That means 15 magnets equivalent instead of 12 is 25% more magnets as well as Halbaching it, so there's a good chance it'll be over 1.5 times and headed for twice as much field. But as it is its depth of field would probably be a good match with a 20mm or even one inch thick alume disk rather than the ~10mm one. It would probably be better if it went NSNSNSNSNSNS rather than NNSSNNSSNNSS. It would be  a shallower field but with more field transitions. Then if it had a skinny magnet between each of the others - 12 half magnets on their sides between 12 full ones (NISINISINISINISINISINISI), which would obviously still fit on a 10 inch rotor - it would be 18 magnets equivalent, more ideally "Halbached", and surely have an awesome field strength. Anyway I'm using up these old rotors for this torque converter unless poor performance forces me to do such an "ultimate" one. (or a thicker alume disk, or both. I don't think a costly, heavy copper disk is called for. It would cost more than any rare earth magnets it saved.)

[30th] I used up the epoxy touching up and coating the new magnets. It finally occurred to me why the rear driveshaft was splined and originally free to slide in and out: when the truck hit bumps, the rear suspension would move and that join was where the drive mechanism had some slack if it moved back and forward a bit.

[Oct. 2nd] I cut the motor shaft a little shorter to make room for the bearing at the back. I ended up cutting twice (oops, too far!), moving the alume rotor 2 or 3 times, and finally I put it back together with almost no magnet gap - a couple of mm. With the 'Halbached' rotor there was a lot of resistance to turning it, or the same resistance at considerably lower speeds than before.
   It fit on the truck with a couple of mm to spare on the shaft length. I decided to try a tiny test drive, but as I hadn't put the shaft key back on for this test fit, it had only 2 little set screws holding the rear drive shaft. After tightening them twice (and worrying that the threads might strip), I got it to move. At "idle speed" the truck wouldn't move ahead, but a small press on the pedal got it to go. In reverse it started moving at "idle speed" and I didn't press on the pedal. Then the drive shaft started slipping again.
   The new video showed that the body of the planetary turned much more slowly. In reverse once the truck started moving, it almost stopped. So I expect the magnetic coupling is now about right.

   In fitting the mechanism and doing these tests, the amount of wobble I was seeing with the whole unattached gearset assembly and long shafts bothered me, and it occurred to me I should put a steady bearing on the long shaft from the motor, at the rotors end, in addition to the one at the back end of the planetary. I'll feel much better about the stability and high speed operation.

   It's going to be great!

Charts

   I did spreadsheets with some hypothetical values. I found it had to be a three dimensional spreadsheet: Torque versus gear ratio and other parameters, and Speed versus gear ratio and parameters. That being difficult, I did four two-dimensional spreadsheets: Torque = 0, 'x1', 'x4' and 'x8' for 'coasting', 'cruising', 'accelerating' and 'pedal to the metal' resulting in an 'educated guess' of 0, 50, 200 and 400 RPM slip between the alume disk and the magnet rotor. (and later, 'x16'.) These can't be taken as being anything like literal figures because they're going to change for each torque converter and with the strength of the magnetic coupling compared with all the mechanical factors. However, the "x1" and "x4" graphs may not be so far off for the truck for power in watts, since the maximum power reads "9400" (arbitrary units) and the truck's motor is 10000 watts.
   But the "x8" 'pedal to the metal' graph could also be closer at lower power levels if there's less magnetic coupling, and then 'x16' would be for higher acceleration while 'x1' would be almost coasting. Which ones are most realistic for the truck under what loads is to be determined.

   I've rounded off the efficiencies to whole percents. How to calculate them got convoluted. I think I've calculated them correctly but I'm not 100% certain. Here is my reasoning:
1. For a given torque the slip is a fixed RPM, and the power lost is related to that RPM of slip, at any vehicle speed and overall RPMs.
2. If the slip is (eg) 200 RPM 'lost' from the motor to the body of the planetary, and the nominal reduction of the gearset is 5 to 1, that translates out to 40 RPM 'lost' at the output.
3. So the efficiency would be (RPMoutput)/(RPMoutput+40), *100 for percent.
  a. So if the motor was turning 200 RPM, the planetary gear would be stationary at 0 rpm and the output would be 40 RPM. Eff = (40)/(40+40), *100 = 50%. (a momentary figure with the vehicle just starting to move.)
  b. Of course the faster everything is turning, the less significant the 200/'40' RPM slip is in proportion. So at 1000 motor RPM the body is spinning 800 RPM (still 200 RPM slip) and the output is going 840 RPM. Thus, (840)/(840+40) * 100 = 95.45% efficiency.

   Hopefully this method of calculation is correct, or if not, at least a fair approximation. I was surprised how high the percentages turned out to be except at very low speeds. Theoretical efficiencies at typical driving speeds and motor powers look quite good - over 95%. Of course, much depends on the strength of the magnetic coupling and hence the amount of slip for a given torque. High magnetic coupling will give the highest efficiencies but the lowest "gear ratios" at low speeds and hence the lowest acceleration and hill climbing capacity. Inefficiencies, owing to slip in the magnetic coupling, will heat the alume disk the most. (That's where the lost power goes - temperature hasn't been measured yet. It was rather warm on first tests, but the magnet rotor's magnetic field has now been "Halbach" strengthened.)
   It is of note that much of the change in effective gear ratios occurs at very low speeds. (After all, going from 1 to 2 KmPH is a doubling of speed, and 2 to 4 is another doubling.) But it also varies with strength of acceleration. In the "x8 torque" case the ratio is still over 2 to 1 up to 15 KmPH.
   It should also be noted that the ZX40 test vehicle has a 2.2 to 1 additonal gear reduction in the rear differential, so overall it drops from a nominal 11 to 1 toward 2.2 to 1 (rather than from 5 to 1 toward 1 to 1).   2 to 1 in the torque converter is 4.4 to 1 from the motor to the wheels. (There is nothing that seems practical to eliminate whatever the inefficiency is of the rear differential in the test vehicle. Also the additional 2.2 to 1 makes it a better match for the vehicle's Curtis AC35 motor RPMs. But if I do one for the Sprint car with the 0-2000 RPM forklift motor or an axial flux BLDC motor (also high torque, low RPM), the torque converter will go direct to the CV drive shaft on a wheel.)


Case torque = 0: No torque required. ('Coasting')
Truck
Speed
(KmPH)
Drive Shaft
RPM
Gear Body
RPM
Motor RPM
Gear Ratio
(n:1)
0
0
0
0
(5.0)
5
110
110
110
1
10
220
220
220
1
20
440
440
440
1
30
660
660
660
1
et
cetera




Case torque = "x1", magnetic slip = 50 RPM @ motor shaft ('Cruising')
Truck
Speed
(KmPH)
Drive Shaft
RPM
Gear Body
RPM
Motor RPM Gear Ratio
(n:1)
Mot.Power
(arbitrary
  units)
Efficiency
(%)
0
0
-12.5
37.5
(5.0)
37.5

5
110
97.5
147.5
1.34
147.5
90
10
220
207.5
257.5
1.17
257.5
95
20
440
427.5
477.5
1.09
477.5
97
30
660
647.5
697.5
1.06
697.5
98
40
880
867.5
917.5
1.04
917.5
99
50
1110
1087.5
1137.5
1.03
1137.5
99
60
1320
1307.5
1357.5
1.03
1357.5
99
70
1540
1527.5
1577.5
1.02
1577.5
99
80
1760
1747.5
1797.5
1.02
1797.5
99
100
2200
2187.5
2237.5
1.02
2237.5
99



Case torque = "x4", magnetic slip = 200 RPM @ motor shaft ('Accelerating')
Truck
Speed
(KmPH)
Drive Shaft
RPM
Gear Body
RPM
Motor RPM Gear Ratio
(n:1)
Mot.Power
(arbitrary
  units)
Efficiency
(%)
0
0
-50
150
(5.0)
600

5
110
60
260
2.36
1040
73
10
220
170
370
1.68
1480
85
20
440
390
590
1.34
2360
92
30
660
610
810
1.23
3240
94
40
880
830
1030
1.17
4120
96
50
1110
1050
1250
1.14
5000
96
60
1320
1270
1470
1.11
5880
97
70
1540
1490
1690
1.10
6760
97
80
1760
1710
1910
1.09
7640
98
100
2200
2150
2350
1.07
9400
98



Case torque = "x8", magnetic slip = 400 RPM @ motor shaft ('Pedal to the metal')
Truck
Speed
(KmPH)
Drive Shaft
RPM
Gear Body
RPM
Motor RPM Gear Ratio
(n:1)
Mot.Power
(Arbitrary
  units)
Efficiency
(%)
0
0
-100
300
(5.0)
2400

5
110
10
410
3.73
3280
58
10
220
120
520
2.36
4160
73
20
440
340
740
1.68
5920
85
30
660
560
960
1.45
7680
89
40
880
780
1180
1.34
9440
92
50
1110
1000
1400
1.27
11200
93
60
1320
1220
1620
1.23
12960
94
70
1540
1440
1840
1.19
14720
95
80
1760
1660
2060
1.17
16480
96
100
2200
2100
2500
1.14
20000
96

   The figures, while arbitrary, seem indicative of probable performance. Testing is still in the earliest stages and it may prove that 'x8' sorts of reduction ratios and efficiencies will apply at lower accelerations or even at cruising power levels and that there might be an 'x16' for strong acceleration. The 'x1' and 'x4' graphs may indicate too much magnetic coupling resulting in too low effective gear ratios at low speeds and during acceleration. But even the 'x8' efficiencies are substantially better than the "80+%" efficiencies of today's automatic vehicle transmissions, and much better than older "70% efficient" stick shifts and "60%" automatic transmissions.

   In fact, let's look at the 'x16' case, too:

Case torque = "x16", magnetic slip = 800 RPM @ motor shaft (Strong acceleration with lower magnetic coupling)
Truck
Speed
(KmPH)
Drive Shaft
RPM
Gear Body
RPM
Motor RPM Gear Ratio
(n:1)
Mot.Power
(Arbitrary
  units)
Efficiency
(%)
0
0
-200
600
 > (5.0)
9600

5
110
-90
710
6.45
11360
41
10
220
20
820
3.73
13120
58
20
440
240
1040
2.36
16640
73
30
660
460
1260
1.91
20160
80
40
880
680
1480
1.68
23680
85
50
1110
900
1700
1.55
27200
87
60
1320
1120
1920
1.45
30720
89
70
1540
1340
2140
1.39
34240
91
80
1760
1560
2360
1.34
37760
92
100
2200
2000
2800
1.27
44800
93

   Here the mechanism attains higher effective reduction ratios than the design of the planetary gearbox at lowest speeds and (we presume) under strong acceleration as the body of the planetary turns backward. And still, passing through the speed of 50 KmPH as power increases the efficiency hits 87% and it will rise as acceleration is reduced. All of these are excellent figures, seemingly well over 90% for most any typical road trip.




Sprint Car: Tires, TK15 (TK15H) Coulometer


[6th] I was worried about being able to find new tires for the Sprint. I was about to ask the garage if they can order its 12 inch tires. But first I finally I looked in my storage at two used tires that size that I had got 8 or 9 years ago ("good condition, free for pickup" advertised on UsedVictoria.com). I figured they were as old and wouldn't be much better than the ones on the car, but in fact they look newer and better. The rims look rather rusty, but the tires look pretty new - no cracks in the sidewalls, good if not full tread and they're still inflated after all this time. "Firestone Gas Saver" - sounds good to me! I'll put them on the front wheels. A rear tire blowing is generally not catastrophic and I'll have two full size spares in case one does. Good enough for a few years. (I'm now assuming the variable torque converter will finally get it on the road sometime in the foreseeable future!)

[7th]   In connection with doing the torque converter in the truck I had to take one of the batteries from the Sprint. The truck needs two of my three 36 volt stacks to get its 72 volts.

   According to my rough calculations and expectations [and assuming it will have the variable torque converter] I should still be able to drive it to town and back (55 Km) even with just one battery stack instead of two (36 V, 120 AH = 4320 WH - should use well under 4000 for that trip).

(If instead I could put all three stacks in the Sprint for 13KWH, it should probably be able to make it to the farthest town on the island, Masset, and back. 170 Km total.
   The Nissan Leaf can't do that with 24KWH. According to its "Km/KWH" reading, it takes around 7 to 9 KWH to drive to town and back. 7 is in summer sun; 9 is wet road or cool to cold weather. I've never driven it more than about 110 Km, in summer, with the reserve saying just under 20% and flashing red. Whatever the Leaf's efficiency it weighs twice as much and surely has more road/tire resistance with its fat tires.)


   I didn't want to leave the Sprint with the power disconnected and not working. And I figured while things were disassembled was the time to install the coulomb meter I bought some months ago so I could see the state of charge and voltage of the battery. Of course it had a shunt resistor that had to go in the battery line. I thought I had a good way to put and connect it on the block that the main battery fuse was on.

   Then it dawned on me that it said "B-", not "B+". It had to go on the ground side! Typical, actually. I managed to use the same copper plate strap. By the end of the day I had the battery and balance charger reconnected and the TK15 - 350 amp coulometer wired and working, but not mounted on the dash. The 2 meter long optional cable I got with it was just long enough. The TK15 seems to come in a variety of voltage current ratings and may(?) have more than one manufacturer.

   There was no manual and I watched a video on youtube showing how to use it. I set it to 40V fully charged and 33 discharged, 120 amp-hours. It seems like a good unit. In addition to what my other battery monitors do, it tracks the current in and out and estimates the state of charge of the battery, expressed in percent and amp-hours remaining. The backlight pulses on and off while it's charging, even a little bit. It stays on while a load is on and goes out if nothing at all is happening, to avoid itself discharging the idle battery. I told it the battery was at 100%.

   The current readings to the motor while driving looked reasonable.

   Then I took a test drive - the usual, across the acreage and back. Everything seemed to work fine and stayed cold except my crappy flattened copper waterpipes forward-reverse switch got warm, as usual. If I picked the meter up off the floor and held it so I could see the amps and volts. It showed 98% charge remaining. It had rained earlier, and the drive wheel's tire spun on the wet grass much more easily than it had when the ground was dry.


[8th] I mounted the coulometer on the side of the dash with a couple of "L" bits of stainless steel. That seemed to be the only place where I could see it without it being hidden behind the steering wheel or looking way down. I had a car accident in 1993 (Saved by the seatbelt! An airbag as well would have saved much trauma.) while looking down for an intermittent windshield wiper adjustment mounted down at the bottom of the dash, so I wasnt keen on having my attention diverted far from the road - probably repeatedly as I check current and charge level readings in my experimental car.

  For the same reason I have one chief complaint with the unit: the display is too small. Instead of taking a quick glance one must peer at it to locate the desired figure. This again can distract attention from the road for an undesirably long period.
   It would be great in a stationary application, but it's not ideal for a car or electric bicycle (which seems to be one chief application.)

(This picture shows the coulometer better but less as the driver sees it.)


[9th] When recharging I noticed that the TK15 said 4.18 amps, but the wall monitor said 1.93 amps and the solar charge controller (which I know reads somewhat high) said 2.1 amps. So it was reading, like, over double. Something is definitely askew here! I started wondering if I wasn't supplied a 350A coulometer with a 100A shunt? or something.
   I got out the clamp-on ampmeter and took another test drive with it on the "B+" wire to the motor controller in the cab. It's hard to tell exactly with the current bouncing around between 30 and 115 amps and not being able to read both at once, but on average it and the TK15 seemed to agree quite well. I guess it's just at low currents unit gets confused... or only during charging. Well, 2 amps is less than 1% of its 350 amp range. (Yet is says "0.000 amps" just fine when everything is off!) But the solar charging (especially late in the afternoon... or in clouds... or in winter) is going to be at low currents. The moral of the story: don't trust it when it says the battery is full - go by the voltage. Discharging at pretty high currents is likely to be pretty close.
   Some days later I noticed that at night, connected to the PowMr charge controller with the Sprint's battery powering the house DC system (no more spare batteries!), the backlight stayed on because the PowMr drew a substantial amount of current (100mA; 4W). With most battery chargers that could be a "slow death" battery killer (and it seems every RV I run across the batteries have died over the winter or whenever and the owner is puzzled and looking for help), but in the case of the solar charge controller, the charge gets replenished every morning.




Thoughts: Unipolar "Electric Hubcap" Motor With Halbach Magnet Configuration


[12th] I ran across Halbach magnet "arrays" or configurations which magnify their flux by putting it out mostly on one side. I noted this above in the planetary gearset/magnetic disks toruqe converter above. All else being equal, increasing the magnetism of the rotor would increase the motor torque for the same "n" coil current. It might be as good as the "permanent magnet assist" coil idea proposed a few years ago in some previous issues, and for which I purchased cylindrical magnets to go inside the toroidal motor coil cores.
   I started thinking about what the unipolar motor would look like with that. First, as I don't have any 1/2 x 1 x 2 inch magnets magnetized through the width instead of the thickness, I would have to cut magnets down the middle with the angle grinder to get a 1/2 x 1/2 x 2 inch shape.  These could be turned on their side and used either individually (every second magnet thin) or (as they would attract) stacked sideways in pairs, so it would look about the same as with whole magnets.
   Or I could use the 3/8 x 1 x 2 magnets. Cutting with the angle grinder will take out a kerf anyway so the sideways magnets wouldn't be quite 1/2 inch tall, so it might work out just about as well. (Good thing axial flux PM motor use such a wide flux gap that nothing will hit!)

   Well, I used these thoughts and converted the torque converter rotor to Halbach with 3/8" thick magnets sliced down the middles. And it is indeed markedly better!

   The fact that I don't remember seeing any of these, the most popular of all magnet shapes, available magnetized through the width means people haven't been using Halbach configurations with their axial flux motor and generator designs. I guess everybody else has been as clueless about them as me.

   I could use 1/4 inch thick steel for the rotor - maybe even 5mm(?) flattened sides from the propane tanks I scrounged. Or even 1/8th inch? Being that thin I could cut them with a jigsaw and metal cutting blade... ugg!... or maybe just rough them out with the angle grinder and a zip disk, then a grinder. Then turn them true on somebody's larger lathe than mine. I looked at TE News #163: I had figured on the new motor's rotor to be 330mm, a little over 13 inches. This was the minimum diameter to readily fit the coils on the stator, so I couldn't reduce the rotor with the thin magnets idea. If I did use it the "narrow" magnet idea would "save" 4 magnets (and 4 cuts!), 12 instead of 16 for the 8 magnet poles, but surely the flux would also be that much weaker. 12 magnets is what I have on my 10 inch rotors - 13 would be a bigger rotor with them more spread out, somewhat negating the benefits of the Halbach configuration. (In TE News #134 I show 8 magnet poles. As I had been making rotors, there would have been 16 magnets - 2 magnets for each pole. With the Halbach there would be one plus a sideways magnet between each pole magnet, so still 16 magnets, with the sideways 8 either "narrow" or "wide".) Unless 16 magnets with 8 skinny ones between will fit on the 13 inch rotor. I'll have to draw that out and see what it would look like.






Other "Green" & Electric Equipment Projects


Gardening



Some Fall Harvesting

[3rd] I picked the red cabbage in the main garden. Seeds planted in trays, transplanted out and defended by slug bait, then neglected for the summer except for general watering. Solid. Dense. WOW! It weighed 2.94 Kg - Just the good head after stripping away outer leaves! This is by far the biggest cabbage I've ever grown.


   The volunteer green cabbage in the greenhouse made a good, big solid head, too. These last well in the fridge, but perhaps I should look into something for late winter - sauerkraut?


   Several peppers from the two orange pepper plants I bought in June (my own seedlings having done so little) started getting ripe. I started making salads with all vegetables from the garden. Some long skinny "banana" peppers came along on just one from my own seedlings, another having been set back when its top broke off. I brought the pepper plants and some tomatos in pots into the house or the window greenhouse, along with the coffee bushes. Marina who I got the little bushes from said one of hers had made a few beans this summer. (Mine finally got one flower.)

   Some spinach in a long rectangular pot is seen behind. It kept growing and I occasionally had some, but it gradually became too bitter so I gave it to the chickens.


   The blueberries just kept on ripening for a couple of weeks but tapered off in the last two, and in fact I picked the last few berries on the 30th. Occasionally I would notice that a couple of the raspberry plants had a crop and pick them. There also seemed to be a few "everbearing" strawberries every couple of days until the end of the month and beyond.

Two sunflowers grown by the south wall of the house had ripe seeds.                
Why one was so much bigger than the other (14 inches!) is a mystery to me.            
 One from the main garden (R) has a lot of 'empties' that didn't develop before I cut it.      
Three in the greenhouse hit the roof before flowering, haven't made seeds yet, and probably won't.
   The sunflowers, started in March in seedling pots, did great! The 4 foot tall dwarf one flowered in July and had ripe seeds before the end of August. (I might have left it a week longer?) With the great, sunny September we had, one of the giant ones (7 feet tall with a 2 inch stalk) with a 14 inch diameter flower ripened up. I brushed the seeds out on the 30th into a big pile on the kitchen counter. I won't count on such exceptional weather again but I'll plant the earlier 'dwarf' variety again next year.



   I occasionally move the chicken yard along a few feet to new ground keep it from getting too ucky. I also grew some wheat where it had been which I will probably feed to them. At one point they must have spilled some bird seed in a good spot, and because I was occasionally watering and wasn't mowing, it grew quinoa, millet, swiss chard and sunflower and a couple of other grassy things I don't recognize. It looked like a little garden outside the chicken yard. But it got started too late in the season for the seeds to really mature.


Salal Berry Rake

   Some have used a Huckleberry Rake to pick salal berries. It seems good, but I found it hard to select a branch and get it into the tines without getting other branches caught up as well. It seemed like a nuisance.
   On the 14th I improved on an earlier idea: using a fork to rake salal berries from the tiny branches where they grow along. Last year(?) I tried a fork and found it worked fairly well. Next time I used a different fork and it didn't work. The tines have to be farther apart, like the first cheap fork.
   This year I took a fork and bent the tines farther apart (vise, screwdriver). That seemed to work better, but the branches would slip down the narrow end and catch. Then I bent the tines over to a right angle where the branches would stop. That was still better. Having picked three 500 gram plastic containers in not much time, I stopped. I decided I had made enough work for myself. (Next day I made a pie, and indeed most of the work was picking through the berries to remove stems, bits and unripe or dried out berries.)
   I had my other hand underneath to catch the berries. I think what it still needs that the huckleberry rake has is a collection bottle or pouch that the berries fall into. That might take some thinking so it doesn't end up awkward maneuvering through the branches again.





Electricity Storage

Gelled Nickel-Zinc Batteries


[Dang, no report! I have the PVA, why can't I seem to get to this?]





Electricity Generation

My Solar Power System



The Usual Daily/Monthly/Yearly Log of Solar Power Generated [and grid power consumed]

(All times are in PST: clock 48 minutes ahead of local sun time, not PDT which is an hour and 48 minutes ahead. (DC) battery system power output readings are reset to zero daily (often just for LED lights, occasionally used with other loads: Chevy Sprint electric car, inverters in power outages or other 36V loads), while the grid tied readings are cumulative.)

Daily Figures

Notes: House Main meter (6 digits) accumulates. DC meter now accumulates until it loses precision (9.999 WH => 0010 KWH), then is reset. House East and Cabin meters (4 digits) are reset to 0 when they get near 99.99 (which goes to "100.0") - owing to loss of second decimal precision.

New Order of Daily Solar Readings (Beginning May 2022):

Date House, House, House, Cabin => Total KWH Solar [Notable power Usages; Grid power meter@time] Sky/weather conditions
        Main      DC      East

August
31st 3849.92, 0.84, 92.43, 65.64 => 12.82 [98810@20:00] A bit of summer still?

September
1st 3857.43, 0.93, 97.87, 70.25 => 17.65 [60Km; 98836@20:30] Some sun, not cold.
2nd3862.62, 1.02,   3.85, 73.48 => 12.36 [90km; 98871@20:00] AM sunny, PM not & getting cooler.
3rd 3862.98, 1.71,   4.10, 73.70 =>   1.52 [55Km; 98892@19:00; high winds briefly... POWER FAIL - night to mid afternoon] Cold, rain, clouds. Used inverters on DC system to run freezers, fridge during day. (mostly 1 at a time.)
04þ 3865.38, 1.82,   5.60, 74.93 =>   5.24 [98917@19:00] Rain. Sunshine before sundown.
05þ 3873.00, 1.97, 11.62, 79.88 => 18.74 [98950@04:30AM@6þ (oops)] What a difference some sun makes!
06þ 3875.95, 2.05, 14.10, 81.65 =>   7.28 [98971@19:30] Rain, token appearance by sun.
07þ 3880.83, 2.43, 18.54, 84.84 => 12.89 [98998@20:00] Some sun.
08þ 3885.77, 2.52, 22.23, 87.75 => 11.63 [55Km; 99028@19:30] Fairly sunny.
09þ 3894.21, 2.68, 28.98, 93.26 => 20.85 [90Km; 99058@19:00] Sunny nearly all day! Nice!
10þ 3903.07, 2.82, 36.06, 99.24 => 22.06 [96Km; 99084@19:00] Sunny all day! Great weaðer!
11þ 3912.10, 2.93, 42.92,   5.98 => 21.98 [99106@19:00] Sunny again!
12þ 3921.14, 3.01, 49.95, 11.86 => 22.03 [99123@19:30] Yay!
13þ 3929.93, 3.24, 56.79, 17.55 => 21.65 [55Km; 99150@19:30] Marvelous week!
14þ 3937.73, 3.39, 63.02, 22.55 => 19.18 [99173@19:00] Still great weather!
15þ 3942.30, 3.49, 66.51, 25.23 => 10.84 [10Km; 99198@19:00] It was sunny until about noon (actual noon), then suddenly the heavens opened up and there were extreme deluges with lighter spells of rain all afternoon.
16þ 3946.81, 3.59, 69.82, 27.83 => 10.52 [90Km; 99238@20:00] Light clouds
17þ 3954.27, 3.68, 76.49, 32.80 => 19.19 [55Km; 99268@19:30] Mostly sun again!
18þ 3959.71, 3.76, 81.18, 36.12 => 13.53 [45Km; 99297@19:30] Started with clouds but they cleared off.
19þ 3967.77, 3.86, 87.97, 41.39 => 20.22 [55Km; 99331@19:30] Sunny all day again! Yes!
20þ 3975.38, 3.95, 94.23, 46.27 => 18.84 [99353@19:00] Sunny (again!) but many jet trails
21st 3982.52, 4.02,  6.34, 51.19 => 18.47 [99374@19:00] mor sun!
22nd 3987.51,4.09,10.79, 54.08 => 12.42 [55Km; 99407@20:00] Rain! Cleared off before noon... more sun!
23rd 3990.33,4.19, 12.69, 55.64 =>   6.38 [85Km; 99448@19:30] Clouds & drizzle.
24þ 3992.38, 4.28, 13.97, 56.72 =>   4.50 [60Km; 99485@18:30] see above.
25þ 3996.30, 4.36, 16.94, 58.95 =>   9.20 [99513@19:30] clouds cleared in afternoon, then sunny.
26þ 4000.66, 4.44, 20.43, 61.46 => 10.44 [99535@19:00] a bit of sun now and then
27þ 4003.64, 4.52, 22.79, 53.28 =>   7.24 [99560@19:00] drizzle
28þ 4006.67, 4.61, 24.96, 65.03 =>   7.04 [99595@19:30] overcast
29þ 4010.69, 4.71, 28.16, 67.45 =>   9.72 [55Km; 99621@19:00] overcast, drizzle. Sun showed up a couple of spots.
30þ 4015.44, 4.81, 32.57, 70.69 => 12.51 [85Km; 99666@19:00] some sun, light overcast.

October
1st 4017.04, 4.89, 33.55, 71.44 =>   3.41 [50Km; 99700@19:00] Clouds & drizzle. Summer definitely over.
2nd4022.42, 4.98, 38.14, 74.83 => 13.46 [99925@19:00] Quite a bit of sun, but cold after sundown.
3rd 4028.41, 5.06, 43.69, 78.57 => 15.46 [99968@18:30] Mostly sunny
4th 4029.12, 5.13, 44.01, 78.86 =>   1.49 [50Km; 99987@18:00] Clouds & drizzle
5th 4034.13, 5.24, 48.92, 82.64 => 13.81 [50Km; 99919@18:30] Pretty sunny!
6th 4040.04, 5.33, 52.30, 84.98 => 11.72 [99945@19:00] Sunny day! Lost ~~3 KWH: o/d circuit brkr. blown (to house-east & cabin).
7th 4046.17, 5.40, 56.96, 89.28 => 15.16 [90km; 99877@19:00] Totally sunny! (Persisting jet trails late in day)
8th 4052.17, 5.47, 61.72, 93.39 => 14.94 [99902@18:30] Sunny, later obscurring jet trails covering sky, then fog before dark.


Chart of daily KWH from solar panels.
(Compare SEPTEMBER 2022 (left) with August 2022 & with September 2021 - but note number of solar panels differs.)

Days of
__ KWH
September 2022
(18 solar panels)
August 2022
(18 solar panels)
September 2021
(12 solar panels)
0.xx



1.xx
1 -- (Long Power Fail)

4
2.xx


5
3.xx


4
4.xx
1
1
4
5.xx
1
1
5
6.xx
1
2
4
7.xx
3
1
1
8.xx

1
1
9.xx
2


10.xx
3
2

11.xx
1
2
2
12.xx
4
4

13.xx
1


14.xx



15.xx



16.xx

1

17.xx
1
3

18.xx
3
2
<= chart ended here until April 2022!
19.xx
2
1

20.xx
2


21.xx
2
1

22.xx
2
1

23.xx

1

24.xx

2

25.xx

3

26.xx

2

27.xx


<= In May 2022 just 3 new panels...
28.xx


<= @ sunniest place (carport roof)...
29.xx


<= brought it way up here!
Total KWH
for month
406.02
505.12
152.29
Km Driven
on Electricity
1190.3 Km
(~165 KWH?)
 1054.5 Km
(~145 KWH?)
1072 Km
(~155 KWH)

Km = Nissan Leaf electric car drove distance, then car was charged.

Things Noted - September 2022

* By the middle of the month (15th) solar collection (224.91 KWH) had exceeded any previous entire September. (What a great place the carport roof was to put 3 more solar panels!)

* Still in that same 15 days the house used 388 KWH from the grid. (Running the 600W bitcoin miner (216 KWH) sure doesn't help, but with it on the house isn't chilly and I haven't needed to light and tend small "nuisance" fires in the woodstove to stay warm. I can save the firewood until it gets colder.)


Monthly Summaries: Solar Generated KWH [& Power used from grid KWH]

Month: House system (+ DC system at house) + Cabin system = KWH made [used from grid]

2019
March 1-31: 116.19 + ------ + 105.93 = 222.12 KWH - solar [786 KWH used from grid] (10 solar panels total)
April - 1-30: 136.87 + ------ + 121.97 = 258.84 KWH [608 KWH]
May  - 1-31: 156.23 + ------ + 147.47 = 303.70 KWH [543 KWH] (11th solar panel connected on lawn on 26th)
June - 1-30: 146.63 + 15.65 + 115.26 = 277.54 KWH [374 KWH] (36V, 250W Hot Water Heater installed on 7th)
July  - 1-31: 134.06 + 19.06 + 120.86 = 273.98 KWH [342 KWH]
August 1-31:127.47 + 11.44+91.82+(8/10)*96.29 = 307.76 KWH [334 KWH] (12th solar panel connected on lawn Aug. 1)
Sept.- 1-30: 110.72 + 15.30 + 84.91 = 210.93 KWH   [408 KWH] (solar includes 2/10 of 96.29)
Oct.  - 1-31:  55.67 + 13.03 + 51.82 = 120.52 KWH solar [635 KWH used from grid]
Nov. - 1-30:  36.51 +   6.31 + 26.29 =   69.11 KWH solar [653 KWH used from grid]
Dec.  - 1-23: 18.98 +   .84* + 11.70 =   31.52 KWH, solar + wind [711 KWH + 414 (while away) = 1125 from grid]

2020
Jan.  - 6-31: 17.52 + ------* + 10.61  =  28.13 KWH, solar+ wind [1111 KWH from grid]
Feb.  - 1-29: 56.83 + ------* + 35.17  =  92.00 KWH, solar + wind [963 KWH from grid]
* The solar DC system was running the kitchen hot water tank. Now it's only running a couple of lights - not (usually) worth reporting. So there's just the 2 grid tie systems: house and "roof over travel trailer" (AKA "Cabin").
One year of solar!
March - 1-31: 111.31 +   87.05 = 198.37 KWH solar total  [934 KWH from grid]
April   - 1-30: 156.09 + 115.12 = 271.21 [784 KWH from grid]
May    - 1-31: 181.97 + 131.21 = 313.18 KWH Solar [723 KWH from grid]
June   - 1-30: 164.04 + 119.81 = 283.82 KWH Solar [455 KWH from grid]
July    - 1-31: 190.13 + 110.05 = 300.18 KWH Solar [340 KWH from grid]
August- 1-31: 121.81 + 83.62   = 205.43 KWH Solar [385KWH from Grid]
Sept.  - 1-30: 110.68 + 65.09   = 175.77 KWH Solar [564 KWH used from grid]
Oct.  -   1-31:   67.28 + 42.55   = 109.83 KWH Solar [1360 KWH from grid -- Renters!]
Nov.  -  1-30:   35.70  + 20.79  = 56.49 KWH of Solar [1301 KWH from grid]
Dec.  -  1-31:   19.78  + 11.31  = 31.09 KWH Solar [1078 KWH used from grid]

2021
Jan.   -  1-31:   25.47 + 18.58  = 44.05 KWH Solar [1185 KWH used from grid] (1 solar panel moved to DC system only -- 11 panels)
Feb.   -  1-28:   47.18 + 33.22  = 80.40 KWH Solar [1121 KWH used from grid]
Two years of solar!
March - 1-31:   81.73 +  55.22 + 2.2 (DC) = 139.15 KWH Solar [1039 KWH grid]
April  -  1-30: 161.83 + 112.35 + .44(DC)  = 274.62 KWH Solar [680 KWH from grid]
May   -  1-31: 156.25 +  97.22 + 1.29(DC) = 254.76 KWH Solar [678 KWH from grid]
June  -  1-30: 197.84 + 112.07 + 2.21(DC) = 312.12 KWH Solar [& 448 KWH from grid] (Connected 12th solar panel -- 13 panels total but one goes to DC system only.)
July   -  1-31: 204.35 + 121.21 + 4.06(DC) = 329.62 KWH Solar [426 KWH from grid; 150(?) KWH used by Nissan Leaf]
August- 1-31: 176.19 + 102.91 + 5.37(DC) = 284.47 KWH Solar [477 KWH from grid; 165 KWH (est) used by car]
Sept. -  1-30:   94.35 +   51.34 + 3.30(DC) = 152.29 KWH Solar [590 KWH from grid; 155 KWH (est) used by car]
Oct.   -  1-31:   77.52 +   41.85 + 4.10(DC) = 123.47 KWH Solar [1066 KWH from grid; 150 KWH (est) used by car] (2 new panels on pole making 14 -- but they are mostly in shadows all winter.)
Nov.  -   1-31:  34.69 +  18.92 + 3.82 = 57.43 KWH Solar [1474 KWH from grid (ouch!); 140 (est) used by car]
Dec. - 1-31: 24.00 + 5.22 + 3.76 = 32.98 [1589 KWH from grid (ouch again! Must be the -10°'s); 120 KWH used by car] (New switches allow switching some panels between AC and DC as needed, so all 15 are productively employed.)

2022
Jan.  - 1-31: 32.83 + 20.54 + 4.57 = 57.94 KWH Solar [2556 from grid] Double ouch! Trailer 400W heater, Perry's RV 500W heater, bedroom heat, car using extra power (100 KWH with less driving)... and so little sun!
Feb.  - 1-28: 66.63 + 32.09 + 3.42(DC) = 102.14 KWH Solar [1118 KWH from grid; 130 (est) used by car]
Three years of solar!
March - 1-31: 128.53 + 82.29 + 3.66(DC) = 214.48 [1124 KWH from grid; 160 KWH (est) used by car]
April   - 1-30: 251.29 + 149.87 + 3.01(DC) = 404.17 KWH Solar [911 KWH; est. 170 KWH used by car]
May - 1-31: 255.01(house)+6.46(DC)+140.46(carport)+145.91(cabin)=547.74 KWH Solar [933 KWH from grid; 140 KWH (est) used by car; Bitcoin miner using extra power from 22nd on.] (3 new solar panels on carport roof -- sunniest location around -- total 18)
June  - 1-30: 234.54 + 2.10 + 160.70 + 139.18 = 536.52 KWH [from grid: 864 KWH - dang bitcoin miner!]
July   - 1-31: 232.12 + 4.57 + 143.03 + 139.65 = 519.37 KWH Solar [from power grid: 710 KWH; 165 KWH (est) used by car]
August-1-31: 205.57 + 4.20 + 157.88 + 137.47 = 505.32 KWH Solar [from grid: 561 KWH; 145 KWH (est) used by car]
Sept. - 1-30: 165.52 + 3.97 + 132.24 + 104.29 = 406.02 KWH Solar [from grid: 856 KWH; car used (est): 165 KWH]


Annual Totals

1. March 2019-Feb. 2020: 2196.15 KWH Solar [used   7927 KWH from grid]
2. March 2020-Feb. 2021: 2069.82 KWH Solar [used 11294 KWH from grid] (More electric heat - BR, Trailer & Perry's RV)
3. March 2021-Feb. 2022: 2063.05 KWH Solar [used 10977 KWH from grid]
4. March 2022-August 2022: in (the best) 6 months, about 2725 KWH solar - more than in any previous entire year!

Money Saved or Earned - @ 12¢ [All BC residential elec. rate] ; @ 50¢ [2018 cost of diesel fuel to BC Hydro] ; @ 1$ per KWH [total cost to BC Hydro in 2022 according to an employee]:
1. 263.42$ ; 1097.58$ ; 2196.15$
2. 248.38$ ; 1034.91$ ; 2069.82$
3. 247.57$ ; 1031.53$ ; 2063.05$

   It can be seen that the benefit to the society as a whole on Haida Gwaii from solar power installations is much greater than the cost savings to the individual user of electricity, thanks to the heavy subsidization of our power owing to the BC government policy of having the same power rate across the entire province regardless of the cost of production. And it can be insurance: With some extra equipment and a battery, solar can deliver essential power in electrical outages however long.




https://www.TurquoiseEnergy.com
Haida Gwaii, BC Canada