Turquoise Energy News #192 - May 2024 Report
Turquoise Energy News Report #192
Covering Research & Development Activities of May 2024
(Posted June 3rd 2024)
Lawnhill BC Canada - by Craig Carmichael
[CraigXC at Post dot com]

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

Month In "Brief" (Project Summaries etc.)
 - DC Power: Thermostat on Heaters in Bedroom; "New(?)" LED "Mushroom" Ceiling Light; Broken solar Panel Mounted
 - Copper Oxyhydroxide-Zincate Battery - Electric Fields & Tinnitus - Cabin Construction - Gardening: Coffee!

In Passing (Miscellaneous topics, editorial comments & opinionated rants)
*  Scattered Thots - ESD

- Detailed Project Reports -

Electric Transport - Electric Hubcap Motor Systems (no reports)

Other "Green" & Electric Equipment Projects
* Cabin Construction
* Gardening

Electricity Storage: Batteries
* Copper-Zinc cell - Reference Electrode: Zinc side is good, copper isn't.

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


May in Brief


DC Power: Thermostat on Heaters in Bedroom

   Running small heaters in the bedroom is working out. The voltage rarely falls below 38.7V or so overnight and the battery is recharged by five of the solar panels the next day. At 38V instead of 120V they run at 1/10th their rated power. (See WH Used/WH Recharged charted daily for the entire month.)

120V Heaters, extra low powered by 36V DC, plugged into a "thermostat box"
(via power bar & adapter plug cable)

   I had a broken oil filled electric heater someone once gave me. No doubt I could have fixed it easily as the elements tested good, but I thought, what is the point to this type of heater? It has to heat the oil before it starts warming the space, and then after you shut it off the hot oil is still heating for a while. It's just a big delay. I'd rather have "instant response" direct radiant. But before discarding it, I cut off the top piece with the front controls using an angle grinder/zip disk. I soldered a T-Plug and a T-Socket with wires to the thermostat, and connected the bedroom heaters through it to the 36V DC wall outlet.
   Small tho 200-300 Watts of heaters is, occasionally in mild weather they click off. In cooler weather, once the baseboard heater warmed up the room as I went to bed, later it was always cold when I felt it. (Especially if I had turned the main house breaker off.) If I hadn't lit a fire, the rest of the house got pretty chilly.

   The DC power (generated & used) was 67KWH for May, and grid power was 433KWH. So (assuming equal temperatures) it would have been 500KWH from the grid if i'd only used the basboard heater. (A whopping 13% total savings.) I've written more details and charted it daily for the month of May Here.

   A regular screw-base lamp on a chair but with a T-Plug and 36 volt DC LED light bulb soldered on (silver wire, left) is helping to light the scene for the foto. It works just like any 120V lamp.

Standard for DC Plugs?

   While on the subject of DC power I'm using T-Plugs as the "standard" 36 V DC plugs in lieu of there being any practical alternative, but I do have a complaint. The pins are too short, and they pull out or lose contact with the socket too easily. They would be much better if they were even 10mm long instead of 8.
   Readers may recall that before I found T-Plugs & T-Sockets (also known as "Jones Plugs"), I had developed my own similar design - so similar that my "HAT" plug fit into a Jones T-Socket with just a bit of flexing of the pins. 10mm was the pin length I chose, and it did make for a more reliable fit that didn't fall out.
   However, it is much easier to buy small connectors than to make them, and the T-Plugs are perhaps unique in having the pressure springs on the plug pins instead of hidden inside the sockets. This means that wall and extension cord receptacles should be much less prone to developing a loose fit than "regular" 120 V AC receptacles. Instead the recession of the spring on the pin is visible and also accessible to "adjust" a bit, to bend out and strengthen again.

   So far I haven't found any good alternative for high current connectors (eg, 50+ amps) but to make a large version "T-Plug" & socket. (The spec & builds are in some past issues of TE News.)



DC Power:"New(?)" LED "Mushroom" Ceiling Light

   In thinking of a 36 volt upstairs ceiling light for the cabin, I went to my long neglected drawer of LED things and found a rather elaborate heatsink I had made long ago (2013?) to go with a "mushroom" light diffuser I had taken a fancy to. (Recall that back then LED "regular" light "bulbs" were hardly available, much less the wide variety of LED "bulbs" and light fixtures now on the market.) The intent had been to bolt four 2.9 volt "Cree" LED emitters to it for a 12 volt light. Then Cree emitters I had already used started giving me problems. They started out as 2.9 volts, so four made 11.6 volts, and a resistor would limit the current for 12 volts. But their characteristics changed - they gradually started working at 3 volts, then 3.1 or more, and while they still worked, the supply voltage had to be raised and raised to keep the light from becoming quite dim.
   Then new and more reliable types of composite emitters with multiple LEDs for higher voltages started appearing, I suppose the "ancestors" of larger, flat "COB" ("Chip On Board") panel LEDs. I remembered buying a few of those, and I had made some 6 inch globe lights. The larger size globe didn't have the glare of "light bulb" size.


   In the upshot, I had all but finished the light, but never did. Every detail was done except putting the emitters on and wiring them up. And then lovely commercial LED flat panel lights (among many other choices) started becoming available. Now I thought, what emitters do I have left in that box from those times? I found two sets of three 9-volt emitters, 'square' and 'oval' in shape. (I think they're about 4000K color temperature - greenish. Many might have gone lower 3000K(?), more yellow, for a bedroom, but I had these and in general I do like 4000K. 5000 seems like a lot of blue to me.)

   Four of those and a resistor would make it a 36 volt light. So after all these years, I put it together. I located my tiny bolts and nuts and screwed on two of each type 9V emitter, and wired them up with two 5 ohm, 5 watt resistors in series, and put a 36 VDC T-plug on it.

   With that 10 ohms, the light took 13 watts when I plugged it in and was decently bright. In spite of the great heatsink, it might get a rather warm with such tiny vent holes.







   I mounted it on the ceiling but didn't get it wired until early June. I didn't use an electrical box at the light, but just connected with T-Plugs inside the light itself, tie-wrapped to the metal heatsink.


   I used #18 AWG speaker wire. I have lots of house wire, but it just seemed like such total overkill for a light fixture now that lights are LEDs. A 13 watt light is just .333 amps at 39 volts. Without looking it up, I'm sure #18 wire is rated for a least 5 amps. I drilled a small hole diagonally through the center ridge 2 by 10 to get from the wall space into the ceiling space - not something one would do with heavy wire. Having no "telephone wire" cable stapler, I used ordinary paper staples at short intervals, and I poked the wires through the screwdriver holes in the knockouts in the light switch box, wrapping PVC tape around them to prevent abrasion/shorts in case the edges were sharp.



DC Power: Broken solar Panel Mounted

   Over a year ago a wind blew over my insecurely secured 3 PV panel "A-frame" mounting on the carport roof and one panel had bent and broken. Then it fell when I tried to lower it off the roof and broke some more. But testing the wires showed that it still worked so I didn't discard it.
   I asked myself what good it was sitting on the lawn and now the DC system was short of battery charging power early in the morning now that I was running electric hearers with it. if I just lifted it up two feet and attached it, there was already a cable (old #16 extension cord wire that had gone to the windplant that rusted up, and later to the panels on the pole before I had rerouted them to the carport system) and all I had to do was connect it. It is simply added in parallel with the three panels on the wall. As long as it's working anyway...

(Extra Details...)



Copper Oxyhydroxide-Zincate Battery

   I thought I had everything figured out by May and I had put a lot about the batteries in the previous report, #191. I had made cells that pretty much worked in individual respects but didn't have an actual "everything working at once" successful cell. At first I was going to do a big write-up, but later decided that was premature. Somehow the cells seemed to always deteriorate over the days. Finally TE News #191 (April 2024) was more than a little late.

   Sure enough, this month I learned something different. I made a new zinc electrode with way more osmium powder than previous ones. But it didn't seem to work much differently. That didn't seem to be the problem... what was?

Loss Per Electrode

   Then I tried sticking a piece of zinc into the electrolyte in the cell, not connected to anything else. I had tried this long ago but was confused to get different voltages than I expected WRT the two electrodes, voltages drifting substantially over time, and in a few days it corroded off near the waterline.
   Now I tried it again. This time I didn't care what the absolute voltage was. Instead what I wanted to see was the difference in voltage between 'idle' and 'driving a load'. What I found (and I don't know why this should have surprised me) was that when the 10 Ω load was turned on the copper side lost hundreds of millivolts and the zinc lost (voltage rise) maybe 100-140mV. So! Most of the low current and hence loss of voltage was the copper electrode, not the zinc. The zinc 'reference' piece rotted off again and I replaced it with a stick of graphite. The voltage readings were quite different but the drop/rise when a load was turned on/off was similar. Taking such measurements is a glaringly obvious step in retrospect.

   One problem has been that the charging has been SO slow that I think everything surely must be pretty charged. But now I suspect that the copper electrode is hardly charged at all, and that it behaves like the common nickel oxyhydroxide electrode, which is said to have a very high internal resistance until it is around 20% charged. So it won't charge (within my limit of patience) because it isn't charged. At least, this is my present theory - and hope.
   I stuck in a couple of cupro-nickel sheets to bubble hydrogen in order to get the charging current up. It was better than charging against a charged zinc electrode, but only a little.
   Then I switched the connections and tried the CuNi sheets as positive electrodes. Having very low internal resistance they performed much better than the boxes of copper hydroxide powder. Short circuit current was up to 600mA and it started a 10 Ω load at over a volt. Gosh, just like it should work! But it didn't run long since the accessible copper to react was just a smooth surface layer.
  Then I put the previous zinc, with way less osmium powder in it, back in. It seemed to charge and work fine, delivering higher voltages into the .8-.9 V range as the cell charged. I guess they don't need very much osmium after all, and I've been barking up the wrong tree for some time. I took out the CuNi sheet and was back to the crappy performance of the copper powder electrode. But with the old zinc needing recharge too, it had somewhat higher charging currents. Time to leave it charging for a day or so... or two... or a week. But after a while charging current dropped to about 5mA. Maybe a month?


Cabin Construction


   I put 2 by 3 studs from the edge of the floor up to the ridge board for a wall frame. I only got half the gyproc up.


   I put the gyproc on half the wall, then I slid the insulation in above the ceiling where the light is.


[16th]   Now that it was spring and the wood would be drier, I glued down the rest of the upstairs tongue & groove floor. Three boards per day. I finished the last bits at the door opening on the 31st.



Electric Fields & Tinnitus

   I was going to leave this topic alone, but I had a vacuum cleaner with a 20 foot cord plugged into a 50 foot extension cord in the cabin - 70 feet of 120V AC cord, plugged into the one outlet in the corner. I wandered around and took readings. I mostly used the DC system ground via a long 36V DC cord as a ground.

Cord/Vacuum Unplugged: 10mV to 50mV everywhere
Cord/Vacuum plugged in: 400mV to 4500mV depending how close I stood to the cord.

At the far corner from the cord it was still just 20mV.

   Shows how even just one 120V AC circuit can make enough of a field to be picked up by the body and cause tinnitus and perhaps unrecognized health problems. I'm expecting somewhere around 30-50mV AC body voltage as being the maximum field to avoid or cure tinnitus.

   I talk to people and many say "Ya, my ears ring all the time too!" EMF fields in buildings seem to be more than high enough to cause people that and other various undiagnosed problems. The Greenhome institute and others speak of running shielded house wiring, or wires in metal conduit. "We sleep better out at the point" [at their off-grid house] says one couple. It make me all the more convinced that we need, by and large, to get rid of 120 and 240 V AC running all though homes and buildings and adopt safer, low EMF inducing, 36 V DC (or somewhere around that figure - I like "40 volts") for most in-home wiring, and that that is probably what will start happening when people start waking up to the problems. Perhaps 120/240 wiring - with shielded wiring and shielded power cords - will remain a standard for kitchen and laundry, at least for the foreseeable future. But except where high power is needed, why use hazardous voltages that causes tinnitus, stress and perhaps more for general lights and plugs? LED lights are low voltage, low power DC circuits. (I've been wiring them in the cabin with cheap #18 AWG/1.02mm speaker wire instead of "regular" house wire, partly just to prove the point!) DC to DC converters with screwdriver adjustments can replace multiple "wall wart" power adapters with even a single type of adapter plugged into 36 volts DC. For what will at some point become known as "legacy" 120 V AC appliances and equipment, there's always inverters.


   Best "Faraday cage"? The chicken yard. (The wire is probably grounded here and there.) There in the front yard so nearly under the power lines my body voltage measured around a volt, some places closer to two. Inside the chicken yard with the door closed it was 15 to 20 millivolts, almost a 99 % reduction and surely in the "no tinnitus" range. The chickens don't know how good they have it!

   The enclosure is 2-inch stucco wire. This was a great demonstration that 2-inch holes aren't too large to block 60 Hz AC quite effectively.
   But I confess I was surprised how effective it was. I should probably extend the "L" of chicken wire all around my bed and have good hope that that can attain a similar result. (I may have to wire over the top and under the bed, too.)



Northern Lights

   Nothing to do with green energy except they were kind of green, and are energy... I had heard the Northern Lights were visible even to lower latitudes owing to a CME from the sun in Earth's direction, and then another three days later. It was cloudy. At 3 AM PST on the 15th/16th - presumably a day too late - I got up for one of those night breaks, and looked out the window. There they were! Not very spectacular or colorful, no crackling noises, but I went down to the broad beach (low tide) for a better look. Few clouds, and the sky was already lightening on the NNE horizon. (The sun being only 15° above the horizon at noon on the winter solstice at 53.5° north translates to it being only 15° below the horizon, due north, on the summer solstice.) The display occupied the northern half of the sky. I had the thought that here I am, 69, and I hadn't seen them since I was maybe 10 or 12, watching a dazzling display of them with my dad in northern Alberta.
   Web images of these aurorae on their best days were spectacular even from lower latitudes.


Gardening

   I've done a lot of planting this spring, but more in April than May. The weather was notably warmer and sunnier. May was "normal" crappy spring weather.


Rototiller with back strap to keep it from yanking at my arms


Coffee plant with mostly ripe berries.
It takes 9 months from flowers to ripe berries.
The berry isn't much more than a thick skin with two big seeds inside,
but it is edible and I bit (and ate) them to open them up.


Coffee beans: Left, the whole fruits.
Lower right, some purchased dried beans. ("green" - unroasted)
Upper right, partly dried beans from my trees.
Upper left, just opened.
It's hard to imagine mine could possibly shrink to the size of the purchased ones!
As they are there's over 1/2 a cup. (Maybe enough for a pot of coffee?)



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

Scattered Thots

* Before 2021 immigration to the USA was at a reasonable low level. From 2021 until now it's been said that over ten million mostly illegal migrants have been allowed in through the Mexican border, plus tens of thousands even brought in by air. That's over 8000 per day and about 3% population growth in three years. Texas, overrun with migrants, started ignoring the US federal government's dictates and put up barriers to slow the invasion. Then the border crossings shifted to New Mexico. Texas started busing arrivals to New york and other cities farther north where they said they welcome them. (New York is now overrun too, and becoming unlivable. It looks like the whole city may collapse into violence and chaos.)

   There's not just cultural assimilation to consider, learning the language, the norms & conventions and gaining job or business skills, but new infrastructure needs to be created. All have to be housed, clothed and fed from an existing resource and societal base that needs to expand at an explosive pace - in a country with many of its own citizens pushed right out of the labor force and an ever-growing homelessness crisis. And that's if the resources actually exist - we have been outstripping nature's ability to replenish resources since around 1960.
   Canada is even worse on a per capita basis. It is said that we are bringing in two people for every new job created, and David Quintieri on youtube shows in graphs that the way new jobs are measured is claiming ten times as many new jobs as measuring them a different way, that most of the "new jobs" aren't real. Canada is huge, but its habitable areas aren't. No one is going to build great new cities on remote mountain sides, in the northern muskeg or on the arctic tundra.
   All the people in our exploding population - an increase entirely due to immigration - are competing for the same land, the same housing, mostly the same jobs, the same resources. There are more and more of us, with the birth rate dropping and dropping far below replacement levels largely due to ever increasing economic hardship. (Obviously it was going to drop with the availability of good birth control since the 1960s, and it did, but not to such low levels as it has since attained.) When the present older generation dies off, there won't be much left of North America's and Europe's former peoples. They will consist mostly of more recent immigrants and their descendants.
   In Japan where the birth rate has been low for some decades and there is not much immigration, it is said that houses in some rural areas are just 500$. Likewise in Italy there are towns where one can get a vacant house for 1$ plus a commitment to making needed repairs. How does that compare to North America (and I suppose much of Europe) where a couple who both work spend their whole income trying - not always successfully - just to put and keep a roof over their heads owing to the intense competition for land and housing? It seems to me that this is not the conscious choice of the populations, but only of those responsible for managing such things supposedly on our behalf. I personally have been aghast at the rates of immigration and consequent population growth permitted over the decades for the last 40 plus years, but in the last few years levels have been chaos-breeding.

   Not allowing major immigration unless resources are sufficient to sustain a higher population far into the future and the present population is prospering isn't "racial prejudice". It's basic economic management. And keeping it at levels that can be culturally assimilated is basic societal management - cultural survival. Why do we seem to be so far off track, to our own increasingly severe detriment? How long can it continue without a societal or civilizational collapse?



* The most common "scientific" path to conclusions is shown by the following chart. I think this is the way a lot of "calamity" theories are thought up, such as:

- The entire universe began with a "big bang", when all the energy and matter appeared at once.
- A hypothetical planet (hypotheticly named "Thea") hit the Earth, somehow breaking it into two pieces, Earth and Moon and making Earth the size it is today.
- The dinosaurs were wiped out by a giant asteroid impact.





   We already know - depending who is asked - that none of these "calamity" theories make sense. It appears matter is coming into existence today, and recent findings show tremendous energy lanes through space - as if it was all somehow organized. There is no reason to suppose it all appeared all at once or in some cataclysm, and indeed the James Web Space Telescope showed that what was presumed about the universe including its absurdly young age was wrong, yet many are still clinging on, trying to modify the "big bust" theory so it fits some of the new findings.
   The second two calamities would have to violate some known physics laws. The biggest thing is that any smaller body approaching Earth would undergo tidal disruption (AKA "tidal explosion") well before it actually struck, so the the debris would be dissipated over a large area. I'm not saying there was no asteroid, or that the earth didn't collect massive chunks of debris in its early formation - just that the results they're trying to explain couldn't have occurred from these causes. No moon could have erupted out of the Earth from widespread debris mushing into it, even if the Earth was then much smaller. Especially asteroids are very loose collections of material, easily disrupted by tidal forces as they approach the tidal disruption limit about 2-1/2 radii from Earth's center. The fact of an iridium layer of ~60 million years ago being found in various places around the globe instead of in one place should illustrate that the body broke up and bits of it rained down here and there. It wouldn't have created such a cataclysm as to explain the disappearance of the dinosaurs, which according to some paleontologists had been on the decline for millions of years before this event and which were not entirely absent from later strata. Competition from birds and the newly arriving placental mammals would seem to be a more reasonable explanation.

* And it's interesting to see the above sequence of belief formulation at work, in my own experience. In February 2000 Scientific American, Galileo space project researcher Torrence Johnson was trying to guess how icy white peaks with very dark organic material in between them on Callisto might have originated. He speculated that perhaps the dark organic material in between them had "sublimated away", leaving the bright peaks, but he also said that none of the explanations they had come up with seemed satisfactory. There was no suggestion of a mechanism for this supposed "sublimation". Also not considered was that the dark material had been found in the 1980s and 1990s by Earth based research to be a 'thin', 'fluffy' layer 'that sunlight had to penetrate'. Again it's easier to get odd ideas when only one's own research is considered and findings by others are overlooked. (Ya, I should know!)
   Yet wherever this sort of thing has been found since, such as Iapetus's bright trailing hemisphere and dark leading hemisphere, it has been explained away as "sublimation and migration of the dark material" as if that were somehow the proven, commonly understood cause, "peer doctrine" in the above chart. This bizarre theory too ignores other known findings, but which haven't been connected together. I was on an e-mail discussion list about the Cassini mission in 2005-2006 and most of what I said was deemed "pseudoscience", fitting into the last box above. (I certainly had some major details wrong, but I knew I was onto some things others weren't noticing.)
   I later realized that most of the bright icy peaks, "toothpaste" formations, "horns" and so on, mostly seen around crater rims and in their basins, are easily explained as ice extrusions. An icy, airless world gets hit by a meteor which vaporizes some ice and turns some to liquid in the crater formed. The surface of the body of liquid freezes over almost at once in the vacuum. But water expands as it freezes, so it forces its way through cracks and holes and freezes as or soon after it erupts, pushing out these various forms of relatively pure bright ice, which also vary depending on the gravity of the world. Are these not the sort of "ice volcanos" theorized (but apparently still not recognized) by space scientists? I've been before into the apparent meaning of the "dark", "fluffy", "polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons" organic materials that "seem to have migrated all around the Saturnian system" and that (far from "sublimating away") "resurface the front face of Iapetus at least every hundred thousand years".

A more rational approach, more likely to come up with perceptions that are true, is shown in this diagram:






ESD
(Eccentric Silliness Department)

* That stupid saying we were taught in early grades, " 'I' before 'E' except after 'C' " (wrong about half the time), is debunked again, this time by science.


* Only on Haida Gwaii...
My landline phone: Ring - ring - ring.
"Hello?"
"Hi, is this Clearbrook?" (That would be, Clearbrook Freight Terminal)
"No it isn't."
"Oh, sorry Craig, I got the wrong number."
"That's okay Ted." (At least it wasn't a robot with a scam.)


* "Spork" and "Spam" were introduced at the same time. "Spam" became famous. Wahtever happened to "Spork"?



   "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

No Reports




Other "Green" & Electric Equipment Projects

Cabin Construction & DC Wiring

   The insulation wouldn't stay up between the 2 foot centers 2 by 8's. At the low wall I started sliding it in on top of the ceiling sheets. That seemed to work, but before doing the next sheet up, I decided to make the wall at the side of the room. I would have to set the short step ladder uncomfortably close to the edge. If something happened I could see tumbling out of the upstairs down to the clutter of lumber below, which would be bound to at least hurt a lot. So at some point I put 2 by 3 studs from the edge of the floor up to the ridge board for a wall frame. They didn't quite line up with the ridge, so each one was a custom fit at the top. (I didn't think to take a picture of the open framework, but I only got half the gyproc up in May.)


   I put the gyproc on half the wall, then I slid the insulation in above the ceiling where the light is. (I did in fact stumble against the wall once coming off the short stepladder. I like to think that if I had done it without the wall up yet, I'd have positioned the ladder another way. But the wall certainly made it much safer.)


[16th]   Now that it was spring and the wood would be drier, I started gluing gluing down the rest of the upstairs tongue & groove floor. Three boards per day. I finished the last bits at the door opening on the 31st.


   I was (am) still trying to figure out a good way to roll up the one-piece garage door. Suddenly I had the thought that there might be some way to make some complex hinges that would do the job instead of rolling it. If the bottom opened out first instead of going straight up, and then it all retracted into the ceiling as it went higher, a car could be up near the door instead of having to be back from it to accommodate it when it was at 45 degrees.
   Something tells me I've seen doors that work this way before, but I can't actually recall one from anywhere. Maybe when I was a kid, some neighbor's small garage? And I certainly can't recall the form of the hinge mechanisms, but somehow I know they attach to the edges of the door, they're big, steel, complicated and have springs in them. Or is this a vision I have of something new? I wonder what I can find on line?




Electricity Storage

The Copper Oxyhydroxide-Zincate Cells

[19th?] I took an electrode tray and the ABS back made previously for a new zinc 'trode. And I put together a copper screen with a copper terminal strip to fit. Then I soaked a piece of watercolor paper, previously wetted with toluene, soaked it in SDBS solution for an hour, and then dried it.
   I decided that it would probably go well right on the [dried] surface of the separator after all, so I got out the acetaldehyde and osmium and painted some of the liquid onto it. With the osmium powder seeming to be much too sparse in previous renditions (giving tantalizing but inadequate results), I took the tiny one gram bottle and tapped tiny piles of it onto the paper. (I'm surprised I haven't run out yet in all these years. Perhaps that by itself shows I've been using it much too thinly.) Then I smeared it around until it seemed to be quite a thick layer of 'icing' all over the cake.

Thick layer of osmium on separator paper under microscope
[Seems the extra thickness was unnecessary - It just needs a bit.]

[20th] I painted some calcium hydroxide onto the copper screen and put it into the tray. I sieved some zinc powder [5 wt% conductive carbon black (CCB), .5 wt% zircon, bal fine Zn powder] because I had been careless and had put some used powder in with a large quantity of new. It had little bits of separator paper and clumps of zinc oxide in it. As I think about it, foolish not to have just tossed the whole jar and made a new batch. I spooned 5 grams into the tray, tapping it through the copper screen.

   Then I gooped up the edges of the back cover with ABS cement and stuck it on. I added some more along the seam on all four sides with a small screwdriver. I gave it a while to dry and was about to put it in the cell when I remembered that I hadn't gooped up the terminal slit. So I did that. If the zinc in the electrode is going to dissolve into "supersaturated" zincate liquid as it discharges and stay that way until it is recharged, it is obviously vital that there be no leaks - no way in and out of the zinc box or compartment except through the treated separator sheet.
   And if the zincate is going to plate onto the current collector (or on top of other plated zinc) it would seem irrelevant - except perhaps to insure initial connectivity - that the substance should be compacted as with most powder electrodes. I peeled off the sponge rubber pieces from the back. I wonder if even the CCB and zircon are going to stay dispersed, or if they will eventually end up sunk to the bottom or floated to the top.


   When I put the electrode in, instead of going positive, the cell voltage started out about -.05V and gradually as the electrode wetted, rising as I watched to about -.19V. But I left for a few minutes. Then I looked again and it had reversed and was at +.08V. I can only think that the osmium was more positive than the copper substance, although that didn't make sense. The Pourbaix for osmium showed -.2V in alkali, and the copper should have been above zero. As the zinc powder started to wet the voltage went the expected way. Perhaps the Os had become OsO2 (or ?) in the air or in processing. Zinc's voltage should hold the osmium in its metallic state once the cell is in use. (Hmm, could it have been the SDBS in the separator?) In a few more minutes the cell was passing +.4V and rising rapidly. An hour or more later it was a little over 1.2V. I tried a 50Ω load. The voltage dropped to about .9V. Using the "reference electrode", which proved unreliable as far as actual voltage, I could see that the copper side dropped by .1V while the zinc rose by .2V. I decided to try charging for a while. The current however started out very low, soon just 7mA. But 50Ω load was soon up to 1.0V. I guess it does need charging. Hmm, the charge voltage was 1.4V. I raised it to 1.5V and got 11mA.
   In three short (~2 minutes) 10Ω load tests in the afternoon and evening, performance gradually improved. It went from dropping to .50V to .55V to .60V. From starting below .7V the last test started just above .8V. But I noticed the currents looked low for 10 Ω. There were poor connections to the "+" alligator clip on the cell. I took that 'trode out to the shop, drilled a hole in the terminal, put in a bolt, and bolted on a wire with a crimp connector on it. That seemed much better. But short circuit current was only around 150mA - pretty pathetic.

[21st] It rested overnight, and got a 2 hour charge in the morning. Then I ran another 10Ω load test. It started a little over .6V, rose to .648V, and in 20' ran down to .526V. Except for the low starting voltage, that seemed better than the previous. But the thick coating of osmium seemed, if anything, to reduce currents rather than increase performance. The chief question was of course, would the voltage continue to drop by the day, or would it be stable?

Reference Electrode: Which Electrode is a Problem? - Barking up the Wrong Tree!

   The unconnected zinc "reference electrode" had corroded right off, so I didn't see which electrode seemed to have more voltage drop. I now cut a piece of graphite foil for the same purpose. When I turned the load back on, the output voltage was around .6V. Compared to open circuit, the zinc (B-) side went up by 120mV (ref. reading went from +1100mV to +980mV referenced to B-) and the copper went down by 410mV (reading went from -25mV to 385mV compared to B+ ). A bit later with the charge on (1.5V), the zinc was more negative with it on by ~40mV (1180mV to 1218mV), while the copper went more positive by 200mV (-45mV to -246mV). I keep being disappointed by low voltages, but it seems the voltage drop is much more from the copper side than the zinc.
   In spite of drifting reference voltages and corroding zinc pieces, I should have been doing this test all along! Duh!

   Perhaps I should make a new copper electrode box to pair with this zinc, instead of just using the same old one and expecting better results from new zincs? ...Or does it just need charging? If it really has several amp-hours of substance, it's not getting much at a few milliamps. I pulled out the zinc and put in some cupro-nickel strips for it to charge against at a higher current. Since the strips didn't have much voltage themselves, and not wanting to corrode off the cupro-nickel terminal on the copper electrode, I reduced the charge to 1.1 volts. The current was only 15mA, and after some hours, just unit milliamps again. If it's not charged, why doesn't it? Hmm, if it's discharged too low, it may have low current owing to high resistance CuOH.

   On looking that up (~3eV for both CuOH and Cu(OH)2), I find more stunning chemical things about copper: Cu(OH)2 is "metastable". On looking up that term, it isn't the lowest energy state, but like a ball in a slight trough half way down a hill, it is stable unless something gives it a push out of the trough, in which case it will roll the rest of the way down the hill... to become CuO.
   But in alkaline solution, there's no trough, and evidently it will follow pretty much the same sequence as zinc: Cu(OH)2 => Cu(OH)4-- => CuO. Okay toss half of what I thought I had learned. (Not again!) There is still (as I conceive it) CuOOH valence 3 "fully charged", where valence 2 is an intermediate charge state, and CuOH or Cu2O valence 1. Does this change anything as far as battery cell operation?
   What I had wanted to find out is what the resistance of the electrode is depending on its state of charge. Especially, is there a high resistance state, maybe CuOH, that is limiting charging current and causing high voltage drop during discharge? That might be similar to nickel when it's all hydroxide and no oxyhydroxide. And, likewise is CuOOH by comparison a low resistance state that will source more current or charge much faster when some of the copper reaches that state of charge?

[23rd] Here's an experiment that hadn't occurred to me lately: I took the same cupro-nickel sheet that I had been using as a negative to bubble hydrogen and connected it as "B+" instead of "B-". The new zinc tray became "B-". With just a bit of charge - at over 100mA - this arrangement put out over a volt into 10 Ω for a moment. Wow, what a difference! Short circuit current was 500mA instead of 130. It didn't last long as the charged surface was just the smooth sheet metal, a small surface area which discharged quickly.
   Where I had thought it was the zinc deteriorating, it seemed that it was the copper hydroxide powder. A new Cu 'trode worked well at first because of the cupro-nickel in the current collector, but it seemed to lose voltage over the days. Again I suspect it has poor conductivity at a low state of charge, which itself is causing low charging currents so it takes a coon's age to charge. I still need to prove this by charging and charging for days and days at absurdly low currents, until - I hope - the copper box performs as well as the CuNi sheet, and of course over a much longer discharge period.
   But after some charging, the voltage drop actually increases. Here I'll hazard a guess that copper is highly conductive, CuOH much less so, and then Cu(OH)2 and CuOOH get better. Quite a bit of copper charging to CuOH makes the voltage get lower and lower, and except for CuNi sheet metal, I've probably never charged to an important amount of the latter two, so all I've seen is deteriorating performance.

   Another question, then, is: Were the previous zinc boxes working fine even with way less osmium than this one, and they just needed a well charged copper side in order to work well? I put the previous zinc back in. It seemed completely discharged, so I left it on for a while. It does seem that a zincode, removed from a cell, discharges mostly if not entirely, probably as it dries. Hmm... The Cu box 'trode had a separate wire now, so it was still connected throughout. Good. 19mA without the CuNi sheets 'extra'; keep it charging! Between the Cu box plus the CuNi sheets, and the discharged zinc, it was charging in the upper 10's of milliamps.

   I thought I had a handle on everything. Now I am humbled again by learning more and embarrassed by my previous ignorance and failure to try out some pretty simple things!

[24th] As the copper charges, the voltage goes up, to over 1.4 volts, but the current capacity drops. Instead of losing 400mV with 10 Ω load, it's losing 700mV. Comparing the "reference electrode", whatever its actual voltage, to "B-" and "B+" showed that attributing the voltage drop to worsening zinc oxide buildup in the zinc side was wrong. It occurred to me that if soluble copper ions are formed, and if SDBS blocks Cu(OH)4-- similarly to Zn(OH)4--, they can't get into the zinc compartment. But they could certainly dilute through the water into the rest of the cell and deteriorate performance of the copper. I decided to make a new copper box and put SDBS in its separator. If it was well sealed, the ions would be trapped and should charge properly.

   I started by picking out a 3D printed tray. It seemed to me that the zinc side had an advantage with the copper screen running through it in three layers. The copper only had a solid (and rather too thick) sheet of CuNi metal. What if I cut the sheet back and forth and then expanded it out in the jewelers rolling mill? I found a piece that with a long terminal tab and the right width, but it was only about 3/4 tall. If I stretched it it could be about right. I cut it into connected strips with tinsnips, about 3-4mm wide. I ran it through the rolling mile a few times until it was actually too tall for the space, then I bent it at the joins to make 45° angles, so it went pretty much front to back within the electrode space as well as covering the 50x50mm area.



"corrugated" CuNi sheet

   I cut a sheet of watercolor paper into 50x50mm squares, and soaked them in toluene twice.


[25th] I soaked a separator paper in SDBS solution, then cut a piece of 1/16" ABS sheet for a back to the tray. I put the paper in behind the plastic grill. When it's wet is the best time to fit it properly. Then I looked for my previous instructions so I wouldn't forget any steps. Which issue was that in again? I'm probably about ready to do a "battery making manual" and keep it updated with whatever new is learned.
   First thing I didn't think about was that it would probably be better if non-woven PP cloth was ironed onto/into the watercolor paper - something inert and unchanging to hold the paper together over the long term. Well, no point worrying about 'the long term' for now, but putting that into the manual (and consulting it each time!) would ensure it would get done. I found them in TE News #189 and added them to the manual... which I had started and last edited in 2013. (A complete overhaul of that will be required!)
   (BTW I found out which are the real and the phony cellophane rolls with the iron, trying to have something thin that doesn't melt between the iron and the plastic. The phony stuff melts like plastic. Now that I can tell, I threw out some fake rolls.)
   When the glue was dry I wasn't sure it covered all seams, so a I did a second layer. I don't want the electrode to leak either powder or dissolved ions. I put a little tag that said "BLEACH!" on top of it.


[26th] Sure enough, I probably would have stuck it in the cell without bleaching it if I hadn't put the tag on top. It should start better charged if bleached - probably with any CuOH converted to Cu(OH)2. I cleaned out the cell and mixed fresh electrolyte, connected it, and started charging at around 40mA. [12:12 PST] Ten minutes later it was still charging at 25mA, and it briefly delivered over .9V into 10 ohms. A momentary short circuit was over 400mA. I replaced the alligator clip with a bolted-on connection and got 27mA charge. Experience however says this good performance doesn't last. It's probably the surface of the cupro-nickel current collector sheet charging. That's hardly a start on getting the whole 5 grams of powder charged to CuOOH.


This is probably the most applicable Pourbaix diagram for the copper electrode,
but where is the valence three state? May I suspect they didn't actually try it
up to 2 volts, or perhaps even above 1.0 or even .5 volts?

   I copied in the above Pourbaix diagram, and then wondered... Where really is the transition voltage from Cu(OH)2 to CuOOH at pH 12-13? It has to be way under 2 volts, or the substance surely wouldn't exist in biology, where there are references to it? Could it possibly be a higher voltage than I've been charging at? As I recall funny things started happening at around 1.6 volts charge. The cupro-nickel sheets start corroding away. What if that's because there's enough copper in them to cause them to corrode away, and they should have a higher nickel content? I've tried to get sheet monel with more nickel (>50%), but not successfully except at absurd prices. Nobody seems to have it. It's just nickel and copper, not gold! Maybe I need to smelt some myself? I've saved up some nickel and cupro-nickel coins in order to have the actual metal, but this really isn't something I've wanted to try doing.

   I decided to bring the charge voltage up to 1.6V regardless. With the zinc at -1.2V, that would charge to CuOOH if it's voltage is under +.4V. (Now I suppose I could have done that without making a new electrode!) It was soon charging at 37mA. A brief 10 ohm load started out just under 1V. [13:05PM] Time to let it charge a while. [14:20] Maybe 1.3V open circuit, still dropping to about .95V for a 10 ohm load. The zinc side drops (er, rises) by about 100mV while the copper loses 225mV. It's running longer (but not higher) with more charging. 425mA for (almost) short circuit.

   Well, load voltage is now starting at .85V instead of .95. I'm wise enough to the performance now to expect it will continue dropping day after day rather than improve again. Perhaps the higher the charge of the copper, the poorer the conductivity? Should I add way more graphite powder? It still doesn't quite make sense. Why does it lose even the capacity of the cupro-nickel sheets? Shouldn't it at least give a couple of minutes of good performance? I couldn't find a conductivity or bandgap value for CuOOH. On the bright side, I did at least find a paper mentioning making it by electrolysis - for biological purposes. But still no Pourbaix diagram with it to show reaction voltages.


Monel Powder

   Perhaps it should have a lot more graphite for better conductivity? Or, maybe I should go back to monel (300-) powder? (The one form of monel I've been able to buy except a piece of old boat propeller shaft, both types of which which would be really hard to turn into sheet metal!) It's bigger particles than graphite or CCB, little spheres, and the surface copper will react. But it should have a high enough percentage of nickel to retain its internal metallic structure. Perhaps it could make a low-resistance matrix through the electrode that the smaller graphite and poorly conducting copper oxides will connect with?

   Now what? A whole new electrode, again, to try a different powder mix on spec? It's well glued shut. But I had made the tray type with no lip around the "basket weave" face. Perhaps I could snip it off round the edges, pull off the separator paper, and thus access it from the front, losing some interface surface to glue when putting it together again?
   I snipped it open on three sides. There was a bit of glue on the front by the terminal, which ripped the separator sheet, so I did a new one. I sprinkled a gram (1.15g) of monel powder onto the visible front surface, not worrying about the space behind the "corrugated" current collector. Then I mixed it together with the damp paste in the electrode, with a small screwdriver, and spread it around somewhat evenly. For just 5 grams of original mix that's 20% monel - and even higher since the back side didn't get much. I was thinking 10% monel would be a good amount - essentially as a conductivity enhancer - but this should prove or disprove it has value.


[27th] I say! The monel powder seems to have shaped it up marvelously. Charge currents (at 1.6V) seem higher, and in a few minutes of charging the voltage started drifting down from over 1.5V(!) instead of 1.3V. It momentarily put out over 1.2V (over 110mA) into the 10 ohm load - the highest ever. Hmm, and over 1.4V into 50 ohms! This suggests a copper oxyhydroxide voltage of at least +.2V, which is about what I had previously surmised. So far it's looking like the best battery I've done. Once again, the question is how long it can do that once charged, and will the discharge voltages keep gradually decreasing?


   My optimism didn't last. While the cell started at high voltages, they dropped rapidly - seconds rather than minutes - regardless of hours of charging. If those initial voltages can be maintined, the potential seems to be there for what might be a 1.3 or 1.4 volt cell that drives load well. I can of course continue to charge it for days again and see if it improves. At the moment I'd guess that a few particles of monel touch the current collector and perform very well... until they're discharged and the rest of the copper hydroxide powder mix has to take over. Is a copper oxides powder electrode really doable? It must be, because it has been done, over 100 years ago. What was different? Hmm... it seems to me I read that the powder was strongly compacted. Perhaps that's necessary for this cell after all. Oh, right... and no one had success making them rechargeable. So this is after all, new ground.

[28th] After charging all night it lasted all of 8 seconds longer - 40" instead of 32. Knowing that 1.6V seems to corrode the terminal away I reduced it to 1.5. But how can one charge amp-hours of substance at 6mA? Surely there's some way to speed it up? Maybe it's the compaction. Zinc doesn't need it but copper does? Even with soluble ions? Maybe there aren't any?
   Hmm, the early copper oxide electrodes were held highly compressed inside perforated metal. One was in copper pipes. (That might work as long as one doesn't try to recharge the cell. Otherwise the copper pipes will also turn to oxide.) Of course - needing compaction probably explained all the symptoms I've been having!

Compaction

   I decided to [try to] make a 'trode that would hold the copper hydroxides compacted. Dang, now I'm back to my old conundrum of how to make a flat box or tray for a compacted electrode that won't just bulge out! Maybe I was better off with the 3D printed 'perforated' plastic tubes after all?

   I grabbed a piece of cupro-nickel. I wasn't just sure what I might do. I squeezed it in the rolling mill, thinking to make it long and fold it in half, and crimp the edges. Like the old 1890s designs. Then I annealed it and rolled again. It seemed thinner, but it was just a bit short for a 50x50mm electrode box without folding. Hmm... I could use the other 3D printed tray with a solid bottom and the CuNi on the front? Okay. Then I punched it full of holes with a hammer and nail, one at a time. (Ug!)


The thin plastic tray back would bulge, so I cut a piece of 1/16" ABS and put it inside to stiffen it. I added 20 wt% monel (but only a tiny amount by volume) to the Cu(OH)2 mix and used 5 grams.


   I pressed it in and gooped it shut with plenty of ABS cement, even tho the front was metal, not ABS, I pressed it a bit in the hydraulic press then found some metal pieces to fit and held it pressed with a C-clamp while the glue hardened. A little powder puffed out the front through the nail holes. That wouldn't do.


   I ironed a piece of PP cloth to a piece of toluened watercolor paper and soaked it in SDBS.

Microscope view of the paper with non-woven PP ironed into it.
The shiny blobs are the plastic.

   I pressed it in in front of the perfed metal. I left it to dry on the woodstove warmer. Then I found a piece of 3D printed "basketweave" and glued it on around the edges. I still wasn't satisfied that the copper would stay compacted inside.


   I thought about this arrangement, which was so likely to prove unsatisfactory if a lot of pressure needed to be kept on the Cu materials. And then again about my earlier 3D printed "perforated" plastic tubes. But they weren't very strong either - some had broken. Then SUDDENLY I [thought I] knew how to perforate smooth plastic! Heat a pin frog (or similar metal perforator with pins), perhaps with an iron, and melt the holes through! Why, in 16 years, have I never thought of this before? With a strong perfed tube lined with a treated separator and glued-on end plugs, one could hold the copper substance strongly in compaction, with a simple monel wire or rod in the middle for a current collector and terminal. (Say: for the terminal/current collector, a screw shape. The 'trode would be made solid-filled, then the terminal screwed into the middle. That would only improve compaction. Copper & monel screws? Hah! Good luck!)


   The zinc side, evidently needing no compaction, was more optional. It could be similar, or square to fill more of the space, or could even be a copper screen with zinc powder wrapped around the inner perfed tube with the copper, all in a larger diameter plastic tube for a case: a sort of typical dry cell arrangement. But for a larger cell, simple alternating tubes (CuZnCuZn) in a hexagonal formation would fill most of the space and minimize liquid.

[29th] All ready and glue dry, I put it in the cell. It only rose to .249V, but it only started charging around 45mA, which dropped in under an hour to 19mA. In a quick 10 Ω load it only put out .6+ volts from the start. Not auspicious signs! Solid as it felt, I suspected it wasn't very compacted, after all my efforts. The perforated tubes design just might be the only realistic option, at least for home made.

   I got out 4 small nylon machine screws, drilled holes right through the thickness, and tightened them on with stainless nuts. (insofar as one can tighten nylon screws... I only used my fingers on the nuts for fear of stripping them if I used a wrench. But metal except monel in contact with the electrode would corrode away.)
   This time the current started at 68mA - a little better but not much. Soon it was down to 20.


   I took out the plastic nuts and put in metal ones. Then metal screws. They wouldn't last, but at least I could torque them down! This time, 87mA. Again not the huge improvement I had hoped for. But it stayed over 30mA for a while, and the open circuit voltage didn't jump up over 1.2V but instead was only about 1.0, probably meaning the charge was dispersing into at least some of the powder better. I opened it again and torqued down the screws pretty hard. Again there seemed to be slight improvement. Compaction certainly seems to be what it needs. Now, time to let it charge for a while and see what happens!
   Quick 10Ω load tests: At first it started at ~.7V and took 20" to drop below .6V. After an hour charging it took 25" to drop below .7V. Well, if it continues to improve, that does seem promising!





Tube Electrode

[30th] It got worse pretty quickly - what else is new? Now what? Could even a strong tube hold the copper hydroxides compacted so they wouldn't lose connectivity? What else?
   I can try tubes again. Maybe I can 3D print stronger ones with ABS? I could try just 100% monel powder. The bit that connected in the 2nd last electrode seemed to work wonders. If not monel, perhaps I should go back to nickel-manganese oxide as a rechargeable manganese formula? It doesn't look like I'm half as close to great, working cells as I thought.
   On the bright side, I finally found monel that didn't cost hundreds or thousands of dollars: monel fishing line! "30 pound test". It's kind of scrawny, under 1/2mm, but could make a good current collector/terminal wire for tube electrodes - hopefully the majority nickel alloy will resist corrosion better than 70:30 cupro-nickel. Not quite the same as a screw... perhaps it can be threaded into a powder before final compaction using some sort of "needle" with a forked end instead of a closed "eye"? I ordered a 300 foot spool from a tackle company in Quebec for under 100$.

   I re-designed the cylindrical electrode "pocket" (from December) for 3D printing with .4mm layer height, which I hope should work okay with ABS filament. Just 32mm tall for the first try, and to fit in the same cell with the latest zinc.


[31st] The print didn't work on the first two tries, but after I sprayed hair spray on the Kaptan tape, the third one stuck and printed. I flexed it a bit and it snapped. Ug! I held it together and smeared methylene chloride all over it. Hopefully that will hold, but I didn't dare stress it very hard. (Maybe I should actually immerse them in methylene chloride after they're printed? That would probably strengthen them, but I'm almost out of it and I'm sure I'll have a hard time getting more on this island.)
   I cut & put in a small piece of toluened, SDBS'ed watercolor paper then put in about 12(or was it 11?) grams of monel powder. I scrunched it down as best I could by hand with a small rod, and it did pack down maybe 20%. Very heavy for the size... but it was more nickel than copper, and not-nano powder with interior subsrance that should conduct well but wouldn't react. It read around 2KΩ if I stuck ohmmeter probes into it. That didn't seem very good for solid metal powder, but that was what it was. I added enough so I had to press the top on, which I glued with ABS cement. I used pliers to help stuff in the current collector/terminal and gooped the slot too. (I think it should make good contact.) It was fairly hard pushing the strip down, but by pushing only down near the lid with pliers, it didn't fold. Notwithstanding my efforts, it is quite possible that the tube will stretch a bit and the powder will decompact some, and perhaps lose connectivity to the terminal.
   I didn't think bleaching metal would do anything, so I just let the glue dry and then stuck it in the same cell as usual. 32mm long x 30mm circumference is just 10 sq.cm. of interface area, and most of it is not right next the other electrode, so it would be doing really well to put out 1/2 an amp.
   It started out at just .092V. This wasn't surprising as the copper content was in metallic - totally discharged - form. It started charging (22:04 PST; 1.5V supply) at 11mA, which rose in a minute to 15. But it soon started dropping again. I took out the zinctrode and put in CuNi sheets to bubble hydrogen while the copper charged. It still was only 15mA and dropped to 12mA in 15 minutes. Obviously it wasn't going to be up to much this night. Since there wasn't much difference I put the zinc back in.

[June 1st]  Later, perusing Alkaline Storage Batteries history again, when Demazures made a copper metal electrode, he used 4 to 8 tons per square inch of pressure to "consolidate" (pressure sinter) the copper particles into thin porous plates. I hadn't realized... I think that's even worse than nickel hydroxide electrodes! I used nothing like that kind of force. Maybe it needs it, but how would the plastic tube stand it? Perhaps I should try again, and compact the monel in a metal pipe of just the right diameter, then put it in the tube? And if I do that, will it hold up? Back in the 1880s-1890s no one succeeded in making these cells rechargeable - apparently owing to the soluble ions of copper and zinc. They didn't have sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate to trap dissolved ions inside the electrode!

[June 2nd] I pulled a bit on the top of the tube and it broke apart. It's definitely not going to keep copper compressed the way it seems to need to be. I guess it'll have to be plastic water pipe with holes melted into it. Another month has passed without a successful cell! But the zinc electrodes seem good. If I have it right that all it needs is pressure to hold the powder particles compacted together, maybe I can get the copper side in June.


Electricity Generation

My Solar Power System


New Old Solar Panel

[9th] The broken panel from the carport roof winds of March, 14 months ago, was still sitting on the lawn leaning against my porch. I had noted that it still worked, so I hadn't thrown it out. Now with the DC system seeming to lose out against a grid tie if it wasn't sunny, I checked. I couldn't remember about a cable that ran from the porch into the garage at the solar equipment. It was once the cable for the windplant. What after that? I had forgotten.
   But then it had become the cable that had connected the solar panels on the pole before I had re-routed them to the new carport system. It even had crappy MC4 connectors on it. Oh, right! all ready to use and more than long enough. I pulled the end of the cable around, plugged in the broken panel and got 1.25 (short circuit) amps out of it in the garage. It was cloudy, and #16 AWG is pretty skinny for solar panels, so that seemed reasonable for any panel. I connected it in parallel with the south wall panels.
   Then I used some scraps of wood to pin it up against the porch railing. I'm hardly going to count it as "panel #19", but it can give a bit of extra boost as long as it keeps working. The vertical orientation will help keep water out and should be good if it snows.
   For what I wanted, better morning performance, it would have been better facing SE instead of the SSW orientation of the house and porch. But I only mounted it at all because it was very simple to do it, right there. (And it makes a shadow area on the porch good for putting plastic pails & watering cans out of the sun most of the day.)



The Usual Daily/Monthly/Yearly Log of Solar Power Generated [and grid power consumed
 --- with 36V DC Heaters on Batteries: Notes, Table ---

(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 [before] 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.

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

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

Date House, House, House, Cabin => Total KWH Solar [Notable power Uses (EV); Grid power meter@time] Sky/weather
        Main      DC      East
                            (carport)

   After 5 full years (March 2019 to February 2024), I am no longer recording solar collection figures daily. (Frequently, and surely monthly.) For the chart, a figure for "n" days will be divided by "n" and taken evenly as "n" [more] days of whatever the result is. Oh... now with the DC system running an electric heater at night (From April 11th 2024), I'm interested to do daily again for now.

April
30th 1346.53, 5.33, 33.28, 54.46 => 22.23 [52Km; 14951@20:30]

May
  1st 1353.35, 8.32, 38.95, 60.53 => 21.55 [14959@20:30] Bedroom heat from batteries only.
  2d  1360.87, 2.79, 44.55, 67.01 => 22.39 [55Km; 14975@20:30]
  3rd 1363.63, 4.87, 47.28, 70.08 => 10.64 [85Km; 14997@20:30]
  4th 1370.37, 8.00, 52.56, 75.75 => 20.82 [55Km; 15010@20:00; 50Km]
  5th 1372.67, 1.70, 55.29, 78.80 =>   9.78 [15025@24:00]
  6th 1376.27, 3.93, 59.29, 83.15 => 14.18 [15029@20:00] Just 4KWH grid? Say, I could get to like this shutting the mains breaker off for the night!
  7th 1379.77, 5.91, 62.82, 87.31 => 13.17 [55Km; 15045@21:00]
  8th 1385.41, 8.13, 67.39, 92.72 => 17.84 [15055@20:30]
  9th 1390.83, 2.37, 71.73, 97.87 => 17.28 [15066@20:30]
10th 1396.07, 4.68, 75.69,   4.46 => 15.97 [55Km; 15083@20:00]
11th 1404.04, 7.16, 81.04, 10.82 => 22.16 [55Km; 15100@20:30; 50Km]
12th 1406.81, 9.18, 83.43, 13.85 => 10.21 [15117@21:00] (Next, 10 days with little sun, then ONE sunny day, then at least 2 weeks with little sun again!!!)
13th 1409.41,1.903, 85.84,16.77 =>   9.83 [15122@20:30]
14th 1411.84,4.086, 88.03,19.60 => 10.41 [55Km; 15138@20:30] DC used 1.967
15th 1413.66,5.692, 89.52,21.61 =>   7.02 [60Km; 15155@22:00]
16th 1418.16,7.923, 93.80,25.75 => 15.15 [15157@20:00] Wow! almost no juice used from the mains!?!
17th 1422.25,2.655,   3.59,30.35 => 14.94 [85Km; 15178@20:30]
18th 1425.41,4.781,   6.78,33.79 => 11.92 [60Km; 15190; 60Km]
19th 1429.50,6.826,   9.90,37.34 => 12.81 [15205@20:00]
20th 1433.87,9.509, 13.51,40.73 => 14.01 [15210@20:30]
21st 1438.93,2.317, 18.18,44.25 => 15.57 [15219@20:30]
22d  1447.03,4.593, 23.46,52.91 => 24.31 [15234@20:30] One sunny day!
23rd 1449.62,6.202, 25.68,55.71 =>   9.22 [15243@19:00] Rain, was needed! (Next, 2+ weeks with hardly any sun!)
24th 1452.86,8.247, 28.74,58.90 => 11.54 [85Km; 15266@20:30]
25th 1454.81,1.616, 30.37,61.09 =>   7.49 [55Km; 15282@20:30; 55Km]
26th 1457.75,4.094, 33,25,64.59 => 11.80 [15300@'25:00']
27th 1462.73,6.586, 37.22,69.15 => 16.01 [55Km; 15311@21:00]
28th 1467.07,8.686, 40.83,73.54 => 14.44 [15325@21:00]
29th 1471.48,2.251, 43.81,77.08 => 13.18 [15337@23:30]
30th 1473.53,4.700, 46.69,80.53 => 10.87 [15446@21:30]
31th 1475.76,6.225, 48.64,82.91 =>   8.09 [15356@20:30]

June
  1st 1479.24, 8.91, 52.10, 86.99 => 13.70 [15368@20:30]
  2d  1482.82, 2.38, 55.53, 90.21 => 12.61 [55Km; 15389@20:00]
  4th 1489.24, 6.65, 61.78, 97.33 => 24.26 [15415@20:30] 2 days
  5th 1493.62, 8.72, 65.42,   4.59 => 14.59 [75Km; 15436@21:00]
  6th 1498.92, 2.10, 69.53,   9.73 => 16.65 [15443@20:30]
  7th 1508.66, 4.50, 75.45, 17.02 => 25.35 [85Km; 15467@21:30] Sun at last! Mowed some hay field... i mean, lawn.
  8th 1513.55, 6.67, 79.42, 22.08 => 16.09 [60Km; 15478@21:00; 50Km]
10th 1521.65, 11   , 86.38, 30.34 => 27.65 [15504@21:00] 2 days. (Dang DC meter just goes from '9999 WH' to '0010 KWH' with no decimals!)
11th 1524.50, 2.29, 89.04, 33.81 => 11.27 [100Km; 15527@20:30] Yay, monel wire arrived!
13th 1533.81, 7.57, 97.50, 43.80 => 33.04 [15548@21:00] 2 days


Chart of daily KWH from solar panels.   (Compare May 2024 (left) with April 2024 & with May 2023.)
Days of
__ KWH
 May
2024
(18 Collectors)
 April 2024
(18 C's)
 May 2023
(18 C's)
0.xx


1.xx


2.xx


3.xx


4.xx


5.xx

2
6.xx


7.xx
 2

8.xx
 1
 2
9.xx
 3
1
10.xx
 4
 1
 1
11.xx
 3
 2
12.xx
 1
 4
 1
13.xx
 2
 3
14.xx
 4
 2
 1
15.xx
 3
 1
16.xx
 1
 4
 2
17.xx
 2
 3
 1
18.xx

2
19.xx
1
20.xx
 1
 1
 2
21.xx
 1
 1
 1
22.xx
 2
 3
 1
23.xx
2
 3
24.xx
 1
3
25.xx
  

1
26.xx

3
27.xx

3
28.xx

2
29.xx

1
Total KWH
for month
 432.53
 483.68 642.52 (all-
time record!)
 Km Driven
on Electricity
 1091.9 (ODO 108799)
(~~145KWH)
 1066.8
(~~140KWH) 		1207.4 Km
(175 KWH?)


Chart of DC Power Usage

DC System running small electric heaters in bedroom, per article in April - TE News #191. (+ a few LED lights, + ?)...

   The point to using the 36V battery to run electric heat is to get bedroom electric heat at night from the solar system instead of from the power company. One reason for this is to lower the electric bill (& reduce their diesel fuel usage a bit). A second reason is that it allows shutting off the main house circuit breaker at night if it isn't too cold, which alleviates my tinnitus a bit. I have LED lamps plugged into the 36V system, so I still have lights with the breaker off. But they use little power. The heaters are the big load. The readings are usually taken later in the evening as or after daylight fades (approximate times noted at power meter reading times above). So most of the DC usage noted is for bedroom heat on the night prior to the day of the reading, often with some heat earlier in the evening [nap] on the day of the reading, or occasionally during the day. The recharge is of course during the daylight hours of the day indicated.
   The recharge never drops to trivial levels by the end of the day, remaining at several amps when there's sufficient sun, but usually the charging voltage is up to "float charge" before noon if it's sunny. If DC/battery usage is over about 3 KWH it may exceed the ability of the system to recharge as far as was drawn down even in sunshine. (The battery is only 10 KWH anyway, so running any electric heating from it may be considered a rather taxing task.)
   I tried running DC electric heaters in the daytime a couple of times, then I realized that I might as well run a 500W (or higher) heater at 120V and make use of the power from the grid ties while the sun was shining or in light clouds - IF no other heavy loads were on. (EG: dryer, charging car, 1000W heater in travel trailer unless full sun.) In fairly mild weather this can save the bother of lighting the woodstove. (One does get tired of keeping it going in May and June, even if wood usage is small!)
   On the 12th to 14th in particular, owing to clouds the voltage was still down some at the end of the day, so I ran fewer heaters the next nights in spite of the bedroom being rather cool. I ran the full 280 watts on the 30th, then the 31st was rain and clouds, and it didn't fully recharge by 2/3 of a kilowatt. By 5 AM on May 1st, voltage was down to 37.3, about a volt lower than usual. This made me nervous and I turned the heaters off. (Why is it the more heat you need, the less there is?)
   But mostly there seemed to be lots of power to run 250W overnight. In fact toward the end of the month and into June the voltage seldom seemed to drop below 38.7V.
Date
 Used (watt-hours)
from Battery
 Recharged (W-H)
from solar
April 29th
 2650
 2440
30
 2647
 2890
May 1st
 2749
 2990
2nd
 3059 (w. daytime heat)
 2790
3rd
 2080
 1749
4th
 3606 (.w daytime heat)
 3136
5th
 1876
 1702 (rain)
6th
 1433
 2227
7th
 2532
 2601
8th
 1839
 2228
9th
 2720
 2377
10th
 2328
 2301
11th
 1663
 2484
12th
 2916
 2020 (cloudy)
13th
 2181
 1903 (cloudy)
14th
 1969
 2183 (cloudy)
15th

Subtotals,
May 1-15
 1597


34,548
 1606 (rain -
still just 39.6V)

34,297
16th
 1491
 2231 (catch-up)
17th
 2642 all heaters, 280W
 2655
18th
 1801
 2126
19th
 2526 all htrs - warmer!
 2045
20th
 2568
 2684
21th
 1725
 2317 (1 KWH
22th
 1863
 2276  catch-up!)
23th
 1858
 2045
24th
 1858
 2045
25th
 1773
 1616
26th
 2371
 2478
27th
 2385
 2492
28th
 2394
 2100
29th
 2030
 2251
30th
 2389
 2449
31st
 2189
 1525
subtotals
May 16-31
 32,005
 33,084
May WH Totals
 66,553
 67,381

    Again, tens of kilowatt hours "saved" isn't much when you're using hundreds in a month. But it's not nothing, either! But reducing tinnitus is the main goal of the exercise. Excess of charging over power used indicates inefficiencies in charging-discharging. With the figure being 848WH more plus that it the battery ended the month down by ~664WH, total 1512 WH, it looks like around 1512/67381. That looks like about 2% losses,but it doesn't factor in the amount the charge controller itself uses at night, a figure that can only be roughly estimated from seeing how much power was made up into the battery every day when nothing had been running on the DC system - around 30 WH in summer up to 80 in winter with the long nights. 30 days at 40 WH/day would be about 1.2 KWH - almost the whole actual difference between made and used. So, apparently (if both meters are that accurate) virtually 100% charge efficiency!

   I don't intend to continue this table. Over a few days, "DC KWH" generated seems to be almost synonymous with that consumed.


Things Noted - May 2024

* April was quite sunny & warm. May was cooler and more cloudy and I was back to wearing my winter jacket. May "came in like a lamb and went out like a lion." (Wait, isn't that expression supposed to apply to March? Anyway, far better this than the +50°C they've been getting in parts of India... in May!)

* Anyway, only a handful of sunny days in the whole month (and on into June). My sunflowers are keeling over!



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

As these tables are getting long, I'm not repeating the log of monthly reports. The reports for the first FIVE full years (March 2019 to February 2024) may be found in TE News #189, February 2023.

2024
Jan KWH: 31.37 + 3.14 +  16.85 + 16.82 =   68.18 [grid: 909; car (very rough estimates): 160]
Feb KWH: 96.52 + 2.36 + 49.67 +  52.98 = 201.53 [grid: 791; car: 130]
FIVE full Years of solar!
Mar KWH 150.09 + 1.63 + 93.59 +  92.50 = 337.81 [grid: 717; car: 140]
Apr KWH 181.89 +35.55 +123.50+142.74 = 483.68 [grid: 575; car: 140]
May KWH 129.23+67.38 +109.6  +126.32 = 432.53 [grid: 405; car: 145]

Annual Totals

1. March 2019-Feb. 2020: 2196.15 KWH Solar [used   7927 KWH from grid; EV use: -] 10, 11, 12 solar panels
2. March 2020-Feb. 2021: 2069.82 KWH Solar [used 11294 KWH from grid; EV use: - (More electric heat - BR, Trailer & Perry's RV)] 12 solar panels
3. March 2021-Feb. 2022: 2063.05 KWH Solar [used 10977 KWH from grid; EV use ~~1485 KWH] 12 solar panels, 14 near end of year.
4a. March 2022-August 2022: in (the best) 6 months, about 2725 KWH solar - more than in any previous entire year!
4. March2022-Feb. 2023: 3793.37 KWH Solar [used 12038 KWH from grid; EV use: ~1583 KWH] 14, 15, 18 solar panels
5. March 2023-Feb. 2024: 3891.35 KWH Solar [used 7914 KWH from power grid; EV use: ~1515 KWH] 18 solar panels

Money Saved or Earned - @ 12¢ [All BC residential elec. rate] ; @ 50¢ [2018 cost of diesel fuel to BC Hydro] ; @ 1$ per KWH [actual 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$
4. 455.20$ ; 1896.69$ ; 3793.37$
5. 466.96$ ; 1945.68$ ; 3891.35$

   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, sufficient solar can deliver essential power in electrical outages however long. (Feb 28th 2023: And it's probably well over 1$/KWH by now the way inflation of diesel fuel and other costs is running.)
   It might also be noted that I never went into this in a big way. Instead of installing a whole palette load of 32 solar panels, I have 18, and my grid ties aren't the best, and I would be hard put to give an accurate total of my installation costs. All in all the grid tied part probably cost me (with all my own 'free' labor) around 7000$. At the actual "total savings to all" figures, they have paid for themselves twice over in five years. The 36V DC system largely cost a couple of thousand dollars for batteries. The solar panels were up. The charge controller, circuit breakers, DC combo meters [V, A, W, WH], 36V compatible LED lights and wiring cost were a few hundred dollars at most. (I did have to make my own T-Plug cables & 3D printed wall plates.) The battery cost has come down substantially in recent years and will come down a lot more if I can get cheap, "forever cycle" batteries working.



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