FranLab Feedback On Green Energy, Batteries, Pedals, And More!

A good friend who played guitar, had a wahwah pedal, made from an old sewing machine pedal housing. Apparently they were pretty popular to homebrew back in the day. I used to build experimental pedals for him. Some such as the 3909 were duds, others using random transistors, 555 timers and the vernerable Xr2206 "vadar voice* kit we modified

Anton

Friend (different one to the elecric car) has a 12 volt solar+mains charger+battery setup in his house for running a lot of things off. Most power packs for technology are 12v, as well as 12v "halogen" LED downlights, temperature controlled exhaust fans, and anything 5V, for which he uses recycled Vicor high-power DC-DC converters, one in each room, and thus the only issue is the thickness of the 5V cable mainly, which has to be speaker wire due to the high-voltage/low current. For the 12v, he simply uses two parallel lots of 15A mains cable which he cleverly dyed the shroud to easily identify LV/PV vs mains.

Anton

Great insight there Paul. If you live in a sunny place and have an electric car (as a friend does), then the car is essentially free to run once the capital is paid except on days when he has to "switch over" to the grid. At other times the solar supplements the household (and runs the A/C on a hot day)

Anton

Green can not compete against heavily subsided fossil fuels

Galen Thurber

Mind blowing how many cell phone lithium battery cells are dumped instead of being reused

Galen Thurber

Dark money is also astro turfing high efficiency power generation groups by cherry picking that certain parts of fossil fuel power generation is far more efficient than green energy. So beware of the they grass root (anti-green) groups

Galen Thurber

US is screwed

Galen Thurber

(It looks like I first bought them in 2012, so going on 8 years.)

Jason Olshefsky

I have sworn by the Eneloops for more than 5 years now. They run a bit low but so far I have had none that leaked, they are tolerant of full-discharge, and none have even died (e.g. won't charge anymore). I love that they have low self-discharge (not that LSD) so I can use them in things like remote controls which rarely get actually used. I also find that my usage of digital cameras is more infrequent than heavy, so the lower capacity is fine but the LSD is ideal. The only problem I have is that I buy 20 or 30 at a clip, then after 6 months I can't remember where the hell they are. I know some are tucked away in vintage calculators, but where did they all go??

Jason Olshefsky

About low voltage supplies: for a long while now I have been thinking about installing an efficient converter in my distribution box and installing an additional set of wires for low voltage/power applications. I could then run custom lights whose voltage drop matches the supply voltage. I could replace my dimmers with simple potentiometres,, more expensive dimmable E27 LED lamps with simple strings of LEDs, have USB charging points wired into the wall outlet wherever I need them, and replace at least some inefficient small power supplies with a big efficient one. With the low power draw the low voltage would not be an issue and standard wiring cross-sections would be plenty. The only thing to figure out is how to make sure the low voltage is distinguishable from the high voltage grid. I don't want to wire 230V mains into a 5V socket or lights and then plug something (or even myself) into it.

horrovac

I guess the real question is...how far away can a step-down transformer for a 5 volt supply be before it becomes inefficient? Even having one step-down transformer for the entire house or apartment sounds like it could be a win, though of course the total current carrying capacity would need to be higher.

Philip Stephens

About green energy: electrons don't have labels. Sure, even if you are paying for green energy, the electron that does work for you may still be able to do that because another electron was shifted a couple of atoms further within a nuclear powerplant. To expect otherwise would be a wrong expectation. Of course it does not work that way. However, it is effective. A provider who sells green energy must buy the equal amount of energy from green sources. So even if at a particular moment the energy you are using comes from a fossil fuel powerplant, you ARE using green energy, because what you consumed from dirty sources will then be compensated by the green energy when it is available again - when the sun shines and water and wind are plentiful and so on. What you are paying for is to have what you consume generated by green sources. This penalises dirty energy and incentivises renewable energy, and will have the desired effect in due course. So, it totally makes sense.

horrovac

Moving the tailpipe is valuable, though. I think most folks driving electric cars know they are effectively only changing where the pollution is happening. A couple of factors come in that make it a good thing, anyway. One is that power plants tend to be more efficient converters of fossil fuel than cars. Even with losses in transmission and A/C-D/C conversion in the car, the overall efficiency is better. Another factor is the level of pollution per mile driven is lower because of not only the greater efficiency, but because more effective pollution controls are installed at power plants. (If a day where effective carbon sequestration occurs, it will certainly be better done at the power plant. So, in the event of that future, the electric car is positioned to pollute even less from its 'remote tailpipe. )Finally, for two car families such as mine, the electric car we have (Hyundai Ioniq), is run in its most efficient modes (<50 mph speed, local driving) and our gasoline car only rarely is driven that way. It turns out the electric car makes our gasoline car run at greater efficiency which means lower pollution (and cost). Overwhelmingly, our gasoline car drives only long distances now, meaning its higher efficiency/lower pollution speeds. So, we end up with a much smaller carbon footprint than a basic analysis of the electric car in isolation.

Paul Bernhardt

Low voltage power distribution would likely be rather inefficient, requiring large (expensive) conductors to minimize loss due to ohms law. Edison tried to electrify New York city with DC current, but found he needed many local generators to minimize voltage loss. Tesla with his AC power systems was able to use transformers to change generated electricity to much higher voltages. Ohms law applies only to current flow. At high voltages the percentage of power lost to resistance is much less compared to trying to send low voltage (with higher current for the same power) for any given distance.

Gayln Hall

If you use the YouTube app on your phone or tablet you can set it up to get notification of new videos.

David Blake

People are funny if they are more worried about where you are looking rather than what you are presenting... I have been using the Eneloops for about a decade. Awesome, they will sit on the shelf charged for a year or more. Sanyo originated them then Panasonic took over.

Gilbert Pfaff

This was a very thought provoking video! So much potential for going greener I had not considered.

William Alsing

At least Patreon still send email announcements

Yes, was always wondering about this pedal thing too :)