Joule Thief

[Pirate88179]

 MH:

Interesting suggestions for sure.  However, I live in a small apartment and, having tried a small garden once, discovered that the sun is blocked for all except 2 hours by buildings and fences.  Solar on the roof is out of the question.

Even though it has been hot here, my electric bill last month was $37.00 (US)  Not bad considering that I have to pay a mandatory $5.00/month recycling fee added to that bill.  The lowest I have had here is $28.00 and, the power company told me that is their minimum billing to retain service.

All of my lights used at night inside are run from "dead" batteries which I obtain for free from friends.  My computer runs from the mains.  I am not trying to save the planet, it will be here long after we have gone, I am trying to save money.  It is funny though, the power company has been here 3 times to "inspect" my meter thinking that it must be broken.  My neighbor's bill last month for the same size place was well over $100.00.  I have plenty of light but wish I could run my heat/air unit from a bank of supercaps or batteries.  But then, once I get to $28/month, that is as low as allowed here, so, I have not really put much thought into that.

I see that TK is playing with the Arduino also.  I was actually considering getting one to learn with.  There are many variants now and a lot of copies that are fake I have read. I suppose the R3 is the place to start?

I am deeply involved in another project at the moment that I have been working on for a while.  If it works as I hope, I will be offering it on my website in both kit form and completed units.  If not, I will move onto something else.

Are you using the Arduino for anything useful at the moment?  One problem I see is that installing it into a project means having to obtain another one to experiment with.  Oh well, nothing is free.

Thanks,

Bill

[MileHigh]

Bill:

I don't play with the Arduino but I know about the guts of microcontrollers from way back when.  So I can talk some of the talk.

The idea is more of a thought experiment.  If every house had solar panels and a giant supercapacitor bank that could store a lot of energy then you could eliminate the hassle associated with batteries.  It's probably way too expensive right now.   However, if you can imagine something the size of a typical refrigerator and suppose that it had the energy density required then it would be really interesting.  Or at least a scaled down version like I stated where you power one or two rooms as a start.

There is still no solution for air conditioners, refrigerators and stoves, etc.  If you look up the total annual energy consumption of the continental US and divide that by the population and then converted that into equivalent continuous 24/7 horsepower per person it would be an interesting number.  The point being that we can't disconnect ourselves from all of the energy consumed by industry because it's industry that sustains our standard of living.  We are industry and industry is us.  There is no such thing as truly being "off the grid" if you still go to the store and buy toilet paper.

I am guessing that it takes a few thousand horsepower per capita running 24/7 so sustain our standard of living.  So that's like each person has a giant diesel engine strapped to their backs.  One day I will crunch the numbers.

MileHigh

[Pirate88179]

MH:

I totally agree with you on your points.  I'll go you even one better.  (Maybe)  Did you ever see those videos where they launch an Estes style rocket into some clouds and, as it goes up, it unreels a very thin wire from a spool? (Like the old wire guided missles.)  The other end of the spool is connected to earth ground and.....Bang!  A lightning bolt runs down the wire to the ground.  Time after time they can repeat this.  (only during certain weather conditions of course.)  So, that solves the problem of not knowing where lighting will strike.  What if a giant, and I mean giant super cap was created by digging a huge circular hole in the ground, and lining the sides with the correct materials and repeating until you get a cap say 1/2 mile in diameter?  Have the lighting strikes targeted to the cap and...now you have a huge amount of energy....for free.  (Minus the construction costs...cheaper than the Hoover dam)  I have always heard scientists claim that there is enough energy in one bolt of lightning to run NY city for more than 1 year.  (One strike)  But, they never knew where it was going to hit.  The next problem was storing it.  I say, scale up supercap technology, or something similar, and there you go.  Probably easier than going to the moon engineering wise I would think.  Now, it should be possible.  (Maybe)

Yes, off-the-grid folks still buy and use things made with energy.  A lot of folks forget that.

Bill

[MileHigh]

Bill:

Yes I saw something like that on TV.  They were examining the "glass tubes" created when the lightning bolts struck the ground and tunneled their way through the sand and melted it.  The guy blew through a long air hose to initiate the launch to ensure that he would not become burnt toast.

I'm quite certain that the amount of energy in a single lighting bolt is not equivalent to running New York City for a whole year.  The difference would be several orders of magnitude.  Is it possible to harvest the energy from lightning bolts?  In one sense you could probably do it, but it wouldn't be practical.  You figure when lighting is going to strike, it's looking for the (electrical and real) ground to complete the circuit.  A giant capacitor like you described would not represent the required electrical ground to the lightning, so the giant capacitor would likely be avoided by the lightning bolts as they seek out the true ground.

But, you never know.  What's cool is the fact that lightning comes from the same source as the good old rubbing a balloon and making it stick to the wall trick.

On the artificial side, you can look up clips of electrical substation transformer fires and stuff like that.  The "fire" of course is the local grid power shorting through a bad transformer or switch.  The amount of sheer raw power and the bursts of energy are amazing to see.  In one clip the guy is filming from a few blocks away and the throbbing power and "random electrical violence" is amazing and truly frightening.

MileHigh

Here's a compilation:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX5TIDLvMyw

[Pirate88179]

MH:

Probably not practicle or even possible but, to me, better than spending all that money on a super collider a mile or so in diameter.

I don't understand why that fine wire is not instantly vaporized.  Maybe it is but the bolt is already targeted on the ground it represented?  I am not sure where they got the energy estimates in a single bolt from...they may not really know.

What I really like is that in all of my science and physics classes, we were taught that "static" electricity is just that...and can't be made to do work.  Well, I always believed that until one day, while working on some projects here at the apartment, I was walking across my carpet in the winter wearing socks holding a gutted cfl to use in a JT circuit when the bulb lit up.  I stopped and scuffed my feet on purpose and the bulb lit brightly with each scuff.  To me, making light in that bulb was work and I figured that what they were teaching was not correct.  Then I found that you can charge a cap using static electricity.  That cap can be made to do work.  The only person in academia I ever heard say this is true is Walter Lewin at MIT.  (In his video series)

Oh well, hopefully, one day maybe they can harness some real energy from lightning.  Hey, I have a kite...maybe I could go out in a storm and....nawwww...that's been done already, ha ha.

Bill