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Topics - PonoBill

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1
Random / Wacky PV stuff
« on: March 04, 2024, 09:59:00 AM »
It seems like everything I know needs to get upgraded every few years. For decades the gold standard for PV was installation on a slanted roof facing south, or if you had a flat roof, then racks, carefully angled to catch midday sun at a perpendicular angle. Then east/west roofs became popular. If you look at the output curve of a properly angled south-facing panel it's a single hump, with a maximum at midday tailing off to not much at all in the morning and evening. Here's what the panels at Ponohouse produce. I've never washed those buggers, I need to:

The sun angle at anything past noon is not optimal, so you don't get continuous generation. Your wiring, controllers, battery charger, inverters, etc. need to be sized for the peak, which lasts less than an hour. Conversely, panels on an east-west orientation have humps at morning and evening, depending on which side they are mounted. When panels cost bazillions, they were the expensive part of the system. Now they cost less per watt than an English muffin, so flattening out the curve makes sense. They benefit from being mounted more steeply to catch the low-angle sun, but it works like gangbusters and you don't need to upgrade the rest of the system.

Cool. But now we have Bifacial panels that are dirt cheap. They benefit from being mounted freestanding in a vertical position east/west so one panel does the work of two. They generate almost nothing at midday but do well for the rest of the day. Shading is tricky, but then it always is. They work best in a mixed installation where there are a more or less equal number of south-facing panels, depending on latitude. Shortly there will be panels optimized for vertical east/west installation that also take advantage of lower reflection, but current bifacial panels work fine. Current panels peak out at about 22% of the theoretical solar energy available regardless of installation because most of the sunlight gets reflected.

There's more. Current solar plus battery tech has crept up from 6V to 12V to 48V, driven mostly by the wire size necessary to deliver significant wattage and power expectations. Now it makes sense to use something like 400 V (the voltage of most EV batteries) because it's easy to get with ten or so PV panels in series and the wire size required is modest (current determines wire size, 1000 watts at 12 volts is 83 amps, meaning you need wire thicker than the battery cable in your car, at 400 V it's 2.5 amps). So basically, everything I learned from fiddling with Solar over the last few decades is now wrong. ....very weak Yay!

2
Downwind and Racing / So this popped up from 14 years ago on Facebook
« on: September 24, 2023, 07:11:19 PM »
If this doesn't make you want to downwind a SUP then I can't imagine what would. It made me crazy, and I wrote it. Of course, it was so long ago I normally wouldn't remember it, but this run is burned into my brain--I'll never forget it. A dangerous statement to make for a geezer facing inevitable decline, but I expect I'll remember this when I don't remember my name:

Holy Maliko what a great run I just had. Waist to shoulder high swells, 40 knot wind, warm air, cool water, and ten miles of constant swell surfing. But wait, this isn't Hawaii, it's Hood River!!


Diane offered to drop me off at Viento Park for a downwind run. I had hoped to hook up with Rod Parmenter, but after last evening's marathon paddle he committed to a mountain bike ride today. Rod and I tried to do a no-wind, downcurrent run from Rowena to Hood River. But when we got to Mosier (almost to Hood River) the wind picked up to honking and the last mile looked just too grim. So we turned around and ran back to Rowena and naturally the wind died a mile or so from Rowena, leaving us stroking tiredly against the current as the sun started setting. We made it just before it got dark.


I tried one other guy I've been swapping email with, but he's out of town. I had to hang out all morning until Gorgenet showed up to connect us to the web. With that done I gazed longingly at the blistering winds in the river until Diane decided to have mercy and be my shuttle driver. What a kid.


We got to Viento at 3:30 and I was in the water and paddling five minutes later. The wind was HOWLING and the swells in the normally flat section right off Viento were close to waist high. I started catching swell after swell, but as they got steeper my F18 started punching into more backsides and disappearing right up to my feet. Not to worry, the F18 stays straight when it does that, but it makes for a hairy ride. so I started steering radically every time I caught a swell. It worked like gangbusters. The speed was absolutely mind-boggling. My board was making that patty-pat-pat-patty sound of a windsurfer in full honk. Exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. I started looking at the wimpy little coiled kiteboard leash that hooks me to the middle of the board. I learned this lesson long ago--hefty leash. I just didn't expect to need one on the Columbia. If I bailed and didn't catch the board that leash would part like a rotten sneaker lace.


My iPhone was playing "Runaway Train" over and over--somehow I stuck it in continuous play. I was irritated at first, but then I thought, how appropriate. rocking like a runaway train.


I thought "what the hell is going to happen when I hit swell city?" Twenty minutes later I found out when I hit swell city, or rather swell city hit me. "Holy fukowitz, those aren't swells, they're skateboard ramps". I hesitate to call the swells overhead in the presence of so many Hawaiians who would probably call them "tree feet". Instead I'd say they were six to eight feet--draw your own conclusions. All I know is that when I popped the nose over the top and pointed it down the swell it looked like I was headed for the river bottom like a lawn dart. In pure panic I gave it right full rudder, and the board zoomed to the bottom and slid sideways. "Holy shit, the wave is going to hit me" methinks, and I gave it left full rudder and roared up the back of the wave in front, over the top and down the other side. Right full rudder again, and I found a rhythm. Laughing like a lunatic, I slalomed through the moguls, going faster and faster until I thought I would surely blow a turn, hit the water and bounce.


I did about twenty turns in a row, then lost my balance and in the crazy acceleration tottered to the tail of the board--completely off the pad, holding onto the bare fiberglass with my toenails. I teetered there for literally minutes while the board was pointed straight down the face of a swell, rocketing along. Finally it slid to the bottom and leveled off, and I clawed my way back to the center. I thought "wow, if someone saw that from the side it probably looked like I knew what I was doing, instead of just barely being along for the ride." Sure enough, a windsurfer pulled up and said "holy crap, that was awesome. I have to get one of these". and then he said "wow, you're an old guy". I was way too flabbergasted by the wacko ride to respond, so I smiled lamely. Only later did I think I SHOULD have said "Oh, this is what we guys at the old folks home do when we burn out on pinochle".


I had little time to ponder all that because the wind was picking up. the tops of the swells were blowing off and the air was full of spindrift. The kite folks way up ahead off the sandbar disappeared. They might turn up somewhere in Idaho. Most of the windsurfers were gone as well, either saying their rosary and looking at the water or rigging a hankie sized sail so popular in the gorge on days like this. The few souls that remained on the water were touching down every fifty feet or so. I passed two windsurfers huddling in the water and slowed to check on them. They asked me when the wind was likely to drop. I suggested they roll up their stuff and float downwind to the hook. Hope they took my advice, they looked kind of scared.


A little cove I call the castle was coming up. I thought it might be cool to try to shoot the opening and take a break. It's a little slot in a rock wall, but I figured I could make it. When i went through the slot at mach 2 I realized what a chance I was taking. but it worked out. I got to change my iPhone to other music, shoot a few shots, and calm down. An hour of survival swell surfing was taking a toll. I watched a barge and tug coming up the river, smashing whitewater over the length of the barge. wild stuff.


When I hopped back on my board and pushed into the wind I raised my paddle to sail for a bit. I could barely hold it up as a sail. I was doing at least five knots just from wind on my body. I suspect the gusts might have hit 50. The swells were getting ripped to pieces by the wind. I rounded the tip of Wells Island and looked behind me to see a huge set of swells bearing down. I assume it was wake from the barge that was transformed by the wind into big face. They looked like reef waves--big, smooth faced, and feathering. I paddled into the first one and was off--I rode from the tip of wells island to well past the big log that juts out of the water midway down the island. An amazingly long ride. I didn't do any cutbacks with my F18, but I curved up and down the swell. wild ride. and when I dropped out the next one was right behind and ikt took me to the end of the island.


From there the ride was fairly uneventful, though when I went by the event center in the shallow water curving into the boat channel I caught a nice swell that carried me all the way through the mouth. While I was getting my stuff onto the truck a guy and two girls ran up to see what i was doing. they had been following me from the hook, and were completely blown away by the entire idea of riding a surfboard in the Columbia river. I could have sold them three board right then and there. They were literally overwhelmed--completely excited by the whole idea.


They should have seen it from My perspective.


Maliko is Maliko, but Hood River is a damn close second, with it's own unique set of challenges. I bet we're going to find some even better runs here. I can't wait.
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3
The Shape Shack / High temperature engineering plastics
« on: February 16, 2023, 09:21:56 PM »
So I've been slinging filament everywhere. I blame some of it on Maui Humidity (I'm facing four days of steady rainfall as I type this), but mostly it's because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Most of the 3D printing I've done previously is PLA, which has a low glass transition temperature, a parameter that I previously assumed meant it melted, but doesn't really. Suffice it to say the characteristics of PLA make it super easy to print well, all you need is a basic recipe of printer settings and off you go. Occasionally I venture forth into more exotic stuff like PETG, which is almost as forgiving, and ABS which is not. I made some enormous messes with ABS and just set it aside--I didn't need it, and it didn't like me.

So now I'm trying to print much more exotic stuff, which is rumored to be much stronger and stiffer than the weenie stuff, though some people claim otherwise, probably because they don't know how to print it any more than I do. I've done some small prints that were very promising, and one or two bigger prints that were fairly amazing. But printing polycarbonate and nylon--either reinforced with Caron Fiber to just straight up, is a random thing for me right now. Sometimes cool and satisfying, sometimes a mess and enraging.

So I've been digging deeper and deeper. It turns out that these higher-temperature materials naturally have a greater aversion to large temperature differences throughout the object being printed. An object that is 100C on the base and nearly 300C up top is in great danger of warping, splitting, yanking itself apart, and otherwise driving me nuts.

One solution is heating the enclosure they are produced in so the temperatures throughout the object are quite a bit closer together and the entire print stays close to the glass transition temperature--effectively being annealed while it's being printed. The main reason current hobby-level printers don't heat the enclosure is a patent on doing just that which has been enforced vigorously (and the simple fact that most folks are happy printing PLA garden gnomes and LOTR figurines). The folks selling 3D printers for 1500 bucks can't afford to pay the license. The folks selling printers for 250K can. But of course, nothing stops me from adding heaters to my enclosed printers, and heated enclosures to my open printers and doing prints that approach, and even exceed the strength of injection molded plastic.

This is all fairly promising. I did a little jury-rigged heater last night and printed a solid cube of polycarbonate 150mm per side. It lifted a little at the corners, but this would have distributed itself all over my printer in the recent past.

The fancy-schmancy 250K printers hold the print volume at 100C or more, but I'm thinking a lot of stuff inside my Bambu would run out the bottom if I did that. so I'm shooting for 80C. We'll see how it goes.

For the seven other people on the planet who find this interesting, there's more info on this from two somewhat irritating but very experienced pros here:

https://youtu.be/QtEnWsSdbN4

And this other goofball. I feel comfortable listening to these guys. These are my people (unfortunately):
https://youtu.be/rMrMkKBxNZs

4
Random / Some days technology just fucks with you
« on: January 17, 2023, 04:17:04 PM »
This is the short list of today's challenges--most still haunting me:
--Echo music players in the main room and garage play a few seconds of requested music and then tell me "sorry, I'm having trouble playing music from your library". They were working fine yesterday. Of course I Googled for solutions, of course I turned them on and off (shades of "The IT Crowd"), of course I deregistered and registered, and of course Amazon is no help at all.

--Fusion 360 is doing so many random things that I think there's some malevolent twit somewhere making the software refuse to do things that worked ten minutes ago.

--I'm trying to prepare to upgrade the Enphase microinverters in our PV system to a newer version, so of course the Enphase installer's toolkit won't let me log in, though it did a few days ago when I called tech support with the same problem. And of course I can't get hold of tech support (does India observe MLK day?).

--The outlets in the kitchen went dead just as I was preparing to make Cacio e Pepe. Breaker is fine, which means it's a tripped GFI, and of course I don't know where it is. Probably behind the refrigerator (because that's the best place to install a GFI. <edit It was behind the monstrously heavy sideboard in our dining room. Of course it had to be there.>

--My 3D printer slicer (Bambu Labs) decided to change its behavior completely. Things that I've done a dozen times no longer work. Splitting an imported .STL design with multiple elements into separate objects is suddenly not an option.

At least the printer works... ...so I got up this morning and found it had quit. The printer detected a fault and stopped. Some of the breakaway support filament decided to string all over the place.

I'm going to go wingfoiling. Oh, wait, no wind.

I posted this on Facebook and my daughter replied:
(Dramatic consoling sarcastic pat on the back) It will be ok dad. Chin up. 🤟

And that's from my kinder daughter. My hardass daughter will just call me a pussy under her breath and not bother to reply.

5
Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / Standard Kanaha
« on: January 06, 2023, 09:57:04 PM »
The wind finally came back today on Maui and I got a nice session at Kanaha. Of course, it wouldn't be a Kanaha Session if I didn't get blasted off my board by a breaking wave and wind up thrashing around in the Portuguese Triangle trying to get restarted with waves breaking on me. I finally managed to time things right and wing out of there. Good session in every way, with decent wind, nice waves, and not crowded.

6
Random / Distance traveled
« on: January 01, 2023, 08:06:13 AM »
I'm turning 76 in a few days, and it's 5 AM, so I can either do some mega-geeky age-related calculations or work on learning Fusion 360. So here we go.

It's common to say "one more trip around the sun", but that isn't the only distance traveled. Ignoring the fact that I haven't lived near the equator year round for all these years, I spin around the globe about 25,000 miles every day (24,859 to be exact, but I'm approximating anyway) so that's 693,500,000 miles in 76 years. Plus the mean orbit of the sun (92,960,000 million miles), so 7,064,960,000 miles in 76 years. The solar system is traveling at 448,000 mph around the galactic center so 298,260,480,000 in 76 years. The velocity certainly isn't additive, but the distance traveled sort of is, so that's 306,018,940,000 miles total in 76 years. I could just do the distance traveled around the galactic center in 76 years since that's the most significant distance, but I'll take credit for all the wandering.

You'd think that if I'd been going in a straight line instead of spinning and orbiting I might have reached someplace interesting, but Proxima Centauri is 25,689,482,000,000 miles away, so no, that's 84 times further. Neptune is 2,800,000,000 miles away, so I could have gone there and back a few (109) times assuming I could somehow direct my personal velocity to that of the solar system orbiting the galactic center.

Of course, the galaxies are also traveling through space (big bang, remember?) at something like 1,400,718 miles per hour. But this is getting boring even for me.

7
For those of you who know and love Donut Dynamite on Maui, I have some sad news. For those of you who have never been there, it's even sadder. Today was the last day. It's gone.

I did my best to avoid the place, but it was hard. Donuts as art. Four-dollar donuts that you balked at the first time the bill came, but after the first taste seemed much too reasonable.

Our wonderful neighbor, Michelle Kanani stood in line for an hour (and I suspect the line stretched far behind her) to get one last shot at Jennifer Matsumoto's (aka Madame Donut) amazing work. She brought us a little container of Chocolate bread pudding with candied citrus as a gift. We had some with our Christmas eve dinner.

At the first taste, I said "Holy shit" leapt up, and dashed off to make unsweetened whipped cream and a couple of shots of decaf espresso to go with it. This demanded our full attention.

Intense, incredible flavors, perfect texture, absolute balance. My god, Jennifer is an astounding chef. It's so easy to get one ingredient out of balance in something like this and wind up with just chocolate, or just candied citrus. Picture both so harmonious that they turn into something else. There you have it.

We're going to miss her mastery, but I'm also selfishly glad it's gone. My waistline can't handle this.


8
Random / Merry Christmas Ho Ho Huli
« on: December 24, 2022, 05:25:32 PM »
Diane set the table for Christmas eve dinner while I scooped the last remnant of leaves out of the pool from our Kona storm. I had to shoot a picture. It can't include Diane--she hides her face when the camera comes out like a mobster doing a perp walk. A violation of her witness protection program agreement...  ...or something like that.

9
Downwind and Racing / downwind autopilot
« on: December 18, 2022, 08:35:11 PM »
It's kind of fun to look back through youtube at all the silly shit I've done. I decided at one point that a radio controlled rudder would be cool--I think it was Admin's idea--but I added an autopilot in the mix, which simply let me press both steering buttons to capture a compass heading and then hold that heading, or slowly make it's way back to it after I turned away from the direction. It all worked really well, though my waterproofing wasn't so great. After I toasted a few prototypes I wandered off to something else.

https://youtu.be/VZdVGJ-KA8M

10
Downwind and Racing / Geezer Maliko
« on: December 18, 2022, 06:10:53 PM »
Poking around in Youtube to find something else I came across this.

It seems nuts that we (Bill Boyum and I) used to do this almost every day, and now we don't. I'm always amazed how a GoPro camera can make mountains look like molehills. This was a big day nine years ago. Nobody in their right mind would take a boat out in those conditions, never mind a sliver of carbon and fiberglass. So much fun though. I need to do this again.

https://youtu.be/rnyurHHS8Hc

11
Random / Steampunk indeed
« on: December 17, 2022, 05:11:24 PM »
Brother Bob sent me this amazing steampunk humpback that he carved on his CA router. A Christmas present. I hate surprises so I opened it right away. So cool. I have to find just the right place to hang it at Ponohouse.  I'm kind of tempted to leave it on the Koa desk.

12
Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / About time...
« on: December 17, 2022, 04:53:53 PM »
There's been fuck all for wind for the last few days. Lots of surf, but no wind. Today I went to the westside to see if I still suck at SUP foiling. Yep. Still suck. I haven't done it for about 8 months and apparently, that's enough to hit the reset button. I can get up, I can turn (slowly), I can pump like a one-legged chicken, and that's about it.

Fortunately, the wind returns tomorrow--with a vengeance. Unfortunately, it's the wrong direction, locally called a Kona wind. Fortunately, I've been looking forward to trying the Southside in a Kona wind. We'll see, I might not be able to scratch my way off the beach. But at least I won't be sending postcards from Tahiti.

But look at the second forecast for 11AM on the 19th. Some idiot must have been praying for wind.

13
Random / I think I'm going to need a bigger book...
« on: December 17, 2022, 12:42:59 PM »
A gift from my friend Twila:

14
Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / Weird problem at Ka'a
« on: December 11, 2022, 11:29:48 PM »
Today was challenging at Ka'a for a very weird reason. The wind was a bit light and looked to be dying, so I screwed around talking to friends but finally decided I had to pull up my big boy pants and go.

I'd forgotten the golden rule of Ka'a. The wind you feel twenty feet uphill by the parking lot is not the wind on the water. I convinced myself a 4M wing was big enough but fudged by mounting a huge 1150 axis front wing so I could pump up no matter what. Wrong. I could barely get the thing off the water, and every lull took me off foil. I came straight back in planning to pump up my 7.0, but as I dug for it I found the brand new 5.5 F-one Strike I bought a week ago. So I pumped that up and went out. Perfect. Except the handles felt really slippery like they were covered with dish soap. So soapy that it covered my hands and I was falling all over the place trying to get on the board. I couldn't hold onto the rail.

I finally managed to get up and fly out, but the slippery handles kept bugging me. I suck bad enough as it is, I don't need extra challenges. I had a nice time no matter what, and when I felt the wind starting to die I came in. Just as soon as I opened the plug on my 5.5 the wind picked up.

Somebody up there hates me.

15
Random / One Fine Day
« on: December 02, 2022, 07:58:23 PM »
Some days wind up being extraordinary. I woke up this morning at 3:20AM with no hope of falling back asleep. That's what happens when you foil for four hours and fall asleep before 8:00 pm, like a fucking farmer.

So I spent the wee hours drinking great Maui coffee (Moka, of course) and trying to get my current project to work. I went over the code line by line, looked at all the parameters in Node Red, debugged, tested, pulled my hair out, drank more coffee and finally find I'd specified port 1880 to receive mqqt packets and it's supposed to be 1883. I typed the fucking code that specifies the port, and still got it wrong. Moron.

Diane finally woke up at a civilized 7:20AM, I made omelets for both of us, fussed around a while, and went to wingfoil on the south side. Nada for wind. Maui 10K, which is the most reliable forecast of south-side wind, was flat-out wrong.

So I went to the Harbor. Should have gone to Ka'a or Kanaha, but no. I pumped up my 7 M and went out to mow the lawn. It was OK, but I continued to crash for 70% of jibes, mostly by touching down with the wing which turns it into the Great Wall Of Kahalui.

This may sound unpromising but stay with me.

I went home and remembered that I bought lobster claws at Costco. A mighty tray of claws, and I also had hot dog rolls that could be converted with a bit of slicing into East Coast buttered and fried rolls. So I cracked and cleaned a dozen big claws, fried the rolls, and made killer lobster rolls.

Anyone from the east coast knows that when you get a lobster roll you get a bunch of chopped tail meat and perhaps one claw perched on the top as a treat. I made lobster rolls that were ALL claw meat. Fucking unbelievable. Diane and I had two each with a nice glass of Far Niente Chardonnay.

Those of you who know Diane are saying "wait, Diane had two??" Yes, and she was staring at mine, which I was eating leisurely.

I could have stopped there, but I remembered I also got talked into buying six Kona bars--dark chocolate with Kona coffee and freeze-dried raspberries. We shared one with a nice glass of Malbec. I've had better desserts, but they included a seriously talented chef doing their best work and a tab at the end with more zeros than anticipated. For this spectacular dessert, I opened a chocolate bar and poured a glass of wine--and it was damned close to the best ever. If you're in Maui, get thee to Costco before these go away. Amazing.

So, to recap--successfully chased down a pathetic bug in my project, mowed the lawn at the harbor in light wind, claw meat lobster rolls with a fine Chardonnay, and incredible chocolate with a decent red wine.

A fine day by any standard.

I hesitate to explain this, but some friends have asked. Maui Mokka is perhaps the world's best coffee. The backstory is too long to relate, but this is essentially the true Moka, no longer commercially grown anywhere in the world other than Maui. By comparison, Jamaican Blue mountain tastes like dishwater. It's stupidly expensive until you taste it, and then it's very reasonable. Members of my family have come to expect gifts of coffee on special occasions. They will probably never get Maui Mokka. Too good to share, but now I've done it, haven't I? Google it if you're a coffee freak, otherwise, leave it for me. It comes into and out of stock. There's only so much. Some rich fuck is going to come along and grab all of this, I just know it.

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