TL=8 Batteries
- Thread starter Spinward Flow
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Head Phones or Ear Buds? Unless that's not working either.
Anime otaku have a well known fondness for subtitles.
Perhaps you could ... you know ... develop a new skill?
& 
The computer I have the most access to is a Graphic Workhorse that may have "sound" on the motherboard, but has no external connections for it. I have bad speakers built into the big monitors that cannot access any sound. I am reluctant to pop the hood of a computer that I do not own (it belongs to work).
After hours, I can watch videos on my iPad (and even broadcast to the TV if the gods of Apple are having a good day) ... but there are other things to do at home than watch an Aussie extol the virtues of Solar Power in the Sunbelt.
[even if the results ARE impressive]I cannot imagine the line loss on a Morocco to UK Power transmission line or the cost to construct a line that distance across that terrain. I certainly look forward to operational numbers from THAT project.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
In that case, how about a guy who lives in Ohio and has been gathering data for over half a year (including during snowstorms and high wind)?there are other things to do at home than watch an Aussie extol the virtues of Solar Power in the Sunbelt.
Actually, as interesting as SOLAR is ... we have wandered pretty far afield from TL 8 batteries [which is fine] and I have a Starship to modify now that my PbP group has changed and is getting close to needing it [which is less fine]. So I need to shift my attention from SOLAR to LBB5 and nail down the final details to create a Deckplan.
I wish both YOU and HIM all the success as I am off to have fun.
I wish both YOU and HIM all the success as I am off to have fun.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Solar panelling worked best with a non accelerating spacecraft, and in Mongoose, it used to be extraordinarily absorptive.
You could park your battle barge just outside the range of planetary defences, and load up the railguns and mass drivers, energized by it, with or without capacitating the batteries.
Now you can accelerate, if you coat the hull.
You have to figure it out yourself, if it's worth the effort, since it's a tenth of that of panelling.
You could park your battle barge just outside the range of planetary defences, and load up the railguns and mass drivers, energized by it, with or without capacitating the batteries.
Now you can accelerate, if you coat the hull.
You have to figure it out yourself, if it's worth the effort, since it's a tenth of that of panelling.
I don't like videos either, I was changing the drive shaft on my 4x before a big camping trip and a friend googled a video on his phone we watched it, I was like "wrong." Grabbed the hammer and prybar. It is funny to see how wrong people get it, like busting the output shaft on their transfer case, or breaking their vise with u-joint and a cheater on the handle. Classic.
Here’s a thought, how I handle capacitors as batteries.
Their main limit isn’t their capacity but their power distribution. The power plant is set up and allots space for both the distribution controls at the plant sending EP to the ship systems and the cables/conduits/whatever technobabble transmission.
So there has to be a distribution system. Two options, the capacitors feed back to the power plant and the main distributor handles it, or the power plant feeds the capacitors and the capacitors actually power the downstream systems normally.
The default for LBB5 is the first option. The power plant has to be down rated or not generating and the capacitors are discharging at the maximum EP rate for the plant.
To increase that rate for capacitors plus full power plant or have a separate distribution subsystem for option 2, the rating has to be built in for whatever max distribution by adding 20% of the difference between baseline power plant and the total discharge capacity. This represents power control and transmission.
I also have capacitors get ‘twitchy’ near full capacity as they heat up and put pressure on their internal structure (I envision them as metallic hydrogen), and if they detonate each ton of full capacitors does 360 tons of damage. So they aren’t used as regular batteries but an edge for battle or other extreme circumstances.
Handy for double shot spinals, multi repulsors or maintaining full agility while powering all weapons.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Think of it this way ... and I'm going to use water plumbing to make the analogy easier to grab onto.
If you've got a manifold and distribution system that is only capable of moving 10 liters per second maximum ... that's the limit of how much fluid you can push through the system. If you try to shove 10+10=20 liters per second through that, because you've got 2 sources of supply, you aren't going to be outputting 20 liters per second to the downstream end user (or if you do, you won't be doing that for very long because something ought to break).
Sticking with the water plumbing analogy, the way I think of it is that the fusion power plant is the source and the capacitors are buffer storage. So the power plant is like a river and the capacitors are like a water tower, used to moderate and modulate the flow throughout the distribution network via management of reserves.
In other words, the batteries/capacitors provide a storage AND power conditioning function to help stabilize the load balancing needed for all power demand systems.
At 36 EP per ton (LBB5), that amounts to several HOURS of power plant output in most circumstances.
A 400 ton starship with J3/3G/PP3 (for example) would have 8 tons of jump capacitors, meaning 288 EP of storage capacity.
The power plant would have a 12 EP output per combat round.
288 / 12 = 24 combat rounds / 3 = 8 hours @ 12 EP continuous output capacity.
So in the event of a "power plant out" due to a lack of fuel (rather than damage to the power plant), if the capacitors (in this example) were loaded to full prior to the power plant going down, the ship would have 8 hours of 3G maneuvering capacity (or 12 hours @ 2G, or 24 hours @ 1G) before exhausting all of the power reserves (note: "housekeeping" power demands would actually shorten this duration slightly, but that's an added complication I don't care to get into right now).
However, the point is that the power plant code rating determines the maximum "load" that can be delivered (unless using Emergency Agility, which is something of an edge case) under nominal conditions. Using my above example of J3/3G/PP3 @ 400 tons, the "power budget" for the ship cannot exceed 12 EP per combat turn. Whether all of those EPs are coming from the power plant itself (100% output) or the jump capacitors or a mixture of the two ... doesn't really matter (except for bookkeeping purposes of the jump capacitor reserve of EPs). What matters is that you CANNOT have a power demand of 13+ EP for all systems under nominal conditions (again, Emergency Agility is an edge case exception). The limit of 12 EP per combat turn is determined by the hull displacement and power plant code.
400 * 0.03 = 12
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
In which case, back in battery news ...
Tesla revealed back on 5 June 2024 that they had made 50,000,000 battery cells in the 4680 form factor over the past several years, cumulative grand total.
Tesla has just revealed here in September 2024 that their cumulative number of 4680 cells produced has increased to 100,000,000.
That means that the first 50,000,000 cells took 45 months to produce.
The second 50,000,000 cells took 3 months to produce.
Can you say ... production ramping up to massive scale?
Hence my option to buy extra distribution capacity, more tons set aside for the control/routing boxes and the actual power lines. Where it sits determines whether the power plant has to exist to route (more easily mixed to need) or potentially run something like the maneuver drive even if it’s been disabled/destroyed.
You're not dealing with transcontinenental line loses, because energy never travels that far.
The Morrocan facilities supply additional power into Spain and Portugal (assuming their grids are linked), which frees up some of their generating capacity for export to France. France, then, has excess capacity to export to the UK. At each step, the transmission distance is regional, not trans-continental.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
The Sahara desert has been earmarked for solar plantations for quite a while.
Sort of surprised why (North) American deserts don't have start ups in theirs.
Sort of surprised why (North) American deserts don't have start ups in theirs.
Mostly, because there's nobody nearby to sell the power to, and they haven't yet built out the distribution network.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
The simple fact of the matter is that utility scale solar requires SOME water resources to keep things working (to wash the panels/mirrors, if nothing else). Mind you, that water demand is nowhere near as high as the water demand for a coal fired power plant (funny that ...
), you still need to expend some water on utility scale solar.And strangely enough, the desert regions in CONUS have the geography and environment to "win the lottery" on solar potential. The US deserts have been called the "Saudi Arabia of Solar" in terms of how favorable solar power generation at industrial scale is ... but there are, shall we call them "entrenched interests" that want to delay the deployment of solar power for as long as possible (I wonder why?
).Something something ... competition is good ... except when the competition disrupts US, then it's BAD™.
The second problem is that the deserts that are "ideal for solar power generation" are not where large populations of people (and thus, demand for electricity) are found. So you get back into the transmission lines/distribution network problem, where even if you build a terrawatt industrial solar plant out in the desert, there's no infrastructure to tie into to export all that power through.
The third problem is ... permitting.
There are a LOT of renewable power projects in the US that are fully funded, some of them are even built and ready to be online ... and the utilities and regulators are just playing Silly Bunnies™ with the permitting process (so as to delay the implementation of solar for as long as possible). It's all a big game of "chicken" where the provincial interests want SOMEBODY ELSE to Go First and prove that delaying this stuff is madness and idiocy.
Fortunately, Texas and (of all places) California are showing that unreasonable delays in getting solar, wind and battery storage online is sheer madness and idiocy when it comes to making energy more affordable.
The fourth problem is "the grid can't handle it!" nonsense ... which starts with the assumption that Capitalism along with the Laws of Supply & Demand have somehow magically been banished. After all, aren't people always waxing prophetic about The Invisible Hand Of The Market and how all you need to do is "build a better mousetrap" and so on and so forth?
The solutions to the (by now) antiquated Dumb Grid that we've inherited ARE available. Simple solutions like Reconductoring (take the wires off the transmission lines and replace them with updated wire systems) can DOUBLE OR MORE the capacity of existing electrical transmission lines (all you need is investment money to make it happen). Building out smarter grid monitoring systems that permit more accurate measurements of loads and rates of power transmission, rather than just "guessing" with wide margins needed for safety (because you don't ACTUALLY know) will go a long way to increasing grid capacity.
Fortunately, the US seems to have finally hit the tipping point.
Change is COMING ...
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
So? That's has nothing to do with physics and reality. That is a manipulated market. Not a free market.
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
The simple fact of the matter is that utility scale solar requires SOME water resources to keep things working (to wash the panels/mirrors, if nothing else). Mind you, that water demand is nowhere near as high as the water demand for a coal fired power plant (funny that ...
And strangely enough, the desert regions in CONUS have the geography and environment to "win the lottery" on solar potential. The US deserts have been called the "Saudi Arabia of Solar" in terms of how favorable solar power generation at industrial scale is ... but there are, shall we call them "entrenched interests" that want to delay the deployment of solar power for as long as possible (I wonder why?
Something something ... competition is good ... except when the competition disrupts US, then it's BAD™.
The second problem is that the deserts that are "ideal for solar power generation" are not where large populations of people (and thus, demand for electricity) are found. So you get back into the transmission lines/distribution network problem, where even if you build a terrawatt industrial solar plant out in the desert, there's no infrastructure to tie into to export all that power through.
The third problem is ... permitting.
There are a LOT of renewable power projects in the US that are fully funded, some of them are even built and ready to be online ... and the utilities and regulators are just playing Silly Bunnies™ with the permitting process (so as to delay the implementation of solar for as long as possible). It's all a big game of "chicken" where the provincial interests want SOMEBODY ELSE to Go First and prove that delaying this stuff is madness and idiocy.
Fortunately, Texas and (of all places) California are showing that unreasonable delays in getting solar, wind and battery storage online is sheer madness and idiocy when it comes to making energy more affordable.
The fourth problem is "the grid can't handle it!" nonsense ... which starts with the assumption that Capitalism along with the Laws of Supply & Demand have somehow magically been banished. After all, aren't people always waxing prophetic about The Invisible Hand Of The Market and how all you need to do is "build a better mousetrap" and so on and so forth?
The solutions to the (by now) antiquated Dumb Grid that we've inherited ARE available. Simple solutions like Reconductoring (take the wires off the transmission lines and replace them with updated wire systems) can DOUBLE OR MORE the capacity of existing electrical transmission lines (all you need is investment money to make it happen). Building out smarter grid monitoring systems that permit more accurate measurements of loads and rates of power transmission, rather than just "guessing" with wide margins needed for safety (because you don't ACTUALLY know) will go a long way to increasing grid capacity.
Fortunately, the US seems to have finally hit the tipping point.
Change is COMING ...
You forgot the 5th problem - which is by far the most resilient and resistant to solution.
Environmental regulations and activist groups!
Even the so-called "American deserts" still have life-forms and an ecology, and large-scale solar farms would negatively impact those, so many groups will fight against them to the bitter end.
Most environmental and nature groups see all that empty land as "a national treasure that must be preserved in its natural state if the planetary ecology is to survive".
Good luck resolving that quandary.
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
Something that used to be a problem only in a few areas that is getting worse is radon gas in homes.
This carcinogen seeps into homes from the ground they are built on (varies greatly by the geography/geology of your soil).
It used to be that only homes with basements and enclosed crawl spaces needed to be tested (and ventilation systems to pump the gas to outside the structure installed if needed), but now our highly-sealed homes, even those on concrete slabs, are testing to problem levels.
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
In that case, how about a guy who lives in Ohio and has been gathering data for over half a year (including during snowstorms and high wind)?
Like atpollard, I make my living off solar (electrician installing residential and commercial systems) - at least I did until my spine decided last year that I needed leg muscle spasms and the like more than I needed an income - and I learned something surprising about snow.
It seems that 6" of snow in the panels reduces solar maybe 50% from "clean panel" levels.
Something about how ice still lets light through or something.
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