Why no more than 4 batteries in any particular string?

[hevans1944]

Forgive me, I was addressing the thread starter; given his region in Arizona and his previous questions which I responded to concerning powering electronics off grid.
I am not a physics master, but I am hoping to make a contribution by continuing my education at this fine institution where I also work, but I must admit academia seems far more attractive. Than being a practicing physicist…

When replying to comments made by multiple responders, you should mention their username prefixed with a commercial "at" sign, @, to identify who your comment is directed toward. Like this: @Delta Prime or @HANKMARS.

I have known and worked with many practicing physicists when I was employed by the University of Dayton Research Institute from June 1967 to August 1979. Like most professions, some were good physicists and some were not so good. I doubt any of them would survive as a physicist in a commercial, profit-making, environment. Some of them didn't appear to have even a modicum of common sense, although some were good with chalk and a chalk board. And then there is the old bromide: "If you cannot wow them with your brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." I've run across more of this type than I care to remember.

I also met a few physicists at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) in Albuquerque NM during my last job before retirement. Most of them were nice folk, who seemed genuinely interested in what my company was doing (perfecting a GaAs solid-state switch) with a project they had abandoned in the late 1990s, deeming their "final solution" to be impractical. But one in particular had a "Not Invented Here" attitude. He flat out didn't believe we had accomplished in a few months what they had spent a decade trying to perfect. Our results just didn't agree with his "theory" of how things were supposed to work, so clearly we must be promoting a fraud. He didn't use the word "fraud" but that's how it came across in our one and only joint conversation with "the powers that be" at SNL. Later, after that meeting, my boss and I were given a "tour" of some of the SNL facilites.

The people we met on the tour were polite and seemed to be interested in what we had accomplished, but AFAIK there was never any follow-up with SNL personnel. Of course, follow-ups might have been classified and if so, I was deemed not to have a "need to know." The results of our work were published, but the work that was done by our sub-contractor (L3 Pulse Sciences) with our PCSS (Photo-Conductive Solid-state Switch) has Department of Commerce export control restrictions. It's a REALLY good optically-triggered switch: fast (picoseconds), high current (kiloamperes), high voltage (kilovolts), and capable of hundreds of discharges without failure. Our original task was to determine its suitability for a compact particle accelerator, designed by a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL), but first we had to figure out a way to make it work... which we did. There were other problems (still unsolved) of how to actually build that dielectric-wall compact accelerator, but I was not involved with trying to solve them.

So, yeah, if you can afford the life-style, an academic environment is the place to be for a physicist. I was gonna become a physicist, but instead became an electrical engineer. Glad I did because the work has been very interesting and aligns perfectly with my electronics hobby. I probably could have done better as an entrepreneur, but I don't know how to do that either!

BTW, based on our other conversations and your posts, I do consider you to be a "master physicist" or at least a wannabe. If you can, get that PhD and find a teaching position in academia that also allows you to perform sponsored research. The key word is sponsored: applied physics pays; theoretical physics not so much, because the field is overcrowded. Of course if you have "genius" chops like Einstein or Newton the sky's not much of a limit. Be all you can be.

 

[hevans1944]

I'm not sure exactly how the different Groks are affected by one's verification status.

My wife purchased my original "verified" subscription to X, the one with the blue check mark. Since then I have apparently "upgraded" to Premium, for which I now pay $40 per month. This gives me access to Grok 4 Expert on X or Super Grok on grok.com. I don't think grok.com requires a subscription to X, but without a subscription you may not have access to the "latest and greatest" version of Grok. Also, on X you can "record" your interactions with Grok, which will allow you to resume conversations where you left off. AFAIK the version you get at grok.com doesn't currently have this session recording capability.

I began my AI interactions with Grok 2, but that version was pretty "stupid" IMHO. It wasn't until Grok 4 that it became more "human-like" in its responses. It still requires some skill in posing "questions" if you want "good" answers. And it is still possible for Grok 4 to make mistakes, but any errors are now more likely because the user didn't provide enough information or didn't formulate their question properly. I would not suggest that you ever trust an AI to provide the "correct" answer. Always verify with independent means the "answers" an AI creates. The more the technology approaches human-like interactions, the more likely those interactions are to lead to dubious results. It all depends on how the AI was trained and how large its database resources happen to be.

If we engage in a private conversation (I will wait for you to initiate it) you can post a "question" to Grok there and I will re-post your question to Grok 4 Expert on X. I can then "cut-and-paste" Grok's answer in my private conversation response. BTW, be aware that anything posted on the Internet lives somewhere forever, sometimes in multiple instances. If you would not like to see your posts on the front page of the New York Times, above the fold, don't post them via the Internet. There is no such thing as privacy in the 21st century. TANSTAP (There Ain't No Such Thing As Privacy) has now replaced TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) as the buzzword of this decade.

BTW, my father (deceased) was born on August 1,1918, the same year as your father. I going to guess we both now qualify as "old fogies" based on our fathers' birth dates, although I still feel like I am (perhaps) only eighteen or so instead of 81+. My wife sometimes says I behave like a two-year old, so maybe we age backwards after retirement...

 

[Delta Prime]

Thank you for the information regarding multiple responders

 

[HANKMARS]

Not sure how the new owners of this website feel about posts wandering off topic. This happened all the time when this forum was called Electronics Point, back in June 2012 when I joined. I have only one conversation active right now, so it seems reasonable to start another one with you. I'll let you initiate that.

You didn't answer my question of how it is that you have Internet access, miles away from civilization, or at least commercial electrical power.

What kind of bandwidth do you have? Can you do Zoom or Google Meeting conversations requiring broadband Internet connectivity? I have (not recently) exchanged messages with other users here who still had only "land line" Internet access, sometimes apparently with very slow acoustic modems running 110 baud. That made it very difficult to have a true "conversation" without the patience of a saint. Turnaround time could take days or weeks.

I did notice, and responded, when @Delta Prime chimed in on this thread. Moving our discussion to the Conversations part of this app would allow us to exclude comments from other members of Electronics Lab. It would be your choice of who to allow "in" to the private conversations if you start a new conversation there. I generally avoid private conversations because the purpose of this forum is to freely exchange ideas and perhaps offer solutions to problems. Private conversations easily move into the realm of echo chambers unless carefully avoided. I post my opinions on X, but that's just a larger echo chamber. I don't have many followers on X, but I follow back almost anyone who follows me, for whatever that is worth. For whatever reason, a lot of the folks who request a direct message (DM) with me are women. I seldom respond to those "female" DM requests as I have been happily married for more than twenty-five years to my second wife.

If you want to exchange comments or DM me on X, please look up my name on the FCC website associated with my amateur radio license, AC8NS. I use my full name as my username on X. If you choose to use a different username than HANKMARS, let me know with a DM that mentions that.

I will jot down your radio license number and look it up soon. I, too, have an X account and use my proper name. Of the few women I responded to in DMs, they all had money schemes. Most just downright scams but a few with legitimate proposals, nonetheless, I was not a taker as dealing over the net can get quite convoluted quickly. I am attached to cyberspace with a Starlink system. A little pricey but no less than a magnitude of better quality than any other service I've had. Were you, or are you a moderator on this forum? If I have it right, this forum was Electronics Point, then MakerPro maybe? I will have to look to see current name. Anyway, I'll look you up on X and may become a bit pesky with questions regarding amateur radio. I have not noticed if this forum has a radio section. I have a tendency to barge right in with inquiries when I hit a wall. If I get answers, Great! If I get excommunicated, I can deal with it. I'll be around looking for info 44 here or elsewhere, so I'll catch ya soon.

 

[hevans1944]

Here is a link to my FCC-licensed amateur radio operator call sign, AC8NS, at https://qrz.com. You can also find more about my bona fides at the FCC website, but not while the Federal Government remains shutdown.

Roger, your experience with alleged women trying to DM on X. I usually "follow" anyone with a blue check mark who follows me or makes a comment that I like and/or agree with. This often leads to a DM discussion, but the ones who are trying to hustle me are easy to spot and ignore. It's just the price we have to pay for an open discussion forum, although I do detect a bias lately in the posts that X "features". I used to post a lot on X (great way to relieve stress) but now I mainly visit there to have "conversations" with a machine: Grok 4.

I have never been asked to be a moderator of this or any other forum. I did meet one of the moderators of Electronics Point (from Australia or maybe New Zealand) when a few years ago he visited some of his relatives in nearby Indiana. Nice fellow, but I think he was a bit put off by my concealed carry of a Model 1911, .45 caliber, Colt autoloading pistol. They banned firearms ownership in Australia after some nut-job committed a mass shooting! What a novel concept: lock up the guns instead of the people who use them unlawfully. I guess it works "down under" but I don't see how it could work here in America. Americans, apparently, love to shoot each other... or commit other random acts of violence, if you can believe anything your lying television eyes see. No escape to Australia though: they are very careful about who they let immigrate into their country. The USA has recently decided to try that, too. The immigration aspect. not gun banning.

I was escorting him around various sights in the Dayton area (the REAL birthplace of aviation and home of the Wright brothers), including the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB. Just as we were about to go through a metal detector to enter the museum, I realized I was packing and my gun would set the detector off. I apologized to the person operating the metal detector and we left, without visiting the museum, without further ado. This was a serious situation that could have turned really nasty because it is illegal to be armed on Federal property without permission, Second Amendment or not. I have no desire to test the constitutionality of that federal policy.

Now that we live in the free state of Florida, which allows both concealed carry as well as open carry, neither my wife nor I fell it necessary to carry weapons in public anymore. We still have them available, of course. We usually carry at least a couple of pistols while traveling on the Interstate, but leave everything else at home. I took a non-expiring oath to defend the USA from all enemies, foreign and domestic, when I enlisted in the Air Force. I am still waiting to be called up to help fight insurrections, but that may have to be left to Gen X, Y, or Z if the necessity occurs. Imma gettin' too old for that shit.

I am the moderator (and owner) of a public forum that I created to explore the possibility of using the Moon as a passive reflector for Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) or "Moon bounce" communications using visible light. I think I have the details worked out, but it is doubtful that many amateur radio operators will jump on this particular band wagon. Depending on transmit power and the size of the receiver aperture, it could take days to complete a message transfer. A "conversation" is even more problematical because of the two and a half second round-trip delay between signals sent to the Moon and received back on Earth. If you want more information, please visit this web site.

I am thinking about selling our home here in Venice FL and purchasing a (slightly) used RV for my wife and I to tour the USA in. Remember Dinah Shore and her theme song, "Tour the USA, in your Chevrolet! American is waiting for you to call!"? My father did just that in the 1950s. I also did it for my first family in the summer of 1978, just before graduating college after ten years of part-time study. By then I had a wife and four children, whereas my dad only had his two young sons and his wife. But it wasn't a competition. I enjoyed both tours. I may describe some of the experience in a private conversation if you are interested.

If my current wife and I decide to do this, we will also want to have Internet connectivity everywhere we go. The only way I know of to do this is to subscribe, as you did, to Starlink. I don't want to have to depend on a sketchy 5G cellular telephone network. We can probably afford Starlink if we ditch our iPhones and broadband fiber Internet service, which together cost around $200 per month. Heck, Elon may even lower the price for a Starlink terminal, things are going so well for him right now. We'll see.

I doubt there will ever be any rebates on the monthly service fee. Someone has to pay to keep those birds flying overhead. The business model is similar to my deal with Florida Power & Light: they provide the grid, I "sell" my excess solar power back to the grid (net zero metering), and I pay a small monthly fee to help support their grid infrastructure. Seems to be a win-win for both me and FPL. There is the inconvenience of not being able to use the solar when a storm takes part of the grid down, but we have a propane-fueled motor-generator to tide us over until FPL restores grid power, usually within a day or two. Others with solar PV panels, like you, opt for battery storage of electrical energy. This allows operation off-grid at night, but doesn't help during the day if grid power is absent and they have net-zero metering. Enphase has a newer model microinverter that does not require grid power to synchronize its output, but the wiring of my net-zero metering does not allow me to use them. The meter is permanently connected to the grid on the FPL side and permanently connected to the input poles of my circuit breaker panel on the other side. The solar electricity is also directly connected to the circuit breaker panel, but the microinverers on my solar installation shut down if grid power is not available. This is to prevent backfeeding solar-derived electricity into the FPL grid, potentially creating an electrocution hazard for FPL linemen.

The current state-of-the-art in batteries is not good enough, IMHO, to rely on them for backup power. But with your living in the wilderness (so to speak) you must either have batteries to store solar-derived electricity, or put up with no electricty from dusk until dawn. Either that or build a dam and use pumped water energy storage techniques not generally available to individuals. Well, that, plus two acres in not really enough room unless you build a VERY tall dam. Come to think of it, maybe you could just put up a water tower and use that to store gravitational energy that you recover as electricity by allowing flowing water from the water tower to spin up an alternator. Anyone who can make an observatory from a grain silo and a sheet of plywood should have no problem implementing this nifty solution to energy storage. Ummmm. How much water, and how high should the water tower be to allow you to have electricity at night or on cloudy days? An exercise best left for you to solve.

This has been a longer than usual post. Are you sure you don't want to start a private conversation? Do you want me to start one?