Just For Fun Archives - Geothunder Main

Thoughts on the Tesla’s Run at the Green Hell (Nürburgring)

Benjamin Huffman — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 04:31:35 +0000

Thoughts on the Tesla’s Run at the Green Hell (Nürburgring)

Everyone but Porsche seems fairly impressed with Tesla’s plaid prototype. Today they announced that their unofficial laps times are in the neighborhood of 7 minutes 20 seconds.

They also said they think they may be able to get the time into the 7:05 range next month when they are back to try again.

What I don’t see anyone talking is what the ultimate purpose is for being at the ring in the first place. Yeah Porsche… made fun of a 6 year old car. That’s not the goal.

Predictions: The Next Time We See Tesla at the Nürburgring

Tesla Model S Plaid will easily set the fastest (soon to) production four door car speed around the track. They will use the data from this run to tweak the car.
They may also set the quickest mass produced cars self-driving/autonomous speed time on the track.
The first trip was all just smoke and mirrors so than can collect data for their real run at the Nürburgring.
1. Who cares if you’re the fastest four door car at the track? The real goal is fastest car around the track ever. Period
… The Roaster 2.0 should be out sometime late next year. Maybe They will bring the Roaster 2.0 the next time they show up at the track.

Tesla’s Hype Machine

Tesla lives on hype and the following quote is directly from the preorder page for the Tesla Roadster 2.0.
“The first supercar to set every performance record and still fit seating for four.”

A run at the Ring would help solidify their claim if the car is up to the task. With the data they collected on this trip they can probably figure out the Roadsters 2.0s. theoretical lap time.

According to Wikipedia, the current production car record holder is the Lamborghini Aventador LP770-4 SVJ @ 6:44.97. Lamborghini conducted test with a full roll cage and Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R tires.

According to the information released by Tesla, the Roadster 2.0 should be able to out preform the Aventador LP770-4 SVJ in every way. Time will tell if that statement is true.

Wrapping things up

The long and the short of it… Tesla was at the Nürburgring for two reasons.

Repay Porsche for trying to embarrass them on the world stage.
Collect data to get their Tesla roaster dialed in for a run at the all-time production Nürburgring record attempt.

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Google street view is getting crazy

Ben — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 21:28:43 +0000

In my internet travels I came across this today… Google Street Mount Fuji.

Google Street Capture Mount Fuji

Google Earth Capture Mount Fuji

Now you can be a lazy mountaineer too.

https://maps.google.com/?t=m&layer=c&panoid=Lr3HSVh_ZJDNcBj4kseVLg&cbp=13,124.2,,0,-16.47&cbll=35.370573,138.739&ie=UTF8&source=embed&ll=35.351256,138.739128&spn=0.067205,0.146255&z=12

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Made a new toy for the Bakken

Ben — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:05:29 +0000

I have not been very productive lately, but I noticed a lot of people are interested in the confidential wells list for North Dakota. The state provides a copy of all the wells in an HTML table, but it isn’t very useful unless you transfer it all into excel. I manipulate their data to provide excel like functions inside the web browser. You can now sort and search the confidential well list for North Dakota.

If I have time I will try to make a page that shows the wells that recently came off the confidential list, but that will be a server side operation where the current confidential page operates with client side scripts. It will probably be quite a bit more complicated to make a page that pulls old data, but I have an idea of how I might be able to do it.

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Using Capacitors to Power an Electric Bike

Ben — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 05:21:17 +0000

For anyone who would like to run their electric bike off of capacitors let me save you some time.

Simple Answer:
With current technology capacitors are not a viable option for powering an electric bike.

Medium Answer:
Currently, the energy density for ultra capacitors is at best about 1/10 that of lead acid batteries so it would take about 10 times the weight in ultra capacitors as it would for lead acid batteries. Unless you have room for 300lb of capacitors this isn’t really an option.

A little wiki action:

(3–5 W·h/kg for a standard ultracapacitor, although 85 W.h/kg has been achieved in the lab as of 2010 compared to 30-40 W·h/kg for a lead acid battery)


Parameters	Electrostatic Capacitor	Ultracapacitor	Battery
Discharge Time	10^-6~10^-3sec	1~30 sec	0.3~3 hrs
Charge Time	10^-6~10^-3sec	1~30 sec	1~5 hrs
Energy Density (Wh/kg)	< 0.1	1~10	20~100
Power Density (W/kg)	< 10,000	10,000	50~200
Charge / Discharge Efficiency	~ 1.0	~10	0.7~0.85
Cycle Life	Infinite	> 500,000	500~2,000

http://www.nesscap.com/product/overview.jsp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultracapacitor

Long Answer:
Even short trips require 4 or 5 amp hours of power at the rated voltage to be effective.

Others have asked the same question on multiple web forums, and the best answer I could find was this.

1 Farad is 1 Ampere second per Volt. 1 F = 1 As/V.
1 Ah = 3600 As
3600 As / 12V = 300 As/V = 300F
But you need more then that because the voltage will drop as the capacitor discharges. Half the charge means half the voltage.
With a lead acid battery that’s different. A battery that is half empty still has nearly the same voltage as it had at the start.
Maybe 600F and some electronics to automatically step up the voltage so it stays at 12V.
So you’d need to buy 160 capacitors with 3V and 60F each.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=256751

Even after reading the above statement I decided to do more research and see if there is any new technology that could be useful. Ultra capacitors are starting to come down in price and are readily available, but they still are not cheap.
It is possible buy capacitors that are rated for 3000F and 2.7 volts, and their data sheets state that they have 3.30 Wh (~1.2Ah = 3.3Wh / 2.7V) of usable stored energy. The problem is that the calculation does not factor in the voltage drop that takes place as the capacitor discharges.

Ideally, with a bike you would want to run somewhere between 60 and 36 volts for a hub motor.

There are two options:
1. A voltage multiplier circuit.
2. A string of ultra capacitors in series.

The first idea is probably the better one, but it is fairly technical and goes beyond the scope of a blog post.
The basic math behind a series string of capacitors would be this. (Capacitance drops as capacitors are added in series.) 1/((1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)+(1/3000)) = 166. 7F

Theoretical storage would be
166. 7F*48V = 8000As
8000As/ 3600 As = 2.2 Ah

However, the usable potential is likely 1.2Ah which is stated on the data sheet, and the hub motor will operate most effectively between 48 and 36 volts. That is a 12V change and happens to provide access to about 25% of the usable 1.2 Ah in a simple series circuit.

……………………………. This is getting too boring.

If you still want to know more about sizing ultra capacitors for electric vehicles this article provides the required calculations. http://people.clarkson.edu/~pillayp/c1.pdf

Conclusion:
Start considering ultra capacitors for application in electric bikes when ratings of 12000F + capacitors become available. There were a lot of claims in 2007 and 2008 that we would see the end of batteries, but it looks like someone is getting close.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/44477

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Christmas Tree Time Lapse

Ben — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:07:42 +0000

Tossed together a short time lapse while decorating the Christmas Tree. However, we ended taking everything off and re-decorating, but there is no video of that.

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