kevin_standlee: Round logo with text "Tonopah, Nevada - Westercon 74 - July 1-4, 2022 - A Bright Idea" (Tonopah Westercon)
We had time on our hands this morning, so after a long leisurely breakfast in our hotel room, we set off to have a look at the Mad Scientist's Death Ray Crescent Dunes solar thermal power plant, which as I mentioned a couple of days ago is once again generating power in spectacular fashion.

O Blinding Light )

At this time, solar-thermal plants like this cost more up front and, as I mentioned, have technical challenges. But they can be built with domestic materials (steel and glass and concrete) and are not dominated by countries that have bottled up all of the rare earths. They're not a panacea for energy problems, but we think they have a promising future. I'm glad to see that this plant is working again. The solutions developed here can be used to build more and better such plants in the future.
kevin_standlee: (House)
The main circuit breaker popped again this afternoon. It's not clear exactly what caused it to overdraw, although Lisa speculates that part of the problem is that the load of the various circuits is not evenly balanced across both "legs" of the 100A service. Also, with the warm weather this week, we've had the air conditioning in the trailer and many fans running in the main house including the large swamp cooler. We could be close to 90% of the total available on the breaker, and if NV Energy had any voltage sags due to too many people using too much equipment, it would cause the amps to spike and pop the breaker. In addition, the breaker itself may be wearing out.

As with last time, we let the main breaker cool off for a while, then reset it, and things came back to life. We're going to have to be even more careful budgeting our power draw. And while it's a $250 expense, we did order a replacement 125A master breaker (the maximum service we can have). Our plan is to install it but to not put in any more circuits, in the hope that this will give us more reserve. Someday we may actually put together the ~$8-10K it will take to replace our service with a more modern 200A service (most of the cost of which is what NVEnergy will charge us to drop a new line).

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