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Waiting For The Sun Episode Transcript. Length - 38:47 
Magnetofunky No. 178. It's Friday, February 5th, 2021. [intro theme] Yeah. Larry here, waiting for the current cycle of rainy weather to clear out on my schedule to test my solar kit, as the QaNazis inside and outside the DC Beltway continue trying to interfere with Pres. Biden getting on with putting out all the existing dumpster fires the Sedition Caucus keeps feeding with the Big Lie. Meanwhile, I finally made a PDF file of my Benitez-8 modified power plant and posted it on my FB. The music this time out is all new tunes either submitted or curated from my usual music sources including a new source I discovered. Most of the cuts are hip hop... [song] - 01:21 Ok, that was ZOOM IN - KANADA THE LOOP, a hip hop and pop artist from Hobart, TAS, found at Australian music site triple j Unearthed. There's no other online footprint, but I dig the tune. This is a laid back (and often explicit - you bet your ass) underground international podzine and personal journal of extremely eclectic music and progressive politics, with a focus on energy independence for the 99%. My podpage is 1223studios.com/mfunky.h. The Twitter is @Magnetofunky. [Grid Theory] - 05:05 23% Efficiency Is It? In Grid Theory, While I'm waiting through the rain to catch a few good hours of peak winter sun to run test my solar kit, I decided to run through the weeds of solar efficiency, not as in how to increase eff., or what future whiz bang solar tech is just around the corner - I mean why is the best solar panel eff. only 20-23% in 2021? Apparently, the short answer is the 2nd law of thermodynamics (if you have a system that is isolated, any natural process in that system progresses in the direction of increasing disorder, or entropy, of the system) forbids a 100% efficient solar cell. Ok, forget 100%, but if you go for the best that money can buy (like a $100K solar panel) you might get almost 35% eff. Also the sun puts out a spectrum of radiation and solar cells are only tuned to a narrow frequency range - 400-1200 nm, some visible light, some infrared. And adding mirrors and lenses to concentrate the sunlight may theoretically double that, but concentrating the infrared (higher temperatures) decreases the eff. as well. Also in consideration is the actual physical conversion of photons into electricity via solar cells. The physical theory was worked out by William Shockley and Hans Queisser in 1961, now known as the Shockley-Queisser limit and set as a max eff. of 33.7%, and yes this is the same racist jagoff Wm. Shockley who nobody could get along with and who shoulda stayed in his engineering lane. Anyway, until a new manufacturing process or new technology can outdo silicon p-n junction cells, that's about it. My 60W folding solar panel is rated 21.5-23.5% eff. under peak sun in ideal conditions, which is as good as I can get. Cool---[bell] Ok, the Benitez-8 diagram printout in a bit... [Back To The Stage] - 08:22 Ok, Back to The Stage, continuing the set of new mostly hip hop tunes, but we open with Darwin's Eden by Swedish post-punk/indie band A Projection. This new single released Jan 22 shows their late 70s and early 80s flow which oscillates between New Wave, Post-Punk, Gothic and Indie Rock. This is a tune I can imagine playing at the club Tech Noir in the movie Terminator... [song] - 08:59 All right, next up it's Pull The Plug, another excellent new cut by NYC founded, LA based band Mercury and the Architects. And yeah, I featured a new cut last show, so what? [song] - 12:59 Ok, next short piece is Kite by Majestic Dre, a cat with no location I saw cited on his Instagram or YouTube, but if he wanted you to know you'd know. He does popular song Freestyle/remixes every Friday and releases a new song every Sunday, and though this piece is short and sweet, it's not worksafe... [song] - 16:29 All right, we wrap the set in grand style with Beethoven on Struggle by Ensemble Mik Nawooj. Led by composer/pianist, JooWan Kim, the Oakland-based Hip Hop Orchestra creates Metamusic by sampling principles of Hip-Hop and Classical, free from the dogmas of Western European concert music aesthetic. And BTW, these last two pieces I found at the Reddit Music page under New Music. Nice... [song] - 18:54 ["Geeknotes"] - 24:45 Geeknotes: Platonic Future... Hey, Geeknotes! Well... We see another example of the toxic fallout of Orange Ex-Queenie's Big Lie - The military junta in Myanmar using the same BS excuse of 'Election Fraud' to stage a coup and retake power in that country. Meanwhile, The chickenshit GOP is carrying on with the Q-War because the gerrymandered base figuratively and literaly holds a gun to the heads of the Sedition Caucus in both the House and Senate, but that privileged supremacist base is increasingly frustrated that whining about 'unity' while threatening death is the only card they have left to use against Democrats and its no longer enough. I still expect another terrorist attack before Biden's 100th day, but we'll see... On the Covid front I'm darkly amused but not surprised with the automatic dismissing out of hand the relatively low numbers of Covid infections and deaths in African countries, the refusals of western medical experts to believe Africans can count the sick and the dead, or extrapolate their prior experiences with Hepatitus B, Lassa Fever, HIV and Ebola. The same old attitude of the West has everything to teach and nothing to learn. The S. African variant may change the situation of course, but I'm tired of the corp. media wishing Africa was in worse condition cause that's the narrative they expect... It may be years from now before Covid finally goes from pandemic to a seasonal virus like the flu, but when it does, those of us who wore the damn masks and socially distanced and constantly washed our hands and lost people to this plague are going to experience a blossoming of platonic intimacy, of casual hugging, hand holding and basic physical contact that will be frankly confusing and infuriating to all those anti-maskers and herd mentality bullies who will only feel resentment because we'll all know who has genuine empathy and who's faking... Ok, for the duration, If you have promos, pluggers, gig info, an art opening, etc, send me an email and I may add it to my Twitter feed if possible, but now that I'm back on FB I'll put it there, and I might just start looking at Zoom events to put up as well, as I'm deleting fake friend requests. The address is [email protected]... And, if you like, or hate the show, give it a quick review. Go to ratethispodcast.com/mfunky and I'll read it here in Geeknotes and tee off appropriately. [Grid Practice] - 28:51 Solar PDF... Ok, In Grid Practice, After putting up the FB page and posting one of the Benitez device videos I got the 'how does it work' question from a new friend, which was as good a time as any to do a diagram and run through of the device, based on the working model as it existed on the project board. It took a couple days, but I made a free pdf and posted it up on FB and my Twitter. Since it's not a new invention I also looked up the details on the efficacy of the system with my batteries. According to an Inverter Wattage Rating formula I found at Vanner Inc (a manufacturer of power inverters and other equipment), 12 volt inverters require approximately one (1) amp of DC input for each 10 watts of AC output, and to support 1 amp hour of battery power, 2 amp hours of battery capacity is required. In my case, 10A of DC input would be required to power 100W of AC output for an hour, meaning 10Ah, so 20Ah of battery capacity would be required. So ballpark math says my 18Ah batteries are barely enough to power a full 100W load. Since I'm not pumping anything more than 60-70W max, my system is just within specs. The fact that my tests used 8Ah batteries pumping that 60W load and still gave great numbers on run times and Coefficience is even better, though I'd want to rerun those tests to be sure. To do that I need a 4-5A AC smart charger to top off the new batteries at home. Meanwhile, on Thur. the 4th, my window appeared so I hoofed it uphill from my crib for a noon solar test... I went to Duboce Park, smaller, but less crowded under a cloudless sky. The grass was only slightly damp as I deployed the folding solar panel and setup the gear on my biker bag - battery, cheap-ass multimeter and charge controller. I hooked up the battery to the controller, then the solar panel to the controller, got a better reading of 12.8V from the controller, and a reading of 13.7V from the panel to the battery. This final reading of 19.4V from the solar panel to the charge controller confirms that the solar kit is running 5 by 5, especially since the cheap-ass meter is lowballing by 200-300mV. Ok, the charge half of my power plant is set, and an updated Coefficience test goes on the to-do list... [One More Tune] - 32:56 Ok, for this week's One More Tune, we close out with another hot number from down under found at triple j Unearthed - The Worker by Party Dozen, a Punk, Rock outfit from Sydney - saxophonist Kirsty Tickle and percussionist Jonathan Boulet - loosely based around improvisation. Check out their full-length album "The Living Man" available on Bnadcamp... [song] - 33:27 Well, OK. [Closing] - 37:09 Hey, this show is a 1223studios joint. I'm on almost all the popular podcast platforms, the latest being Castbox and Overcast. You can also say "Alexa, ask AnyPod to play Magnetofunky". Show notes are on the podpage. Send email to [email protected]. If you like the show, tell your friends, and: Congratulations to Stacey Abrams and the BLM movement being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. And of course, in retaliation Alan Dershowitz nominated Jared Kushner, which is like nominating Jeffrey Dahmer for a Michelin Star... Show themes "Rocket Power" & "Spy Glass" by NY musician and composer Kevin MacLeod. Some additional audio from freesound.org. Next episode is set for whenever I have enough music and stuff to rant about, let's say after Valentine's Day. I'm Larry, trying hard to stay chill at my garrett in the Mission, and this is Magnetofunky, from San Francisco, where we are proceeding through, no longer into, the darkness. |
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