A Geek Goes Flying

Over at the Santa Monica Municipal Airport , they have free municipal EV charging. It’s not particularly fast (I think it’s reported as being something like 4.2 kW, shared, but in practice I see 3.77 kW when charging alone, or 1.86 kW when split - which is basically L1 charging), but it’s free, and the system is kinda kick ass. Solterra connected to a Santa Monica supplied EV ARC solar charger It’s up to 4 hours free per day, with a $1.00/minute “overstay charge” if you go beyond that. It’s administered by ChargePoint. And the EV ARC (Autonomous Renewable Charger) hardware is courtesy Envision Solar , who claims to be using a “patented sun tracker” (presumably this patent ?). (Apparently Envision is now Beam Global .) A large sign reads: EV ARC™  A truly zero emissions solution  The EV ARC™ is the world’s only transportable, solar powered electric vehicle charging product. The system is completely grid independent. The patented EnvisionTrak™ sun tracking technology enables th...

A week into my wildly unscientific solar power experiment, I’ve come to mistrust all capability / capacity specifications.     Solar panels. I was told to expect about 1/2 the rated power from even the highest quality solar panels. I’m getting a bit better than that (I’m seeing the 50W Renogy top out around 32W in direct, morning, SoCal winter sunshine). Battery pack: Capacity. Just like with “normal” portable battery packs, the capacities are overstated vis-a-vis what you can actually expect them to provide in the real world. One reviewer, with instrumentation far in excess of what I have access to, observes 92% of advertised capacity is par for the course. ( https://www.californiaskys.com/blog/ebl-voyager-1000-review ) Battery pack: Efficiency.  Renogy states in its manual for the battery pack “The charging conversion rate of this power bank is around 80%-90% (the 10%-20% conversion loss is due to the heat generation when power is transferred in batteries and charging ...

Zendure SuperTank Pro Zendure SuperTank Pro I’m still enamored with the Zendure X5, but I went looking for a solution with at least 2 USB-C PD outputs, that could power both a MacBook Air and a 15.6" UPERFECT portable monitor (that I expect will become part of a flexible sit-stand setup ). The Zendure SuperTank Pro 100W PD 26800mAh power bank seems to have glowing reviews and the specs are there (and I like the OLED screen that shows what each port is delivering, how many watt hours of charge are remaining, etc), and Amazon had it as a lightning sale item marked down from $229 to $169, so I decided to take the plunge. Update: The SuperTank arrived today. To my surprise, it came with a carrying case, a USB-C to USB-C cable, and a USB-C to USB-A adapter. I hooked it up to the UGREEN 100W charger through the Klein and observed it charging (it came with about a 36% charge, and Zendure recommends fully charging it before use). Using the red 60W-rated cable showed 56.0W on the SuperT...