Electrical Vehicles as Home Electrical Power Backup Systems

     One way to expand the value of ANY EV to it's owners is exactly this! Design capacity into the vehicle's charging systems, battery management hardware and software of the EV for use as alternative power source in times of owners' home area electrical grid supply failure. These EVs have battery energy storage capacities rivaling if not far exceeding some home power backup battery storage systems. The New Ford F-150 EV has 131 Kilowatt-hours of battery energy supply when fully charged! The smallest EV SUV I know of has a battery system with 78 Kilowatt-hours of energy storage capacity!

Ford has teamed up with Sunrun, a Chicago area corporation in the business of making home electrical power battery backup Systems for this precise purpose. Ford TV ads touting this F-150 EV feature have been appearing for weeks already.

How a Chicago-area solar company transformed a pickup truck into a backup home generator

The Best Cordless Electric Snowblower Going Today

You folks with corner lots or long driveways like mine might want to get one of these in anticipation of the inevitable big snow fall. These EGOs can out throw most gas powered single stage snow blowers of their size. 

This one sells for $799 but the battery system with 2 ea 7.5 AH 56V batteries on board in the 2 live battery chambers with auto switchover at battery charge depletion give you 2/3 of the energy on board that my 1 1/2 ton 2020 Honda Insight hybrid sedan has in it's drive battery system for wheel motordrive via the collectively 100hp pair of motor / generators! For less hefty workloads the same machine with 5 AH battery packs sells for $599.

This is only one of a growing array of EGO 56v powered home yard equipment all of which use the same battery system. One of my neighbors swears by them, owning the snow blower, mower and string trimmer. I envy him a bit but still swear by my Ryobi 18v One + 22" Hedge trimmer and One + string trimmer. I also have a One + yard blower and 3/8" Drill / Driver. Ryobi sells over 100 different 18v One + equipment items that all use the same battery system.

As I've said before about yard work, Be Happy, Go Cordless Electric

My Possibly Quirky Upper Respiratory Anatomy

    This is a post about a quirk in my epiglottis and why those of you with various similarly quirky features in your breathing anatomy probably shouldn't be scared off from seeing an appropriate specialist for possible problems with them or by the procedures they commonly perform.
My epiglottis is somewhat uncommonly omega shaped as I'm told by my ENT physician, Dr Samuel J Girgis, who's gotten multiple up close thin, flexible endoscope views of it.

My epiglottis' shape is a possible factor in my hospitalization for infectious inflammation of it in July 2016 and a likely source of today's very scary fleeting breathing difficulty / E.R. trip event in the wee hours. Untreated inflammation of it can obviously close down the airway with equally obviously dramatic consequences.
Those endoscopy procedures for this area of the respiratory tract with specific purpose designed flexible endoscopes sound and look gross and scary but they are in fact not inordinately uncomfortable though fully patient awake, and completely pain free, for me at least.

The ones with hard endoscopes on the other hand, not quite so much and only good for view of the nasal passages, sinuses and nasopharynx (see image at top). I've had both but MOSTLY (thankfully) the former type.  My attitude toward hard scope procedures (I have managed to endure a couple of them with no pain or other negative consequences)  may come from from medical equipment engineering experience born knowledge of EXTREMELY RARE mishap events fueling (irrational?) fear of hard things entering my body from any source. . Yes pilgrims I AM NOT PERFECTLY RATIONAL!
    Please follow the contrasting colored text links by clicking on them to find further very relevant information provided from various on-line sources

The Wrong Wall To Worry About

    Donald Trump's Infamous wall on our southern border is not the "wall" US citizens should be most concerned about. There is a far more troubling "wall" regarding our government once established as "of the people, by the people and for the people". That would be the wall of money the greediest of great wealth among "we the People" have constructed around themselves and access to the processes of government in the USA at the Federal, State and Local levels to varying degrees. 
      We've been in this situation before but back then there were less than 1/4 as many people in the USA and no electronic media of any kind nor anything like the similarly totally conglomerated print medium we have today in the USA to buy our attention with. 
     How did we get to being an oligarchy, as living past US Presidents have accurately(?) described 21st century US government? There are probably a bunch of theories but I trace it back to the "greed is good" days of the Ronald Reagan Presidency and the beginnings of dismantlement of the regulatory system that preserved access of ALL people to the processes of government and the integrity of the National assets we all depend upon for survival.        
   The strongest blow against resistance to the progress toward our current oligarchy came from the US Supreme Court in a series of 5-4 rulings dismantling the protections of our election campaign and lobbying systems by regulation of money's influence over them. They essentially put those systems up for purchase by the highest bidders by literally equating money with free speech with no limits.

As A Biomedical Engineering Technician, What Was I?

    As A Biomedical Engineering Technician, What Was I? That's the title I came up with for my first blog post about my 37 year career as a BMET which ended with my retirement from Hines VA Hospital in November 2009 . 
    My mind somehow wandered this morning to thoughts of all of the vast array of technology I worked with and on as a BMET for 37 years, most of which as an in-house tech at VA hospitals. I decided it's time to take stock, a so far not unpleasant experience. 
   Mine was a "trade", more of a calling one might say, that required significant mastery of the details of every different technology; electrical systems, electronics, computer systems and networking, communication systems, mechanical systems, thermodynamics, pneumatic systems, fluid dynamics and flow control systems, chemical reactions etc. each medical device employed to function. Not only that but one needed basic understandings of all of the physics, chemistry, biology and human anatomy and physiology behind and driving the function of the vast array of diverse medical equipment each of us was charged with maintaining and repairing. 
   My last few years at Hines VA Hospital were by far my best and most rewarding. In those closing years of my career I was gifted with not only management that appreciated my well earned expertise in vital signs monitoring and cardiology equipment, but also the availability of then new technology to enhance the performance of all of those medical devices for patient well being and to greatly extend the time between failures of the care area equipment systems.  The fact that I FINALLY mastered the divide between the people oriented mindsets of nursing staff and the machine oriented mindset we biomedical engineering technicians must have was a HUGE factor in my successes in those years as well. Having excellent care area managers facilitated that change.  

Troy-Bilt Flex System for Homeownwer Yard Care

   The Troy-Bilt Array of "Flex" system options

    This is an intriguing design for a single power unit that connects to a  variety of functional front ends. It's very inventive and "out of the box" engineering. That's what I like about it. What's not so inventive and out of the box about it is that it is COMBUSTION POWERED! I see no logical reason why it shouldn't be adapted to battery / brush-less DC motor powered operation. In fact that would make it a FAR more efficient user of energy and since the mechanical design could be FAR simpler, a more reliable system. 

    How is the latter possible? It is an unavoidable fact that mechanical linkage consumes far more power than electrical connections and wiring do in such close distances. Mechanical linkages are also far more complicated and all parts of them subject to physical wear under use that electronics and simple wire connections are not subject to. 

    The obvious way to switch it over from gas to battery energy source would be to make the power unit just the battery and wheel drive unit with electrical power delivery electronics and minimal electrical control and power delivery connections to the functional units. Each functional unit would have it's own specific purpose designed motor(s) and some function specific control electronics. Today's electronic power delivery control systems operate CONSIDERABLY more efficiently and reliably than mechanical power delivery systems.

    For example; the mower front end would be best designed with separate identical brush-less DC motors for each blade. That reduces the mechanical linkage to ZERO. The best design for the power unit's wheel drive would likewise be a brushless DC motor for each wheel achieving the same mechanical simplification. 

Cub Cadet RZT Zero Electric Riding Mower

     I cite the years on the market now Cub Cadet RZT Zero Electric Riding Mower as prime example of this electrical power design concept. Also every other currently available twin blade electric mower I'm aware of uses direct connected motors for each blade.

Flex System Snow Thrower Unit

     Same would be true of the snow thrower unit with separate brush-less DC motors directly connected to the auger and vertical impeller , possibly somewhat different in design per the 2 functions.  

    As always, follow the highlighted text hyper-links to web pages offering more information on the specific subjects. Right clicking on the links and selecting "Open link in new tab" works best for me.

My Old / Newer SLA battery Rotary Mower Love

 

    This is what my Neuton CE-5 14" 24 volt cordless electric mower looks like. Neuton says it's the quietest on the market and I have no evidence to the contrary after 15 years of using this and prior to it the same size and battery pack Neuton EM 4.1 mower. It sells as a 2 in 1 mower. As seen it is in bagging mode but it comes with a mulching plug that inserts in the back of the mower  with the bag removed. It can also do side discharge operation with the separately available chute that is mountable in place of the bag as well.

   One advantage of this and their CE-6 19" 36 v mower is that they use Sealed Lead Acid batteries. That's what your cars and trucks have but these are in use removable /replaceable battery packs that contain 2 (24v) or 3 (36v) 12 volt standard scooter batteries. A simple fact of rechargable batteries is that the devices they are used in ALWAYS outlive the batteries by 2-5 times. These SLA packs, unlike the more common today Lithium battery packs in cordless yard equipment, can be rebuilt with new 12v batteries. A replacement pack for my CE-5 costs in the $100 range but the replacement 12v batteries to rebuild one can be bought for as little as $18 ea. quite often from a wide array of on-line and local bricks and mortar vendors. I have accumulated 4 packs. 

An EM 4.1 like mine

Neuton CE-6 

      Another advantage of the Neuton mowers is that the new Neutons have a battery status meter on the top of the handle. It's a simple 3 zone analog meter with red, yellow, and green zones. All else being equal simpler is almost always better. 

    Speaking of simpler, That battery rebuild for the Neutons is BY far the simplest of all of the available SLA battery powered mowers on the market. The video below is about the CE-6 packs but the CE-5 packs are identical but for 2 vs 3 batteries enclosed. It takes me ~ 10 minutes start to finish when I have everything in front of me for the task. 

     The battery chargers are an issue these days however.  My EM 4.1 came with a "dumb" charger 14 years ago. As I said the CE-5 uses the same battery pack. A "dumb" charger is one that has NO auto-shutoff at full battery charge. For a few years after the CE series came out Neuton shipped "smart" chargers with the auto-shutoff feature but reverted back to "dumb" ones by the time I bought my CE-5. I bought one of the "smart" ones back when they were carried by Neuton. Why is that a big deal you may ask. Simply put overcharging ANY rechargeable battery wreaks havoc on available runtime and lifespan of the battery. "Smart" chargers don't let that happen and "dumb" ones do.

    This is a source for a smart charger usable with a 24v Neuton mower.  They sell 36v models too that are good for the 19" CE-6. Note: you need the ones with the "Axial" battery pack connector. 1  to 1.6 Amp models should suffice. See the "This is an automatic battery charger which stops charging and goes into float mode when the charging cycle is complete to prevent overcharging" In the product description that defines them as "smart".