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Mycroft Holmes wrote: Following that logic would 240VAC be better than 120VAC, Oz runs on 240 and I have always wondered why, other than we probably followed the UK standards.
No idea on your specific history, but 100+ years ago when electrification was beginning 120 vs 240 was a cointoss on costs. 240 needed thinner copper wires than 120; but needed double the insulation thickness. 240 wins hands down on wiring cost today because plastic is cheap and copper expensive; but at the time the cost of the thicker insulation completely negated the savings on thinner wire.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Quote: Now I'm looking for and [sic] efficient 3 phase battery solution.
Do you mean 3-phase supplied by an inverter? That's done easily enough. But by definition you cannot have 3-phase d.c. 
As Sasha says, the higher the voltage, the lower the line losses. Look at power tools and electric vehicles for examples - all these are 'better' (more power available, lower losses) the higher the voltage employed.
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I am putting together such a system at the moment but only the outdoor lighting will be off pure DC - the rest will be through DC/AC inverter.
If you are doing a separate circuit this is reasonably easy. If you want to feed the solar into your existing mains power you need a grid tie inverter (so your phase matches the AC phase of the power company) and probably a professional electrician at that stage.
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I am currently setting up my own 12VDC net, but as you might infer from my other posts here: Only for low-effect use: Light, communication, alarm.
I am not at all worried about the power bill, that's not why, but the bill from the electrician. Here in Norway you can't legally do much more than replacing burned-out light bulbs without calling an electrician. I want to handle things myself, setting up alternate switches, adding lights etc. And I want to keep communication and light and alarms operative even during power outages.
Do not ignore cable length concerns! I put a battery bank in my loft, next to the central chimney, with a start of cables straigth to above the ceiling light, or wall lamp, charging socket etc. in the floor below. It cost a few extra meters of cabling, but the voltage loss is reduced both due to shorter distance and lower current - the current is spread over a number of wires. Also, that allows me to use smaller, lower-amp, fuses for each of the connections, giving better protection. And if I blow the fuse of one lamp, there are still light in the others.
I plan another battery bank in the basement - it saves 5-6 meters of cabling (two floor heights), both for light, small fans and networking equipment. Getting straight to the point of light might take some drilling through concrete walls.
The batteries will be charged from four panels that might in theory deliver a peak effect of about 900 W. That is highly theoretical! Two panels will be roof mounted, at 23 degrees angle from the horizontal plane, direction south-west (ideal a few hours after noon in April and August). Two panels will be wall mounted, vertically, directly towards SW and SE, respectively. I will have to see how much power I get in practice: If needed, I can easily mount two more on the roof.
I hope to keep the batteries charged by sun alone from late February or March through September. From early October to mid February, the aun is so weak that it won't give much, and from December (or earlier) the roof panels may be covered by snow. So during the winter months, the necessary power to keep the batteries fully charged will be taken from the power grid. (I want to keep them fully charged especially during winter - that is the season for power outages!)
For heating I use thermal collectors and a heat pump for ground heat. The thermal collectors keep the yield at a usable level far longer into late fall, and earlier in spring, than the photocells, and are more than four times as efficient. I do NOT plan on using solar panels for heating. (Except that to handle power outages, I will install 12VDC circulation pumps in the solar heating system; these have far lower effect than the main circulation pumps, but will give some heat to the floors.
Looking up power meter readings from a few years back, when the house was exlusively electrically heated, LED lights hadn't yet arrived on the market, we were three persons taking daily showers, cooked all our food on an electric stove, the freezer/fridge(s) were old an inefficient... Winter time we were up to a consumption of 120 kWh per day (!) when temperatures were low. Over the winter months the average was about half of that. There is no way whatsoever that we could have had that amount of energy stored in a battery bank charged during the summer months.
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C-P-User-3 wrote: Can these systems truly power the common residence today ?
Depends on what you mean.
Often solar installs exist in two ways.
1. To provide some power to house when light is available
2. To provide all power to the house and sells the excess back to the utility when light is available.
In both cases the utility still provides power to the house either during the day or definitely at night.
For your long list the house would be drawing power from the utility. But the usage would be, on average, outside of daylight business hours because business uses along with just more people doing things at day use the most power during the day. But even so most of the time you would not be using all of those.
The third install type is more complex, costs more to install and maintain and often only exists in locations without utilities. Those installs require both solar and batteries. Solar charges the batteries during the day and batteries provide the power for the rest of the time.
Any system would of course be sized to the house and with the last option one choose as a lifestyle to make certain trades offs to lower costs. Such as limiting when laundry is done (turning off other appliances completely when running the washing machine.)
Obviously for any of the above additional back up power supplies could be in use such as gasoline/diesel powered generators.
C-P-User-3 wrote: Now then, if we can get 85 Lumens per watt from these new fangled bulbs, and if we can get a solar system that delivers lower voltage (e.g. 12 volts; whatever)
Lights are not the biggest power users in a normal house. However they are not normally trivial either. But on average I suspect load estimates for an install would not change substantially if all bulbs were the most effective possible.
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Ok fair warning, I got my rose-colored glasses on right now. It's that positive music link below I tell you. It's getting to me...
Can't...
Resist...
The Smiley...
See!?
It seems to me life is amazing stuff. Yeah we got ups and downs, but all-in-all it's a wonderful experience. Especially since the alternative is death. I think when it starts to really suck is when we neglect certain basic human needs. Like when we sit way too much behind a computer or playing video games instead of chatting with someone you like. Or perhaps spend too much in the soapbox. Ok, that's not amazing. But still, life...
What's the point of this post? None! Except to say it's good time to smile when being the holidays and all.
Jeremy Falcon
modified 5-Dec-17 1:56am.
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Pass whatever you're having. I could use it.
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Sure thing man... (takes a puff) Here ya go...
Jeremy Falcon
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What ever you are smoking, pass it over to me. 
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I look forward to moving back to a country that does not throw you in jail for smoking that stuff.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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There's no law against smoking your socks! 
(Sorry Jeremy - I'll get my coat.)
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
modified 5-Dec-17 6:46am.
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Jeremy Falcon
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There will always some sort of substance that's controlled. If it's not weed, it's something else. We as humans need stuff to argue about... saves us from being bored and actually having to study apparently. People need an escape... whether it's entertainment, weed, booze, pr0n, cocaine, TV, or whatever. Some people need this escape so bad that all rational conversation is left out of it in my experience.
That being said, regardless of the taboo du jour, I do think a natural high is the best one. Substances are a pale comparison to doing life correctly and living on a natural high. And by natural I mean a hormonally induced, internal high.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Especially since the alternative is death.
Have you tried it ? What if it turned out to be the ultimate smile ?
«While I complain of being able to see only a shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is now, since I'm not at a stage of development where I'm capable of seeing it.» Claude Levi-Strauss (Tristes Tropiques, 1955)
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You might be on to something. I've never heard of anyone actually coming back and complaining about it.
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Ha. And while this may be true, I'm in no hurry to find out. Besides, we have all our deaths to be dead. May as well enjoy the ride to get there.
Jeremy Falcon
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Something in the Lounge worth reading. Well done.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Thanks man. And of course... Happy Festivus!
Jeremy Falcon
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I always knew that the CRLF came from Carriage Return and Line Feed from the days of the electronic typewriters ... but never really thought about it logically until today...
In the days of electronic typewriters a Line Feed would be followed by a Carriage Return to move the line down and the return the carriage to the start of the line I have [B]never[/B] seen a typewriter do it the other way around... so why is this reversed in computing?? ... even the enter character symbol ↵ implies that the Line Feed should be done first!...
I even looked up YouTube videos to double check ... and sure enough the LineFeed is done first
Any thoughts  ?? ... Do people agree that logically it should be done the other way around (although I would be against that since I have been conditioned to do it the other way)??
Kris
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And?
(Later...)
As we're talking about computing history, also consider FORTRAN -- what did it use? As I recall the first character (or was it two?) on a line indicated what to do after the Carriage Return.
The discussions always allude to which system you're on, but then only mention Windows, Apple, and UNIX -- which leaves out OpenVMS, which is like totally flexible!
You want CR? You got it.
You want LF? You got it.
You want Fortran? You got it.
You want Fixed format? What size?
Also, in one of the posts someone pointed to, I saw this:
Someone wrote: it was often the "style" to have normal print lines begin with Line Feed and end with Carriage Return
That's how I prefer to read "lines" from text files -- so I know I got the whole thing.
modified 4-Dec-17 21:19pm.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: As I recall the first character (or was it two?) on a line indicated what to do after the Carriage Return.
As I recall...
Punch cards probably varied but the first 6 chars were for the line number. Then the continuation character in the 7th position. And it was on the line that was continuing, not on the first line.
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Having cut my teeth on teleprinters (Yes, I have stripped an ASR-33[^] and reassembled it from a bucket of sheet metal stampings  ) I can tell you that CRLF is right, LFCR is wrong.
The reason for this is that the carriage return is SLOW. But it can be overlapped with the paper feed.
Back in the day, most software would output "CR LF PAD PAD" to be safe.
It took a bit of tuning of the dashpot to get an ASR-33 carriage to have finished bouncing with just CR LF <first character="" on="" the="" new="" line="">, but it could be done.
The Siemens equivalent (which made a sexy purring noise, unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof of the model 33) needed the pads, otherwise the first character of the next line would print "somewhere", generally blurred as the carriage was moving.
Cheers,
Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Peter_in_2780 wrote: unlike the skeletons-copulating-on-a-tin-roof
I play clash of clans (skeletons are one of the participants) and I am not going to be able to get that image out of my head. Hordes of skeletons racing at each other and start shagging AAaaaaaahhhhhhh
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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