1 November
In the evening I drove Sun Roper to Christiansburg to put him in a race-car trailer to haul to the Civic Center in Roanoke for display at the Green Living and Energy Expo.
2 November
You can also follow the price of natural gas. It took a big jump yesterday to $8.64/MMBTU.
On a related subject, you might find my latest web page interesting.
Also, my latest project about solar greenhouses. Last Saturday I gave a talk about it at the Sustainability Week 2007 in Blacksburg .
Sun Roper delivered a Roanoke City Council member from the display area of the Roanoke Civic Center to the lobby for her to open the Green Living and Energy Expo. That was on WDBJTV, but I did not see it. Nearly 100 people stopped by to talk about Sun Roper and electric and hybrid cars at the Expo. I gave a talk on plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles. A picture of Sun Roper at the Green Living and Energy Expo in Roanoke VA was featured in the Virginia section of the Roanoke Times on 3 November:
See the Green Living and Energy Expo web page for two pictures of Sun Roper.
I ordered a battery tester:
When testing a battery in the chain of six batteries, the charge equalizer (PowerCheq in my case) needs to be unconnected from it.
3 November
Spent the day with SR at the Green Living and Energy Expo. I must have talked to 100 people about it. Several seemed very interested in possibly getting a Xebra.
5 November
It appears that I have one or more bad batteries. I only got 18 miles range today. Are my batteries still under warranty with Discover
An electician installed a plug in my driveway for charging Sun Roper:
The wiring is such that it can be easily converted to 220 volts in the future.
9 November
I got the battery tester today and tried to use it to test Sun Roper's batteries. The clamps do not clamp well on the terminals; they got red hot and almost melted. I am going to get some heavy-duty lugs to replace the clamps, so that I can bolt them onto the terminals. With the problematic connections I could not get two of the batteries to go to the 414 amperes (3 times the amp-hrs or 3x138) that the instructions indicate for a test. After I get the lugs on the tester, I will test all 6 batteries again.
I used the Chicago Electric Power Tools 500 Amp Carbon Pile Load Tester to test Sun Ropers's Discover EV12A-A, 138 Amp-hours @ 20 hours batteries. They all appear to be ok. The test was 400 amperes for 15 seconds; the results are:
Battery |
Volts before |
Volts during |
Volts after |
|---|---|---|---|
1 |
12.92 |
10.6 |
13.01 |
2 |
12.95 |
10.6 |
13.03 |
3 |
12.93 |
10.6 |
13.02 |
4 |
12.95 |
10.6 |
13.03 |
5 |
12.94 |
10.6 |
13.01 |
6 |
12.92 |
10.8 |
12.95 |
I got a new door liner (Metro Molded Products part #MW00100) from Mark Higley today to replace the frayed one on SR's driver's side.
Mark sent me the Delta QuiQ-charger programmer on loan. I need to know which algorithms I need to download into the charger and which one should be the default one.
Mark said that the algorithm I need to install on the Delta QuiQ charger is number 42. I got the QuiQ programmer software installed on my tablet PC. In the next few days I will try it out. Is there an algorithm that will restart the charger every hour or so after it quits charging? The current algorithm turns off when finished charging and does not turn back on. I sometimes turn it off myself and then back on to let it charge some more after running the desulfator or just after a few hours of self discharge.
I got the door liner installed. It is very high quality. The only problem is that it is so thick that I have to slam the door hard to completely shut it.
25 November
Running desulfator most of the time when SR is at home. My theory is that the several times I ran the batteries all the way down greatly sulfated them and I have not run the desulfator enough to get rid of the large crystals.