#field-guide for #mushrooms in #Argentina: “García, R.; Ranieri, M.C.; Tajani, S.; Bo, C.; Paolucci, N. & Romano, G.M. 2023. Guía ilustrada de identificación de hongos. Ed. Fundación Hongos de Argentina para la Sustentabilidad. 46 p.” #formina
another #field-guide for #mushrooms in #Argentina: “Romano, G.M.; Vignale, M.V. & Niveiro, N. 2023. Guía de identificación de hongos con laminillas. Ed. Fundación Hongos de Argentina para la Sustentabilidad. 88 p.”
A third #field-guide for #mushrooms in #Argentina, but this time in Patagonia
#solar #energy update from the #USA in this #SEIA press release from two days ago about the “U.S. Solar Market Insight Q2 2024 report”: manufacturing capacity increases to 27 gigawatts in Q1 02024 (per year), 11.8 gigawatts pear year more than Q4 02023; 10 new gigawatts of utility-scale #photovoltaic deployed in Q1 (largely in Florida and Texas, but also including 686 megawatts in New Mexico and 546 megawatts in Ohio); and total US solar capacity (installed nameplate generation capacity, I think) is expected to double over the next five years, reaching 438 gigawatts by 02029. According to the slide at the top, solar represents 55% of new US electricity-generation capacity added in 02023 (“over 40 GW”) and 75% of new capacity in Q1 02024; the remainder is 9% of storage and 16% of wind. In 02023 storage was 14%, wind was 12%, natural gas was 17% (fairly steady since 02020), and “other” was 2%. Coal has been at zero since 02015.
#SEIA talks more about #USA #photovoltaic #energy: 11.8 gigawatts (“GWdc”) installed in Q1 02024, 9.8 of which was utility-scale #solar. Residential solar installations shrank 25% from a year ago to only 1.3 gigawatts, due to California.
More from #SEIA’s #USA #photovoltaic #energy report (this is the executive summary): Florida installed 2.7 gigawatts in Q1 02024, Texas installed 2.6. New installations in the “commercial #solar segment” (“distributed solar projects with commercial, industrial, agricultural, school, government, or nonprofit offtakers, including remotely net-metered projects”) declined 34% from Q4 02023 to 434 megawatts. “Community solar” (“part of formal programs where multiple residential and non-residential customers can subscribe to the power produced by a local solar project and receive credits on their utility bills”) also declined, 32%, to 279 megawatts. Interestingly, SEIA here cites import tariffs as a major problem: “In this report, we’ve accounted for the updates to the Section 201 tariffs, notably the removal of the bifacial module exemption. And while the Section 301 tariffs were doubled (from 25% to 50%) for Chinese solar cells and modules, the tariff increase will not have a significant direct impact on the US solar industry, given the low volume (less than 0.1%) of Chinese imports. This report does not yet incorporate the impacts of potential new antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) on imports of crystalline silicon cells and modules from four Southeast Asia countries.” I somehow thought SEIA were among the people backing the tariffs; I guess I got that wrong! Apparently part of the spike here is that the AD/CVD had a temporary two-year waiver which just expired, and the cells imported under the waiver had to be utilized within 180 days. Most alarmingly: “While [the expectation of installing 40 gigawatts a year over the next five years] is certainly proof of the solar industry’s strong standing in the energy transition, it also represents a slowdown of industry growth. The growth patterns vary amongst segments, but average annual growth between now and 2029 is 3%.” They also have a set of cost breakdowns for “turnkey installed price”, coming in at 98¢ per watt for “utility-scale fixed-tilt”, slightly higher than last year and almost half due to about 40¢ for the PV module itself. Residential is at 325¢, with about 20¢ for the PV module.
more #SEIA #USA #photovoltaic #energy data. Mentions that 6% of all US electrical generation is now #solar (though it’s unclear if this is nameplate capacity or generated energy). CSP remains marginal.
#video on salvaging the mirror #brushless motor from a laser printer. #hoarding by #Zafer-Yildiz. I expect disappointment from watching a video of his previously. Jesus fuck, he’s touching the first-surface mirrors with his fingers. Which are dirty. ALL OF THEM. Good tip on identifying power rails from the polarization of a smoothing cap. By grounding different signal lines on the connector through a 1kΩ resistor he gets it to spin up! But shows no waveforms. He gets it to spin faster by overvolting it (initially 12V from his lab supply.) By feeding in a varying-frequency sine wave on a control pin he also gets different speeds. Not that bad a video for 5 minutes I guess.
#Coy-Beardmore #video on salvaging industrial robot arms. Holy shit, US$80 for a cleanroom #SCARA arm. And then a guy who has a warehouse full of used robot arms gave him another one, plus the power supply and control electronics, for free. So then he spent a bunch of time with a vertical milling machine making solid steel rails to mount the robot arms on. Adept V+ is running in a windowing environment I don’t recognize, on some kind of OS with drive letters. Software dates 01984-01995, supporting TCP/IP, and V+ is apparently from 02000. He had to troubleshoot a short circuit in the wire to the Z-axis home sensor, whose insulation had frayed; it kept blowing a 2-amp fuse when the switch closed. There’s some kind of weird bespoke programming language visible at 4'56". #hoarding #robotics
The #Minix Git repo is still online but I can’t clone it.