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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Sailboats can operate at lower power levels, because their displacement hull is efficient at low speeds. (Where a planeing hull needs higher speeds to get more efficient.) When I had solar electric sail boat, I could motor at 2 knots with no wind using only 500w of solar without touching the battery. I usually ran it at 3.5 knots if there was no wind, which gave me lots of range on battery for a full day on the water.

    They also have the sail as a primary power source when there’s enough wind, so you don’t always need the electric motor. Sometimes, if the wind is strong enough, you can use the water turning the propeller to generate electricity to charge the battery. Or if the wind is light, you can use the motor to add more speed than sail alone, using less battery than using electric alone.



  • brianorca@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldCords
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    2 months ago

    In AC, diodes work half the time, every 1/60 second. The “good” LEDs will have circuitry to fully rectify the AC into DC, drop the voltage properly, and smooth the peaks and valleys, so they will be continuously lit. So the cheap LED Christmas lights might have a slight flicker, and the good ones are steady. (Or get fancy with chasing colors, etc.)

    All of that happens inside each of the “bulb” enclosures, or sometimes in a box at one end, so it technically doesn’t matter which end they are getting electricity from, since the socket at the far end is still just connected in parallel to the plug at the near end. (Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to link them together.)

    It’s just a really bad dangerous idea to reverse them.




  • It would still work. But it is VERY dangerous. 1. The far end of the light string will now have exposed metal prongs that are energized at 120v, which can be fatal. 2. If the other end gets plugged into a socket, there is a 50% chance it will be a different circuit on a different phase, which can create a 240v direct short, across a wire that has no properly sized circuit breaker. 3. Using it to plug a generator into your house during a power outage can kill electrical workers trying to fix the outage if you fail to open your circuit breakers.



  • Two things: 1: there’s a high chance you do cross live and neutral, or even live and live on different phases. 2: using it to plug in a generator to power your house can kill electrical workers who are trying to restore a power outage. (If you fail to open your circuit breaker.)