Anyone use portable power stations.

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by UncleTim

What does watts translate to, using this water metaphor?

Originally Posted by alanmalk

To your water bill at the end of the month.

No, the bill is based only on volume of water, not the pressure at which it was delivered. The water volume (on the bill or not) corresponds to battery capacity (current in amps multiplied by time in hours, just as volumetric flow rate in whatevers per hour multiplied by hours of time flowing is the volume of water used in whatever volume unit you like). When you charge your battery with a current over a period of time, you're filling your electrical energy tank (metaphorically).

[alanmalk]

Originally Posted by Brian B-P

No, the bill is based only on volume of water, not the pressure at which it was delivered. ...

Very true. Plus the bill is not based on the diameter of the pipe or hose that was used (aka "resistance"). It is a grand total and you are paying based on this number.

If you are paying for electricity it is convenient to say "you pay us (the Electric Company) based on the grand total of kilowatt-hours". But kWh is just a shortcut for the total energy ( 1 kWh = 3.6 mega joules ). Note - no reference to time in joules, just a grand total number.

I would maintain that joules of power is conceptually the same as gallons(liters) of water.
At this point in the thread I can practically hear the eyes rolling in their sockets...
--
Alan

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by alanmalk

Very true. Plus the bill is not based on the diameter of the pipe or hose that was used (aka "resistance"). It is a grand total and you are paying based on this number.

If you are paying for electricity it is convenient to say "you pay us (the Electric Company) based on the grand total of kilowatt-hours". But kWh is just a shortcut for the total energy ( 1 kWh = 3.6 mega joules ). Note - no reference to time in joules, just a grand total number.

I agree with that.

Originally Posted by alanmalk

I would maintain that joules of power is conceptually the same as gallons(liters) of water.

But that doesn't work as an extension of the voltage => pressure and current => flow analogy, because the electrical bill is for energy, not total charge (integrated current). 12 kWh at home is 100 amp-hours at 120 volts, and that is very different from 100 amp-hours at 12 volts (only 1.2 kWh) into the trailer's battery; voltage matters, and is an integral part of the energy value. The electrical bill is for energy, not charge; the water bill is for volume (like charge), not the energy taken to push that volume into your house.

[sclifrickson]

Uh...I like turtles.

[cpaharley2008]

Anyone know why there are water towers in use in smaller municipalities? Electricity rates is cheaper at night, so they fill up the tanks then and let gravity perform its job during the day...al least that is what I was told?

[UncleTim]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

Anyone know why there are water towers in use in smaller municipalities? Electricity rates is cheaper at night, so they fill up the tanks then and let gravity perform its job during the day...al least that is what I was told?

Regardless of when they fill it up or how, they do to establish a hydraulic gradient line to all the water lines serving the city. With solar pumps now and battery storage systems you can charge in the day and pump at night, or any other time.

If that tower is 200 feet in the air (that is modest), then you have established 86.6 pounds of head (pressure). Usually you need more than that because when you run water thru a service line you develop friction. Different coefficients (c value) for different materials. Copper is one of the best. So you lose pressure.

200 x .433 = 86.6 pounds of pressure.

So it is an easy way to pressurize the towns water lines and supply constant pressure and pump as you stated.

Note of interest. In my town the water travels down several thousand feet, from the continental divide. We have step down stations and a very sophisticated water delivery system. But the city routinely experiences streets and intersections that blow up and flood the entire area. All because of severe head due to elevation. The pipes can't take it.

[alanmalk]

Originally Posted by sclifrickson

Uh...I like turtles.

I knew that would happen!



And on further investigation I realize now that a joule of energy requires a voltage value.
So UncleTim is correct.


Perhaps I should have said garden hose "watts" are more like the time it takes to fill the trailer tank.
Even though the tank holds 25 gallons, the faster you can fill it, the more "watts" you are using.


I'm going back to isolation now so you can all eat breakfast in peace.

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

Anyone know why there are water towers in use in smaller municipalities? Electricity rates is cheaper at night, so they fill up the tanks then and let gravity perform its job during the day...al least that is what I was told?

That makes sense now, but water towers were around before there were electric pumps to fill them, and even now many areas do not have lower electricity rates at night.

Water towers are only common in smaller communities because a big city would need too many of them, or towers which are too big (and too tall, in order to provide enough pressure for tall buildings), so they just give up on towers and run pumps continuously.

A house with a well normally uses a tank with an air cushion to maintain pressure (a big version fo the little accumulators which some people have added to their Escapes), rather than an elevated tank; however, in some places rooftop tanks are actually used.

An RV could use the water tower idea (for actual water), by putting the fresh water tank on the roof, allowing gravity to push it out faucets, and skipping the water pump. I'm not recommending this...

Originally Posted by UncleTim

Regardless of when they fill it up or how, they do to establish a hydraulic gradient line to all the water lines serving the city.
...
If that tower is 200 feet in the air (that is modest), then you have established 86.6 pounds of head (pressure).

Yes, water towers are reservoirs of water (just as a battery is a reservoir of charge) with elevation allowing it to come out with pressure (just as a battery stores charge with voltage). Raising the water gives it potential energy, just as forcing it into a pressurized container would. Voltage is properly known as electrical potential, but it similarly represents the potential for charge to deliver energy when it is release.

Using energy to pump water up into a water tower is a good analogy for pushing (with voltage) charge into a battery. The water level in the tower represent the battery voltage, with the level going down to the bottom of the elevated tank corresponding to battery voltage getting down to the voltage at which it is considered discharged. A high-capacity battery is a big (wide) water tank; a higher-voltage battery (e.g. 24 volts instead of 12 volts) would be a taller tower.

So, yes...

Originally Posted by UncleTim

Calculate at .433 pounds per vertical feet which equals head (in a hydraulic gradient line), that builds up p.s.i. pretty fast. Would pressure equate to a power station?

I have always wondered about this analogy.

... a hydroelectric power station taking water from an elevated reservoir to produce electrical energy (behind a dam or waterfall) is analogous to a battery delivering charge from some voltage (potential). Stored energy in the water reservoir is the product of volume and potential energy per volume (which depends on height, acceleration of gravity, and density); stored energy in the battery is the product of charge (in units such as amp-hours) and potential (voltage).


Analogies can be very useful to help understand technology which is hard to grasp (anything electrical or sub-atomic) by comparing it to technology with which people are more familiar (water flow in this case). They can get very convoluted because the mapping between the real world and the analogy never works out entirely nicely, and because most people don't understand the "familiar" technology as well as they initially expect.

[sclifrickson]

Western Pond Turtles and Painted Turtles are native to Washington, but Pond Sliders are invasive.

[UncleTim]

Do your Western Painted turtles have that multi pointed, splotch, dark overlay on the underside?

That's the way we tell between Eastern and Western varieties.

If you're diving or snorkeling, you can see it when they surface above you.

[sclifrickson]

Originally Posted by UncleTim

Do your Western Painted turtles have that multi pointed, splotch, dark overlay on the underside?

That's the way we tell between Eastern and Western varieties.

If you're diving or snorkeling, you can see it when they surface above you.

I didn’t know, so looked it up. According to the inter webs, the Western variant’s bottom shell has a large colored splotch that spreads to the edges (further than the midland) and often has red hues.

[Iowa Dave]

For the dead of winter Christmas Day yesterday was a good day for us up here at 42 degrees
latitude. 32kWh per day average for December makes me happy. I have about 3,000 kWh in the bank for the year. My reset date is in late April so even if I didn’t get anything for Jan, Feb, and March my electric bill for the month would be $12.95. My water bill is part of the HOA dues. So unlimited water at 60 lbs pressure. We’re heating and cooling with geothermal. We’re using about $400 per year worth of propane for cooking, fireplace and water heater. (1 fill on a 500 gallon tank). My gasoline and beer bill is about the same as my utilities. Waiting on a little more range on electric vehicles.
Used to fish for snappers but got where I just didn’t like killing them.
Iowa Dave

[Bobbie54]

Originally Posted by Brian B-P

That makes sense now, but water towers were around before there were electric pumps to fill them, and even now many areas do not have lower electricity rates at night.

Water towers are only common in smaller communities because a big city would need too many of them, or towers which are too big (and too tall, in order to provide enough pressure for tall buildings), so they just give up on towers and run pumps continuously.

Our water comes from a small water association (47 hookups) and is pumped uphill to a tank. If demand is high it can also go directly down the line to the houses. The advantage of the water tower is that it stores water so that if the power goes off or there is a lot of usage, it takes longer to run out. Sort of like that extra battery. interestingly, though, our well is artesian so water would come out without the pump- it just won't go to the tank without it. Also, and totally irrelevant to this thread (whatever it is about) the other water company on our road has a tank, too, near ours, well is also near ours, and if one of our pumps fails we have a cross-connection to draw water from the other system.

We recently used that for <12 hrs when a pump died and got some flack from someone in the other system but records showed that the last time it happened they used ours for a week. No more complaints..

Now back to turtles. In a pinch my portable power station could run the deicers currently on my turtle tanks.

[oldwave]

Originally Posted by gbaglo

I got a jump from a friend. Got the car home and called BCAA. They arrived shortly and installed my new battery for a reasonable price. I didn't have to go anywhere or buy anything else, or haul it around.

Not if your in the back country, my little lithium ion jump starter saved my bacon more than once
By the way I’ve saved a few turtles in my time including a giant snapper that wanted to take me out, hint I won and lived to see another day.

[Centex]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

Anyone know why there are water towers in use in smaller municipalities? Electricity rates is cheaper at night, so they fill up the tanks then and let gravity perform its job during the day...al least that is what I was told?

Ground surface elevations in the Austin, TX metro area (hardly a small municipality) range from ~370'MSL to ~1430'MSL with an average around 740'MSL.

The municipal water distribution system is divided into numerous 'pressure planes' with very large (10 million gallon) steel reservoirs scattered through the city (above-ground but certainly not on stilts like a tower - think giant oil-refinery and oil-reserve storage tanks). Some sites have multiple water reservoirs.

Though not "towers", those reservoirs are considered "elevated storage" in 'water-system-speak' and serve an identical function on a much larger scale.

That system using "elevated-storage" provides

• gravity-flow distribution with adequate pressure (but not too much pressure) to the vast majority of the city. The reservoir serving you may be on higher-ground far-away on the other side of town even though you may see a nearby reservoir (serving another area some distance away and lower-elevation than your neighborhood).
• off-peak pumping efficiencies to fill reservoirs
• more efficient water treatment-plant sizing and operation (the reservoirs act as 'buffers' so treatment-plants can operate with fewer and lower peak demands and be sized accordingly in terms of plant-capacity)

In the design of water distribution (and wastewater collection) systems ya use the terrain nature provides you (and gravity) to optimize facility capital cost and continuing operating (pumping energy) cost for best life-cycle economics.

The same principles apply when natural terrain is less advantageous, so system designers may 'create their own high-terrain' using water towers when that's feasible and lends to overall best life-cycle cost.

As a *general rule* systems which require direct-pumping (rather than gravity) to meet service-pressure demands are more expensive to both build and operate. But sometimes that's the only feasible alternative; those systems may still employ very large reservoirs for the 'buffering' advantages they afford.

[John in Santa Cruz]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

Anyone know why there are water towers in use in smaller municipalities? Electricity rates is cheaper at night, so they fill up the tanks then and let gravity perform its job during the day...al least that is what I was told?

larger towns out west here used big water tanks on hills instead. towers aren't a good idea in earthquake country, and even the ones that still stand aren't actually in use anymore. example:
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.5132...7i16384!8i8192

[Iowa Dave]

My home town of Cedar Rapids Iowa has quite a history of water tanks, towers, wells and water distribution systems owing to its major employers needing to use millions of gallons of water in food processing. I had oversight for maintaining the turf grass over the Bever park tank. In my years there were two murders on the tank, a few suicides, and enough babies conceived to fill an elementary school on this landmark. Read the article if you’re so inclined.
https://www.thegazette.com/news/time...ark-reservoir/
Iowa Dave

[Ron in BC]

Originally Posted by Centex

In the design of water distribution (and wastewater collection) systems ya use the terrain nature provides you (and gravity) to optimize facility capital cost and continuing operating (pumping energy) cost for best life-cycle economics.

When I first moved to this area I was at the point where the large pipes from the reservoir far up the valley emerged. I soon learned that if you put a stand pipe before your house regulator the hose pressure was a virtual pressure washer.

Alas, over time they installed regulators on all the branch pipes probably to extend the life of the system. Now all I have is a measly 60 psi, don't even need a house regulator. Good things never last.

Ron

[gbaglo]

I had to replace the water line from the mains. Had plumber ask if I wanted my outside tap installed before or after the pressure reduction valve. I chose before, and then I gave my pressure washer to my son-in-law.