LM2596 Variable Voltage Regulator with Built in Voltmeter

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We have just purchased one of the voltage regulators pictured below for REUK product testing. This is a variable voltage regulator which will accept inputs of from 4-40V and output a user set voltage from 1.3-37V at up to 2 Amps. (Input voltage must be at least 1.5V higher than user set output voltage)

lm2596 voltage regulator with voltmeter display
This device is just 3.5 x 6.0cm in size and includes a display to 0.1V resolution of the measured input and output voltages AND it costs a hard to believe £3.51 delivered to anywhere in the world from China.

We will add lots of information about this device together with some photos just as soon as we are done testing. For now, here is a link to get your hands on one or more of these LM2596 regulators to test for yourselves.

Largest Concentrated Solar Power Plant in the World – Shams 1

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The world’s largest concentrated solar power plant started operation on Sunday 17th March 2013.  Costing US$600 million to build, Shams I is located in the desert in the west of Abu Dhabi. The 100 Megawatt power plant will supply electricity to more than 20,000 homes in the United Arab Emirates.

solar-power-plant-shams

100MW Solar Power Plant – Shams I

Covering 2.5 square kilometres, Shams I is an array of 768 solar tracking mirrored parabolic troughs which concentrate the sun’s energy onto a pipe running through the troughs through which oil is pumped. This solar heated oil then passes through a heat exchanger generating steam which drives an electricity generating turbine. More than 250,000 mirrors were used in the construction of the parabolic solar collectors.

solar-concentrators-shams

Shams I – 768 tracking parabolic solar concentrators

Shams I has a dry-cooling system which greatly reduces the amount of water this power plant will use – a vital feature considering its arid desert location. Dry-cooling uses the air to condense exhaust vapour from the steam turbine instead of water. Water cooling is cheaper where possible/practical, but the best geographical locations for solar generation unfortunately tend to be very dry places. It is approximately 5% more expensive to build a concentrated solar power plant with dry-cooling, and the electricity generated will be 10% more expensive than from a water cooled power plant.

At US$600,000,000 for 100,000,000 Watts of installed power, it sounds quite expensive – US$6 per Watt, but perhaps it was all of the associated infrastructure which added to the cost rather than the choice of solar concentrator technology over simple solar photovoltaic technology.

Comparing the costs of this solar concentrating power plant with solar photovoltaic power plants of equivalent size, the Rovigo PV Power Plant in NE Italy cost 276 million Euro for 72MW of installed PV capacity when it was built in 2010 becoming briefly the World’s largest PV power plant (US$5 per Watt), but since then the much larger 145MW Neuhardenberg Solar Park in Germany was constructed for US$365 million, or just US$2.50 per Watt.

12V High Torque Motors

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We have been selling hen house door controllers now for a few years: hen house door controller. Nothing too complicated, just a programmable timer or light detector based controller to turn a motor in one direction in the morning to open the door, and then turn the motor in the opposite direction in the evening to close the door.

We have always recommended using motor car windscreen wiper motors for this application as they are cheaply available, robust, strong, and reversible. But, they are also large, heavy, different motors have different power/current requirements, and they all use far more power than is ideal for this project necessitating big relays and thick cables.

30 RPM 12VDC high torque motor

30 RPM 12VDC high torque motor

After much searching and testing we have finally found an alternative motor which we are happy to recommend for this application. It is a good quality motor fitted to a sturdy gearbox giving a high torque (120 N.cm) low speed (30 RPM) which is perfect for slowly raising a lowering a hen house door.

The motor has a wide diameter (6mm) sturdy shaft onto which it is easy to glue a spool or cog. With a 12.0V supply, this motor draws a super low 40mA (0.04 Amps) when there is no resistance up to a maximum of 500mA (0.5A) when working at its maximum

These motors are priced from £5-8 delivered (from HK / China), so they are also economical too. Click here for more information: 30 rpm high torque 12V geared motors.

There are many other uses for these low power high strength motors which we’ll be exploring soon.