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Tuesday, August 17th, 2021
| Time | Event |
| 3:30a | World's Largest Solar-Powered Battery Is Now 75% Complete An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: The Manatee Energy Storage Center -- the world's largest solar-powered battery storage facility -- is now 75% finished with 100 of 132 total containers already installed, reveals a press release from Florida Power and Light Company (FPL). The battery is housed in Manatee County as the name indicates and is expected to be fully operational by the end of the year. When completed, the system will have a 409-MW capacity with the ability to deliver 900 MWh of energy. This is enough electricity to power 329,000 homes for more than two hours. The battery will serve to replace FPL's coal plants. The battery will store energy in order to bring electricity to homes even when the sun's not shining (at night and on cloudy days) meaning other more polluting power sources will not be required. Although customers are bound to see some financial benefits the main gains will be environmental. According to FPL, each battery module is capable of storing an amount of solar energy equivalent to roughly 2,000 iPhone batteries. The complete battery system will be equivalent to 100 million iPhone batteries and the energy storage containers will be organized across a 40-acre plot of land (the equivalent of 30 football fields). The battery will have a lifespan of 40 years. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.  |
| 4:05p | Gigabyte Will Replace 'Exploding' PSUs, Downplays Risk UnknowingFool writes: Gigabyte announced it will replace PSU models GP-P850GM and GP-P750GM that fail after HardwareBusters and Gamer's Nexus both showed their PSUs fail catastrophically in small explosions. Gigabyte however downplayed the risk by misstating the failed PSUs only exploded after prolonged extreme conditions and that the problem had been corrected last year. Both HardwareBusters and GamerNexus contest multiple points from Gigabyte. Both stated that their units failed quickly under moderate to light loads. In the case of Gamer's Nexus they obtained some units as late as May 2021. This issue was first reported in November 2020, when Hardware Busters evaluated a GP-P750GM model and found it exploded during testing. After many Newegg customers reported multiple issues with two Gigabyte models, Gamer's Nexus purchased or obtained units from customers over the course of several months in the spring. Their testing found 5 out of 10 units failed quickly during OPP (Over Power Protection) testing. A normal OPP scenario should have had the PSU shut down to protect itself. Instead, some of the units exploded. A further complication arose when Newegg customers tried to return failed units. Many of the PSUs were bought in Newegg Shuffle bundles with GPUs, and customers would have to return both the GPU and the PSU. Considering the GPU shortage, most Newegg customers complained about this requirement.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 10:02p | Boston Dynamics Teaches Atlas Robot Parkour An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCMag: Boston Dynamics taught its robots to dance last year, now one of them can complete a parkour course. The robot company, which is owned by Hyundai, has released two new videos today. The first shows off how well the Atlas robot can perform parkour, while the second video takes us behind the scenes and explains how Atlas works. It's actually the first time Atlas has managed to complete the complex obstacle course flawlessly, and Boston wants to celebrate that. After the dancing video last year, we all expect Boston's robots to do amazing things now, and the parkour video doesn't disappoint. But what it doesn't show is all the hard work, missteps, and problems that need fixing in order to make these demonstrations possible. That's what the second video reveals, and it's the first time I've seen these robots breakdown and leak fluids. There's a hardware team, a software team, technicians, and operations staff required to make this whole operation work. Each Atlas requires three onboard computers in order to process the sensor data and run the algorithms allowing this 5ft, 190lbs robot to move with 28-degrees of freedom without falling over (very often). And even though we're asking these robots to do the same actions as humans, it's a very different challenge.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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