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Mercury Arc Rectifier, then Thyristor, Solid State Relays, Integrated Circuits, CMOS sensors, Mics, & More, AC & DC Trending Power for Decarbonizing Energy with Renewables & Energy Storage

Peter Cooper Hewit invented mercury-arc valve, known also as mercury-vapor rectifier in 1902, to convert grid power AC into commercial DC power for industrial motors, railways, streetcars, subways, radio stations, even an eventually especially to telephones, & servers, mainframes, super computers, desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, smart watches, smart rings, smart clothing, smart appliances, smart furniture, smart cars, smart bikes, smart scooters, smart motorcycles, smart keys, & so many other internet of things today, world wide web, mobile broadband, 5G systems, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Chips, IC's, Graphics Cards, Memory, CPU, Motherboards, RAM, SOC's, & so many other electronics or COTS and scientific equipment and commercially valuable AI accelerators, TOS, ASIC, banking, fintech, accounting, investing.

Literally everything from healthcare to education has been computerized with DC computer systems, while the overwhelming majority of grid power AC or alternating current, so a means to switch AC to DC in so called Power Supplies, Power Conditioning, Power Conversion, Power Storage, Energy Storage, Renewables, Solar, Wind, Thermal, Wave, Tidal, even PV panels of 400W or bigger have tiny integrated DC-AC inverters so smaller higher voltage wires connecting all the panels to a whole home battery system pump AC directly into loads in the home.

Since all the appliances run on AC power, except the Wife Modem, Computers, & other digital electronics aptly named for digits zero and one that define on and off in transistors, often connected by the billion on chipsets or integrated circuits, made as the most complex products every created such that transistors are the highest precision most manufactured device ever, and continue to be so. We are seeing growing global interest in decarbonizing energy, noting how many converging and emerging technologies are enabling renewables to provide more grid energy rapidly consumed by utility customer loads, but where do all those electrons end up going as telluric currents in the earth returning to the power plant?  

Inverters take DC & Output AC, oddly this can go both ways in some setups. I have a portable battery generator, with 512wh LFP battery, but it has an integrated inverter, which takes DC from the LFP and makes AC power 120v 15amps, then my portable fridge has a power adapted for wall power, that I plug into the AC port which then converts the input low noise sign wave AC power into DC power that runs the Portable Fridge, which has a proprietary power connector, while the Battery Generator has all sorts of IO for power :) 

I also have an EU2000 gasoline generator with ECO mode that varies the inverter output to match loads of things plugged into it, our Fridge during a fluke wind storm 8 day power outages for example, then when fridge compressor not operating, onto a 1500w small fan blown ceramic element space heater since it was cold winter, and that combo kept our fridge cold and interior warm during cold winter weather and prolonged power outage, using about 1 gallon every 16 hours per day.

Mercury Arc Lamps emit a cool green white color and operated on early magnetic long-life ballasts, while offering better color rendering than LPS, or HPS orange lights, but not as good as more advanced MH metal halide, which were fully miniaturized for automotive headlights with 12V DC digital ballasts, on 35W MH projectors that had vastly superior optical performance throwing out more light further than older Halogen or Incandescent headlights, while 4200K color temp superior automotive illumination color matches spectral sensitivity of human eye vision which peaks on bright green laser color sensitivity, why all safety gear went from neon orange to neon green also. 

Cold Weather Outside in Winter, Chilly Cool, Cold & Raining, Very Cold, Freezing Cold, Near Freezing, Wind Chills, WTF

Human body has to stay above 95 degrees around 98 degrees to work correctly, for all the cell enzymes to work properly, for DNA transcription and RNA transcription, for organelles to do their job properly, but the average outside temperature of Earth only 59 degrees.

Where metric system widely utilized, 15 deg C equals about 59 deg F, average outside temperature. 

Body temp 35 C means 95 F on low side of hypothermia, normal body temp 36.7 C or 98 F

Many locations have very cold winter temperatures that make walking outside, riding a bicycle outside, riding a motorcycle, flying a paramotor, anything where wind chill going to shove cold air at your body, like riding a Segway or Self Balancing Scooter, all that cold, cold and wet, or cold icy air going to steal body heat from your fingers, tip of nose & ears, especially cold rain which can steal body heat hundreds of times faster than cold dry conditions.

While activities like jumping jacks, walking, doing physical labor, they can increase your metabolism and body heat production, yet if you work too hard or workout too hard all that sweat you generate will cool your skin and promote heat loss in clothing soaked on the inside with sweat, so balancing body temperature in very cold outdoor, means using layers of warm gear, specialized, expensive, and it makes living in colder climates more costly from heating home more utility bills elevated, same for heating water, for heating laundry to dry it, for running dishwasher, for cooking, when temperatures outside are colder your warm home loses expensive heat faster to environment, meaning you have to pay more for electricity and natural gas or fuel oil or coal or wood to heat your home in the winter.

What about when you are outside on your own operating a chainsaw to cut down dead tree's in the arctic like Luke Nicols of Outdoor Boys, to generate dry wood to make a fire, or to load into a foldable metal camping stove inside a hot tent, with a special exhaust pipe into a fireproof jack in the tent that allows the super hot pipe to not melt the tent material. 

But dragging a 10lb or 4kg metal stove and pipe kit in a backpack, along with a chainsaw and fuel, food, water, this can add up to a 80lbs of gear for 1 adult man to live in super cold for a few days, assuming he uses much of his day to harvest dead trees for wood fuel to burn to make a fire for heating an improvised snow structure made using a shovel aluminum folding camping model, all the gear, lights, stove, utensils, must be aluminum, titanium or thin stainless steel to keep weight down, while a warm tent material has to be waterproof for winter, a problem of moisture building up on the inside which can soak your sleeping bag, clothing, shoes, gloves, hat, if you bump it at all, so a careful balancing act of moisture control, heating, and warm gear must be carefully chosen otherwise freezing to death a very real danger that has claimed the lives of many unprepared young men trying to emulate what they see in YouTube videos of camping in the arctic blizzard, without understanding all the special precautions and special gear required. even a folding camping saw can work wonders to cut down dead smaller trees for firewood, without weight, fuel & complexity of bringing a chainsaw system along for the ride. 

I wonder about correct indoor temperatures to heat a home for comfort. Why do people choose to live in area with terrible cold winter weather. Noting that most developing economies have very warm conditions allowing low-cost living with less energy use per person? That living and operating in very cold conditions uses tons of energy, as noted the extreme amount of wood consumed when Luke Nicols camping in sub-freezing arctic conditions, for one person, their body weight or many times that of dead dry wood required to keep them warm overnight, extremely resource intensive, not exactly a model for 8.3 billion people to follow, but as noted about warm countries with developing economies, most of Earth's people live in warmer locations, and I actually think its stupid and unwise to live in very cold conditions that drive up energy consumption 3-8X more, at great cost, not just for the energy, but also all the additional emissions.

Again, why do people choose to live in very cold locations, that seems stupid given body temperature requirements. The larger the difference between body temperature and outside temperature means more energy, more gear, more costs, more emissions, more complication, more room for failure. In the so-called cradle of life the outside temperature means no one is going to accidentally freeze to death at night while sleeping. 

Consider the life of Christ Jesus and people living in, near and around those areas that he frequented, they wore leather handmade sandals, open toe, a tunic body sized garment made of hand rolled animal wool spun on a stick slowly and tediously or linen, and such that clothing made this way extremely expensive, a Tunic made of hand spun wool, then hand weaved, can take hundred of hours to make for one person, and in today's US dollars given us labor costs, that would eat up 7 days wages today, around $1000 with the handmade leather sandals, effectively like one week wages back then or a silver denarius at the height of the Roman Empire

There was no such thing as cheap fast fashion in antiquity, no mass manufacturing fabric. In fact, one of my primary complains about paramotoring, the wings, an proper well made EN-A wing can cost as much as $3400 to $7000, almost or more than the cost of the carbon fiber rod, aluminum frame, Italian low mass forced air cooled 80cc Atom 80 motor combo with all additional gear, so the system costs $12,500, when in reality the mass produced synthetic fabric in the larger paragliding wing only costs a couple hundred bucks, the major cost design, made to order, they are a low volume niche product, not mass produced like fast fashion garments leverage to cost reductions achieve in high volume manufacturing, and the same can be said for nuclear reactors and supercars, when it's all custom and low volume, costs are extremely high. 

Jay Leno for example has a Turbine Powered Supercar custom made by GM in collaboration with a Helicopter manufacture, and cost just short of $970K to make, and so loud that his wife refuses to ride in it, and it had to be reworked several times to correct issues, since it was a one-off custom build. Even Y2K motorcycle, use a repurposed helicopter turboshaft engine system, FADEC electronics & cost about $100K in the year 2000. 

I have watched a fair number of Refurbish videos on YouTube, where in India, somewhere in India, men in cheap sandals, on dirt roads, on rural lots, are using outdoor sand blasting, outdoor spray painting, wire wheels on angle grinders, you can hear animals and kids making a racket in background, they take old motorcycles that are all rusty, graphics are messed up, lubricating oils in fork dried out, the chain funky, it needs extensive cleaning, refinishing, new parts too, you see them open packages of new wire harnesses, new headlights, new dash display, often 1980s models, with zero emissions controls, that are illegal to sell in America, even comparing $6000 all said new cost of US model Yamaha MT03 to the exact same model sold in India without emissions controls for $1870 all said, why does the US model cost $4599, there is no way the US emissions controls add that much additional cost. 

The point is that it is infinitely more practical to live and operate as a person in warmer weather. Doing that same kind of refurbish work in America means you need a giant shop building, diesel heater unit, and all sorts of specialized gear to do the same work inside, without exposing your lungs to toxic particles of VOC fumes, so you do not poison yourself refurbishing a motorcycle, given value of a human life, cost of treating diseases caused by VOC inhalation, Cancer, or breathing particles from rusty paint, lung cancer or COPD, as examples of expensive to treat diseases from such exposures.