[ExI] alpha customer

Sun Nov 23 23:04:27 UTC 2025

Woohooo!

We have our first customer!  I was out for a walk and met this guy, name =
Ben.  I dropped him a note after we spoke about an hour ago.  This note
isn't to our Ben, but rather that guy, but like our Ben, he comes across as
a hell of a nice guy and very smart.  He isn't an engineer, but sees the
value in proles coming up with alternative uses for underutilized car
charging ports to keep the businesses alive so that it stays available for
EV drivers.

The bad news is.

Well, read on please.  This is what I sent to Ben the EV guy:

Ben, you and I spoke about half an hour ago up at the charging station,
where I think you may be the first power buyer from that facilty.

This station opened 13 days ago.  There is another non-Musk station at the
next exit south, eight port, opened for about 6 years now (it was already
charging before covid started in Dec 2019.)  I go by there often.  Most of
the time there are no cars charging there, but sometimes one.  I have never
seen more than one at that station.

Regarding that idear we discussed while you were charging: as we were
speaking I thought of something that might make the whole idea a no-fly
zone.  I may have (as in "I DID") underestimate the cost of cooling the
processors.  I guessed at it before I did any calculations.  My original
idear was to have the processors air cooled, but a processor hipster friend
said that it wouldn't work.  I didn't ask him why, but I did the calcs and
realized he was right: there wouldn't be enough cooling capacity available
for even the 15 processor version of the mobile calculation station, never
mind the 55 processor which uses that high-speed charger where you are
parked.  From what I can tell, it would get too hot in the minivan.  

So next I thought of liquid cooling, drawing the pressure down to about 3
MPa, perhaps in pressure cookers drawn down rather than pressured up, let
the boiling distilled water carry away the heat.

I walked home, sharpened my pencil, don't like what I see: the power cost of
just cooling the processors by that method is higher than the power cost of
the processor itself.  I will check my work, and it might be wrong (I hope
it is) but I don't see my mistake yet.  

Second bad news: the power you were buying up there is more expensive than I
realized.

Sigh.  

No worries, all is not lost.  All is merely. temporarily misplaced, I hope.
If instead of water in phase change, which I now think is an inherently bad
idea because of corrosion, the water would only go to about 50C, then draw
the coolant out to a water to air heat exchanger, like a more sincere
version of the radiator on a truck.  If we go that route, there are
lower-corrosion coolants available, such as ethylene glycol or mineral
spirits or soybean glycerol or any saponified triglyceride, so long as it is
a low-corrosive coolant.  

We already know the last three items on that short list (and possibly four
(I don't know much about ethylene glycol (but it seems to do fine in the
radiator of your car (well, not YOUR car, but mine)))) will not be giving
away any oxygen atoms, and they have no free hydrogen, so those won't
corrode the electronics.  We know that straight ethylene glycol can take the
heat, as will mineral spirits.

Initial calcs suggest that approach might work, but I have more calculating
to do and I don't know much about heat transfer rates on those coolants or
what happens if I try to use three or four Diesel truck radiators as heat
exchangers (not because they are optimal but because they are cheap (they
don't need to be new (and I already own one.)))

If I ever get this notion to the critical design review stage, I will
include you on the cc of potential investors if you wish.  I need to look
into the market: who is buying processed data and so on, and how much is it
worth, etc.

Yours,

spike

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