I tore down another 21 laptop batteries, so I have about 200 cells now. If they each could deliver 1000 mAh, I guesstimated there’s enough energy to:
Boil 1L of water.
Run a fridge for 1/5 of a day.
Cook a whole chicken.
Keep a cell phone charged for 60 hours.

Lithium ion 18650 cells usually have more than 1000 mAh capacity. If I had 1000 batteries things start to get serious, because I could entertain the idea of running some appliances entirely from solar or wind energy. The key with batteries is to avoid deep discharge cycles.

This project is more for fun and learning rather than money. If it broke even I would consider it a success. But, maybe if my setup lasts long enough it could save some money. I’m only $80 deep so far. With what we pay for electricity in this province, and how it’s increasing every year, maybe this is the right path for me.

At this stage I need to work on testing the batteries and building charge and discharge circuits. I plan to design and build everything myself to better my skills as an electrical engineer.

Can you spot the difference? I had made several mistakes measuring 0.3 up to 1mm. These antennas were made on a precision mill able to place a 0.254mm bit down to the 0.0254mm. Needless to say my mistakes were way outside of tolerance… Thankfully our technicians are forgiving and kind!

This patch antenna works at 3.4 GHz and uses sequentially rotated feed to achieve circular polarization.

Patch antennas are really great. They can achieve high gain in arrays, and also CP using a variety of techniques. One is sequential rotation, where array elements are rotated and phase shifted to follow the polarization of the EM wave.

One area where CP is important is satellite communication, because the orientation of the satellite relative to ground station is difficult to ascertain and control. It is simpler to use RHCP or LHCP to avoid polarization loss. This patch antenna is designed for 3.4 GHz and can fit on a 2U or 3U CubeSat.