Anybody know anything about Solar or Geothermal energy?

PeterZ wrote:I believe the are more than one and they give much more light than Terra experiences.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Do we know if it is due to a higher albedo, or greater size?

DrakBibliophile wrote:Only one Moon has been mentioned. David Weber has said that it's both larger than our Moon and has a higher albedo.

DrakBibliophile wrote:Only one Moon has been mentioned. David Weber has said that it's both larger than our Moon and has a higher albedo.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Is that in one of the info dumps, or was it in a post from before when I joined the forum? Is it possible to give a pointer to the info? Thanks

A Note on Safeholdian Timekeeping
image

The Safeholdian day is 26 hours and 31 minutes long. Safehold’s year is 301.32 local days in length, which works out to .91 Earth standard years. It has one major moon, named Langhorne, which orbits Safehold in 27.6 local days, so the lunar month is approximately 28 days long.
The Safeholdian day is divided into twenty-six 60-minute hours, and one 31-minute period, known as “Langhorne’s Watch,” which is used to adjust the local day into something which can be evenly divided into standard minutes and hours.
The Safeholdian calendar year is divided into ten months: February, April, March, May, June, July, August, September, October, and November. Each month is divided into ten five-day weeks, each of which is referred to as a “five-day.” The days of the week are: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The extra day in each year is inserted into the middle of the month of July, but is not numbered. It is referred to as “God’s Day” and is the high holy day of the Church of God Awaiting. What this means, among other things, is that the first day of every month will always be a Monday, and the last day of every month will always be a Friday. Every third year is a leap year, with the additional day—known as “Langhorne’s Memorial”—being inserted, again, without numbering, into the middle of the month of February. It also means that each Safeholdian month is 795 standard hours long, as opposed to 720 hours for a 30-day Birth month.
The Safeholdian equinoxes occur on April 23 and September 22. The solstices fall on July 7 and February 8.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Is there any textev on the subject of moons around Safehold? I assume that there is one, or the tides would be small (solar tides only).

fallsfromtrees wrote:
Okay, I found part of the answer. In the first few books, in an appendix you find the following:

A Note on Safeholdian Timekeeping
image

The Safeholdian day is 26 hours and 31 minutes long. Safehold’s year is 301.32 local days in length, which works out to .91 Earth standard years. It has one major moon, named Langhorne, which orbits Safehold in 27.6 local days, so the lunar month is approximately 28 days long.
The Safeholdian day is divided into twenty-six 60-minute hours, and one 31-minute period, known as “Langhorne’s Watch,” which is used to adjust the local day into something which can be evenly divided into standard minutes and hours.
The Safeholdian calendar year is divided into ten months: February, April, March, May, June, July, August, September, October, and November. Each month is divided into ten five-day weeks, each of which is referred to as a “five-day.” The days of the week are: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The extra day in each year is inserted into the middle of the month of July, but is not numbered. It is referred to as “God’s Day” and is the high holy day of the Church of God Awaiting. What this means, among other things, is that the first day of every month will always be a Monday, and the last day of every month will always be a Friday. Every third year is a leap year, with the additional day—known as “Langhorne’s Memorial”—being inserted, again, without numbering, into the middle of the month of February. It also means that each Safeholdian month is 795 standard hours long, as opposed to 720 hours for a 30-day Birth month.
The Safeholdian equinoxes occur on April 23 and September 22. The solstices fall on July 7 and February 8.

Which raises the interesting point that given the information above, the Safehold calendar is going to start suffering from some fairly severe creep. Basically it is going to gain about 1 day every 75 years, and so by now (about 975 since founding), the amount of creep is up to about 13 days. This is going to start to call into question the infallibility of the archangels who set the calendar into motion. Why should the solstices and equinoxes get earlier with the passage of time. The spring equinox is now back to about April 10th, and the winter solstice has moved into the back part of December (December 25, if I haven't miscalculated).

fallsfromtrees wrote:Okay, I found part of the answer. In the first few books, in an appendix you find the following:

A Note on Safeholdian Timekeeping
image

The Safeholdian day is 26 hours and 31 minutes long. Safehold’s year is 301.32 local days in length, which works out to .91 Earth standard years. It has one major moon, named Langhorne, which orbits Safehold in 27.6 local days, so the lunar month is approximately 28 days long.
The Safeholdian day is divided into twenty-six 60-minute hours, and one 31-minute period, known as “Langhorne’s Watch,” which is used to adjust the local day into something which can be evenly divided into standard minutes and hours.
The Safeholdian calendar year is divided into ten months: February, April, March, May, June, July, August, September, October, and November. Each month is divided into ten five-day weeks, each of which is referred to as a “five-day.” The days of the week are: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The extra day in each year is inserted into the middle of the month of July, but is not numbered. It is referred to as “God’s Day” and is the high holy day of the Church of God Awaiting. What this means, among other things, is that the first day of every month will always be a Monday, and the last day of every month will always be a Friday. Every third year is a leap year, with the additional day—known as “Langhorne’s Memorial”—being inserted, again, without numbering, into the middle of the month of February. It also means that each Safeholdian month is 795 standard hours long, as opposed to 720 hours for a 30-day Birth month.
The Safeholdian equinoxes occur on April 23 and September 22. The solstices fall on July 7 and February 8.

Which raises the interesting point that given the information above, the Safehold calendar is going to start suffering from some fairly severe creep. Basically it is going to gain about 1 day every 75 years, and so by now (about 975 since founding), the amount of creep is up to about 13 days. This is going to start to call into question the infallibility of the archangels who set the calendar into motion. Why should the solstices and equinoxes get earlier with the passage of time. The spring equinox is now back to about April 10th, and the winter solstice has moved into the back part of December (December 25, if I haven't miscalculated).

fleadermouse wrote:
According to DOE actual usage last year in the US was 570 GW or 4.7 x 10^15 watt hrs which means about 9000 sq miles (bigger than the state of New Jersey ) of solar panels with no safety factor at 8 hours effective and 60% sunny and zero loss in transmission storage or transformation which in real life is significant.

Keith_w wrote:snip

Something must be wrong there, if there are 10 five-days per month, and 10 months per year, that works out to 50 days per month and 500 days per year which is about 198 days too long.

Additionally, 795 hours in a month, divided by 26.5 hours per day is 30 days per month, or 6 5-days per month which makes more sense than the 10 5-days per month mentioned.

On the other hand, 10 months of 30 days is 300 days, plus and extra "Gods" day in July is 301 days. Every 3 years there is a leap day inserted, so over the 3 years there are 301*3+1 days which is an average of 301.33 days, or a difference of .01 days which can be fixed by the adjusting the length of the leap day, so I don't see how there can be solistace creep.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Keith_w wrote:snip

Something must be wrong there, if there are 10 five-days per month, and 10 months per year, that works out to 50 days per month and 500 days per year which is about 198 days too long.

Additionally, 795 hours in a month, divided by 26.5 hours per day is 30 days per month, or 6 5-days per month which makes more sense than the 10 5-days per month mentioned.

On the other hand, 10 months of 30 days is 300 days, plus and extra "Gods" day in July is 301 days. Every 3 years there is a leap day inserted, so over the 3 years there are 301*3+1 days which is an average of 301.33 days, or a difference of .01 days which can be fixed by the adjusting the length of the leap day, so I don't see how there can be solistace creep.

The 10 5-days in a month is a typo. The quote I had was from OAR. When I checked the same thing in AMF, it has been corrected to 6 5-days in a month.

If you attempt to adjust things by playing with the length of the leap day, then you will end up screwing up the start of day, and you will end up with another type of time creep - eventually dawn will be occurring at 6pm, and sundown at something like 6am.

It is possible that there is another adjustment that is required. A simple removal of Langhorne's Memorial every 75 years would go along way towards fixing the problem. Similar to the way the the Gregorian calendar fixes the older Julian calendar.

Keith_w wrote:I was looking at my copy of OAR as well.

As for the leap day creep, I don't recall any textev of Safehold Standard Time, Zion Mean time or Universal Time Co-ordinate, so it would be possible to say that 6am occurs when the sun rises above the horizon on Solistice day at your location (or 5, or whatever the appropriate hour is).

DrakBibliophile wrote:David Weber gives us additional information on Safehold time-keeping in the thread "What is "noon" to a Charisan".

He doesn't mention "Standard Time" or "Time Zones" but I suspect that the Archangels would have set up such a system.

They were planning for a "world-wide" Church and they were a product of a society where "Standard Time" and "Time Zones" were common place.

The Church's semaphore system would have allowed for more "standard" time (allowing for time zones) on the Mainland.

Times in the realms not on the Mainland would be harder to keep standard (ie same as Mainland time) but within each realm there would be a standard time (thanks to the Church's semaphores).

Of course, considering the relative slow speed of travel on Safehold, people would be more concerned about "what time it is here" than "what time it is in Zion".

McGuiness wrote:It's a reasonable supposition that the archangels instituted time zones, especially on the mainland where the church semaphore can speed messages along as quickly as 600 mph!