Making the news today....

[sime42]

On 19/08/2022 at 13:34, openspaceman said:

What lies?

 

If you are talking in general yes you are right, the cheapness of fossil fuels and the vested interest in producing them has meant the urgent need to deal with the external costs of them hasn't allowed the renewable energy business to develop as far as it could have from when problems became apparent 50 years ago. It is a basic human trait to live for today.

 

At the domestic level an individual can comfortably do without the grid for most of their electricity with a battery that only stores a days worth. I could even do without  the grid  for the last 450kWh I fall short of from Mid November to March with a simple chp system which would  make better use of the thermal energy of gas. Of course we are going to rely on fossil fuels for a long time yet but no need to continue with such profligacy and those living in high density housing will have to rely on what is provided, and pay for it.

It's simple O level physics that show why this is not practicable;energy in the wind is the mass flow times the square of the velocity, mass flow also contains a velocity term as it is mass  passing per unit time, hence the energy varies with the cubic power of the wind velocity. So if you design the hardware to make use of the wind  and produce a return on the hardware at an average 7 metres per second then double the wind speed to 14m/sec and you need to cope with producing 14 times the average amount of power, it is simply not worth investing the equipment for such a range  so cheaper to produce the power around the average speed with machinery optimised for it and shut down when the windspeed is too high for the equipment to absorb the energy.

 

This is an interesting development;-

 

A new method boosts wind farms’ energy output, without new equipment | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

NEWS.MIT.EDU

---

MIT engineers have developed a method to increase wind farms’ energy output. Whereas individual turbines are typically...

 

[GarethM]

On a sample size of three turbines in India, surely they could find somewhere a little closer to MIT.

 

I would hope turbine manufacturers a d installers already knew about wake turbulence, it's the reason they have to separate big planes and spacing whilst landing. Which I think was also the reason for fitting winglets to the a380, to reduce vortices on landing.

[Johnsond]

2 hours ago, GarethM said:

Think it's pretty much the world over at the moment, Australia just changed parties, new Zealand are fed up of the smiling Arden. Canada similar with Trudeau, Sweden might also switch party.

 

Might be something of a reflection on career politicians, all focus group policy and zero real world experience.

Or indeed the fact many people ( not all admittedly) are waking up to the fact they had the piss taken out of them for the past two years. 3 of the 4 countries you mention were notorious for full on hardcore restrictions 🤷‍♂️Coincidence maybe. 

[Steve Bullman]

14 minutes ago, Johnsond said:

Or indeed the fact many people ( not all admittedly) are waking up to the fact they had the piss taken out of them for the past two years. 3 of the 4 countries you mention were notorious for full on hardcore restrictions 🤷‍♂️Coincidence maybe. 

Italys turn next month also 

[GarethM]

That should be fun watching, didn't the last election fail to elect a party as it's the European style coalition governments.

 

Plus it'll be interesting if the Finland PM tests positive for cocaine.

Edited August 21, 2022 by GarethM

[trigger_andy]

33 minutes ago, GarethM said:

Plus it'll be interesting if the Finland PM tests positive for cocaine.

I cant see her submitting to one unless she was damn sure she could control the outcome or is clean. 

[GarethM]

Everyone knows it's never going to come back positive, one can dream 

[Johnsond]

29 minutes ago, GarethM said:

Everyone knows it's never going to come back positive, one can dream 

Finnish politics is as clean and boring as it’s possible to be. To be honest I think the opposite in as much as it proves again what lying ott sensationalist arseholes most media outlets are and public opinion will be on her side for it, the media has become all powerful nowadays and seems to revel in pulling people down or scaremongering. 

[Steve Bullman]

Seems they are being taken seriously 

 

 

[trigger_andy]

3 minutes ago, Steve Bullman said:

Seems they are being taken seriously 

 

 

Thank goodness they dont do that here.