Thanks for that.

Way to go!

And with good cheer!!


We really need to pull in some legislation to bring in sustainability by design.


All on our only one self-contained planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
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Thanks - and that article makes me think.....
These mines have obviously been filled with water from somewhere, and in the UK we've had some quite dramatic drops in ground water levels. So, is some of that drop the result of these mine being flooded?

Also I recall reading a good few years ago that some of the mines were really unpleasantly hot places to work in with the temperature getting up into the high twenties or thirties and such mines would make even better heat sources than the one talked about at the top of the story.

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Interesting but, a much more interesting report follows that if one scrolls down about beavers.
Amazing what nature can.
Sadly, man is too destructive...

They're so unpopular among farmers, in fact, that there's a whole YouTube community dedicated to filming themselves dynamiting beaver dams with explosives.

...however, as seen in the report, the UK government granted permission when originally, they wanted to have the animals removed.
Hope for us all?
Only time will tell whether man has learnt in time.

These mines have obviously been filled with water from somewhere, and in the UK we've had some quite dramatic drops in ground water levels. So, is some of that drop the result of these mine being flooded?

I think it's more often the other way round. The old mine workings gradually receive water from rainfall and other run-off, and have done from the start of mining: the first steam engines were built to power waste water removal pumps.

Now that actual mining has stopped in many cases, many of the pumps have been switched off, and the build-up of water hasn't always been as well managed as it ought to be.

The thousands of old mine shafts beneath Welsh homes and the chances of another catastrophic flood

If it is possible for you to read this in the Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/07/14/inside-governments-plan-kill-car/ there are dates and numbers in there that are some of the reason why I am skeptical that the governments plans to go green are possible.

How will the government recoup the loss of fuel tax?
Where are the power stations (any type) to provide the electricity needed?
And how are they going to charge HGV's and bus's that are on the road 16+ hrs/day?

The list of questions just keeps building up, where are the minerals and how will they be mined (very dirty process)?
Where are the re-cycling plants, and is it even possible?

The UK plan to ban gas boilers from 2035 has apparently been put on hold after the government was informed that the switch to heat pumps was not as easy as they thought.

Heat pumps cam be twice the cost of a gas boiler, and on present prices heat pumps cost on average £400/year more to run.
And where the installation is a replacement it can be £10k+ in many homes as it requires a complete new system installation, not counting the subsequent redecoration etc.

This could mean a carbon price tax on gas in the near future, in an attempt to equalise the costs.

edit] Again where are the extra electricity generation plants to power this green push?

Another small step to clean up to reduce the ignorant wanton pollution of our planet:


Using plastic waste to help solve sand shortages
wrote:

Does the world have a shortage of sand? At first, that might sound like a peculiar question.

After all, sand covers vast expanses of beaches and deserts across the world.

Yet the raw material is used in giant quantities in construction and manufacturing. In the building sector alone, 40-50bn tonnes of the stuff is used around the world annually...

... "The issue is construction. We are building cities and towns at an unprecedented pace," she adds. "But many of us also don't realize that sand is used for things like smartphone and TV screens, solar panels and other electric items," she says.

To try to reduce the need for sand, a small but growing number of researchers are turning to technology and innovation in the hunt for alternatives.

These include Dr John Orr, a lecturer in concrete structures at Cambridge University. His research has found that plastic waste can be sorted, cleaned, shredded and crushed into a sand alternative for use in concrete...

Rather than 'shortages' pushing new cleaner developments, how do we price out pollution in the first place?...


All on our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Indeed, the politics to go truly green is badly poisoned by the Fossil Fuels lobbying to keep the dirty business sweating along a while longer...

All your listed pitfalls are positively easily managed, but only with the necessary political will to go against the expensively subsidized fossil fuels giants.


As for the practicalities of an Electric Vehicle, here's a good down to earth rural mythsbuster:

Electric Car Myths - Prof Simon



That's a very good clean quiet way to go!

All on our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

All the while the UK has brought forward by a year the closure of the last coal fired power station to Oct 2024. So no subsidy there.

And without any feasible storage systems and our Northern location, which means solar isn't yet an economic solution, there has to be some other type of power stations other that wind. And nuclear probably isn't it, and biomass such as Drax probably fails the test as we have to import some of its fuel (in dirty oil fired ships)

Idea's?

P.S. I already run a Hybrid car, and guess what they ain't so wonderful after electric cars they don't work well in hilly country. In the hills the miles/kWh figure is probably half of the claimed by the manufacturers.

Under the heading "Blackout warning: Drivers must charge electric cars off-peak to avoid overstretching National Grid" in The Telegraph it would appear that a few MP's on the Transport Committee are beginning to understand that the UK will need significant improvements to the National Grid and power generation just to go electric for transport.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/28/blackout-warning-drivers-must-charge-electric-cars-off-peak/

And therefore if there is not enough electricity for transport where is the power coming from to replace the phasing out of gas heating etc.?

This is where there needs to be a wakeup call for how our National Grid is operated...

Also, do we go for big new wiring?

Or is a better solution to go grid distributed local storage to even out the required supply yet still provide local high capacity for recharging EVs? (Tesla are already doing that for their high rate charge points.)


Way to go!

All on our only one planet...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

If you go the fast charging route then you will need a 3 phase supply to your home. And that is going to require a complete re-wiring of every street in the UK.
As noticed when we had a single phase failure here a few years ago, each phase was connected to a row of about 20 homes.

And if you are stuck with the lowest rate of charging, with the 6 hour limit of 'system 7' then it could take about 4 days to charge a fully discharged car.
What happens to the 30% of homes that do not have off-road facilities, will they have to go to the nearest public charging point in the middle of the night.

Yes on all counts or...

For domestic charging, a charge can be trickled in overnight as is done at present.

The Grid is highly modular and so the local circuits capacity can be reconnected to additional or uprated substations as needed in phases as needed.

And not all areas will need uprating due to 'demographics'.

Also note the push to fully autonomous driving to shift car ownership away from individuals and also to make present taxi drivers redundant... For a big resources saving.

We have an early example of going all-EV for the big city of Shenzhen. Glasgow/Edinburgh have early ambitions to follow that good example.

The updates/uprating is all very easily doable if we start now.

One thing to avoid is the all too usual mismanaged expensive greedy rush when left too late...


All on our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Grids are modular at the grid level. By the time you get to the block level they are single way only. The issue isn't so much getting power to the neighborhood, the issue is getting it from that step down transformer to your abode. That transformer has a rating. Once the load is sustained near peak over time it heats up and then fails, frequently with a boom. They were designed to have time at lower loading part of the day to shed heat from their oil. No off time and blackout. Every single piece of equipment and wire between your house and the substation will need to be replaced with higher rated equipment. Not cheap, not fast.

Not quite....
Many streets built in the last few decades already have 3-phase cables installed, with groups of houses being fed from each phase. The big problem is that the vast majority of houses only have a single phase feed, to get a 3-phase feed to each house will mean a monumental amount of disruption to the wiring to and within houses with new consumer units, distribution boards as well as the laying of the feed cables.
Personally I see that is one of two very large elephants in the room - the other being the amount of installed generation capacity, which has (I think) actually reduced in recent years as the big power hungry industries have reduced.

Picking up on Gary's comment, some countries have a much finer granulation of their grids than others, and some countries have inherently much more interconnected grids than others.

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

3-phase also brings into play a new set of hazards that may be unfamiliar to domestic users. I once had responsibility for an office within a shared building. Something - it might have been botched maintenance - lost the common ground connection. So instead of the UK nominal 240V, our office electrical devices were exposed to the phase difference of 415V. Several didn't survive the experience....

The one that did was our PABX telephone cabinet. The engineer came, replaced the - by now, rather smelly - surge protector, and we were back up and running.

Only can speak to here, but the neighborhood is feed by 3 phase 25K from a substation. There is an underground vault with step downs to 5K three phase. From that vault each block gets a different 5K single phase line. Along the block each group of about 6 houses is fed from a step down to 230 neutral in the middle. None of this is interconnected. I'm not specifically sure if there is only a single feed from the substation to the neighborhood vault, I seem to remember they may have had two lines so they could shut down one for service and still keep the power on. From the substation level back to generation it is interconnected grid, such that in a failure, power can be routed around the failed equipment or sections can be sliced away to stop cascade failures.

At least here for the UK for the final domestic supply street circuits, we normally have a 3-phase ring main powered by x2 redundant transformers. That allows for a transformer to be taken out of service for swap/repairs/reconfigure without anyone losing power at any time. The ring main also allows for live cable repairs, all whilst noone loses power.

Similarly, if needed, additional transformers can be added to a ring to even up the loading around the ring, Or even additional conductors added to the existing conductors to the distribution mix. All very flexible.

However, for something as specific as public high power charge points, likely a whole new dedicated circuit would be installed.


Essentially, no big rip it all up and start from scratch. Just more of the same incremental upgrades as have been ongoing since the big Nationalization rewire earlier last century.


The far greater big bang is with the politics and administrative regulation and who gets rich.


All on our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

For an idyllic way to go?


Electric Narrowboats: the future for our canals?
wrote:

... Starting on the River Severn and going up the Droitwich canals, eight boats using a variety of power plants would have their fuel, efficiency and any solar input measured and compared...

Amongst the usual silly comments for any video, some of the comments on there are very good and practical. Judge for yourselves.

Enjoy!


Enjoy our only one planet!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

I watched that video recently, and my biggest thought was "At last someone has done a sensible test". Sadly it shows how difficult it would be to run a fully off-grid boat in the UK if one wanted to do a sensible journey every day for a week or two without having an absolutely massive battery bank.

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?