ENERGY MATTERS

[PanBiker]

Same as us Kev.

[Stanley]

I got my dual fuel bill covering 22 January to 22ns February..... £211. Hopefully the next one will be less.....

[Tripps]

As we lurch towards the nonsense of Net Zero, I read recently that the electricity distribution network was designed on a trunk - branch - twig principle and was designed for elctricity to flow in that direction- not the reverse ie twig - branch - tree.

That didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time, but I came across this video last night which goes a long way towards doing so. It's not simple stuff, but Ian, Pluggy, and Wendyf's Col should get it.

Artisan Electrics

[Wendyf]

Tripps, I think we have known each long enough for you to drop the f. Oh, but I still call you Tripps!

[Tripps]

It's a deal.

[Whyperion]

As we lurch towards the nonsense of Net Zero, I read recently that the electricity distribution network was designed on a trunk - branch - twig principle and was designed for elctricity to flow in that direction- not the reverse ie twig - branch - tree.

That didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time, but I came across this video last night which goes a long way towards doing so. It's not simple stuff, but Ian, Pluggy, and Wendyf's Col should get it.

Artisan Electrics

Saw that B4U Posted. Note the state of repair of access poles. Indeed the idea of "consumers" becoming generators needed really a CEGB / Government thought. But the comments to the vid were informative as to cable/transformers etc so any ideas on house transformers for 240v system as it is a bit different in say the US

[Stanley]

David, I had a glance at that link and you are quite right, beyond my paygrade. I'll stick to making chips in the shed!

[PanBiker]

A good explanation of how voltage drop works. A victim like a lot of our other infrastructure of under investment. The basic backbone of the grid sysem is the same as it was when first installed. Folk don't want massive 11kv towers in their back yards or even in sight to be honest. They want the power but are not prepared to accept the delivery system. By now we should be using SNR's for local electricity generation.

Our Victorian railways should have been replaced by monorail bullet trains as suggested by Prof Eric Lathwaite and his linear motor experiments in the late 50's and early 60's, dismissed as a nice party trick. The Far East were listening, our loss.

Best not mention the water treatment and sewage system. Meanwhile we plant trees much too close together and build solar farms on perfectly good agricultural land. We don't make it mandatory to put solar on new builds, public building and schools which is a bit stupid in my book!

[Whyperion]

Much of the Roof of the new Cambridge South Rail station is going to be Solar Panels. And BP have not abandoned "renewables" just going at a slower pace ( presumably as the profit lock in is not there at present - maybe they should partner with Octopus ?

[Stanley]

Quite right Ian. I have said for years that our energy strategy was non existent. Everything left until the last minute and then as little government responsibility as possible. (The Market will fix it)
We are reaping the reward with the highest energy charges in Europe. Surprise surprise.
When will we learn the lesson not to put politicians in charge of anything!

[PanBiker]

Quite right Ian. I have said for years that our energy strategy was non existent. Everything left until the last minute and then as little government responsibility as possible. (The Market will fix it)
We are reaping the reward with the highest energy charges in Europe. Surprise surprise.
When will we learn the lesson not to put politicians in charge of anything!

Problem there is that the government is about to hack and thrash the folk that actually make things happen. Maybe they are top heavy but a mass culling operation at this juncture when trying to get the economy going again is a bad idea. Sack off the dross but not the ones that have the proper skills.

[Stanley]

Which is why it is always a mistake to put politicians in control of any of the commanding heights of the economy.

[Stanley]

Today is the day I read my 'Smart Meters' and send the results to BG. Hopefully this months will be the last of the heavy bills....

[Stanley]

It was, £50 less at £155.00 for the month. Summer is acomin in!

[Whyperion]

The Fire in one mid Kv Transformer at North Hyde Substation is still being investigated. It looks more like old age on certain step switching causing arcing. Apparently London Heathrow does have two other substation feeds but enough was lost to close passenger and freight operations for around 24 hours. While the rail services have their own power supplies , oddly Hayes and Harlington Rail Station took power from the same outgoing lines and that along with I think 16,000 local houses had loss of power too.

[Stanley]

Last month's dual fuel bill was £140. Slowly coming down....

[Tripps]

Therre is speculation about the cause of the mega power outage in Spain yesterday. Some of it is pretty far fetched (spinning / fake news) I'd say.

This is pretty convincing Lack of inertia in a grid sytem Watch it if you wish. You can skip the short advert, and the main information takes about eight minutes.

As with the concealment of the truth about EV's - remember that to acknowledge that information, would contradict the entire Government energy policy. Hence you wo't hear much about it. Thank goodness for Australian Bloggers.

[PanBiker]

There has been speculation of it being due to Space Weather, Solar Flares etc, however currently the sun has been behaving itself over the last few weeks with only minor surface activity. Another theory was massive fluctuations in temperature that the region has been experiencing recently which is probably a better explanation. Spain's grid supplies the majority of Portugal and bits of Southern France which also had outages. How they fixed it and brought different areas back on grid should really reveal what went wrong.

One Winter back in the 70's when I was in the TV servicing trade there was an over voltage incident at the Salterforth Sub Station. The breakers were frozen shut so when the fault occurred nothing tripped out. For us the over voltage managed to blow all the PCL86 Audio Output valves in just about every ITT hybrid TV we had in one half of Earby, all of Salterforth and few up through Sough to Kelbrook, I think from memory about 50 or 60 sets. We had to work Saturday afternoon to change them all and reset all the fusible HT feed resistors. We had to borrow valves from all of the other TV traders in our Pendle buying group. I think the YEB paid us around £1.00 per set which only scratched the surface of the repair costs when you factored in the cost of the valves, labour and travelling expenses to effect the repairs. WE never worked out why it only toasted the Audio Output valves, all the other output stages used valves as well. Line output had Boost Diode for the CRT UHT and a Line Output Valve, Field output was also valved, tuners and front end of the ITT sets were transistorised.

[Stanley]

I listened to MGUY David and you are right, he is spot on. The only thing I would add is that he didn't mention Nuclear as being one of the good guys because it uses old fashioned heavy turbine generating sets because all an atomic pile is is a different way of boiling the water for steam....
Incidentally, nice to see you posting, it is very lonely on the site at the moment as most people are shut out to some degree....