OneGuyFromBarlick

"There wasn't much wind David.... "

Precisely -

and when is peak demand in winter? - when it's cold
and when is it coldest? - when there is high pressure, and no clouds
and what happens during high pressure? - there is not much wind.

System going well - build more windmills.

(to paraphrase my favourite joke - the telegram from Monte Carlo 'send more money')

There wasn't much sun either, being night-time, short days and all that. Mind you, there wasn't mu sun during the day either, at least not where we live - we couldn't even see the sky!

I have just taken delivery and fitted the latest batch of my LED lighting replacement plan. This time the triple fitting in our back room. They are BC (B22) fittings and I have just deployed 3 x 12W Warm White LED 3000K - 1100-1200 lumen (about an 80W equivalent). 30,000 hours lifetime over 15,000 switching cycles A* energy rating for £3.90 each. The price is coming down all the time for the LED technology, I am gradually working my way through the house, all of the main lighting downstairs is now LED apart from some alcove lights which we only use intermittently and a table lamp.

David and Tiz. That was my thinking as well. This is why when looking at 'renewables' I have always favoured hydro, wave, and tidal power. High capital cost but very reliable and clean.
I'm fairly certain that if I replaced the fluorescents in my two main areas of energy use for lights, in the kitchen and the shed it would be a good thing to bite the capital cost and do it. The crunch point will come when one of the high efficiency units in the kitchen fails but as I have gone through that not long ago and replaced both ballasts and all the tubes I suspect (hope!) it will be a long time. Even though my eyes are now OK I demand high light levels in both places. The rest of the lighting in the house is so infrequently used that major refurb would not be economic.
I am always struck by a house I know of nearby where every light in the house seems to be on permanently (and they have outside lighting in the garden as well). I hate to think what their leccy bill must be but that's up to them.

PanBiker wrote:I have just taken delivery and fitted the latest batch of my LED lighting replacement plan.

It's the way to go. I'm delighted that I replaced all our tungsten filament bulbs with LED. Initially I used a mixture of 3W & 5W LED bulbs in the lounge, there are 30 of them in 3 fittings, but I've just replaced 14 of the 3W bulbs with 5W which I buy on the internet for <20 pence each. Even after this upgrade I'm only using 150 Watts if I leave everything burning , hardly worth switching them off.


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noted my local electrical wholesaler has LED 'filament' lights, but they are only in clear glass, I would prefer pearl casings , if not too much illumination is lost.

Not really planning to buy new as yet, but do need something with SES fittings to fit golfball spotlight holders and a set of candle bulb holders in the lounge we have.

Need to find someone whom wants 30 old (new) 40w pearl bulbs I probably wont need for the future.

We've changed the bulbs that we use most, wherever we can find a suitable LED replacement. What I need now are 100W LED equivalents of the standard shape bayonet bulbs so that I don't have to replace single light fittings with multiple fittings. Tesco started to sell them for £10 but I missed out and they seem to be out of stock at the moment. In some rooms we've left the old bulbs in place because they are used so infrequently - ditching and replacing with new would probably have a bigger carbon footprint than keeping them going!

LED on Amazon £11:99

Thanks for that Kev...but they only last 15 years! (I notice they give a 5-year warranty. If they say the bulbs last 15 years surely they should give a 15-year warranty?)

Some posts seem to be going missing? I already posted a reply to Whyperion about sourcing lamps but it's not here?

Anyway, the ones I have fitted came from CPC at Preston, part of the Farnell group now. £3.90 + VAT for the ones I have just fitted 12W 1100-1200lm BC 3000K. They stock a full range of envelope types in multi wattage's and base styles. Free delivery on orders as well.

CPC

A senior moment Ian?
Thanks for the link!

I definitely remember typing it up and after submitting being informed that it had posted, there is no cancel on the edit box so don't know what happened there.

You are welcome for the link, I buy a few items from CPC I used them as one of my suppliers when I had my business and then when procuring at school.

On the question of posts disappearing into the ether. A couple of my posts suffered the same fate. Looking at the timing of other posting I saw that there was another vying for space at exactly the same time. I now copy my posts before final submission so that if they ever finished up in this black hole I could have another try.

plaques wrote:On the question of posts disappearing into the ether. A couple of my posts suffered the same fate. Looking at the timing of other posting I saw that there was another vying for space at exactly the same time. I now copy my posts before final submission so that if they ever finished up in this black hole I could have another try.

I second that - it's happened to me a few times. I do Ctrl C if it's a long post just in case - when I remember.

Yes, I've lost posts now and then. Sometimes I conclude that I must have pressed cancel. Another danger, particularly with long posts, is when using Preview. I preview the post, decide to check something, look at a web page on another Firefox tab, get distracted, look back and see my post and then move on, thinking I've already posted it into the thread. Now, with any long post I too write it in my text editor. To be fair, Stanley has always suggesting doing this to avoid losing the text of posts. As Ian has found, using the edit facility is also a danger.

What I don't understand is that when you post a reply there is no cancel button, only SUBMIT, PREVIEW, SAVE DRAFT. The only option to dump the post is to close the tab.

I've just looked...and you're right! I could have sworn there was a Cancel button. Have they changed the software perhaps? If not, then I must have been closing the page rather than cancelling. In Thunderbird email I use the Save Draft function a lot and I assume I would have used it here if I'd noticed it was available. But then perhaps it's all because I'm just getting a bit older every day!

I have never really noticed saved draft either. The natural tab to use is post and occasionally preview. Just checked and if you do use save draft they go into a tab on your user profile. Note to self, must have a play with that.

I forgot to riddle the ashes in the stove last thing last night and the stove ran slow. Front room temperature dropped slightly to 72F. Enough to allow the CH to kick in first thing as the wind rose and the outside temperature fell to about 8C. Never mind, it means the shed is warmer!

Fifty percent of European built cars now have turbocharged engines. The rush to lower emissions has been possible by using the turbo to get as much power from a small engine as from a larger one . Turbos are no longer restricted to sports cars, they're now common in small town cars and family cars, and twin turbos are becoming common too. The recent worry about diesel has added further attraction to petrol turbo engines. This BBC article describes some of the latest advances: `Turbo gives petrol cars a boost as diesel faces backlash'

I remember watching the rotors of turbochargers being friction welded to the shaft at a factory where I had gone to look at a secondhand boiler. You've never seen anything as neat, tidy and accurate in your life....

I've seen a video of railway wagon axles being friction welded together. Not just accurate but very quick.

Just got my electric bill covering 1st September to 1st November: useage 290 kW, cost 153.2 rmb = £15.80. I'm a happy bunny. Changing to LED bulbs has had a big impact on my electricity consumption.

The thing that struck me was that no machining needed to be done after the weld and the two pieces of shaft welded on either side in one operation were dead in line. I remember once seeing camshafts being hardened by induction using very high value currents and the thing that struck me was how twisted they were afterwards, I didn't see how they trued them up but they certainly needed it!
That's cheap leccy China.... it would be nice if we had it here!
By the way, I took note of usage yesterday after welding and it was negligible....

A good indication of the dip in temperature is that the CH has come on at low level this morning. I have held it at bay with the stove burning at low level but have opened it up a bit this morning. No real advantage in cost but I feel a lot better burning fuel that is bought and paid for..... That's right, I'm old-fashioned!

I ordered a top up of coal yesterday and turned the stove up a touch. Toasty this morning but of course it's warmer anyway. No CH!