OneGuyFromBarlick

Quite Tiz. I happen to be one of those dinosaurs who believes that the major elements of our infrastructure ought to be firmly in our control. Health, education, transport, energy.... They are even privatising the army training and our future under PFI. If you want a road map for the convolutions of the big energy company's financial structure, have a look at the article in yesterday's Private Eye. It's even more complicated than I thought and is the perfect vehicle for obfuscation.

The dinosaurs eventually became extinct but let's remember that they ruled the Earth for near on 200 million years!

Sharp frost this morning and as the stove was only ticking over on a low setting the CH kicked in as well. Have woken the stove up a bit, can't do with burning gas when I have coal in the yard!

This makes you think a bit.....

Coal to Newcastle

David, it shows it can be done!

Tizer wrote:

hartley353 wrote:Don't listen to the government, find a good heating engineer who can balance your radiators. TRV's were never intended for small scale wet heating systems.

That doesn't provide the flexibility that TRVs give - we use them all the time for adjusting temperatures around the house. And they work fine for our `small scale wet heating system' (i.e. central heating).

A news story on solar panels...
Tiny 'LEGO brick' -style studs make solar panels a quarter more efficient
Rows of aluminium studs help solar panels extract more energy from sunlight than those with flat surfaces.
18 October 2013, Imperial College London

Most solar cells used in homes and industry are made using thick layers of material to absorb sunlight, but have been limited in the past by relatively high costs. Many new, lower cost designs are limited as their layer of light-absorbing material is too thin to extract enough energy. In new research, scientists have demonstrated that the efficiency of all solar panel designs could be improved by up to 22 per cent by covering their surface with aluminium studs that bend and trap light inside the absorbing layer. At the microscopic level, the studs make the solar panels look similar to the interlocking LEGO building bricks played with by children across the world. The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports by scientists from Imperial College London and international collaborators in Belgium, China and Japan.

"In recent years both the efficiency and cost of commercial solar panels have improved but they remain expensive compared to fossil fuels. As the absorbing material alone can make up half the cost of a solar panel our aim has been to reduce to a minimum the amount that is needed," said lead author Dr Nicholas Hylton from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London. "The success of our technology, in combination with modern anti-reflection coatings, will take us a long way down the path towards highly efficient and thin solar cells that could be available at a competitive price."

Dr Hylton and his colleagues attached rows of aluminium cylinders just 100 nanometres across to the top of the solar panel, where they interact with passing light, causing individual light rays to change course. More energy is extracted from the light as the rays become effectively trapped inside the solar panel and travel for longer distances through its absorbing layer. In the past scientists have tried to achieve the light bending effect using silver and gold studs because those materials are known to strongly interact with light, however these precious metals actually reduce the efficiency as they absorb some of the light before it enters the solar panel. "The key to understanding these new results is in the way the internal structures of these metals interact with light. Gold and silver both have a strong effect on passing light rays, which can penetrate into the tiny studs and be absorbed, whereas aluminium has a different interaction and merely bends and scatters light as it travels past them into the solar cells."

An additional advantage to this solution is that aluminium is cheaper and far more abundant than silver and gold. The future success of this technology opens up the possibility of making flexible solar panels that could be applied to any flat or curved surface, which could be used to power everything from domestic appliances to portable electronics like laptops.

Solar energy is surely the future way of filling our energy needs.. Govt of all countries must make policies to boost usage of solar energy.

Dustin,
Then you'll no doubt be pleased to hear some more new applications of solar energy...
US researchers have found an effective way to concentrate solar energy to make steam for various applications. A great amount of energy is used by manufacturing industry to boil water to generate steam for distillation plants. Most of the energy is used up in boiling the water rather than in actually creating the steam. The scientists have made nanoparticles that, when placed in water, absorb solar energy and rapidly vaporise the water immediately surrounding them, thus generating steam without having to heat large amounts of the water and requiring only a fraction of the energy. It's still at the lab scale but will be developed for commercial use.

The same team have shown that they can use the method to generate high pressure steam in an autoclave, at sufficient temperature and pressure that it will kill any bacteria or virus and meets the requirements of the US Federal Drug Administration for sterilisation of medical equipment. It's ideal for use in developing countries or emergencies where the small equipment is easily transported and used, needing only sunlight. (Most of the weight currently carried by emergency medical teams in such situations consists of sterilising fluids.)

Other workers in Kenya are using solar energy to sterilise human faecal waste which can then be made into brquettes and be used as a fuel.

I wonder when we'll see the first solar-powered steam engine?

Solar powered steam engines aren't new, there are commercial power stations in sunnier climes run by steam engines with the steam generated by solar power. A load of mirrors concentrating a large area of sunlight onto a solar furnace which boils water, pretty low tech really.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_so ... r_stations

I see that Mr Cameron is appealing to the energy companies to have mercy on the poorer consumers. About all he can do despite the brave words about price caps and harsher regulation. Twenty years of lousy energy management has reaped the inevitable result and the truth is there is nothing we can do about it. What a brilliant advertisement for government policies....

Noted from one of the railway spotting journals I recently was given , Biomass Trains ( I think that's wood pulp from Norway etc , burnt in some Power Stations, not certain why all coal burning ones cannot run on the stuff )

Energy Pricing problem now the standing charges are back , there is less saving to cutting back on energy usage.

Good news on energy prices! They are set to rise above inflation for at least the next 17 years! There is an element of panic in the current debate. I think the politicians are beginning to realise that this is a far greater problem than they thought. Here's a sign of the times and a fore-runner of what will happen in the future, not a good prospect and perhaps the biggest danger from the rising prices in the long run. LINK
I know it's a cop out but sometimes I am glad I am old and might escape it!

New set of thermal underwear arrived in the post yesterday. Our energy bills are not exorbitant, but every little helps. Due to my shortage of Hair the Mrs says it may be possible for me to wear my cap in the house, bring it on Jack Frost.

What strikes me about all this discussion about renewal of pipes and their costs is the elephant in the room.

If we import 50% of our gas, wouldn't it be more sensible to ensure that at least 50% of current demand is converted to something else? Plan for the future, rather than continue to rig up something which we know will increase in price?

Reduce the demand, and the price per user goes up again for renewal of the infrastructure that may one day be obsolete. Keep as many as possible on the grid and prices are reduced but you are locked into a cycle of dependance upon other countries and world spot markets for commodities.

I didn't understand that post.... Here's the state of your private water supply pipe...

The stove is performing well, on a low setting and not interfered with at all apart from ash removal and firing once a day. It is holding the house core temperature at about 19C so no gas being burned by the CH. Cost is roughly the same as gas would be but with the bonus that cooking done on it is free heat (it stays in the house and doesn't increase fuel consumption) and this saves on the leccy bill so the net effect is a saving. One of the best things I ever did and of course has the advantage that it's power cut proof!
That's triggered a question Pluggy, what happens with the solar panels if there is a power cut? Could you run your lighting for instance?

Standard solar panels are whats called grid tied, they are dependent on the grid being alive if they are to generate anything. So, no the lights stay out if there is a power cut, by spending a lot of money on a big battery pack and a fancy inverter, its possible to have some independence from grid power. If the power is cut, the batteries feed the house and the panels charge the batteries.

That's a reason we haven't gone for PV panels. Having an unreliable power supply and being unsure about future power cuts we would have liked to use PV as a back up. But it's too expensive and too much hassle to have expensive batteries just for the odd occasion.

We have a bank of batteries rescued from ups systems being thrown out from Cols last workplace. Their main job is to store energy from the wind turbine but they are charged up whenever the sun is shining and the pv panels are producing. If the grid goes down we can run the oil fired cooker/central heating system and the freezer for as long as the batteries last.

M\any years ago Newton and I built a diesel generator in his back garden using and old engine, an alternator and a full water jacket on the exhaust which discharged into a pit to muffle it. It made enough leccy to keep the house going and the water from the cooling system was piped through the CH system in the house. He cut his energy bills in half and we said at the time we should have patented it. You can buy them now of course, it was a small Combined Heat and Power system. (LINK)

People would be surprised as to how many Large batteries it takes to run the national grid system. Without these batteries there would be no supervision, control, or communication. PV panels without a storage system are just plain wasteful. Most folks with PV arrays are being subsidised by their neighbours through the Green taxation. Even today with the closure of fossil fuel generators, the majority of so called green generation is not required, We could have built many more combined heat and power generating plants with the monies given to wind farms etc.

There you are Plugs, you're officially a parasite! (And I'm adding to air pollution and global warming by burning fossil fuel in my stove.)

Pluggy and I have both said before that our PV panels were a good investment at the time rather than an attempt to be "green". Don't suppose it will be long before the government goes back on it's promise and cuts the FIT we receive

Misread again Stanley, Your burning fossil fuels is not a problem to me. I am quite happy with coal fired power stations and the emission controls for them. They have been part of my career since the eighties when I managed a project to fix scrubbers to the Soar valley power stations, and observed the byproducts produced by the technology.

I think they've already done that in Germany, dropping it in steps from 24 cents when it started to 6 cents next year, because too much electricity is being generated at the wrong time of day.

It's you that has misread Hartley not me. By burning fossil fuel in my stove I add to air pollution and global warming. That statement is entirely accurate and has nothing to do with your post. Go back and have a look.
Regardless of the economics, the fact that Pluggy and Wendy are generating solar power (and in Wendy's case wind as well) is to be commended because the overall effect is that they reduce their demand on mains leccy which is still mostly generated using fossil fuel.
Just fired the stove for the day, despite the low temperature and the wind (a very important cooling factor) the CH has not fired up yet.