"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Doctor Drivel wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Apropos of something else, I was moved to research my energy costs.

Night time electricity is currently 4.85p per Kwh.

Oil is a staggering 54p a liter.

Oil energy density is 37.5MJ /liter. Which with a 100% efficient boiler
is still 5.184p per Kwh.

Does anyone make electrical central heating boilers?

I have UFH, which is tantamount to a big ****-off storage radiator
anyway !

;-)

If my existing boiler was as low as 50% efficient (its non condensing
oil boiler) I might expect electricity to be cheaper in the daytime a
well.

Thank god for nookoleer powah!

If I recall rightly you have an overlarge unvented cylinder. A more
powerful immersion can be fitted, or two if two bosses available. Then a
take off using a bronze pump and a plate heat exchanger to mesh into the
heating circuit. Then you have the electricity and oil available.


Not a lot of use for central heating is it tho?

You did not understand. The unvented cylinder is converted to a thermal
store. The hot water in the cylinder is pumped through a plate heat X which
then heats the UFH

All you need is:

- a plate heat X. A 100kW will do, as used in Gledhill Systemates (about
£80-90)
- a Bronze pump (about £60 on Ebay)
- A more powerful immersion heater (around £100)
- some pipework and fitting.

You say you only need 10kW for the house. A 9 to 12kW immersion, which can
fit a 2 1/4" bosse will do. You have the advantage of storing the heat
overnight and then a ready supply of hot water in he morning for the UFH.
You say the UFH can only absorb 5kW, so no probs.

I would go down this route.

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:21:22 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Pity the oil boiler is 35.2kW output...

Blimey. Is that a combi? or just a very large house?

No floor standing cast iron jobbie with 12 gallons of water in it. Most of
the time it is very much oversize for our use. It's there to heat what is
effectively two 3 bed semis.

--
Cheers
Dave.

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 08:41:27 on
Sat, 26 Apr 2008, The Natural Philosopher remarked:
As for electric boilers yes:
http://www.heatandplumb.com/acatalog...c_Boilers.html
First decent hit from google. Seem to max out at 12kW.

That's probably on account of the electricity supply restrictions.
One of the models went to 14.4KW which equates to around 60A, which is
actually the fuse limit on many domestic supplies.

And, of course, places like Cambridge are maxed out on the wholesale
supply of electricity. So you can't just build some nooclear power
stations, sell everyone electrical heating, without a lot of other
infrastructure upgrades as well.

I'd guess this applies to the whole country - if everyone presently
heating with oil changed to electricity. Plus the fact that very few
houses will have a supply large enough to directly replace an oil fired
system anyway.

I've got 100amps 3ph:-) They may not be prepared to sell at *off peak*
rates though.

regards


--
Tim Lamb

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:29:59 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Needs an intelligent controller ....

Thats what Linux is for innit?

I'd probably use a PLC. If I knew then what I know now when I designed the
current 4 zone, single boiler, twin pump system with pump over run I would
have used a PLC rather than relays.

A few radiio stats, and radio operated control valves and the like ;-)

Wires work. We do have a radio based programmable room stat. Guess which
single stat, out of 9, gives the most trouble...

Looks like wood is about 17MJ/kg, which is 4.7kWh/kg, or 4700 units per
tonne.

Roughly 1p/unit input.

So its break even at around 30% stove efficiency, at todays prices. Vis
a vis off-peak leccy/oil.

Should be able to get 30% bearing in mind that the room with the wood
burner won't need any heating.

However what it would do to pollution,

Well I'm not bothered about the CO2, the carbon was only taken from the
atmosphere in the last 50 odd years and we have 800 odd new trees growing
in the paddock. I don't think the local sheep are bothered by a bit of
smoke and the nearest neighbours down wind in the prevailing direction are
several miles away the otherside of a fell...

and to wood prices,if everybody started doing it doesn't bear thinking
about.

Not to mention how fast this country would lose any tree bigger than a
large sapling.

--
Cheers
Dave.

In article et,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:14:40 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

I'd guess this applies to the whole country - if everyone presently
heating with oil changed to electricity.

The lights would start to go out. What was the figure for the number of
homes heated by oil bandied about not long ago 1.5 million? Say
15kw/home, that would be another 22.5GW required on the nationa supply
I don't think the available winter margin is quite that large...

Nothing like it - I believe we sail quite close to the wind these days.

Plus the fact that very few houses will have a supply large enough to
directly replace an oil fired system anyway.

ISTR that the linesmen who came to adjust the tapping on our transformer
said it was capable of 25kW or 100A. The pole fuses are 200A, the
incomer 100A. Pity the oil boiler is 35.2kW output...

Of course you could reduce the peak demand from a boiler by storing heat
on all but the very coldest of days but I wonder what that does to the
efficiency?

I also suspect since oil has gone up so much electricity won't be so far
behind. No country is going to sell us any energy at less than the going
price - and that includes gas.

--
*Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

Adrian C wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Thank god for nookoleer powah!

Just find something radioscary to irradiate yer gonads for a few
minutes. Once done, you will be able to go through the rest of ye life
without ever paying a heating bill again. The "ready break" method:-)

But it wont be a very LONG life will it?

I had sorta hoped to see in 2020

Under these circumsfances you just might -- albeit as an almost woman :-)

In article et,
"Dave Liquorice" writes:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:14:40 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

I'd guess this applies to the whole country - if everyone presently
heating with oil changed to electricity.

The lights would start to go out. What was the figure for the number of
homes heated by oil bandied about not long ago 1.5 million? Say 15kw/home,
that would be another 22.5GW required on the nationa supply I don't think
the available winter margin is quite that large...

Nothing like. Normal UK load is around 40GW, and peak load around 60GW.
We've had peaks in the last five years where we were we had only around
1% spare capacity with all generation plant that was working online
(very close to rolling blackouts).

Plus the fact that very few houses will have a supply large enough to
directly replace an oil fired system anyway.

and the supply network isn't sized for that sort of load from many
houses at once.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:20:58 +0100, Rick Hughes wrote:
There are several of these about ... but of more interest would be:

1) heat pump ... remarkably more efficient, air-air easy enough but ground
to air, or water to air even better

Has anyone here managed to homebrew one of these? I did some reading up on
them a few weeks ago and the theory seems easy enough, but I'm not sure
how specialist some of the bits need to be...

(air-source isn't practical around here due to low winter temps, but
ground-source should be possible)

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Thats what Linux is for innit?

A few radiio stats, and radio operated control valves and the like ;-)

And there I was thinking that you were planning to install electric heating
by fitting a few server racks in each room. Might as well get some
computation cycles for the electricity. 'nice' is your thermostat

Theo

Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Nothing like. Normal UK load is around 40GW, and peak load around 60GW.
We've had peaks in the last five years where we were we had only around
1% spare capacity with all generation plant that was working online
(very close to rolling blackouts).

The Democratic Republic of Congo wants to build a hydroelectric project
that if it were possible here would supply the UK with all its
electricity needs, with the potential to supply the entire energy needs
of a country the size of the UK. Obviously in energy-poor Africa the
clean, renewable energy would transform lives for the better. And it
gives Congo the potential to be a serious industrial contender. Rather
as hydrothermal power is making Iceland a leader for companies wanting
clean, cheap power.

Usurprisingly the melons (green outside) want to get thw DRC project
stopped.

In message , The Natural
Philosopher writes
geoff wrote:
In message , The Natural
Philosopher writes
geoff wrote:
In message , The Natural
Philosopher writes
Apropos of something else, I was moved to research my energy costs.

Night time electricity is currently 4.85p per Kwh.

Oil is a staggering 54p a liter.

Oil energy density is 37.5MJ /liter. Which with a 100% efficient
boiler is still 5.184p per Kwh.

Does anyone make electrical central heating boilers?

I have UFH, which is tantamount to a big ****-off storage radiator
anyway !

With the amount of hot air you produce,what do you need central
heating for anyway ?

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
I knew you hadn't killfiled me, it just needed a bit of taunting
ha ha

I have,but not in this NG...


there is nowhere else that I can think of


--
geoff

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 12:08:37 on
Sat, 26 Apr 2008, magwitch remarked:

And you run your tumble dryer for an hour 5 times a week?

Yes (it's running now, I just measured the power, it's 1.3Kw).

Five loads of washing then drying a week. That's just over one per person.
Thats oeof te things thathappes when yopu dont 'go in to work'

Yes, its a load of T-shirts and socks and underpans every week,but NOt
shirts, suits, ties, and if you skip shaving and a bath for a day or
even two, its no ones business but your won, and saves power and water.

In message , The Natural
Philosopher writes
geoff wrote:
In message , The Natural
Philosopher writes
Apropos of something else, I was moved to research my energy costs.

Night time electricity is currently 4.85p per Kwh.

Oil is a staggering 54p a liter.

Oil energy density is 37.5MJ /liter. Which with a 100% efficient
boiler is still 5.184p per Kwh.

Does anyone make electrical central heating boilers?

I have UFH, which is tantamount to a big ****-off storage radiator
anyway !

With the amount of hot air you produce,what do you need central
heating for anyway ?

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

'kin hell - six words without a spelling mistake

must be a record for you


--
geoff

Dave Liquorice wrote:

Well I'm not bothered about the CO2, the carbon was only taken from the
atmosphere in the last 50 odd years and we have 800 odd new trees growing
in the paddock. I don't think the local sheep are bothered by a bit of
smoke and the nearest neighbours down wind in the prevailing direction are
several miles away the otherside of a fell...

and to wood prices,if everybody started doing it doesn't bear thinking
about.

Not to mention how fast this country would lose any tree bigger than a
large sapling.

Yes
One of my most vidid memories of te Isle of wight festival - the first
one - is arriving there a day eraly and campoing in the corner of a
field by a nice little copse, and leaving in the Monday with the wood
gone, and having been replaced by what amounted to an open toilet.

Back to nature, in terms of the vast majority of people, doesn't work.

Theo Markettos wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Thats what Linux is for innit?

A few radiio stats, and radio operated control valves and the like ;-)

And there I was thinking that you were planning to install electric heating
by fitting a few server racks in each room. Might as well get some
computation cycles for the electricity. 'nice' is your thermostat

Theo
Hmm. Not a bad idea: relocate the servers to the coldest room that is
used regularly.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Doctor Drivel wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Apropos of something else, I was moved to research my energy costs.

Night time electricity is currently 4.85p per Kwh.

Oil is a staggering 54p a liter.

Oil energy density is 37.5MJ /liter. Which with a 100% efficient boiler
is still 5.184p per Kwh.

Does anyone make electrical central heating boilers?

I have UFH, which is tantamount to a big ****-off storage radiator
anyway !

;-)

If my existing boiler was as low as 50% efficient (its non condensing
oil boiler) I might expect electricity to be cheaper in the daytime a
well.

Thank god for nookoleer powah!

If I recall rightly you have an overlarge unvented cylinder. A more
powerful immersion can be fitted, or two if two bosses available. Then a
take off using a bronze pump and a plate heat exchanger to mesh into the
heating circuit. Then you have the electricity and oil available.

What size is your cylinder in litres?

"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message , The Natural
Philosopher writes
geoff wrote:
In message , The Natural
Philosopher writes
Apropos of something else, I was moved to research my energy costs.

Night time electricity is currently 4.85p per Kwh.

Oil is a staggering 54p a liter.

Oil energy density is 37.5MJ /liter. Which with a 100% efficient boiler
is still 5.184p per Kwh.

Does anyone make electrical central heating boilers?

I have UFH, which is tantamount to a big ****-off storage radiator
anyway !

With the amount of hot air you produce,what do you need central heating
for anyway ?

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

'kin hell - six words without a spelling mistake

must be a record for you

Maxie, people have CDs these days.

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...

Nothing like. Normal UK load is around 40GW, and peak load around 60GW.
We've had peaks in the last five years where we were we had only around
1% spare capacity with all generation plant that was working online
(very close to rolling blackouts).

When was that? Why? What event caused that?

In message , at 17:49:18 on
Sat, 26 Apr 2008, The Natural Philosopher remarked:
And you run your tumble dryer for an hour 5 times a week?
Yes (it's running now, I just measured the power, it's 1.3Kw).
Five loads of washing then drying a week. That's just over one per
person.
Thats oeof te things thathappes when yopu dont 'go in to work'

Yes, its a load of T-shirts and socks and underpans every week,but NOt
shirts, suits, ties, and if you skip shaving and a bath for a day or
even two, its no ones business but your won,

And the rest of the family!

and saves power and water.

Not shaving saves a few watts, I suppose.

But two kids seem to get through a lot of clothes, what with school
uniform *and* what they change into later.
--
Roland Perry

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:49:18 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Five loads of washing then drying a week. That's just over one per person.
Thats oeof te things thathappes when yopu dont 'go in to work'

Yes, its a load of T-shirts and socks and underpans every week,but NOt
shirts, suits, ties, and if you skip shaving and a bath for a day or
even two, its no ones business but your won, and saves power and water.

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007...ages/day.4.jpg

and...

http://www.teo-computer.com/dev/graphics/dilbert0.gif

In article ,
Roland Perry writes:
In message , at 10:12:50 on Sat, 26 Apr
2008, tony sayer remarked:
And, of course, places like Cambridge are maxed out on the wholesale
supply of electricity. So you can't just build some nooclear power
stations, sell everyone electrical heating, without a lot of other
infrastructure upgrades as well.

Their building a new additional line from the Burwell super grid station
to supply Cambridge. In fact it should be built by now...

One town down, several hundred more to go.

This is a really big issue in the National Grid too...

a) Much of the grid equipment is now 50 years old and end of life.
b) The grid was designed to carry power from the coal fired power
stations mostly located at the coal mines to the industrial
centres of 50 years ago. Coal generated power has halved and is
intended to drop to very low levels. The industrial centres of
50 years ago are now mostly dead. This means the grid is not in
the best places to transfer power from current and future
generation plant to today's consumers.
c) The grid is at max capacity.
d) It now takes longer to build or upgrade one line (nearly 10
years, due to planning, public enquires, etc) than it took to
build the whole grid 50 years ago.

This has lots of implications for new generation plant. Most of
the potential renewable generation locations are nowhere near the
grid. Even those that are are finding they can't feed power into
the grid because it's already at full capacity, either locally,
or at a distant bottleneck. One such is that Scotland can't
feed more than 2GW to England, which is contributing to a 7 year
waiting list for new generators in Scotland to get a connection
to the grid. (This creates an interesting problem given that
planning permission for new plant lasts for 5 years, so it's
expired long before you can connect up, and no one's going to
build plant 2 or more years before they can use it.)

It takes politicians to create such a fiasco.

EU is pushing (maybe even legislating) countries to ensure they
have interconnects equivalent to 10% of their electricty
requirement, to promote international competition in electricity
sales. That actually seems unusually sensible. We're currently
a long way off that with 2GW to France and 0.5GW to Ireland.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Hmm. Not a bad idea: relocate the servers to the coldest room that is
used regularly.

I do it by having mine under the stairs - it heats the hall, and the hot air
rises to heat the upstairs too.

The (Cambridge) University Computer Lab building is entirely heated by
computers and bodyheat - my office was nice and toasty when I had about 500W
of equipment running yesterday. It can get a bit chilly at Christmas when
there's not so much bodyheat around.

Theo

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Apropos of something else, I was moved to research my energy costs.

Night time electricity is currently 4.85p per Kwh.

Oil is a staggering 54p a liter.

Oil energy density is 37.5MJ /liter. Which with a 100% efficient boiler is
still 5.184p per Kwh.

Does anyone make electrical central heating boilers?

I have UFH, which is tantamount to a big ****-off storage radiator anyway
!


Good site here for comparing costs...

http://www.nottenergy.com/energy-costs-comparison3

The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

if you skip shaving and a bath for a day or
even two, its no ones business but your won, and saves power and water.

Now, now ........ can't have the wife going out wearing a beard! :-)

On Apr 26, 4:31*pm, "CWatters"
wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in .net...

Apropos of something else, I was moved to research my energy costs.

Night time electricity is currently 4.85p per Kwh.

Oil is a staggering 54p a liter.

Oil energy density is 37.5MJ /liter. Which with a 100% efficient boiler is
still 5.184p per Kwh.

Does anyone make electrical central heating boilers?

I have UFH, which is tantamount to a big ****-off storage radiator anyway
!

Good site here for comparing costs...

http://www.nottenergy.com/energy-costs-comparison3

Interesting thread:

Seems like an opportunity, with all the know how represented here, to
ask a question that has been in mind for at least the last 50 years!

Recalling that, back in the early 1950s, read an article about a
power cable across the North Sea from Scotland to Norway?

Recollection is that it was, or proposed to be, a DC cable with
conversion from/to 50 cycle/hertz AC at each end. The purpose being to
load share between the power grids of the two countries etc.

I'm pretty sure recalling the article is not a figment of my
imagination.

But was that cable a fact or proposal?

Still very curious and would welcome any informed comment. Cheers.

In article ,
"Doctor Drivel" writes:

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...

Nothing like. Normal UK load is around 40GW, and peak load around 60GW.
We've had peaks in the last five years where we were we had only around
1% spare capacity with all generation plant that was working online
(very close to rolling blackouts).

When was that? Why? What event caused that?

First one (in recent years) was 10th December 2002. We were some
2-3 minutes from initiating load shedding (rolling blackouts).
I don't know the cause -- most likely a cold spell causing a
shortage of gas so that commercial consumers on cheap gas tarrifs
have their gas cut off, some of whom were gas fired power
stations, so we lose electricity generation capacity at peak
heating demand.

When a power plant wants to supply power to the grid, it contracts
to supply so much power for so much time. If it can't do it, it
has to pay another power station to do so in its place. The market
between suppliers means they carefully look to see if anyone
else unexpectedly drops off the grid, and immediately jack up
their prices to make maximum profit out of the failed plant
which now has to pay a premium to other suppliers to replace
the electricity it contracturally agreed to provide. On 10th
December 2002, this mechanism forced the wholesale price of
electricity to 500 times its normal price, and even then only
just managed to keep the lights on by the skin of its teeth.

Planning for rolling backouts took place in the following winter,
and only didn't happen because the weather forcast was wrong and
it didn't get as cold as was predicted. I don't have subsequent
dates, but there have been a number of supply shortage incidents
since then. Prior to the 2002 incident, we'd had a supply
infrastructure for decades with emergency capacity maintained in
reserve which gave us one of the most stable supplies in the world.
It was decided to mothball the emergency plant to save money (which
required a change in the law). It would have taken months to get it
back up working again.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Apr 25, 10:47*pm, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Apropos of something else, I was moved to research my energy costs.

Night time electricity is currently 4.85p per Kwh.

Oil is a staggering 54p a liter.

Oil energy density is 37.5MJ /liter. Which with a 100% efficient boiler
is still 5.184p per Kwh.

Does anyone make electrical central heating boilers?

Get one of these:

http://www.airconwarehouse.com/acatalog/Hitachi_AquaFree.html

Keep the boiler for the odd cold snap.

cheers,
Pete.

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:15:08 +0100 Steve Firth wrote :
The Democratic Republic of Congo wants to build a hydroelectric project
that if it were possible here would supply the UK with all its
electricity needs, with the potential to supply the entire energy needs
of a country the size of the UK. Obviously in energy-poor Africa the
clean, renewable energy would transform lives for the better. And it
gives Congo the potential to be a serious industrial contender.

If only it was so simple. Zambia and Zimbabwe have had the benefit of the
Kariba Dam since the 1960s. What keeps Africa poor is the absence of good
government.

--
Tony Bryer SDA UK 'Software to build on' http://www.sda.co.uk

Tony Bryer wrote:

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:15:08 +0100 Steve Firth wrote :
The Democratic Republic of Congo wants to build a hydroelectric project
that if it were possible here would supply the UK with all its
electricity needs, with the potential to supply the entire energy needs
of a country the size of the UK. Obviously in energy-poor Africa the
clean, renewable energy would transform lives for the better. And it
gives Congo the potential to be a serious industrial contender.

If only it was so simple.

I didn't say it was simple, but greens attempting to stop development
for their own political ends are suppressing the few chances that come
to poor countries.

Zambia and Zimbabwe have had the benefit of the
Kariba Dam since the 1960s.

And until Mugabe Zimbabwe was rich.

What keeps Africa poor is the absence of good
government.

I don't dispute that at all, but good government comes in part from
people having a reasonable expectation for their standard of life.

Jules wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:49:18 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Five loads of washing then drying a week. That's just over one per person.
Thats oeof te things thathappes when yopu dont 'go in to work'

Yes, its a load of T-shirts and socks and underpans every week,but NOt
shirts, suits, ties, and if you skip shaving and a bath for a day or
even two, its no ones business but your won, and saves power and water.

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007...ages/day.4.jpg

and...

http://www.teo-computer.com/dev/graphics/dilbert0.gif



Both somewhat too true to actually be funny..

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
Roland Perry writes:
In message , at 10:12:50 on Sat, 26 Apr
2008, tony sayer remarked:
And, of course, places like Cambridge are maxed out on the wholesale
supply of electricity. So you can't just build some nooclear power
stations, sell everyone electrical heating, without a lot of other
infrastructure upgrades as well.
Their building a new additional line from the Burwell super grid station
to supply Cambridge. In fact it should be built by now...
One town down, several hundred more to go.

This is a really big issue in the National Grid too...

a) Much of the grid equipment is now 50 years old and end of life.
b) The grid was designed to carry power from the coal fired power
stations mostly located at the coal mines to the industrial
centres of 50 years ago. Coal generated power has halved and is
intended to drop to very low levels. The industrial centres of
50 years ago are now mostly dead. This means the grid is not in
the best places to transfer power from current and future
generation plant to today's consumers.
c) The grid is at max capacity.
d) It now takes longer to build or upgrade one line (nearly 10
years, due to planning, public enquires, etc) than it took to
build the whole grid 50 years ago.

This has lots of implications for new generation plant. Most of
the potential renewable generation locations are nowhere near the
grid. Even those that are are finding they can't feed power into
the grid because it's already at full capacity, either locally,
or at a distant bottleneck. One such is that Scotland can't
feed more than 2GW to England, which is contributing to a 7 year
waiting list for new generators in Scotland to get a connection
to the grid. (This creates an interesting problem given that
planning permission for new plant lasts for 5 years, so it's
expired long before you can connect up, and no one's going to
build plant 2 or more years before they can use it.)

It takes politicians to create such a fiasco.


Utterly agree, Or rather to not recognise tehdanger of not stepping in
and stopping it.


EU is pushing (maybe even legislating) countries to ensure they
have interconnects equivalent to 10% of their electricty
requirement, to promote international competition in electricity
sales. That actually seems unusually sensible. We're currently
a long way off that with 2GW to France and 0.5GW to Ireland.



Its all very well for landlocked brussels to say that, but it costs us
10x more to cross a strip of sea with a cable than an unmanned border
post in luxembourg.

terry wrote:
On Apr 26, 4:31 pm, "CWatters"
wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in . net...

Apropos of something else, I was moved to research my energy costs.
Night time electricity is currently 4.85p per Kwh.
Oil is a staggering 54p a liter.
Oil energy density is 37.5MJ /liter. Which with a 100% efficient boiler is
still 5.184p per Kwh.
Does anyone make electrical central heating boilers?
I have UFH, which is tantamount to a big ****-off storage radiator anyway
!
Good site here for comparing costs...

http://www.nottenergy.com/energy-costs-comparison3

Interesting thread:

Seems like an opportunity, with all the know how represented here, to
ask a question that has been in mind for at least the last 50 years!

Recalling that, back in the early 1950s, read an article about a
power cable across the North Sea from Scotland to Norway?

Recollection is that it was, or proposed to be, a DC cable with
conversion from/to 50 cycle/hertz AC at each end. The purpose being to
load share between the power grids of the two countries etc.

I'm pretty sure recalling the article is not a figment of my
imagination.

But was that cable a fact or proposal?

Still very curious and would welcome any informed comment. Cheers.

Not sure if that one is a fact: others are,but the cost of the cable
plus the cost of energy the other end has to be less than the cost of
building a ocal power station, and by and large it isn't.

Undersea cable being pretty expensive things.

In article ,
Steve Firth wrote:
The Democratic Republic of Congo wants to build a hydroelectric project
that if it were possible here would supply the UK with all its
electricity needs, with the potential to supply the entire energy needs
of a country the size of the UK. Obviously in energy-poor Africa the
clean, renewable energy would transform lives for the better. And it
gives Congo the potential to be a serious industrial contender. Rather
as hydrothermal power is making Iceland a leader for companies wanting
clean, cheap power.

Usurprisingly the melons (green outside) want to get thw DRC project
stopped.

The big snag of that sort of scheme is not actually building it but
distributing the electricity to where it's needed.

But of course it's easier to blame the greens when practical objections
are raised.

--
*He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher writes:
terry wrote:

Interesting thread:

Seems like an opportunity, with all the know how represented here, to
ask a question that has been in mind for at least the last 50 years!

Recalling that, back in the early 1950s, read an article about a
power cable across the North Sea from Scotland to Norway?

Recollection is that it was, or proposed to be, a DC cable with
conversion from/to 50 cycle/hertz AC at each end. The purpose being to
load share between the power grids of the two countries etc.

I'm pretty sure recalling the article is not a figment of my
imagination.

But was that cable a fact or proposal?

Still very curious and would welcome any informed comment. Cheers.

Not sure if that one is a fact: others are,but the cost of the cable
plus the cost of energy the other end has to be less than the cost of
building a ocal power station, and by and large it isn't.

Undersea cable being pretty expensive things.

There was a proposal a couple of years ago to build a ring main
or interconnect under the north sea, connecting UK, Holland,
Germany, Denmark, Norway, and also allowing easier connection
of sea-based wind farms. Don't know where that's got to now.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Planning for rolling backouts took place in the following winter,
and only didn't happen because the weather forcast was wrong and
it didn't get as cold as was predicted. I don't have subsequent
dates, but there have been a number of supply shortage incidents
since then. Prior to the 2002 incident, we'd had a supply
infrastructure for decades with emergency capacity maintained in
reserve which gave us one of the most stable supplies in the world.
It was decided to mothball the emergency plant to save money (which
required a change in the law). It would have taken months to get it
back up working again.


But we're OK now we've got the windmills .. aren't we;!?...
--
Tony Sayer

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

The big snag of that sort of scheme is not actually building it but
distributing the electricity to where it's needed.

That has already been covered for this scheme.

But of course it's easier to blame the greens when practical objections
are raised.

The greens aren't raising "practical objections" they are objecting on
unfounded principle.

tony sayer wrote:
Planning for rolling backouts took place in the following winter,
and only didn't happen because the weather forcast was wrong and
it didn't get as cold as was predicted. I don't have subsequent
dates, but there have been a number of supply shortage incidents
since then. Prior to the 2002 incident, we'd had a supply
infrastructure for decades with emergency capacity maintained in
reserve which gave us one of the most stable supplies in the world.
It was decided to mothball the emergency plant to save money (which
required a change in the law). It would have taken months to get it
back up working again.


But we're OK now we've got the windmills .. aren't we;!?...

Yeah, right

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher writes:
terry wrote:
Interesting thread:

Seems like an opportunity, with all the know how represented here, to
ask a question that has been in mind for at least the last 50 years!

Recalling that, back in the early 1950s, read an article about a
power cable across the North Sea from Scotland to Norway?

Recollection is that it was, or proposed to be, a DC cable with
conversion from/to 50 cycle/hertz AC at each end. The purpose being to
load share between the power grids of the two countries etc.

I'm pretty sure recalling the article is not a figment of my
imagination.

But was that cable a fact or proposal?

Still very curious and would welcome any informed comment. Cheers.
Not sure if that one is a fact: others are,but the cost of the cable
plus the cost of energy the other end has to be less than the cost of
building a ocal power station, and by and large it isn't.

Undersea cable being pretty expensive things.

There was a proposal a couple of years ago to build a ring main
or interconnect under the north sea, connecting UK, Holland,
Germany, Denmark, Norway, and also allowing easier connection
of sea-based wind farms. Don't know where that's got to now.


Probably booted well into touch when the costs were calculated.


As with a lot off greenwash stuff, its all just more cat-belling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_the_cat

On Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:59:34 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

Planning for rolling backouts took place in the following winter,
and only didn't happen because the weather forcast was wrong and
it didn't get as cold as was predicted. I don't have subsequent
dates, but there have been a number of supply shortage incidents
since then. Prior to the 2002 incident, we'd had a supply
infrastructure for decades with emergency capacity maintained in
reserve which gave us one of the most stable supplies in the world.
It was decided to mothball the emergency plant to save money (which
required a change in the law). It would have taken months to get it
back up working again.


But we're OK now we've got the windmills .. aren't we;!?...


Bizarrely, given that was blamed on the wind chill, they'd actually be
usefull.

Steve Firth wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

The big snag of that sort of scheme is not actually building it but
distributing the electricity to where it's needed.

That has already been covered for this scheme.

But of course it's easier to blame the greens when practical objections
are raised.

The greens aren't raising "practical objections" they are objecting on
unfounded principle.

Well less unfounded principle, than principle founded on prejudice.


There is a hazy sort of credo running through gren/naturalist thinking,
and that is really more a rejection of technology by people who are
scared of it, don't understand it, and want to return to some Romantic
idealised Naturalism.

I will relate again the response of my one time neighbour and landlord,
a Fenland potato farmer, who related how before tractors, they used to
pick the potatoes from the fields by hand.

"And what would you do if there were no tractors and you had to do it
again?" asked the schoolgirl on a 'field trip'

"I should probably commit suicide" was his considered response.

I remember another anecdote, from the early days of the Apple Mac.
Allegedly Apple set a competition for 'the most inventive thing you
could do with an Apple Mac, given suitable software and peripheral
equipment"

Some dry wit remarked "with *suitable software and peripherals*, I would
use an Apple Mac to put a man on the moon"

Frankly, as an engineer, most of the problem is that very few people ARE
engineers, and even fewer engineers get anywhere near government.

Its easy enough to talk in theoretical terms, but engineers are used to
thinking it terms of practical solutions, and furthermore, outside of
the USA anyway, in practical solutions that can be *economically
implemented*.

An engineer, Neville Shute remarked, is someone "who can do for sixpence
what any damn fool can do for a quid".

Undersea cables are around a million quid a mile at GW capacity.

Nuclear power stations are about a billion quid a gigawatt.

It doesn't take more than 11+ maths (or these days, an advanced degree
in Mathematics from Burnham on Crouch University of the mentally
challenged) to work out that puts a distinct restraint on e.g. carrying
power from the Congo to the UK or whatever.

And makes the value of a North Sea super ring pretty arguable.

IF all we have is windmills, and IF teh north sea is going to be a
littered with them as the pavement outside McDonald's is littered with
rubbish on a Saturday night, well, yes, then thats a sensible solution.

But the cost is many times greater than the alternatives.