"Windmill" wrote in message
...

They tend to have a battery backup, it doesn't last long.
Nobody (except naive users) expects the mobile network to survive an
emergency.

Certainly not likely to survive an EMP.

The wired one won't either (well not from a nuclear device above the UK).

I have some kit sealed in a biscuit tin that might.

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 08:13:41 GMT, lid
(Windmill) wrote:

If you were trying to do things on a small scale, just for yourself,
and had an acre or two of ground, you could use gravitational storage
in the form of a 40 foot cube of heavy rock which your solar panels and
small wind turbine would raise to a height of 40 feet.

Rather than a random lump of rock choose a lump of a heavy element
like uranium...


--

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 08:13:41 +0000, Windmill wrote:

Clive Page writes:

I agree, but that doesn't of itself mean that wind power is not a good
investment. It may be on the grounds that every little helps, but the
economic arguments rely rather a lot on subsidies.

Anyone who thinks that renewable energy will solve all our problems
should have a look at www.withouthotair.com which is a free online book
written by David MacKay, a respected physicist. He shows beyond doubt
that the only solution for the UK is a partial revival of nuclear power:
the sum of all other methods of generating electricity under the best
possible assumptions won't generate enough. It's a long document, but
well worth reading.


The odd thing is that you don't have to be a respected physicist to have
been able from the start to see that the UK will, sooner or later, need
nuclear power stations. You just need high school maths. It's plain that
renewables are over-hyped.

The big problem with renewables is energy storage.

If you were trying to do things on a small scale, just for yourself, and
had an acre or two of ground, you could use gravitational storage in the
form of a 40 foot cube of heavy rock which your solar panels and small
wind turbine would raise to a height of 40 feet.

That'd store enough energy for personal needs, provided that you made
efficient use of the energy. A much smaller arrangement could be used to
power remote TV repeater stations, small telephone exchanges, etc.

If I had loads of cash (and a country estate, not a flat in town), I'd
love to experiment with such an arrangement.

When there's excess power, the cube is raised. When power is needed, it
slowly sinks. When no power is needed or generated, nothing moves. If
power is being generated but none is being used, you disconnect the
generating device.

I think you could do it with some kind of differential as used in a
car's transmission.

Maybe it also needs some kind of gear mechanism with an infinitely
variable ratio (a few vehicles have used that).

Well, something like that. I'm not a mechanical engineer, but if I were
Cameron I could afford to hire a few (and would probably have the
country estate besides).

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would be
to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested below -
assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not gravity).
Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently done by a
bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.

Or drive machinery for milling flour .....

Jethro_uk wrote:

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would be
to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested below -
assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not gravity).
Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently done by a
bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.

Or drive machinery for milling flour .....

I suggest you look at and do some very basic O level mathematics on the
energy density of various storage mediums.

If you are not a Green this should be within your capabilities.

Then ask that question again, and calculate just how much of any given
thing you need to store the energy.

You will then discover that the best thing there ever was for storing
energy, although we cant make it, is nuclear fuel.

Way below that is carbon based fuels,

Water up a hill is OK, if you have country sized hills and valleys..

Hot things are also very good. If what you want is heat.If it isn't they
are massively useless and inefficient at turning heat into anything else.



--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

In article ,
Jethro_uk wrote:

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would be
to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested below -
assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not gravity).
Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently done by a
bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.

Or drive machinery for milling flour .....

if you don't convert the energy to electrcity, you need the renewable
source at the point of use. I suupose I could use a small windmill to
power my coffee grinder. ;-)

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.18

On Wednesday, June 27, 2012 9:15:14 AM UTC+1, Windmill wrote:
snip
The mobile network isn't much use without the wired bit.

True, at the moment, but we may be moving towards an all-mobile
arrangement.

Even if everyone gave up their landline phones we'd still be dependent on the wires (well, mainly fibres) linking the mobile base stations.

On Wednesday, June 27, 2012 1:42:52 PM UTC+1, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Jethro_uk wrote:

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would be
to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested below -
assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not gravity).
Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently done by a
bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.

Or drive machinery for milling flour .....

I suggest you look at and do some very basic O level mathematics on the
energy density of various storage mediums.

If you are not a Green this should be within your capabilities.

Then ask that question again, and calculate just how much of any given
thing you need to store the energy.

You will then discover that the best thing there ever was for storing
energy, although we cant make it, is nuclear fuel.

Way below that is carbon based fuels,

Water up a hill is OK, if you have country sized hills and valleys..

Hot things are also very good. If what you want is heat.If it isn't they
are massively useless and inefficient at turning heat into anything else.

Intersting solar lakes is Aus.

http://www.enersalt.com.au/Local%20P...ap_heat__.html




--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

In article ,
wrote:
On Wednesday, June 27, 2012 9:15:14 AM UTC+1, Windmill wrote:
snip
The mobile network isn't much use without the wired bit.

True, at the moment, but we may be moving towards an all-mobile
arrangement.

Even if everyone gave up their landline phones we'd still be dependent on
the wires (well, mainly fibres) linking the mobile base stations.

In a lot of cases it's microwaves

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.18

charles wrote:
In article ,
Jethro_uk wrote:

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would be
to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested below -
assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not gravity).
Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently done by a
bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.

Or drive machinery for milling flour .....

if you don't convert the energy to electrcity, you need the renewable
source at the point of use. I suupose I could use a small windmill to
power my coffee grinder. ;-)


depend on how long you are prepared to store the ground coffee..


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

On Jun 26, 10:33*am, "dennis@home"
wrote:
"mogga" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:47:37 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

"All the windmills in the UK are not supplying enough electricity to
charge an I pod in every house in the country"

Its not a very good example.
It would have more meaning if you stated that they cant even maintain the
telephone network which most people would regard as essential.

Telephone network or mobile network?

The mobile network isn't much use without the wired bit.

Just exactly how many mobiles in use would need recharging at:
01:36:31 on Tuesday, 26 June 2012?

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 08:22:58 -0700 (PDT), Weatherlawyer
wrote:

On Jun 26, 10:33*am, "dennis@home"
wrote:
"mogga" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:47:37 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

"All the windmills in the UK are not supplying enough electricity to
charge an I pod in every house in the country"

Its not a very good example.
It would have more meaning if you stated that they cant even maintain the
telephone network which most people would regard as essential.

Telephone network or mobile network?

The mobile network isn't much use without the wired bit.

Just exactly how many mobiles in use would need recharging at:
01:36:31 on Tuesday, 26 June 2012?

If we all used phones from 10 year ago about 15%

For a modern and 'improved' smartphone. 100%


--

Weatherlawyer wrote:
On Jun 26, 10:33 am, "dennis@home"
wrote:
"mogga" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:47:37 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
"All the windmills in the UK are not supplying enough electricity to
charge an I pod in every house in the country"
Its not a very good example.
It would have more meaning if you stated that they cant even maintain the
telephone network which most people would regard as essential.
Telephone network or mobile network?
The mobile network isn't much use without the wired bit.

Just exactly how many mobiles in use would need recharging at:
01:36:31 on Tuesday, 26 June 2012?

whoosh...


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"Windmill" wrote in message
...
"dennis@home" writes:

8

The mobile network isn't much use without the wired bit.

True, at the moment, but we may be moving towards an all-mobile
arrangement.

I hope not, what will the emergency services do when it all goes tits up?

It never does, even in world wars.

On 27/06/2012 11:14, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Windmill wrote:
Clive Page writes:

I agree, but that doesn't of itself mean that wind power is not a
good investment. It may be on the grounds that every little helps,
but the economic arguments rely rather a lot on subsidies.

Anyone who thinks that renewable energy will solve all our problems
should have a look at www.withouthotair.com which is a free online
book written by David MacKay, a respected physicist. He shows beyond
doubt that the only solution for the UK is a partial revival of
nuclear power: the sum of all other methods of generating electricity
under the best possible assumptions won't generate enough. It's a
long document, but well worth reading.


The odd thing is that you don't have to be a respected physicist to
have been able from the start to see that the UK will, sooner or later,
need nuclear power stations. You just need high school maths.
It's plain that renewables are over-hyped.

The big problem with renewables is energy storage.

If you were trying to do things on a small scale, just for yourself,
and had an acre or two of ground, you could use gravitational storage
in the form of a 40 foot cube of heavy rock which your solar panels and
small wind turbine would raise to a height of 40 feet.

That'd store enough energy for personal needs, provided that you made
efficient use of the energy. A much smaller arrangement could be used
to power remote TV repeater stations, small telephone exchanges, etc.

If I had loads of cash (and a country estate, not a flat in town), I'd
love to experiment with such an arrangement.

When there's excess power, the cube is raised. When power is needed, it
slowly sinks. When no power is needed or generated, nothing moves.
If power is being generated but none is being used, you disconnect the
generating device.

I think you could do it with some kind of differential as used in a
car's transmission.

Maybe it also needs some kind of gear mechanism with an infinitely
variable ratio (a few vehicles have used that).

Well, something like that. I'm not a mechanical engineer, but if I were
Cameron I could afford to hire a few (and would probably have the country
estate besides).


its easiire just to pump water into a large header tank. One the size of
a dirtsict water supply tank - about the same size as a church tower -
could probebly keep one person going a few days.

You can store a lot more power in a smaller volume by using the pumped
water to lift a heavy weight. That's exactly how Tower Bridge works -
allowing a relatively small motor (formerly steam engine) to slowly pump
the weight up while the bridge is down and then the weight provides the
stored energy to raise the bridge when needed.

SteveW

On 27/06/2012 13:44, charles wrote:


if you don't convert the energy to electrcity, you need the renewable
source at the point of use. I suupose I could use a small windmill to
power my coffee grinder. ;-)


That sounds like rather a fine DIY project. For that matter you could
have a set of shafts and pulleys across the ceiling like a good old
fashioned factory, to drive the food mixer, tin opener, fridge....

I used to have an extremely manic and energetic collie cross, it was
always one of my fantasies to build a sort of giant hampster wheel in
the back garden to try to wear it out.

:-)

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would be
to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested below -
assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not gravity).
Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently done by a
bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.


Theres some 0f they just past Duxford airfield going south towards
Ickleton. Wouldn't believe they are there. They have an anti phase sound
cancelling system suppose they borrow some Gas as from the pipelines!...


Or drive machinery for milling flour .....

--
Tony Sayer

In article m,
newshound scribeth thus
On 27/06/2012 13:44, charles wrote:


if you don't convert the energy to electrcity, you need the renewable
source at the point of use. I suupose I could use a small windmill to
power my coffee grinder. ;-)


That sounds like rather a fine DIY project. For that matter you could
have a set of shafts and pulleys across the ceiling like a good old
fashioned factory, to drive the food mixer, tin opener, fridge....

I used to have an extremely manic and energetic collie cross, it was
always one of my fantasies to build a sort of giant hampster wheel in
the back garden to try to wear it out.

:-)


If you get a reasonable excuse to go to the science museum at all
grandchildren on a day out etc. Go down to the basement and there prolly
still is there a demo of the energy to light a 20 or 30 watt light bulb
by turning a crank handle.

Unless your very fit you won't be doing it that long its an excellent
demo of what power is all about;!...
--
Tony Sayer

SteveW wrote:
On 27/06/2012 11:14, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Windmill wrote:
Clive Page writes:

I agree, but that doesn't of itself mean that wind power is not a
good investment. It may be on the grounds that every little helps,
but the economic arguments rely rather a lot on subsidies.

Anyone who thinks that renewable energy will solve all our problems
should have a look at www.withouthotair.com which is a free online
book written by David MacKay, a respected physicist. He shows beyond
doubt that the only solution for the UK is a partial revival of
nuclear power: the sum of all other methods of generating electricity
under the best possible assumptions won't generate enough. It's a
long document, but well worth reading.


The odd thing is that you don't have to be a respected physicist to
have been able from the start to see that the UK will, sooner or later,
need nuclear power stations. You just need high school maths.
It's plain that renewables are over-hyped.

The big problem with renewables is energy storage.

If you were trying to do things on a small scale, just for yourself,
and had an acre or two of ground, you could use gravitational storage
in the form of a 40 foot cube of heavy rock which your solar panels and
small wind turbine would raise to a height of 40 feet.

That'd store enough energy for personal needs, provided that you made
efficient use of the energy. A much smaller arrangement could be used
to power remote TV repeater stations, small telephone exchanges, etc.

If I had loads of cash (and a country estate, not a flat in town), I'd
love to experiment with such an arrangement.

When there's excess power, the cube is raised. When power is needed, it
slowly sinks. When no power is needed or generated, nothing moves.
If power is being generated but none is being used, you disconnect the
generating device.

I think you could do it with some kind of differential as used in a
car's transmission.

Maybe it also needs some kind of gear mechanism with an infinitely
variable ratio (a few vehicles have used that).

Well, something like that. I'm not a mechanical engineer, but if I were
Cameron I could afford to hire a few (and would probably have the
country
estate besides).


its easiire just to pump water into a large header tank. One the size of
a dirtsict water supply tank - about the same size as a church tower -
could probebly keep one person going a few days.

You can store a lot more power in a smaller volume by using the pumped
water to lift a heavy weight. That's exactly how Tower Bridge works -
allowing a relatively small motor (formerly steam engine) to slowly pump
the weight up while the bridge is down and then the weight provides the
stored energy to raise the bridge when needed.


well I suppose depleted uranium is a few times heavier than water.

Might run you for a couple of days.

You would be surprised how little power it takes to operate tower bridge...


SteveW


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...

I hope not, what will the emergency services do when it all goes tits up?

It never does, even in world wars.

which mobile network did we use during the last two world wars?

dennis@home wrote:


"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...

I hope not, what will the emergency services do when it all goes tits
up?

It never does, even in world wars.

which mobile network did we use during the last two world wars?

shortwave mainly.

--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...

I hope not, what will the emergency services do when it all goes tits
up?

It never does, even in world wars.

which mobile network did we use during the last two world wars?

Its obviously feasible to do the mobile system the same
way we did the landline phone system during the last one.

Not a shred of rocket science whatever required.

And I was clearly talking about your silly 'when it all goes tits up'
anyway.

That never happens in the first world even with world wars.

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...


"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...

I hope not, what will the emergency services do when it all goes tits
up?

It never does, even in world wars.

which mobile network did we use during the last two world wars?

Its obviously feasible to do the mobile system the same
way we did the landline phone system during the last one.

Not a shred of rocket science whatever required.

And I was clearly talking about your silly 'when it all goes tits up'
anyway.

That never happens in the first world even with world wars.



I suggest you lookup the difference between strowger and electronics.

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:08:17 +0100, dennis@home wrote:

I suggest you lookup the difference between strowger and electronics.

Then wander over to the Ofcom site and count how many cell sites there are.
Then consider the number of UPS's and gensets that would be required to
maintain the mobile networks. The capital and on going costs of all that kit
to the commercial operators. It just ain't going to happen for the public
networks. Airwave may well be different.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...


"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...

I hope not, what will the emergency services do when it all goes tits
up?

It never does, even in world wars.

which mobile network did we use during the last two world wars?

Its obviously feasible to do the mobile system the same
way we did the landline phone system during the last one.

Not a shred of rocket science whatever required.

And I was clearly talking about your silly 'when it all goes tits up'
anyway.

That never happens in the first world even with world wars.

I suggest you lookup the difference between strowger and electronics.

Don't need to, I know what the difference is.

Its irrelevant to how things are designed to handle the situation
where mains power goes away for a while, and that still works
fine with modern digital landline exchanges.

And is completely irrelevant to the FACT that we don't ever
see 'when it all goes tits up' even in full world wars anyway.

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:11:35 +0100, Terry Fields wrote:

dennis@home wrote:

"Windmill" wrote in message
...

They tend to have a battery backup, it doesn't last long. Nobody
(except naive users) expects the mobile network to survive an
emergency.

Certainly not likely to survive an EMP.

The wired one won't either (well not from a nuclear device above the
UK).

I have some kit sealed in a biscuit tin that might.

"The worst effects of a Russian high altitude test occurred on 22
October 1962 (during the Cuban missile crisis), in Operation K when a
300 kiloton missile-warhead detonated west of Dzhezkazgan (also called
Zhezqazghan) at an altitude of 290 km (180 mi). The Soviet scientists
instrumented a 570-kilometer (350 mi) section of telephone line in the
area affected by the detonation in order to measure electromagnetic
pulse effects.[2]

The EMP fused all of the 570-kilometer monitored overhead telephone line
with measured currents of 1500 to 3400 amperes during the 22 October
1962 test.[3] The monitored telephone line was divided into sub-lines
of 40 to 80 kilometers (about 25 to 50 miles) in length, separated by
repeaters. Each sub-line was protected by fuses and by gas-filled
overvoltage protectors. The EMP from the 22 October (K-3) nuclear test
caused all of the fuses to blow and all of the overvoltage protectors to
fire in all of the sub-lines of the 570 km telephone line.[2] The EMP
from the same test started a fire that burned down the Karaganda power
plant, and shut down 1,000 km (620 mi) of shallow-buried power cables
between Astana (then called Aqmola) and Almaty.[3]

The Partial Test Ban Treaty was passed the following year, ending
atmospheric and exoatmospheric nuclear tests."

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


Terry Fields

I recall reading in "Electronics Today International" in the early 80s
about EMP. Apparently valves were much less susceptible - it was
interesting how back then a lot of Russian kit was not transistorised.
ISTR the most vulnerable components were VLSI chips.

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:42:52 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I suggest you look at and do some very basic O level mathematics on the
energy density of various storage mediums.

If you are not a Green this should be within your capabilities.

I was trying to be ironic

The more nukes the better as far as I am concerned. Bring them on. And
why not look at Thorium too - if we're not interesting in making bombs.

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 23:14:56 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

In article m,
newshound scribeth thus
On 27/06/2012 13:44, charles wrote:


if you don't convert the energy to electrcity, you need the renewable
source at the point of use. I suupose I could use a small windmill to
power my coffee grinder. ;-)


That sounds like rather a fine DIY project. For that matter you could
have a set of shafts and pulleys across the ceiling like a good old
fashioned factory, to drive the food mixer, tin opener, fridge....

I used to have an extremely manic and energetic collie cross, it was
always one of my fantasies to build a sort of giant hampster wheel in
the back garden to try to wear it out.

:-)


If you get a reasonable excuse to go to the science museum at all
grandchildren on a day out etc. Go down to the basement and there prolly
still is there a demo of the energy to light a 20 or 30 watt light bulb
by turning a crank handle.

Unless your very fit you won't be doing it that long its an excellent
demo of what power is all about;!...

Which makes it all the more amazing that a human brain can use about 20W
all on it's own ....

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 23:11:37 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would be
to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested below -
assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not gravity).
Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently done by a
bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.


Theres some 0f they just past Duxford airfield going south towards
Ickleton. Wouldn't believe they are there. They have an anti phase sound
cancelling system suppose they borrow some Gas as from the pipelines!...


Yes, they're powered by inline gas so can run (in theory) till the gas
runs out. Last I knew there were 14 compressor stations across the UK,
usually with 2 engines. Designed to pack the grid to 75bar. You could buy
the gas after 6pm (when it was cheapest) and pressurised the grid to run
during the day. There was quite a bit of software involved in matching
demand, supply, and contract data, to deliver the most cost-efficient
spread of gas purchasing possible.

Apparently, at 75bar, the gas can throw a flame 400m !

In article o.uk, Dave
Liquorice scribeth thus
On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:08:17 +0100, dennis@home wrote:

I suggest you lookup the difference between strowger and electronics.

Then wander over to the Ofcom site and count how many cell sites there are.
Then consider the number of UPS's and gensets that would be required to
maintain the mobile networks. The capital and on going costs of all that kit
to the commercial operators. It just ain't going to happen for the public
networks. Airwave may well be different.


Dave, check you mail later you'll see a pix of a small 3G base station
the enclosed batts will keep it going for a day or so. This is a small
roadside one.


--
Tony Sayer

In article , Jethro_uk
scribeth thus
On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 23:11:37 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would be
to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested below -
assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not gravity).
Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently done by a
bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.


Theres some 0f they just past Duxford airfield going south towards
Ickleton. Wouldn't believe they are there. They have an anti phase sound
cancelling system suppose they borrow some Gas as from the pipelines!...


Yes, they're powered by inline gas so can run (in theory) till the gas
runs out. Last I knew there were 14 compressor stations across the UK,
usually with 2 engines. Designed to pack the grid to 75bar. You could buy
the gas after 6pm (when it was cheapest) and pressurised the grid to run
during the day. There was quite a bit of software involved in matching
demand, supply, and contract data, to deliver the most cost-efficient
spread of gas purchasing possible.

Apparently, at 75bar, the gas can throw a flame 400m !

I remember back a long while ago they had an open day of sorts where
you could go on or in a section of pipe to see how it was welded and
inspected;!..

http://goo.gl/maps/GDHt
--
Tony Sayer

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:49:57 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

In article , Jethro_uk
scribeth thus
On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 23:11:37 +0100, tony sayer wrote:

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would
be to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested
below - assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not
gravity). Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently
done by a bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.


Theres some 0f they just past Duxford airfield going south towards
Ickleton. Wouldn't believe they are there. They have an anti phase
sound cancelling system suppose they borrow some Gas as from the
pipelines!...


Yes, they're powered by inline gas so can run (in theory) till the gas
runs out. Last I knew there were 14 compressor stations across the UK,
usually with 2 engines. Designed to pack the grid to 75bar. You could
buy the gas after 6pm (when it was cheapest) and pressurised the grid to
run during the day. There was quite a bit of software involved in
matching demand, supply, and contract data, to deliver the most
cost-efficient spread of gas purchasing possible.

Apparently, at 75bar, the gas can throw a flame 400m !

I remember back a long while ago they had an open day of sorts where
you could go on or in a section of pipe to see how it was welded and
inspected;!..

http://goo.gl/maps/GDHt

Obviously at 75bar, integrity was critical. During the summer, they would
send robotic pigs through empty pipes to check for corrosion. They had to
notify the CAA when venting the pipes, as it made the air above too thin
for safe flight !

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:25:09 GMT, Jethro_uk
wrote:

Obviously at 75bar, integrity was critical. During the summer, they would
send robotic pigs through empty pipes to check for corrosion. They had to
notify the CAA when venting the pipes, as it made the air above too thin
for safe flight !

All major gas venting sites are marked on aircraft navigation charts
with a minimum advised height.

No idea why they would ever need to inform the CAA as I can't ever
recall them being in a NOTAM (notice to airmen) as they are regarded
as a fixed hazard just like TV masts and chimney stacks.

Example of one near Duxford mentioned previously and the key from a
CAA supplied chart.

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/6430/gasventing.jpg


--

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:54:03 +0100, The Other Mike wrote:

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:25:09 GMT, Jethro_uk
wrote:

Obviously at 75bar, integrity was critical. During the summer, they
would send robotic pigs through empty pipes to check for corrosion. They
had to notify the CAA when venting the pipes, as it made the air above
too thin for safe flight !

All major gas venting sites are marked on aircraft navigation charts
with a minimum advised height.

No idea why they would ever need to inform the CAA as I can't ever
recall them being in a NOTAM (notice to airmen) as they are regarded as
a fixed hazard just like TV masts and chimney stacks.

Example of one near Duxford mentioned previously and the key from a CAA
supplied chart.

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/6430/gasventing.jpg

This was 25 years ago

AFAICR the location of pipes and offtakes was kept as secret as possible
(with the exception of pipes crossing rivers, which had to be marked) as
you really wouldn't want to see what a few pounds of HE could do there.

The Natural Philosopher writes:

Windmill wrote:
Clive Page writes:

I agree, but that doesn't of itself mean that wind power is not a good
investment. It may be on the grounds that every little helps, but the
economic arguments rely rather a lot on subsidies.

Anyone who thinks that renewable energy will solve all our problems
should have a look at www.withouthotair.com which is a free online book
written by David MacKay, a respected physicist. He shows beyond doubt
that the only solution for the UK is a partial revival of nuclear power:
the sum of all other methods of generating electricity under the best
possible assumptions won't generate enough. It's a long document, but
well worth reading.


The odd thing is that you don't have to be a respected physicist to
have been able from the start to see that the UK will, sooner or later,
need nuclear power stations. You just need high school maths.
It's plain that renewables are over-hyped.

The big problem with renewables is energy storage.

If you were trying to do things on a small scale, just for yourself,
and had an acre or two of ground, you could use gravitational storage
in the form of a 40 foot cube of heavy rock which your solar panels and
small wind turbine would raise to a height of 40 feet.

That'd store enough energy for personal needs, provided that you made
efficient use of the energy. A much smaller arrangement could be used
to power remote TV repeater stations, small telephone exchanges, etc.

If I had loads of cash (and a country estate, not a flat in town), I'd
love to experiment with such an arrangement.

When there's excess power, the cube is raised. When power is needed, it
slowly sinks. When no power is needed or generated, nothing moves.
If power is being generated but none is being used, you disconnect the
generating device.

I think you could do it with some kind of differential as used in a
car's transmission.

Maybe it also needs some kind of gear mechanism with an infinitely
variable ratio (a few vehicles have used that).

Well, something like that. I'm not a mechanical engineer, but if I were
Cameron I could afford to hire a few (and would probably have the country
estate besides).


its easiire just to pump water into a large header tank. One the size of
a dirtsict water supply tank - about the same size as a church tower -
could probebly keep one person going a few days.

On the face of it, that's true.
But water corrodes things/freezes/evaporates, and isn't very heavy.
My guess is that the cube (maybe with linked gearing of heavy worm gears at
each corner) would require much less maintnenance.
And you wouldn't want something which required a live-in engineer.

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

Jethro_uk writes:

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 08:13:41 +0000, Windmill wrote:

Clive Page writes:

I agree, but that doesn't of itself mean that wind power is not a good
investment. It may be on the grounds that every little helps, but the
economic arguments rely rather a lot on subsidies.

Anyone who thinks that renewable energy will solve all our problems
should have a look at www.withouthotair.com which is a free online book
written by David MacKay, a respected physicist. He shows beyond doubt
that the only solution for the UK is a partial revival of nuclear power:
the sum of all other methods of generating electricity under the best
possible assumptions won't generate enough. It's a long document, but
well worth reading.


The odd thing is that you don't have to be a respected physicist to have
been able from the start to see that the UK will, sooner or later, need
nuclear power stations. You just need high school maths. It's plain that
renewables are over-hyped.

The big problem with renewables is energy storage.

If you were trying to do things on a small scale, just for yourself, and
had an acre or two of ground, you could use gravitational storage in the
form of a 40 foot cube of heavy rock which your solar panels and small
wind turbine would raise to a height of 40 feet.

That'd store enough energy for personal needs, provided that you made
efficient use of the energy. A much smaller arrangement could be used to
power remote TV repeater stations, small telephone exchanges, etc.

If I had loads of cash (and a country estate, not a flat in town), I'd
love to experiment with such an arrangement.

When there's excess power, the cube is raised. When power is needed, it
slowly sinks. When no power is needed or generated, nothing moves. If
power is being generated but none is being used, you disconnect the
generating device.

I think you could do it with some kind of differential as used in a
car's transmission.

Maybe it also needs some kind of gear mechanism with an infinitely
variable ratio (a few vehicles have used that).

Well, something like that. I'm not a mechanical engineer, but if I were
Cameron I could afford to hire a few (and would probably have the
country estate besides).

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would be
to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested below -
assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not gravity).
Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently done by a
bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.

Or drive machinery for milling flour .....

Not converting from one form of energy to another unless necessary
makes sense. You don't have the almost inevitable conversion losses.

But if you need the energy somewhere else, but not too distant,
electricity is probably the way to go.

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

John Williamson writes:

Windmill wrote:
Tim Watts writes:

We have always had the odd 10-60 minute outage, but this year (since and
including Dec 2011) we have had 7 power cuts (2 days has 2 each). I wonder
if this has anything to do with EDF having sold all our transmission to the
Chinese (UKPower).

Just wait until our glorious leaders, "needing" a huge profit, sell the
(by then) newly-privatised prisons to them.

Bring back the treadmill? Connect it to a generator?

Mill the flour for noodle manufacture?

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

"dennis@home" writes:



"Windmill" wrote in message
...
"dennis@home" writes:

8

The mobile network isn't much use without the wired bit.

True, at the moment, but we may be moving towards an all-mobile
arrangement.

I hope not, what will the emergency services do when it all goes tits up?

It should make multiple redundancy systems easier to achieve.
I saw an ad. (on Ebay AIR) for a mobile which accepted 4 SIMS.

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

"dennis@home" writes:



"Windmill" wrote in message
...

They tend to have a battery backup, it doesn't last long.
Nobody (except naive users) expects the mobile network to survive an
emergency.

Certainly not likely to survive an EMP.

The wired one won't either (well not from a nuclear device above the UK).

I have some kit sealed in a biscuit tin that might.

I have some very ancient backups, on sets of floppies and on data
tapes, which are likewise in a tin and might also survive.
Not that they're now of much use.

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

The Natural Philosopher writes:

Jethro_uk wrote:

Maybe people should investigate ways of using renewables which don't
involve converting the energy to electricity ? Couple of ideas would be
to drive pumps to lift water up to storage tanks (as suggested below -
assuming the water companies currently do this using pumps not gravity).
Or to pump up the high pressure gas grid, which is currently done by a
bank of RB211s which consume more gas than Liverpool.

Or drive machinery for milling flour .....

I suggest you look at and do some very basic O level mathematics on the
energy density of various storage mediums.

I gather that supercapacitors are quite useful as a source of repeated
short bursts of energy, in an electric car for example, but wasn't
surprised to read on Wikipedia that they have only about 1/1000th. the
energy density of petrol.

If you are not a Green this should be within your capabilities.

Then ask that question again, and calculate just how much of any given
thing you need to store the energy.

You will then discover that the best thing there ever was for storing
energy, although we cant make it, is nuclear fuel.

Black holes are better yet, they say! The ultimate in gravitational
energy.

Way below that is carbon based fuels,

Water up a hill is OK, if you have country sized hills and valleys..

Hot things are also very good. If what you want is heat.If it isn't they
are massively useless and inefficient at turning heat into anything else.
--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

On 28/06/2012 16:19, Windmill wrote:
I have some very ancient backups, on sets of floppies and on data
tapes, which are likewise in a tin and might also survive.
Not that they're now of much use.


Apart from anything else - do you have any kit that will read them?

(And if you do is that also in a tin?)

Had the discussion about "the coming digital dark age" somewhere else a
couple of days ago!

Andy