https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on
a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody
to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other
expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin
and Greek.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap,
not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the
game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically
educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail.
Bill Sloman <[email protected]> wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on
a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody
to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service
depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other
expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin
and Greek.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap,
not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and
distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the
game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically
educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail.
Excellent summary.
On Sun, 13 Apr 2025 07:46:22 +0100, [email protected]d
(Liz Tuddenham) wrote:
Bill Sloman <[email protected]> wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on
a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody
to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service
depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other
expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin
and Greek.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap,
not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and
distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the
game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically
educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail.
Excellent summary.
Well done, Bill; you got something right for a change!
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on
a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody
to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other
expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin
and Greek.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap,
not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the
game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically
educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail.
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the
laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way.
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the
laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way.
I switched on the radio a couple of days ago and almost immediately
heard someone say that adding two effects together gave the result
squared. A few seconds later another 'expert' said something like
"because the material of a building hadn't risen in temperature as much
as the surrounding air, it was working negatively, behaving as a >refrigerator".
I immediately guessed that this was a BBC programme about the
environment and the contributers were qualified 'environmnetal experts' >brought into the studio to explain the science to us poor simpletons.
It turned out I was right.
What hope is there when this sort of stupidity is used to bolster
political decisions based on ignorance and justify it as "science".
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the extent
that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on
a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Unfortunately you are right about that.
Each successive NESO Electricity Ten Year Statement (ETSY) report gets
more and more fanciful about how Net Zero will be achieved. The
important technical content also disappears with each successive annual >revision. Millibrain is being told it is all going very well.
They have taken to hiding old ones so you can't compare actuality with >prediction (unless you have taken the precaution of downloading them).
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody
to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service
depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other
expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin
and Greek.
They do have a few scientists and engineers in parliament but they are
never given any significant roles. The joke at my university was why be
a scientist (or engineer) when you can be a scientist's boss.
Beancounters and lawyers rule the roost.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap,
not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and
distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the
game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically
educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail.
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the
laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way.
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the North
and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main cables >running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter.
Page 6 of this mess shows the effects of the next decade of "improvements". >Page 33 shows the pinch point at Thermal Boundary 7a
https://www.neso.energy/document/352001/download
The pages that used to show locality and seasonal overloading of the
network have been conveniently redacted form the 2024 edition.
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the
laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way.
I switched on the radio a couple of days ago and almost immediately
heard someone say that adding two effects together gave the result
squared. A few seconds later another 'expert' said something like
"because the material of a building hadn't risen in temperature as much
as the surrounding air, it was working negatively, behaving as a refrigerator".
I immediately guessed that this was a BBC programme about the
environment and the contributers were qualified 'environmnetal experts' brought into the studio to explain the science to us poor simpletons.
It turned out I was right.
What hope is there when this sort of stupidity is used to bolster
political decisions based on ignorance and justify it as "science".
The UK did trust Boris Johson, and got themselves stuck with Brexit, and followed him up with Liz Truss, but at least the UK political system
makes it easier to dump a complete twit fairly quickly.
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the
laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way.
I switched on the radio a couple of days ago and almost immediately
heard someone say that adding two effects together gave the result
squared. A few seconds later another 'expert' said something like
"because the material of a building hadn't risen in temperature as much
as the surrounding air, it was working negatively, behaving as a refrigerator".
I immediately guessed that this was a BBC programme about the
environment and the contributers were qualified 'environmnetal experts' brought into the studio to explain the science to us poor simpletons.
It turned out I was right.
What hope is there when this sort of stupidity is used to bolster
political decisions based on ignorance and justify it as "science".
Bill Sloman <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
The UK did trust Boris Johson, and got themselves stuck with Brexit, and
followed him up with Liz Truss, but at least the UK political system
makes it easier to dump a complete twit fairly quickly.
Boris Johnson isn't a statesman but he managed to impersonate one long
enough to get us through the COVID pandemic relatively lightly. He
could have done a lot better - but most of the other 'leaders' around at
the time would certainly have done a lot worse.
Any party that could tolerate someone as ignorant and bigoted as Liz
Truss, let alone put her in any position of responsibility, needs to
look seriously at the clique that is running it and ask if they really represent more than a tiny fraction of its graaa-roots members.
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the extent
that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service
on a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Unfortunately you are right about that.
Each successive NESO Electricity Ten Year Statement (ETSY) report gets
more and more fanciful about how Net Zero will be achieved. The
important technical content also disappears with each successive annual revision. Millibrain is being told it is all going very well.
They have taken to hiding old ones so you can't compare actuality with prediction (unless you have taken the precaution of downloading them).
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for
anybody to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil
service depended on proving that you could read and write, and any
other expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin
and Greek.
They do have a few scientists and engineers in parliament but they are
never given any significant roles. The joke at my university was why be
a scientist (or engineer) when you can be a scientist's boss.
Beancounters and lawyers rule the roost.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap,
not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and
distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the
game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically
educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail.
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the
laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way.
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It was the deranged grass roots activists that voted Liz the Lettuce in.
I don't think so: she was elected by a small group at the top of the
party. The grass-roots Conservatives I have spoken to are appalled by
the things the party elite have been doing in their name.
On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:58:43 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the extent
that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on
a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Unfortunately you are right about that.
Each successive NESO Electricity Ten Year Statement (ETSY) report gets
more and more fanciful about how Net Zero will be achieved. The
important technical content also disappears with each successive annual
revision. Millibrain is being told it is all going very well.
They have taken to hiding old ones so you can't compare actuality with
prediction (unless you have taken the precaution of downloading them).
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody
to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service
depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other
expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin
and Greek.
They do have a few scientists and engineers in parliament but they are
never given any significant roles. The joke at my university was why be
a scientist (or engineer) when you can be a scientist's boss.
Beancounters and lawyers rule the roost.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap,
not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and
distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the
game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically
educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail.
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the
laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way.
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the North
and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main cables
running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter.
Page 6 of this mess shows the effects of the next decade of "improvements". >> Page 33 shows the pinch point at Thermal Boundary 7a
https://www.neso.energy/document/352001/download
The pages that used to show locality and seasonal overloading of the
network have been conveniently redacted form the 2024 edition.
Radical improvements in fiberoptics, and cheap satellites, have hugely reduced the cost to transport data. But AI has hugely increased the
energy requirement of computing.
[...]
It was the deranged grass roots activists that voted Liz the Lettuce in.
On 4/14/25 16:40, john larkin wrote:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:58:43 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the extent
that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on >>>> a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Unfortunately you are right about that.
Each successive NESO Electricity Ten Year Statement (ETSY) report gets
more and more fanciful about how Net Zero will be achieved. The
important technical content also disappears with each successive annual >>> revision. Millibrain is being told it is all going very well.
They have taken to hiding old ones so you can't compare actuality with
prediction (unless you have taken the precaution of downloading them).
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody >>>> to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service
depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other
expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin
and Greek.
They do have a few scientists and engineers in parliament but they are
never given any significant roles. The joke at my university was why be
a scientist (or engineer) when you can be a scientist's boss.
Beancounters and lawyers rule the roost.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap, >>>> not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and
distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the
game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically
educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail.
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the
laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way. >>>
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the North
and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main cables
running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter.
Page 6 of this mess shows the effects of the next decade of "improvements". >>> Page 33 shows the pinch point at Thermal Boundary 7a
https://www.neso.energy/document/352001/download
The pages that used to show locality and seasonal overloading of the
network have been conveniently redacted form the 2024 edition.
Radical improvements in fiberoptics, and cheap satellites, have hugely
reduced the cost to transport data. But AI has hugely increased the
energy requirement of computing.
[...]
... which again confirms my rule that any resource perceived to be
cheap and abundant will be wasted until it becomes scarce and expensive.
Jeroen Belleman
On 2025-04-14, Liz Tuddenham <[email protected]d> wrote:
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It was the deranged grass roots activists that voted Liz the Lettuce in.
I don't think so: she was elected by a small group at the top of the
party. The grass-roots Conservatives I have spoken to are appalled by
the things the party elite have been doing in their name.
Meanwhile in the real world ...
The MP's selected Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak...
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the extent that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the North and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main cables running N-S
are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter.
On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 21:52:35 +0200, Jeroen Belleman
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 4/14/25 16:40, john larkin wrote:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:58:43 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the extent >>>> that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on >>>>> a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Unfortunately you are right about that.
Each successive NESO Electricity Ten Year Statement (ETSY) report gets >>>> more and more fanciful about how Net Zero will be achieved. The
important technical content also disappears with each successive annual >>>> revision. Millibrain is being told it is all going very well.
They have taken to hiding old ones so you can't compare actuality with >>>> prediction (unless you have taken the precaution of downloading them). >>>>
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody >>>>> to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service >>>>> depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other
expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin >>>>> and Greek.
They do have a few scientists and engineers in parliament but they are >>>> never given any significant roles. The joke at my university was why be >>>> a scientist (or engineer) when you can be a scientist's boss.
Beancounters and lawyers rule the roost.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap, >>>>> not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and
distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the >>>>> game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically >>>>> educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail.
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the >>>> laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way. >>>>
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the North >>>> and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main cables >>>> running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter.
Page 6 of this mess shows the effects of the next decade of "improvements".
Page 33 shows the pinch point at Thermal Boundary 7a
https://www.neso.energy/document/352001/download
The pages that used to show locality and seasonal overloading of the
network have been conveniently redacted form the 2024 edition.
Radical improvements in fiberoptics, and cheap satellites, have hugely
reduced the cost to transport data. But AI has hugely increased the
energy requirement of computing.
[...]
... which again confirms my rule that any resource perceived to be
cheap and abundant will be wasted until it becomes scarce and expensive.
Jeroen Belleman
I can't think of an example of that rule.
Jim Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-04-14, Liz Tuddenham <[email protected]d> wrote:
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It was the deranged grass roots activists that voted Liz the Lettuce in. >>>I don't think so: she was elected by a small group at the top of the
party. The grass-roots Conservatives I have spoken to are appalled by
the things the party elite have been doing in their name.
Meanwhile in the real world ...
The MP's selected Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak...
That was the point I was trying to make: there is a clique at the top of
the party and ordinary grass-roots members don't get to choose freely.
On 4/14/2025 3:58 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the
extent that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
What's "sky high"? And, are residential and commercial/industrial
rates significantly different?
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the
North and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main
cables running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter.
Why is NEW generation not brought on-line closer to the demand?
Is this a NiMBY issue? Or, a consequence of real-estate valuations?
Or, just a resistance to solving a problem (which then means you can't
CLAIM to be the one who WILL solve it -- if elected to do so)?
On 4/14/25 12:58, Martin Brown wrote:
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of
the laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in
the way.
That makes sense: Lawyers are used to bending the rule of law. They must think they can do the same with the laws of nature.
Good luck to you, GB.
On 4/14/25 22:32, john larkin wrote:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 21:52:35 +0200, Jeroen Belleman
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 4/14/25 16:40, john larkin wrote:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:58:43 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the extent >>>>> that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/ >>>>>
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on >>>>>> a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Unfortunately you are right about that.
Each successive NESO Electricity Ten Year Statement (ETSY) report gets >>>>> more and more fanciful about how Net Zero will be achieved. The
important technical content also disappears with each successive annual >>>>> revision. Millibrain is being told it is all going very well.
They have taken to hiding old ones so you can't compare actuality with >>>>> prediction (unless you have taken the precaution of downloading them). >>>>>
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody >>>>>> to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service >>>>>> depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other
expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin >>>>>> and Greek.
They do have a few scientists and engineers in parliament but they are >>>>> never given any significant roles. The joke at my university was why be >>>>> a scientist (or engineer) when you can be a scientist's boss.
Beancounters and lawyers rule the roost.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap, >>>>>> not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and >>>>>> distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the >>>>>> game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically >>>>>> educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail. >>>>>It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to >>>>> net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the >>>>> laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way. >>>>>
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the North >>>>> and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main cables >>>>> running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter.
Page 6 of this mess shows the effects of the next decade of "improvements".
Page 33 shows the pinch point at Thermal Boundary 7a
https://www.neso.energy/document/352001/download
The pages that used to show locality and seasonal overloading of the >>>>> network have been conveniently redacted form the 2024 edition.
Radical improvements in fiberoptics, and cheap satellites, have hugely >>>> reduced the cost to transport data. But AI has hugely increased the
energy requirement of computing.
[...]
... which again confirms my rule that any resource perceived to be
cheap and abundant will be wasted until it becomes scarce and expensive. >>>
Jeroen Belleman
I can't think of an example of that rule.
I just gave you one.
Jeroen Belleman
On 15/04/2025 01:43, Don Y wrote:
On 4/14/2025 3:58 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the
extent that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
What's "sky high"?� And, are residential and commercial/industrial
rates significantly different?
Yes and in complicated ways. Residential tariffs are capped, ordinary >businesses are not but a handful of ultimate heavy use load balancing
centres get preferential rates on condition that they can get no
electricity at all. Think aluminium and fertiliser plants and choralkali >electrolysis. (I think the last aluminium plant in England has now shut)
Increasingly the winter peak load in the UK is balanced by paying big
heavy industrial users to shut down or go to a standby condition! There
are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
Typical electricity prices in the UK are tightly coupled to the spot
price of natural gas in a totally crazy pricing structure. Electricity
in the UK is 2x the price on mainland Europe and 4x that in the US.
It was sort of OK until the war in Ukraine started and Russian gas was >plentiful in Europe. We were pretty much screwed from that point because
we had almost no long term gas storage capacity with Rough closed down
(it was deliberately taken offline to save on maintenance costs).
https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/knowledgecentre/business/business/gas_price_spike/
The price paid for wholesale electricity in the UK is determined by the
cost of generating the most expensive component needed to match demand
(so that they can make a profit). This is typically a fast response gas >turbine and all suppliers get paid in proportion to that high price.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/02/25/its-time-to-change-uk-energy-pricing/
The whole thing is rigged by Ofgem (the energy regulator) for the
benefit of the electricity producers and against their customers.
At night the spot price for electricity can spike negative so that UK
battery farms like to put insanely big substations onto their batteries
to game the system (and so get paid handsomely for accepting power).
This does nothing for network stability.
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in theWhy is NEW generation not brought on-line closer to the demand?
North and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main
cables running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter. >>
Engineers have been warning about the problem for about 3 decades.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/in-depth/generation-gap/
Is this a NiMBY issue?� Or, a consequence of real-estate valuations?
Partly a factor is that land prices are much lower in the north but also
it is a lot more windy. A Nimby in the south is worth 10 in the north.
One option is to install large BESS systems near to the windfarms and
also near the major city loads. That way power can be moved overnight to >where it will be needed in the daytime. Only snag is that it is way more >profitable to build them in the north where land is so much cheaper.
UK infrastructure configuration is determined by speculators.
Or, just a resistance to solving a problem (which then means you can't
CLAIM to be the one who WILL solve it -- if elected to do so)?
UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by
vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is >problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the >balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
What's "sky high"? And, are residential and commercial/industrial
rates significantly different?
Yes and in complicated ways. Residential tariffs are capped, ordinary businesses are not but a handful of ultimate heavy use load balancing centres get preferential rates on condition that they can get no electricity at all. Think aluminium and fertiliser plants and choralkali electrolysis. (I think the
last aluminium plant in England has now shut)
Increasingly the winter peak load in the UK is balanced by paying big heavy industrial users to shut down or go to a standby condition! There are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
Typical electricity prices in the UK are tightly coupled to the spot price of natural gas in a totally crazy pricing structure. Electricity in the UK is 2x the price on mainland Europe and 4x that in the US.
It was sort of OK until the war in Ukraine started and Russian gas was plentiful in Europe. We were pretty much screwed from that point because we had
almost no long term gas storage capacity with Rough closed down (it was deliberately taken offline to save on maintenance costs).
https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/knowledgecentre/business/business/gas_price_spike/
The price paid for wholesale electricity in the UK is determined by the cost of
generating the most expensive component needed to match demand (so that they can make a profit). This is typically a fast response gas turbine and all suppliers get paid in proportion to that high price.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/02/25/its-time-to-change-uk-energy-pricing/
The whole thing is rigged by Ofgem (the energy regulator) for the benefit of the electricity producers and against their customers.
At night the spot price for electricity can spike negative so that UK battery farms like to put insanely big substations onto their batteries to game the system (and so get paid handsomely for accepting power). This does nothing for
network stability.
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the North and >>> consumption of power in London and the South East. The main cables running >>> N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter.
Why is NEW generation not brought on-line closer to the demand?
Engineers have been warning about the problem for about 3 decades.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/in-depth/generation-gap/
Is this a NiMBY issue? Or, a consequence of real-estate valuations?
Partly a factor is that land prices are much lower in the north but also it is
a lot more windy. A Nimby in the south is worth 10 in the north.
One option is to install large BESS systems near to the windfarms and also near
the major city loads. That way power can be moved overnight to where it will be
needed in the daytime. Only snag is that it is way more profitable to build them in the north where land is so much cheaper.
UK infrastructure configuration is determined by speculators.
Or, just a resistance to solving a problem (which then means you can't
CLAIM to be the one who WILL solve it -- if elected to do so)?
UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 15/04/2025 01:43, Don Y wrote:
On 4/14/2025 3:58 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the
balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
There will never be enough batteries to power even a tiny country like
the UK, to keep people alive through a few weeks of cold, dark, still weather.
People can keep warm by snuggling around burning lithium batteries.
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the
laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way.
I switched on the radio a couple of days ago and almost immediately
heard someone say that adding two effects together gave the result
squared. A few seconds later another 'expert' said something like
"because the material of a building hadn't risen in temperature as much
as the surrounding air, it was working negatively, behaving as a >refrigerator".
I immediately guessed that this was a BBC programme about the
environment and the contributers were qualified 'environmnetal experts' >brought into the studio to explain the science to us poor simpletons.
It turned out I was right.
What hope is there when this sort of stupidity is used to bolster
political decisions based on ignorance and justify it as "science".
On 14/04/2025 22:25, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Jim Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-04-14, Liz Tuddenham <[email protected]d> wrote:
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It was the deranged grass roots activists that voted Liz the Lettuce in. >>>I don't think so: she was elected by a small group at the top of the
party. The grass-roots Conservatives I have spoken to are appalled by >>> the things the party elite have been doing in their name.
Meanwhile in the real world ...
The MP's selected Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak...
That was the point I was trying to make: there is a clique at the top of the party and ordinary grass-roots members don't get to choose freely.
Rishi Sunak was a *perfectly good candidate* for PM.
If he had won in the first round then things could well have been very different. It was the Tory grass roots activists that destroyed the Tory party by electing Liz the Lettuce and resulting in total annihilation.
There
are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
On 4/15/2025 1:04 PM, Martin Brown wrote:
What's "sky high"? And, are residential and commercial/industrial
rates significantly different?
Yes and in complicated ways. Residential tariffs are capped, ordinary
businesses are not but a handful of ultimate heavy use load balancing
centres get preferential rates on condition that they can get no
electricity at all. Think aluminium and fertiliser plants and
choralkali electrolysis. (I think the last aluminium plant in England
has now shut)
Is the "cap" significantly higher than the "normal" rate? Or, is it, effectively, the "normal rate"?
Increasingly the winter peak load in the UK is balanced by paying big
heavy industrial users to shut down or go to a standby condition!
There are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak
times.
We have had time-of-use (ToU) tariffs, here, for decades. (I designed a
ToU KWHr meter more than 35 years ago) But, they are usually ridiculously structured. E.g., it would only make sense for *me* if we could live entirely without refrigerative cooling (ain't gonna happen for 9 months
out of the year) as the cost of using electricity during peak hours exceeds by many multiples the cost of non-ToU rates.
There are also "demand" tariffs where the cost of the energy is
proportional
to the *peak* rate of YOUR consumption. So, it pays to be able to do local load-leveling as any power used at less than your peak rate of consumption
is over-priced. This is primarily used by businesses and leads to investments
in load-shifting technologies (e.g., making ice, overnite, to ease the cooling load the next *day* -- as well as allowing the refrigeration units
to be downsized a bit).
There are also cases where the utility is (at your consent) given control over some of your larger loads (think: central air conditioning) so that
it can manage its total load as well as micromanaging the loads on
individual
parts of the distribution network.
And, of course, rates for folks who do cogeneration. (amusingly, if you
are a cogenerator, you are automatically put on a ToU schedule. So,
taking your cogeneration capability offline for maintenance means
you pay through the nose for power that your neighbors would get at a fraction of that cost)
Typical electricity prices in the UK are tightly coupled to the spot
price of natural gas in a totally crazy pricing structure. Electricity
in the UK is 2x the price on mainland Europe and 4x that in the US.
We have a surcharge for power generation via "quick response" technologies (like gas fired plants). We also pay for the cost of transmission (a technique that allows the utility to avoid reimbursing cogenerators for
power at the same rate that they would charge to supply it!)
Plus taxes, fees, etc. And, of course, voluntary donations to subsidize folks
who can't pay their bills... <rolls eyes>
It was sort of OK until the war in Ukraine started and Russian gas was
plentiful in Europe. We were pretty much screwed from that point
because we had almost no long term gas storage capacity with Rough
closed down (it was deliberately taken offline to save on maintenance
costs).
Good to have politicians who are looking out for your interests in this regard -- not!
https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/knowledgecentre/business/business/gas_price_spike/
The price paid for wholesale electricity in the UK is determined by
the cost of generating the most expensive component needed to match
demand (so that they can make a profit). This is typically a fast
response gas turbine and all suppliers get paid in proportion to that
high price.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/02/25/its-time-to-change-uk-energy-pricing/
I *think*, here, it depends on the actual cost. E.g., places with hydropower
likely pay a lower overall rate vs. places totally reliant on burning
fossil
carbon.
The utility has been complaining that they have "too much" residential
solar capacity (the utility has a say in whether or not YOU can use solar
and how large your installation can be)
The whole thing is rigged by Ofgem (the energy regulator) for the
benefit of the electricity producers and against their customers.
Well, when was a service ever designed for the (strict) *benefit* of its consumers? SWMBO's folks were part of a co-operative for power generation so she periodically receives *checks* from them.
At night the spot price for electricity can spike negative so that UK
battery farms like to put insanely big substations onto their
batteries to game the system (and so get paid handsomely for accepting
power). This does nothing for network stability.
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the
North and consumption of power in London and the South East. The
main cables running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime
during winter.
Why is NEW generation not brought on-line closer to the demand?
Engineers have been warning about the problem for about 3 decades.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/in-depth/generation-gap/
Deaf politicians? Or, consumers unwilling to bear the short-term pain
of bringing that on-line? (i.e., hoping the shit hits the fan sometime
down the road)
Is this a NiMBY issue? Or, a consequence of real-estate valuations?
Partly a factor is that land prices are much lower in the north but
also it is a lot more windy. A Nimby in the south is worth 10 in the
north.
That suggests you are using wind-power, there?
One option is to install large BESS systems near to the windfarms and
also near the major city loads. That way power can be moved overnight
to where it will be needed in the daytime. Only snag is that it is way
more profitable to build them in the north where land is so much cheaper.
In relative terms, is the real estate THAT much of a portion of the cost?
I would think it would fall out of the equation rather quickly.
UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by
vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that
is problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust
too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load
the balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
It seems like a change to the tax code could quickly change their fortunes?
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 14/04/2025 22:25, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Jim Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-04-14, Liz Tuddenham <[email protected]d> wrote: >>>>> Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It was the deranged grass roots activists that voted Liz the Lettuce in. >>>>>I don't think so: she was elected by a small group at the top of the >>>>> party. The grass-roots Conservatives I have spoken to are appalled by >>>>> the things the party elite have been doing in their name.
Meanwhile in the real world ...
The MP's selected Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak...
That was the point I was trying to make: there is a clique at the top of >>> the party and ordinary grass-roots members don't get to choose freely.
Rishi Sunak was a *perfectly good candidate* for PM.
If he had won in the first round then things could well have been very
different. It was the Tory grass roots activists that destroyed the Tory
party by electing Liz the Lettuce and resulting in total annihilation.
Thst's not the point I was making: Ordinary members of the party who
were not 'activists' (whatever that means), or in the elite few at the
top, were only able to choose between candidates who had already been selected by a self-perpetuating clique. They had no say in who was
offered to them.
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by
vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is
problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the
balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
There will never be enough batteries to power even a tiny country like
the UK, to keep people alive through a few weeks of cold, dark, still weather.
People can keep warm by snuggling around burning lithium batteries.
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by
vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is
problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the >>> balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
There will never be enough batteries to power even a tiny country like
the UK, to keep people alive through a few weeks of cold, dark, still
weather.
I'm inclined to agree. But provided that you use nuclear power
generation for the base load you only need about 60GWhr of battery
storage to time shift night time electricity to cover the daytime.
UK BESS operators should be limited to having a substation capable of >recharging their storage capacity at the C/8 rate so that they can
recharge during the slack hours (2200-1800) in winter and then resupply
at peak times (0900-2100) major evening peak is 1800-2100. In summer it
is much less of a problem - the system really creaks in winter.
They like to charge at C/2 to exploit the pricing algorithm glitches and >isn't all that good for the batteries.
It would take an impossibly large battery storage capacity to handle a
long becalmed event in mid winter. The numbers that NESO bandy around
for UK net zero by 2030/50 (delete as appropriate) are pure fantasy.
Our grid system will fail soon but I live in the northern region that
will still have power (and mains water) when it all goes to pot. NESO's
long term decadal master plan is for two or more very long DC cables in
the North Sea for the Russians to sabotage as and when they like.
https://www.neso.energy/document/315516/download
Page 7 (and elsewhere) - warning it is very long and tedious stuff.
Volume and pretty pictures makes up for useful technical content.
People can keep warm by snuggling around burning lithium batteries.
The big snag with Lithium batteries is their nasty tendency to catch
fire spectacularly. A guy at nearby Newcastle University is an expert on
such incidents - there isn't any good way to put such fires out either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jby0uyL78YU
Skip to 12 minutes in for the juicy bits
(starts with a chemistry lesson)
I'm fighting a plan to build the world's largest BESS on my doorstep.
It would be hard to find a worse spot to put one. We are sat on the
choke point where the 400kV lines are routinely overloaded in winter.
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown >> <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
The big snag with Lithium batteries is their nasty tendency to catch
fire spectacularly.
A guy at nearby Newcastle University is an expert on
such incidents - there isn't any good way to put such fires out either.
On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:39:57 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by
vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is >>>> problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too. >>>>
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the >>>> balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
There will never be enough batteries to power even a tiny country like
the UK, to keep people alive through a few weeks of cold, dark, still
weather.
I'm inclined to agree. But provided that you use nuclear power
generation for the base load you only need about 60GWhr of battery
storage to time shift night time electricity to cover the daytime.
Why build insanely expensive and dangerous battery farms so you can
run the nukes at 200% capacity half the time and 0% the rest?
We're lucky to have a good deal of hydro and lots of natural gas, both
easily tunable to varying loads. Power is very reliable here.
UK BESS operators should be limited to having a substation capable of
recharging their storage capacity at the C/8 rate so that they can
recharge during the slack hours (2200-1800) in winter and then resupply
at peak times (0900-2100) major evening peak is 1800-2100. In summer it
is much less of a problem - the system really creaks in winter.
Fine, let someone do that without subsidies.
They like to charge at C/2 to exploit the pricing algorithm glitches and
isn't all that good for the batteries.
It would take an impossibly large battery storage capacity to handle a
long becalmed event in mid winter. The numbers that NESO bandy around
for UK net zero by 2030/50 (delete as appropriate) are pure fantasy.
Socialist and communist governments substitute politicians for
engineers.
On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:39:57 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by
vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is >>>> problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too. >>>>
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the >>>> balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
There will never be enough batteries to power even a tiny country like
the UK, to keep people alive through a few weeks of cold, dark, still
weather.
I'm inclined to agree. But provided that you use nuclear power
generation for the base load you only need about 60GWhr of battery
storage to time shift night time electricity to cover the daytime.
Why build insanely expensive and dangerous battery farms so you can
run the nukes at 200% capacity half the time and 0% the rest?
We're lucky to have a good deal of hydro and lots of natural gas, both
easily tunable to varying loads. Power is very reliable here.
UK BESS operators should be limited to having a substation capable of
recharging their storage capacity at the C/8 rate so that they can
recharge during the slack hours (2200-1800) in winter and then resupply
at peak times (0900-2100) major evening peak is 1800-2100. In summer it
is much less of a problem - the system really creaks in winter.
Fine, let someone do that without subsidies.
They like to charge at C/2 to exploit the pricing algorithm glitches and
isn't all that good for the batteries.
It would take an impossibly large battery storage capacity to handle a
long becalmed event in mid winter. The numbers that NESO bandy around
for UK net zero by 2030/50 (delete as appropriate) are pure fantasy.
Socialist and communist governments substitute politicians for
engineers.
I'm fighting a plan to build the world's largest BESS on my doorstep.
It would be hard to find a worse spot to put one. We are sat on the
choke point where the 400kV lines are routinely overloaded in winter.
We had a pretty big lithium battery fire here recently.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/23/moss-landing-lithium-battery-plant-fire-vistra/77912642007/
nice video:
https://apnews.com/article/battery-storage-plant-fire-california-moss-landing-7c561fed096f410ddecfb04722a8b1f8
On 16/04/2025 15:36, john larkin wrote:
On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:39:57 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by
vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is >>>>> problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too. >>>>>
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the >>>>> balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners. >>>>>
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
There will never be enough batteries to power even a tiny country like >>>> the UK, to keep people alive through a few weeks of cold, dark, still >>>> weather.
I'm inclined to agree. But provided that you use nuclear power
generation for the base load you only need about 60GWhr of battery
storage to time shift night time electricity to cover the daytime.
Why build insanely expensive and dangerous battery farms so you can
run the nukes at 200% capacity half the time and 0% the rest?
You can't ramp nukes up and down fast enough daily to cope without
causing other problems (and we have nowhere near enough of them). They
are incredibly slow to build and UK lost most of its capable nuclear >engineers over a decade or so ago. Efforts keeping the last remaining
ones still operational are getting a bit scary.
When I was at school there was a big surplus of them (nuclear engineers)
most of whom ended up as bad physics teachers. A product Harold Wilson's >white heat of technology "electricity too cheap to meter" initiative.
We're lucky to have a good deal of hydro and lots of natural gas, both
easily tunable to varying loads. Power is very reliable here.
Power in the UK for the moment is reliable, but they have been skating
on *very* thin ice for a long time in winter (roughly two decades of >prevarication).
UK BESS operators should be limited to having a substation capable of
recharging their storage capacity at the C/8 rate so that they can
recharge during the slack hours (2200-1800) in winter and then resupply
at peak times (0900-2100) major evening peak is 1800-2100. In summer it
is much less of a problem - the system really creaks in winter.
Fine, let someone do that without subsidies.
They like to charge at C/2 to exploit the pricing algorithm glitches and >>> isn't all that good for the batteries.
It would take an impossibly large battery storage capacity to handle a
long becalmed event in mid winter. The numbers that NESO bandy around
for UK net zero by 2030/50 (delete as appropriate) are pure fantasy.
Socialist and communist governments substitute politicians for
engineers.
The main damage was done by the Tories - a right wing party.
I'm fighting a plan to build the world's largest BESS on my doorstep.
It would be hard to find a worse spot to put one. We are sat on the
choke point where the 400kV lines are routinely overloaded in winter.
We had a pretty big lithium battery fire here recently.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/23/moss-landing-lithium-battery-plant-fire-vistra/77912642007/
nice video:
https://apnews.com/article/battery-storage-plant-fire-california-moss-landing-7c561fed096f410ddecfb04722a8b1f8
I know. The Moss landing fire in January got the attention of all our >neighbouring parish councils out to a 5 mile radius. My friends who work
in Silicon valley could smell it burning from about 20 miles away. A lot
more help was forthcoming after that event.
Our BESS will be ~10% bigger than Moss Landing if it goes ahead. Vistra >doesn't exactly have a stellar safety reputation but the company doing
ours is a start-up with no track record at all on any scale!
Rather brave to try and do three of the worlds largest BESS within 20
miles of each other. The one on Teesside actually makes engineering
sense - it can buffer the offshore windfarms that come ashore there...
https://www.renewableinstitute.org/plans-unveiled-to-construct-a-1-billion-battery-storage-facility-in-the-north-east-of-england/
However, the entire Teesside regeneration scheme is all a bit dodgy.
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 09:49:06 +0200, Jeroen Belleman
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 4/14/25 22:32, john larkin wrote:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 21:52:35 +0200, Jeroen Belleman
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 4/14/25 16:40, john larkin wrote:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:58:43 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the extent >>>>>> that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/ >>>>>>
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on >>>>>>> a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Unfortunately you are right about that.
Each successive NESO Electricity Ten Year Statement (ETSY) report gets >>>>>> more and more fanciful about how Net Zero will be achieved. The
important technical content also disappears with each successive annual >>>>>> revision. Millibrain is being told it is all going very well.
They have taken to hiding old ones so you can't compare actuality with >>>>>> prediction (unless you have taken the precaution of downloading them). >>>>>>
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody >>>>>>> to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service >>>>>>> depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other >>>>>>> expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure
intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't
difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin >>>>>>> and Greek.
They do have a few scientists and engineers in parliament but they are >>>>>> never given any significant roles. The joke at my university was why be >>>>>> a scientist (or engineer) when you can be a scientist's boss.
Beancounters and lawyers rule the roost.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap, >>>>>>> not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and >>>>>>> distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the >>>>>>> game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically >>>>>>> educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail. >>>>>>It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to >>>>>> net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the >>>>>> laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way. >>>>>>
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the North >>>>>> and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main cables >>>>>> running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter. >>>>>>
Page 6 of this mess shows the effects of the next decade of "improvements".
Page 33 shows the pinch point at Thermal Boundary 7a
https://www.neso.energy/document/352001/download
The pages that used to show locality and seasonal overloading of the >>>>>> network have been conveniently redacted form the 2024 edition.
Radical improvements in fiberoptics, and cheap satellites, have hugely >>>>> reduced the cost to transport data. But AI has hugely increased the
energy requirement of computing.
[...]
... which again confirms my rule that any resource perceived to be
cheap and abundant will be wasted until it becomes scarce and expensive. >>>>
Jeroen Belleman
I can't think of an example of that rule.
I just gave you one.
Jeroen Belleman
Are you referring to energy poverty and de-industrialization in the
UK?
That will improve somewhat. People who are unemployed and cold and
hungry in the dark will vote in their interests.
On 4/15/25 23:02, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 09:49:06 +0200, Jeroen BellemanThe best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 4/14/25 22:32, john larkin wrote:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 21:52:35 +0200, Jeroen Belleman
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 4/14/25 16:40, john larkin wrote:
On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:58:43 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the extent >>>>>>> that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/ >>>>>>>
The UK still suffers from an old decision to base it's civil service on
a misunderstood version of the Chinese civil service.
Unfortunately you are right about that.
Each successive NESO Electricity Ten Year Statement (ETSY) report gets >>>>>>> more and more fanciful about how Net Zero will be achieved. The
important technical content also disappears with each successive annual
revision. Millibrain is being told it is all going very well.
They have taken to hiding old ones so you can't compare actuality with >>>>>>> prediction (unless you have taken the precaution of downloading them). >>>>>>>
Chinese orthography is horrible and it took a lot of effort for anybody
to get literate and stay literate. Entry to the Chinese civil service >>>>>>>> depended on proving that you could read and write, and any other >>>>>>>> expertise was secondary.
The UK imagined that the candidates were being tested for pure >>>>>>>> intellectual power. Being able to read and write English wasn't >>>>>>>> difficult enough to test this, so they tested for competence in Latin >>>>>>>> and Greek.
They do have a few scientists and engineers in parliament but they are >>>>>>> never given any significant roles. The joke at my university was why be >>>>>>> a scientist (or engineer) when you can be a scientist's boss.
Beancounters and lawyers rule the roost.
Science was despised - the civil service formula was scientist on tap, >>>>>>>> not on top. When it comes to technical matters like generating and >>>>>>>> distributing electric power cheaply, the English are still behind the >>>>>>>> game, because the crucial choices are still made by some classically >>>>>>>> educated mandarin who doesn't understand the problems in any detail. >>>>>>>It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to >>>>>>> net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the >>>>>>> laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way.
The UK has an insane imbalance between production of power in the North >>>>>>> and consumption of power in London and the South East. The main cables >>>>>>> running N-S are routinely overloaded during daytime during winter. >>>>>>>
Page 6 of this mess shows the effects of the next decade of "improvements".
Page 33 shows the pinch point at Thermal Boundary 7a
https://www.neso.energy/document/352001/download
The pages that used to show locality and seasonal overloading of the >>>>>>> network have been conveniently redacted form the 2024 edition.
Radical improvements in fiberoptics, and cheap satellites, have hugely >>>>>> reduced the cost to transport data. But AI has hugely increased the >>>>>> energy requirement of computing.
[...]
... which again confirms my rule that any resource perceived to be
cheap and abundant will be wasted until it becomes scarce and expensive. >>>>>
Jeroen Belleman
I can't think of an example of that rule.
I just gave you one.
Jeroen Belleman
Are you referring to energy poverty and de-industrialization in the
UK?
That will improve somewhat. People who are unemployed and cold and
hungry in the dark will vote in their interests.
with the avarage voter. The current situation in the US is a
blatant example of how a democracy can go awry.
Jeroen Belleman
Is the "cap" significantly higher than the "normal" rate? Or, is it,
effectively, the "normal rate"?
The cap limits ordinary home users exposure to extreme market volatility. It
became necessary after the invasion of Ukraine when gas prices spikes very high
making it impossible for some elderly folk to heat their homes. Their choice was quite literally heating or eating.
Even a Tory government isn't quite that callous.
Increasingly the winter peak load in the UK is balanced by paying big heavy >>> industrial users to shut down or go to a standby condition! There are even >>> schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
We have had time-of-use (ToU) tariffs, here, for decades. (I designed a ToU
KWHr meter more than 35 years ago) But, they are usually ridiculously
structured. E.g., it would only make sense for *me* if we could live
entirely without refrigerative cooling (ain't gonna happen for 9 months
out of the year) as the cost of using electricity during peak hours exceeds >> by many multiples the cost of non-ToU rates.
Time of use tariffs are still uncommon in the UK. It is possible with a smart meter (which I now have) but supplier offers are pretty poor. Previously I had
a counter rotating dials mechanism dating from the 1950's (which had clocked -
overflowing the counter back to all zeros).
There are also "demand" tariffs where the cost of the energy is proportional >> to the *peak* rate of YOUR consumption. So, it pays to be able to do local >> load-leveling as any power used at less than your peak rate of consumption >> is over-priced. This is primarily used by businesses and leads to investments
in load-shifting technologies (e.g., making ice, overnite, to ease the
cooling load the next *day* -- as well as allowing the refrigeration units >> to be downsized a bit).
It is possible to have local domestic battery storage and exploit the overnight
low rates - though to get the best deals you need to own an electric car (or at
least convince your electricity supplier you do).
My supplier has just offered me half price electricity at the weekends. Only snag is their website won't allow me to accept their generous offer - it keeps
saying "something went wrong- try again later".
There are also cases where the utility is (at your consent) given control
over some of your larger loads (think: central air conditioning) so that
it can manage its total load as well as micromanaging the loads on individual
parts of the distribution network.
Aircon isn't really a thing in domestic UK buildings. The number of days a year
when it would be needed can be counted on the fingers of one hand. My house manages it with Victoria technology - very thick walls and windows to open at night. Centres of major cities do get rather warm due to office buildings with
air conditioning pumping out heat!
And, of course, rates for folks who do cogeneration. (amusingly, if you
are a cogenerator, you are automatically put on a ToU schedule. So,
taking your cogeneration capability offline for maintenance means
you pay through the nose for power that your neighbors would get at a
fraction of that cost)
Having solar panels is another way to get onto a ToU tariff. Even that is gamed
though. Much domestic PV electricity ends up heating domestic water as the feed
in tariffs are also based on crazy sums. There is an aftermarket in diverters to exploit this loophole.
There are incentives to install solar PV but none for solar hot water.
We have a surcharge for power generation via "quick response" technologies >> (like gas fired plants). We also pay for the cost of transmission (a
technique that allows the utility to avoid reimbursing cogenerators for
power at the same rate that they would charge to supply it!)
Plus taxes, fees, etc. And, of course, voluntary donations to subsidize folks
who can't pay their bills... <rolls eyes>
We have a standing charge which covers distribution and all the bankruptcies of
box shifter companies that got into selling electricity to consumers without having the first clue about what they were doing.
The utility has been complaining that they have "too much" residential
solar capacity (the utility has a say in whether or not YOU can use solar
and how large your installation can be)
UK allows up to 4kW solar generation on any domestic premises. More than that
and you have to apply for a license. It confused the load shedding algorithms last time there was a serious power outage since it was about 6pm in mid summer
and so when they shed a nominal 1GW of load they also dropped off about 100MW of small solar PV systems. It was enough to lose control of the frequency again
and a cascade failure ensued.
We also have a ridiculous amount of solar PV for such a high latitude. This is
governed by the fact that in a good year a farmer can make around £200/acre by
actively growing crops and £2k/acre by stuffing their land full of solar panels. Many are choosing the latter.
UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by vulture >>> capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is problematic >>> London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the >>> balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
It seems like a change to the tax code could quickly change their fortunes?
Not really - a lot of them have been sold off to foreign companies.
Successive UK governments have been particularly good at selling off the family
silver to make ends meet.
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:<...>
Here, the issue is the high PEAK demands that the ACbrrs place on
individual
subscribers. We could probably get by on a 3-5KW plant -- but, only if
we could store and deliver for large loads (I think the ACbrr is ~14KW).
There are incentives to install solar PV but none for solar hot water.
You could, of course, use (PV) electrically heated water. There are
myriad schemes to make better use of the energy available but few
see widespread use.
requires it
UK allows up to 4kW solar generation on any domestic premises. More
than that
I don't think the *city* places limits on size of plant. But,
to reside on rooftops to avoid permitting, architects, etc. (of course).
Renewable power (wind and solar) have been the cheapest sources since
they got big enough to supply an appreciable proportion of national
energy budget. They don't need subsidy.
It took a lot of capital
investment to get enough of them to get there,
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
Is the "cap" significantly higher than the "normal" rate? Or, is it,
effectively, the "normal rate"?
The cap limits ordinary home users exposure to extreme market
volatility. It
Of course. But, a consumer's idea of a "reasonable cap" and a
PROVIDER'S idea
are likely worlds apart! Hence my question as to whether or not it was, EFFECTIVELY, the normal rate (i.e., providers opting for as much as they
can get, within the current constraints)
Time of use tariffs are still uncommon in the UK. It is possible with
a smart meter (which I now have) but supplier offers are pretty poor.
Previously I had a counter rotating dials mechanism dating from the
1950's (which had clocked - overflowing the counter back to all zeros).
I believe all of the meters, locally, have now been switched over to solid state devices. Remote monitoring being a desirable asset (*reading* a
meter is only "worth" ~25p so it, in itself, is not enough to justify
the cost of the swap).
It is possible to have local domestic battery storage and exploit the
overnight low rates - though to get the best deals you need to own an
electric car (or at least convince your electricity supplier you do).
Here, the issue is the high PEAK demands that the ACbrrs place on
individual
subscribers. We could probably get by on a 3-5KW plant -- but, only if
we could store and deliver for large loads (I think the ACbrr is ~14KW).
My supplier has just offered me half price electricity at the
weekends. Only snag is their website won't allow me to accept their
generous offer - it keeps saying "something went wrong- try again later".
If there isn't a corresponding INCREASE in the weekday rate, it could
be a win. They likely have surplus (weekend) capacity and are looking
to encourage users to consume that, instead of weekDAY capacity.
Aircon isn't really a thing in domestic UK buildings. The number of
days a year when it would be needed can be counted on the fingers of
one hand. My house manages it with Victoria technology - very thick
walls and windows to open at night. Centres of major cities do get
rather warm due to office buildings with air conditioning pumping out
heat!
Most construction, here, is masonary -- 8" block. But, when the outside temperatures rise so early in the year and persist for so long THROUGH the year, that actually works against you -- the house STAYS hot because of the thermal storage in its walls.
[We've already had our first 100F day and it's been above 80F since
February]
Having solar panels is another way to get onto a ToU tariff. Even that
is gamed though. Much domestic PV electricity ends up heating domestic
water as the feed in tariffs are also based on crazy sums. There is an
aftermarket in diverters to exploit this loophole.
There are incentives to install solar PV but none for solar hot water.
You could, of course, use (PV) electrically heated water. There are
myriad schemes to make better use of the energy available but few
see widespread use.
A personal favorite, here, would be to capture the waste heat from the
ACbrrr condenser and use it to heat swimming pool water; the liquid medium would likely be a more efficient coolant than air sourced in a typical condenser. And, 100F pool water is delightful!
We have a standing charge which covers distribution and all the
bankruptcies of box shifter companies that got into selling
electricity to consumers without having the first clue about what they
were doing.
Almost all of our charges are tied directly to usage. Using LESS is obviously the best approach.
The utility has been complaining that they have "too much" residential
solar capacity (the utility has a say in whether or not YOU can use
solar
and how large your installation can be)
UK allows up to 4kW solar generation on any domestic premises. More
than that
I don't think the *city* places limits on size of plant. But, requires it to reside on rooftops to avoid permitting, architects, etc. (of course).
That, of course, means any time you need to have your roof serviced,
the array must be disconnected or dismounted. Then, reinspected
after reinstallation.
and you have to apply for a license. It confused the load shedding
algorithms last time there was a serious power outage since it was
about 6pm in mid summer and so when they shed a nominal 1GW of load
they also dropped off about 100MW of small solar PV systems. It was
enough to lose control of the frequency again and a cascade failure
ensued.
Too funny. C'mon, this isn't rocket science!
[OTOH, I am always amazed at how out-of-date the (network) "maps" are
that the utility uses. Didn't anyone write this stuff down? Do
you even KNOW where your equipment is? Or, does a crew have to go
out and visually identify it??]
We also have a ridiculous amount of solar PV for such a high latitude.
This is governed by the fact that in a good year a farmer can make
around £200/acre by actively growing crops and £2k/acre by stuffing
their land full of solar panels. Many are choosing the latter.
I suspect we will see a similar pattern (perhaps wind) with large
swatches of farmland, here -- esp as climate change renders particular
crops harder to grow, increased pestilence, etc.
"This farm has been in my family for 5 generations! (but, now it's
a WIND/PV farm cuz I can't grow shit!)"
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load
the balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign
owners.
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
It seems like a change to the tax code could quickly change their
fortunes?
Not really - a lot of them have been sold off to foreign companies.
Don't they still have to pay local taxes? Even if they ship the
profits off to foreign investors?
On 4/16/25 3:49 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:<...>
Here, the issue is the high PEAK demands that the ACbrrs place on individual
subscribers. We could probably get by on a 3-5KW plant -- but, only if we could store and deliver for large loads (I think the ACbrr is ~14KW).
That's a very large residential A/C. Our 4-Ton unit (48kBTU/Hr) takes about 5kW
and suffices a 2,900 sq ft house in northern California. (Don't you like all these antiquated units!)
<...>
There are incentives to install solar PV but none for solar hot water.
You could, of course, use (PV) electrically heated water. There are myriad schemes to make better use of the energy available but few
see widespread use.
California encourages (and will soon require) heat pumps for domestic hot water, that gives you a threefold improvement in efficiency if running from solar generated electricity. They are pretty common.
<...>
UK allows up to 4kW solar generation on any domestic premises. More
than that
I don't think the *city* places limits on size of plant. But, requires it
to reside on rooftops to avoid permitting, architects, etc. (of course).
Here in PG&E land around the SF bay we're allowed up to 10kW of solar generation without significant additional requirements.
<...>
kw
Time of use tariffs are still uncommon in the UK. It is possible with a
smart meter (which I now have) but supplier offers are pretty poor.
Previously I had a counter rotating dials mechanism dating from the 1950's >>> (which had clocked - overflowing the counter back to all zeros).
I believe all of the meters, locally, have now been switched over to solid >> state devices. Remote monitoring being a desirable asset (*reading* a
meter is only "worth" ~25p so it, in itself, is not enough to justify
the cost of the swap).
The "smart" meter program in the UK has been hilarious. They rolled out model 1
systems that are almost trivial for a state actor to hack. I waited for a gen 2
"smart" meter which so far has behaved pretty well.
I had my own monitoring clipped onto the incoming live line so it doesn't really give me anything new except fewer meter reader visits.
There are two different comms systems in use one which works and one which doesn't. The north of England where I live has the latter. My meter actually works OK but the one in our Village Hall nearby failed within days of being installed and they have now given up on it.
A bit more info here.
https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/smets-1-and-2-new-smart-meter-generation
Only the SMETS2 meters are properly cryptosecure.
It is possible to have local domestic battery storage and exploit the
overnight low rates - though to get the best deals you need to own an
electric car (or at least convince your electricity supplier you do).
Here, the issue is the high PEAK demands that the ACbrrs place on individual >> subscribers. We could probably get by on a 3-5KW plant -- but, only if
we could store and deliver for large loads (I think the ACbrr is ~14KW).
That is huge. I sometimes have a small fan on from time to time but the house temperature seldom exceeds 25C in summer. Night time almost always drops below
16C (56F) so tropical nights are rare here.
Aircon isn't really a thing in domestic UK buildings. The number of days a >>> year when it would be needed can be counted on the fingers of one hand. My >>> house manages it with Victoria technology - very thick walls and windows to >>> open at night. Centres of major cities do get rather warm due to office
buildings with air conditioning pumping out heat!
Most construction, here, is masonary -- 8" block. But, when the outside
temperatures rise so early in the year and persist for so long THROUGH the >> year, that actually works against you -- the house STAYS hot because of the >> thermal storage in its walls.
Aren't you in desert country?
I thought the overnight temperatures could drop quite low there...
[We've already had our first 100F day and it's been above 80F since February]
It is spring here. Has been as high as 20C (64F) but yesterday was cold 5C (40F?). Working towards Bank Holiday (bad) weather after a prolonged warm spell
that has seen all cherry, plum and pear blossom out.
A personal favorite, here, would be to capture the waste heat from the
ACbrrr condenser and use it to heat swimming pool water; the liquid medium >> would likely be a more efficient coolant than air sourced in a typical
condenser. And, 100F pool water is delightful!
Outdoor swimming pools are not common in the UK. It is too cold - although wild
swimming in open water is on the increase since Covid.
The utility has been complaining that they have "too much" residential >>>> solar capacity (the utility has a say in whether or not YOU can use solar >>>> and how large your installation can be)
UK allows up to 4kW solar generation on any domestic premises. More than that
I don't think the *city* places limits on size of plant. But, requires it >> to reside on rooftops to avoid permitting, architects, etc. (of course).
That is a double win in a low latitude country because the double skin on the roof creates shade and delays ingress of heat. Clever backing on the panels (thin insualtion and Alu foil) can improve it further at the expense of losing
efficiency of the solar panels due to increased heating.
and you have to apply for a license. It confused the load shedding
algorithms last time there was a serious power outage since it was about 6pm
in mid summer and so when they shed a nominal 1GW of load they also dropped >>> off about 100MW of small solar PV systems. It was enough to lose control of >>> the frequency again and a cascade failure ensued.
Too funny. C'mon, this isn't rocket science!
The network stability is actually quite a tough problem. And getting tougher with the rapid removal of so much spinning generator kit which has serious angular momentum stored energy in the rotating equipment.
The problem with locally electronic phase matched output is that it will quite
happily track whatever frequency is sees on the mains.
[OTOH, I am always amazed at how out-of-date the (network) "maps" are
that the utility uses. Didn't anyone write this stuff down? Do
you even KNOW where your equipment is? Or, does a crew have to go
out and visually identify it??]
They typically have no idea and fewer skilled engineers than are needed to reconnect people in more remote areas when there is big storm damage.
We also have a ridiculous amount of solar PV for such a high latitude. This >>> is governed by the fact that in a good year a farmer can make around
£200/acre by actively growing crops and £2k/acre by stuffing their land full
of solar panels. Many are choosing the latter.
I suspect we will see a similar pattern (perhaps wind) with large
swatches of farmland, here -- esp as climate change renders particular
crops harder to grow, increased pestilence, etc.
"This farm has been in my family for 5 generations! (but, now it's
a WIND/PV farm cuz I can't grow shit!)"
Wind power you can still graze animals or grow crops underneath as it doesn't shade the ground. UK has rather more offshore windfarms than most. The blades for the bigger ones are amazing things of beauty.
I sometimes pass them on the motorway. Definitely "abnormal load" !
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the >>>>> balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners. >>>>>
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
It seems like a change to the tax code could quickly change their fortunes?
Not really - a lot of them have been sold off to foreign companies.
Don't they still have to pay local taxes? Even if they ship the
profits off to foreign investors?
No. That is how the loading up with massive debt trick works. They are allowed
to offset interest payments on loans against taxable profits.
(and pay themselves big dividends into tax havens)
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
[...]
I've heard rumors that some can also be used to disconnect power
(for non-payment) but think that would be hard in the volume
typically set aside for the meter (?)
In the UK, that appeared to be the main reason the electricity compaines rushed to install them; anyone who didn't pay or disputed their bill
could be threatened with being cut off without any necessity to gain
access to the premises. Rather late in the day, this was made illegal
and the drive to fit 'smart' meters suddenly vanished.
I've heard rumors that some can also be used to disconnect power
(for non-payment) but think that would be hard in the volume
typically set aside for the meter (?)
On 16/04/2025 8:39 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown >>
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
<snip>
The big snag with Lithium batteries is their nasty tendency to catch
fire spectacularly.
You can design the battery monitoring circuitry to prevent them doing it spontaneously. Electric bikes and the like may not be big enough to
justify the expense, but electric cars and domestic solar panel back-up batteries certainly are.
Any event that physically damages the battery can also set it on fire if
you are unlucky enough. The newspapers are great at reporting lithium
battery fires, and much less good at reporting the stupidity that lit them.
A guy at nearby Newcastle University is an expert on such incidents -
there isn't any good way to put such fires out either.
Too true, but they shouldn't happen in the first place.
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
[...]
I've heard rumors that some can also be used to disconnect power
(for non-payment) but think that would be hard in the volume
typically set aside for the meter (?)
In the UK, that appeared to be the main reason the electricity compaines rushed to install them; anyone who didn't pay or disputed their bill
could be threatened with being cut off without any necessity to gain
access to the premises. Rather late in the day, this was made illegal
and the drive to fit 'smart' meters suddenly vanished.
On 17/04/2025 12:36, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
[...]
I've heard rumors that some can also be used to disconnect power
(for non-payment) but think that would be hard in the volume
typically set aside for the meter (?)
In the UK, that appeared to be the main reason the electricity compaines rushed to install them; anyone who didn't pay or disputed their bill
could be threatened with being cut off without any necessity to gain
access to the premises. Rather late in the day, this was made illegal
and the drive to fit 'smart' meters suddenly vanished.
The drive to fit them is still there. The supply companies get penalised
if they don't get enough people to upgrade to smart meters each year.
SMETS2 are quite reasonable meters (at least in southern England).
On 4/17/2025 4:36 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
[...]
I've heard rumors that some can also be used to disconnect power
(for non-payment) but think that would be hard in the volume
typically set aside for the meter (?)
In the UK, that appeared to be the main reason the electricity compaines rushed to install them; anyone who didn't pay or disputed their bill
could be threatened with being cut off without any necessity to gain
access to the premises. Rather late in the day, this was made illegal
and the drive to fit 'smart' meters suddenly vanished.
What are they using to disconnect the (typical) two 100A legs?
Here, there is value in having solid state metering. It allows
different monitoring schemes to be implemented without requiring a
completely different mechanical metering system. Eliminates
the meter reader. Provides dynamic load monitoring at the customer
level. Remote fault detection. etc.
On 16/04/2025 23:49, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
Is the "cap" significantly higher than the "normal" rate? Or, is it, >>> effectively, the "normal rate"?
The cap limits ordinary home users exposure to extreme market
volatility. It
Of course. But, a consumer's idea of a "reasonable cap" and a
PROVIDER'S idea
are likely worlds apart! Hence my question as to whether or not it was, EFFECTIVELY, the normal rate (i.e., providers opting for as much as they can get, within the current constraints)
It is better than any of the alternatives. I suspect at one point the
utility companies were at break even or even making a slight loss on
domestic customers when the gas price went up very high.
They compensated by hammering business users.
My supplier has just offered me half price electricity at the
weekends. Only snag is their website won't allow me to accept their
generous offer - it keeps saying "something went wrong- try again later".
If there isn't a corresponding INCREASE in the weekday rate, it could
be a win. They likely have surplus (weekend) capacity and are looking
to encourage users to consume that, instead of weekDAY capacity.
Yes the 5:2 ratio is very visible in the national power output graphs.
Having solar panels is another way to get onto a ToU tariff. Even that
is gamed though. Much domestic PV electricity ends up heating domestic
water as the feed in tariffs are also based on crazy sums. There is an
aftermarket in diverters to exploit this loophole.
There are incentives to install solar PV but none for solar hot water.
You could, of course, use (PV) electrically heated water. There are myriad schemes to make better use of the energy available but few
see widespread use.
That is what the aftermarket diverters allow to happen. Through a quirk
in the Feed-in Tariffs it pays to do that and only export the excess.
A personal favorite, here, would be to capture the waste heat from the ACbrrr condenser and use it to heat swimming pool water; the liquid medium would likely be a more efficient coolant than air sourced in a typical condenser. And, 100F pool water is delightful!
Outdoor swimming pools are not common in the UK. It is too cold -
although wild swimming in open water is on the increase since Covid.
The utility has been complaining that they have "too much" residential >>> solar capacity (the utility has a say in whether or not YOU can use
solar
and how large your installation can be)
UK allows up to 4kW solar generation on any domestic premises. More
than that
I don't think the *city* places limits on size of plant. But, requires it to reside on rooftops to avoid permitting, architects, etc. (of course).
On 16/04/2025 15:59, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 16/04/2025 8:39 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown >>
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
<snip>
The big snag with Lithium batteries is their nasty tendency to catch
fire spectacularly.
You can design the battery monitoring circuitry to prevent them doing it
spontaneously. Electric bikes and the like may not be big enough to
justify the expense, but electric cars and domestic solar panel back-up
batteries certainly are.
I'm less convinced of that than you are. I think you can pretty well
stop thermal runaway but only iff the sensors are done properly.
On 4/16/2025 6:55 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/16/25 3:49 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:<...>
Here, the issue is the high PEAK demands that the ACbrrs place ononly if
individual
subscribers. We could probably get by on a 3-5KW plant -- but,
we could store and deliver for large loads (I think the ACbrr is~14KW).
That's a very large residential A/C. Our 4-Ton unit (48kBTU/Hr) takes
about 5kW and suffices a 2,900 sq ft house in northern California.
(Don't you like all these antiquated units!)
That's the startup load. An inverter for a (pure) solar solution would
have to tolerate that for some large fraction of a second/seconds. I.e., you would NEED to be grid-tied in order to support such large loads,
even temporarily.
By contrast, using minisplits -- and staggering their actions -- we could
get by with something considerably smaller.
<...>
water.;
There are incentives to install solar PV but none for solar hot
;
You could, of course, use (PV) electrically heated water. There are
myriad schemes to make better use of the energy available but few
see widespread use.
California encourages (and will soon require) heat pumps for domestic
hot water, that gives you a threefold improvement in efficiency if
running from solar generated electricity. They are pretty common.
We could easily use true solar water heaters (e.g., evacuated collectors). Many people use solar to heat their swimming pools -- something that would
be prohibitively expensive to use electric or gas.
(though I have a friend in Chicago who does exactly that -- but his pool
is indoors)
The technologies used are often cheap and low efficiency (e.g., a shitload
of coiled black pipe on the roof). Some similar uses for domestic hot water,
but less common. Heating water with natural gas is relatively inexpensive.
<...>
requires it;;
UK allows up to 4kW solar generation on any domestic premises. More
than that
I don't think the *city* places limits on size of plant. But,
to reside on rooftops to avoid permitting, architects, etc. (ofcourse).
Here in PG&E land around the SF bay we're allowed up to 10kW of solar
generation without significant additional requirements.
It's the *mounting* that causes the additional requirements. You have
to be able to certify that the STRUCTURE that you use (or create)
can bear the load under high winds, etc.
E.g., I am hoping to mount a dozen panels on the south wall of
the house (sloping down OVER the south lawn). This would give
me the desired south-facing orientation. It would also place the
mass of the house between the panels and the microbursts that
we frequently encounter FROM the north. (i.e., locate the tops
of the panels at or below the top of the southern wall)
This also makes it convenient to route to the intended destination.
AND, keeps all that crap off the roof so roof maintenance doesn't
hinder energy collection.
(Roofs here are pretty flimsy as we have no snow loads, earthquakes,
etc. There have been homes where a microburst will lift the solar
panels and rip the roof off. Microbursts often fell 75 ft trees
and rip smaller ones right out of the ground!)
<...>
kw
On 16/04/2025 23:49, Don Y wrote:<..
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
and you have to apply for a license. It confused the load shedding
algorithms last time there was a serious power outage since it was
about 6pm in mid summer and so when they shed a nominal 1GW of load
they also dropped off about 100MW of small solar PV systems. It was
enough to lose control of the frequency again and a cascade failure
ensued.
Too funny. C'mon, this isn't rocket science!
The network stability is actually quite a tough problem. And getting
tougher with the rapid removal of so much spinning generator kit which
has serious angular momentum stored energy in the rotating equipment.
<...>
Here, the issue is the high PEAK demands that the ACbrrs place on
individual
subscribers. We could probably get by on a 3-5KW plant -- but, only if
we could store and deliver for large loads (I think the ACbrr is ~14KW).
That's a very large residential A/C. Our 4-Ton unit (48kBTU/Hr) takes about >>> 5kW and suffices a 2,900 sq ft house in northern California. (Don't you like
all these antiquated units!)
That's the startup load. An inverter for a (pure) solar solution would
have to tolerate that for some large fraction of a second/seconds. I.e., >> you would NEED to be grid-tied in order to support such large loads,
even temporarily.
14kW startup is about 60A LRA (locked Rotor Amperage). A single Tesla Powerwall
3 battery is rated for 185A LRA and it is very common to have two or more Powerwalls in a system which increases the available short term power. Our A/C
has a 104A LRA spec.
By contrast, using minisplits -- and staggering their actions -- we could
get by with something considerably smaller.
Yes, I like the minisplit approach - we have an 18,000BTU/Hr one for a separate
room and it extremely quiet and efficient. It normally only takes 200-300W with
very low inrush.
<...>
;;
UK allows up to 4kW solar generation on any domestic premises. More >>> >> than that
I don't think the *city* places limits on size of plant. But, requires it
to reside on rooftops to avoid permitting, architects, etc. (of course).
Here in PG&E land around the SF bay we're allowed up to 10kW of solar
generation without significant additional requirements.
It's the *mounting* that causes the additional requirements. You have
to be able to certify that the STRUCTURE that you use (or create)
can bear the load under high winds, etc.
Yes, we had to get the city to give their permit that involves what you mention
plus features for emergency responders such as adequate access to the roof and
approved means of disabling the panels and batteries with suitable signage.
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 4/17/2025 4:36 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
[...]
I've heard rumors that some can also be used to disconnect power
(for non-payment) but think that would be hard in the volume
typically set aside for the meter (?)
In the UK, that appeared to be the main reason the electricity compaines >>> rushed to install them; anyone who didn't pay or disputed their bill
could be threatened with being cut off without any necessity to gain
access to the premises. Rather late in the day, this was made illegal
and the drive to fit 'smart' meters suddenly vanished.
What are they using to disconnect the (typical) two 100A legs?
Most UK domestic premises are on single-phase 240v, with the neutral
earthed at the sub-station. This means there is only one leg to
disconnect, so a latching relay with one set of 100A contacts is
sufficient. (I remember seeing a video of 'Big Clive" dismantling one -
it may still be on YouTube somewhere.)
Here, there is value in having solid state metering. It allows
different monitoring schemes to be implemented without requiring a
completely different mechanical metering system. Eliminates
the meter reader. Provides dynamic load monitoring at the customer
level. Remote fault detection. etc.
Most of which benefits the supplier, not the consumer.
On 4/17/25 2:28 AM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 6:55 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/16/25 3:49 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:<...>
Here, the issue is the high PEAK demands that the ACbrrs place ononly if
individual
subscribers. We could probably get by on a 3-5KW plant -- but,
we could store and deliver for large loads (I think the ACbrr is~14KW).
That's a very large residential A/C. Our 4-Ton unit (48kBTU/Hr) takes
about 5kW and suffices a 2,900 sq ft house in northern California.
(Don't you like all these antiquated units!)
That's the startup load. An inverter for a (pure) solar solution would
have to tolerate that for some large fraction of a second/seconds. I.e., >> you would NEED to be grid-tied in order to support such large loads,
even temporarily.
14kW startup is about 60A LRA (locked Rotor Amperage). A single Tesla Powerwall 3 battery is rated for 185A LRA and it is very common to have
two or more Powerwalls in a system which increases the available short
term power. Our A/C has a 104A LRA spec.
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
[...]
I've heard rumors that some can also be used to disconnect power
(for non-payment) but think that would be hard in the volume
typically set aside for the meter (?)
In the UK, that appeared to be the main reason the electricity compaines rushed to install them; anyone who didn't pay or disputed their bill
could be threatened with being cut off without any necessity to gain
access to the premises. Rather late in the day, this was made illegal
and the drive to fit 'smart' meters suddenly vanished.
On 4/17/2025 7:38 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
Here, there is value in having solid state metering. It allows
different monitoring schemes to be implemented without requiring a
completely different mechanical metering system. Eliminates
the meter reader. Provides dynamic load monitoring at the customer
level. Remote fault detection. etc.
Most of which benefits the supplier, not the consumer.
Of course! Our electronic water meters include the ability to detect
likely leaks (i.e., if water runs continuously then it is likely a sign
of a leaking toilet fixture, etc.).
But, this isn't used to alert the homeowner to a reparable problem.
Rather, you get a "big bill" and start looking to see "Why?"
I don't think the *city* places limits on size of plant. But, requires it >>> to reside on rooftops to avoid permitting, architects, etc. (of course).
The difference is that < 3.68kW you can just install PV with no permitting.
If you want to install more you need to fill in a form first. The power company could tell you to limit your export based on the capacity of the local grid, but they can't refuse you point blank (you could just do 3.67kW in the worst case).
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was, AFAIK, that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For instance, a contract can
say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter has the ability to switch off when
you try to draw 16A for a time.
Previously, al houses had a limiter switch with a lead seal. People managed to
bypass that switch. By passing the meter is harder, I have not seen it done.
On 4/17/2025 7:38 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 4/17/2025 4:36 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
[...]
I've heard rumors that some can also be used to disconnect power
(for non-payment) but think that would be hard in the volume
typically set aside for the meter (?)
In the UK, that appeared to be the main reason the electricity compaines >>>> rushed to install them; anyone who didn't pay or disputed their bill
could be threatened with being cut off without any necessity to gain
access to the premises. Rather late in the day, this was made illegal >>>> and the drive to fit 'smart' meters suddenly vanished.
What are they using to disconnect the (typical) two 100A legs?
Most UK domestic premises are on single-phase 240v, with the neutral
earthed at the sub-station. This means there is only one leg to
disconnect, so a latching relay with one set of 100A contacts is
sufficient. (I remember seeing a video of 'Big Clive" dismantling one -
it may still be on YouTube somewhere.)
I suspect even a simple contactor would be a challenge to cram in the
bubble alongside the electronics.
Here, there is value in having solid state metering. It allows
different monitoring schemes to be implemented without requiring a
completely different mechanical metering system. Eliminates
the meter reader. Provides dynamic load monitoring at the customer
level. Remote fault detection. etc.
Most of which benefits the supplier, not the consumer.
Of course! Our electronic water meters include the ability to detect
likely leaks (i.e., if water runs continuously then it is likely a sign
of a leaking toilet fixture, etc.).
But, this isn't used to alert the homeowner to a reparable problem.
Rather, you get a "big bill" and start looking to see "Why?"
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 17/04/2025 12:36, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
[...]
I've heard rumors that some can also be used to disconnect power
(for non-payment) but think that would be hard in the volume
typically set aside for the meter (?)
In the UK, that appeared to be the main reason the electricity compaines >> > rushed to install them; anyone who didn't pay or disputed their bill
could be threatened with being cut off without any necessity to gain
access to the premises. Rather late in the day, this was made illegal
and the drive to fit 'smart' meters suddenly vanished.
The drive to fit them is still there. The supply companies get penalised
if they don't get enough people to upgrade to smart meters each year.
SMETS2 are quite reasonable meters (at least in southern England).
They haven't pestered me for a while now. Various friends in places
with no mobile 'phone signal have recently had high-pressure salesmen
visit them - and they told them to clear off!
On 4/17/25 2:07 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 16/04/2025 23:49, Don Y wrote:<..
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
and you have to apply for a license. It confused the load shedding
algorithms last time there was a serious power outage since it was
about 6pm in mid summer and so when they shed a nominal 1GW of load
they also dropped off about 100MW of small solar PV systems. It was
enough to lose control of the frequency again and a cascade failure
ensued.
Too funny.� C'mon, this isn't rocket science!
In California, residential solar installations have to meet "California
Rule 21" that is a specification of how the inverters control their
output when the mains frequency or voltage changes.
Basically the solar output is curtailed linearly to zero as the
frequency is increased from 60-62.5Hz or the voltage above 240-245V.
These measures are intended to promote system stability.
kw
The network stability is actually quite a tough problem. And getting
tougher with the rapid removal of so much spinning generator kit which
has serious angular momentum stored energy in the rotating equipment.
<...>
On 4/17/2025 12:05 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:<...>
We don't want the on-site battery storage -- and the risks that come
with it.
The sun ALWAYS shines (here -- literally).
On 2025-04-17 21:05, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/17/25 2:28 AM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 6:55 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/16/25 3:49 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:<...>
Here, the issue is the high PEAK demands that the ACbrrs place ononly if
individual
subscribers. We could probably get by on a 3-5KW plant -- but,
we could store and deliver for large loads (I think the ACbrr is~14KW).
That's a very large residential A/C. Our 4-Ton unit (48kBTU/Hr)
takes about 5kW and suffices a 2,900 sq ft house in northern
California. (Don't you like all these antiquated units!)
That's the startup load. An inverter for a (pure) solar solution would >>> have to tolerate that for some large fraction of a second/seconds.
I.e.,
you would NEED to be grid-tied in order to support such large loads,
even temporarily.
14kW startup is about 60A LRA (locked Rotor Amperage). A single Tesla
Powerwall 3 battery is rated for 185A LRA and it is very common to
have two or more Powerwalls in a system which increases the available
short term power. Our A/C has a 104A LRA spec.
What would happen if the inverter on the battery pack doesn't have that
peak capacity?
I mean, an inverter might simply limit the maximum peak current without destroying itself, keeping itself all the time within safe limits. Would
the motor still start, albeit slowly? Or would it stall and overheat?
Perhaps motors could be designed co cope. I know my AC unit has an
inverter inside to control the motor, so does my fridge.
...
On 4/17/25 12:55 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 12:05 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:<...>
We don't want the on-site battery storage -- and the risks that come with it.
The sun ALWAYS shines (here -- literally).
Even at night?
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was, AFAIK,
that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For instance,
a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter has the
ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service (ampacity) effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
Previously, al houses had a limiter switch with a lead seal. People
managed to bypass that switch. By passing the meter is harder, I have
not seen it done.
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was, AFAIK, that >>> here the contract limits the current you can draw. For instance, a contract >>> can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter has the ability to switch >>> off when you try to draw 16A for a time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service (ampacity) >> effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed monthly amount
for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a maximum of 15A, we pay
for that, €/month. If we contract 30A, we pay double fixed amount per month.
And the smart meter controls that we don't contract 20 and take 21.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
Previously, al houses had a limiter switch with a lead seal. People managed >>> to bypass that switch. By passing the meter is harder, I have not seen it done.
On 2025-04-17 21:59, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 7:38 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
Here, there is value in having solid state metering. It allows
different monitoring schemes to be implemented without requiring a
completely different mechanical metering system. Eliminates
the meter reader. Provides dynamic load monitoring at the customer
level. Remote fault detection. etc.
Most of which benefits the supplier, not the consumer.
Of course! Our electronic water meters include the ability to detect
likely leaks (i.e., if water runs continuously then it is likely a sign
of a leaking toilet fixture, etc.).
But, this isn't used to alert the homeowner to a reparable problem.
Rather, you get a "big bill" and start looking to see "Why?"
Our city water contractor said on radio few days ago that they would start to deploy smart water meters, and he did say that they would try to detect leaks on our premises, and tell us.
Water here is scarce, the water company is trying to conserve it (a percent comes from desalinization plants).
I have seen a crew of two people (I think)
open the iron lid that covers the main water valve on the street, at 3 AM, put
a tool to it, and hear carefully the noise on headphones, to detect leaks; they
were doing the same on all houses on the street. And then, days later, I noticed a crew coming in and opening up the pavement to repair a single leak.
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was, AFAIK,
that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For instance,
a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter has the
ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a time.
Wow!� Now THAT is interesting.� Here, the size of your service (ampacity)
effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed monthly >amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a maximum
of 15A, we pay for that, �/month. If we contract 30A, we pay double
fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we don't
contract 20 and take 21.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
On 4/17/25 1:50 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-17 21:05, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/17/25 2:28 AM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 6:55 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/16/25 3:49 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:<...>
Here, the issue is the high PEAK demands that the ACbrrs place on >>>>> > individual
subscribers. We could probably get by on a 3-5KW plant -- but, >>>>> only if
we could store and deliver for large loads (I think the ACbrr is >>>>> ~14KW).
That's a very large residential A/C. Our 4-Ton unit (48kBTU/Hr)
takes about 5kW and suffices a 2,900 sq ft house in northern
California. (Don't you like all these antiquated units!)
That's the startup load. An inverter for a (pure) solar solution would >>>> have to tolerate that for some large fraction of a second/seconds.
I.e.,
you would NEED to be grid-tied in order to support such large loads,
even temporarily.
14kW startup is about 60A LRA (locked Rotor Amperage). A single Tesla
Powerwall 3 battery is rated for 185A LRA and it is very common to
have two or more Powerwalls in a system which increases the available
short term power. Our A/C has a 104A LRA spec.
What would happen if the inverter on the battery pack doesn't have
that peak capacity?
The inverter would trip and power would be cutoff until reset.
I mean, an inverter might simply limit the maximum peak current
without destroying itself, keeping itself all the time within safe
limits. Would the motor still start, albeit slowly? Or would it stall
and overheat? Perhaps motors could be designed co cope. I know my AC
unit has an inverter inside to control the motor, so does my fridge.
...
On 16/04/2025 23:49, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
The network stability is actually quite a tough problem. And getting
tougher with the rapid removal of so much spinning generator kit which
has serious angular momentum stored energy in the rotating equipment.
On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:44:15 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 15:59, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 16/04/2025 8:39 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown >>
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
<snip>
The big snag with Lithium batteries is their nasty tendency to catch
fire spectacularly.
You can design the battery monitoring circuitry to prevent them doing it >>> spontaneously. Electric bikes and the like may not be big enough to
justify the expense, but electric cars and domestic solar panel back-up
batteries certainly are.
I'm less convinced of that than you are. I think you can pretty well
stop thermal runaway but only iff the sensors are done properly.
A tiny dendrite puncturing a separator can start an ignition wave that propagates in all directions at centimeters per second and ends in a
fireball fast. All a sensor might to is to tell people to RUN.
Utility-scale batteries are huge and forklifts move pretty slow.
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:[...]
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was, AFAIK,
that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For instance,
a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter has the
ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service (ampacity) effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed monthly amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a maximum
of 15A, we pay for that, €/month. If we contract 30A, we pay double
fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we don't
contract 20 and take 21.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
On 18/04/2025 08:24, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 18/04/2025 1:56 am, john larkin wrote:In the UK a lot of large domestic batteries use lithium iron phosphate
On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:44:15 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 15:59, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 16/04/2025 8:39 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown >>
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
<snip>
The big snag with Lithium batteries is their nasty tendency to catch >>>>>> fire spectacularly.
You can design the battery monitoring circuitry to prevent them
doing it
spontaneously. Electric bikes and the like may not be big enough to
justify the expense, but electric cars and domestic solar panel
back-up
batteries certainly are.
I'm less convinced of that than you are. I think you can pretty well
stop thermal runaway but only iff the sensors are done properly.
A tiny dendrite puncturing a separator can start an ignition wave that
propagates in all directions at centimeters per second and ends in a
fireball fast. All a sensor might to is to tell people to RUN.
At the moment lithium batteries are collections of quite small cells -
roughly D-cell size.
A tiny dendrite puncturing a separator may start an ignition wave that
can propagate at centimeters per second, but only inside that D-cell -
and that would take a badly designed separator.
This sounds more like journalistic alarmism than any kind of peer-
reviewed study.
Utility-scale batteries are huge and forklifts move pretty slow.
South Australia has had a grid scale battery for years and now has
several of them. They haven't caught on fire yet. A grid scale battery
in another state did catch on fire during construction, but mechanical
damage seems to have been the root cause, and the fire was pretty
localised - confined to one refrigerator sized block of cells, the
battery got built anyway.
which is much less likely to produce a spectacular fire than lithium
ion. The individual cells are the size of a large brick.
For example: https://www.fogstar.co.uk/collections/lifepo4/products/eve-lifepo4-mb31-prismatic-cell-grade-a
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1347/0997/files/MB31_..__compressed_1.pdf?v=1718013523
https://www.fogstar.co.uk/collections/solar-battery-storage/products/fogstar-energy-30kwh-48v-rack-battery-bundle
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was,
AFAIK, that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For
instance, a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter
has the ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service (ampacity) >> effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed monthly amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a maximum
of 15A, we pay for that, €/month. If we contract 30A, we pay double
fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we don't
contract 20 and take 21.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
Previously, al houses had a limiter switch with a lead seal. People
managed to bypass that switch. By passing the meter is harder, I have
not seen it done.
On 18/04/2025 1:56 am, john larkin wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:44:15 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 15:59, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 16/04/2025 8:39 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown >>
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
I'm less convinced of that than you are. I think you can pretty well
stop thermal runaway but only iff the sensors are done properly.
A tiny dendrite puncturing a separator can start an ignition wave that
propagates in all directions at centimeters per second and ends in a
fireball fast. All a sensor might to is to tell people to RUN.
At the moment lithium batteries are collections of quite small cells - roughly D-cell size.
A tiny dendrite puncturing a separator may start an ignition wave that
can propagate at centimeters per second, but only inside that D-cell -
and that would take a badly designed separator.
This sounds more like journalistic alarmism than any kind of
peer-reviewed study.
Utility-scale batteries are huge and forklifts move pretty slow.
South Australia has had a grid scale battery for years and now has
several of them. They haven't caught on fire yet. A grid scale battery
in another state did catch on fire during construction, but mechanical
damage seems to have been the root cause, and the fire was pretty
localised - confined to one refrigerator sized block of cells. the
batter got built anyway.
On 16/04/2025 09:20, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 14/04/2025 22:25, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Jim Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-04-14, Liz Tuddenham <[email protected]d> wrote: >>>>>> Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It was the deranged grass roots activists that voted Liz the Lettuce in.
I don't think so: she was elected by a small group at the top of the >>>>>> party. The grass-roots Conservatives I have spoken to are appalled by >>>>>> the things the party elite have been doing in their name.
Meanwhile in the real world ...
The MP's selected Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak...
That was the point I was trying to make: there is a clique at the top of >>>> the party and ordinary grass-roots members don't get to choose freely.
Rishi Sunak was a *perfectly good candidate* for PM.
If he had won in the first round then things could well have been very
different. It was the Tory grass roots activists that destroyed the Tory >>> party by electing Liz the Lettuce and resulting in total annihilation.
Thst's not the point I was making: Ordinary members of the party who
Anyone who was a *member* of the Tory party was entitled to vote for
their choice of PM. They chose unwisely and must live with the result.
Liz the Lettuce was elected by and made PM by all the paid up *members*
of the Conservative Party who voted for her rather than Sunak.
were not 'activists' (whatever that means), or in the elite few at the
top, were only able to choose between candidates who had already been
selected by a self-perpetuating clique. They had no say in who was
offered to them.
One thing about politicians is that anyone who actually wants to do
their job should probably be debarred from doing it.
On 4/17/2025 5:26 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was,
AFAIK, that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For
instance, a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The
meter has the ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a
time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service
(ampacity)
effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed
monthly amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a
maximum of 15A, we pay for that, €/month. If we contract 30A, we pay
double fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we
don't contract 20 and take 21.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
There would also be an incentive for you to do your own load balancing as
you are effectively being charged based on peak demand (even if you don't
USE it). Assuming, of course, that the fixed cost is "significant" and
not just a token charge.
On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:52:46 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 09:20, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 14/04/2025 22:25, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Jim Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-04-14, Liz Tuddenham <[email protected]d> wrote: >>>>>>> Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
One thing about politicians is that anyone who actually wants to do
their job should probably be debarred from doing it.
The major flaw in our current model of democracy as thing stand is the 'career politician' - who 30 or 40 years ago may have got into
politics for the noblest of reasons, but has since had their
principles completely compromised and has amassed considerable wealth
from selling their influence to the highest bidder. We need to make
the 'career politician' an historical curiosity.
On 4/17/25 16:57, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/17/25 1:50 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:The inverter can be smart enough to start up in "speed ramp" mode. I had
On 2025-04-17 21:05, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/17/25 2:28 AM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 6:55 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/16/25 3:49 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/16/2025 3:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:<...>
Here, the issue is the high PEAK demands that the ACbrrs place on >>>>>> > individualis ~14KW).
subscribers. We could probably get by on a 3-5KW plant -- but, >>>>>> only if
we could store and deliver for large loads (I think the ACbrr
That's a very large residential A/C. Our 4-Ton unit (48kBTU/Hr)
takes about 5kW and suffices a 2,900 sq ft house in northern
California. (Don't you like all these antiquated units!)
That's the startup load. An inverter for a (pure) solar solution
would
have to tolerate that for some large fraction of a second/seconds.
I.e.,
you would NEED to be grid-tied in order to support such large loads, >>>>> even temporarily.
14kW startup is about 60A LRA (locked Rotor Amperage). A single
Tesla Powerwall 3 battery is rated for 185A LRA and it is very
common to have two or more Powerwalls in a system which increases
the available short term power. Our A/C has a 104A LRA spec.
What would happen if the inverter on the battery pack doesn't have
that peak capacity?
The inverter would trip and power would be cutoff until reset.
I mean, an inverter might simply limit the maximum peak current
without destroying itself, keeping itself all the time within safe
limits. Would the motor still start, albeit slowly? Or would it stall
and overheat? Perhaps motors could be designed co cope. I know my AC
unit has an inverter inside to control the motor, so does my fridge.
...
the tripping issue on my 3hp lathe motor in high speed gear, until I programmed the inverter to ramp up to speed over several seconds. It's
all about inertia in this case, maybe not so simple with a compressor
load attached.
On 4/17/2025 1:58 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-17 21:59, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 7:38 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
Here, there is value in having solid state metering. It allows
different monitoring schemes to be implemented without requiring a
completely different mechanical metering system. Eliminates
the meter reader. Provides dynamic load monitoring at the customer >>>>> level. Remote fault detection. etc.
Most of which benefits the supplier, not the consumer.
Of course! Our electronic water meters include the ability to detect
likely leaks (i.e., if water runs continuously then it is likely a sign
of a leaking toilet fixture, etc.).
But, this isn't used to alert the homeowner to a reparable problem.
Rather, you get a "big bill" and start looking to see "Why?"
Our city water contractor said on radio few days ago that they would
start to deploy smart water meters, and he did say that they would try
to detect leaks on our premises, and tell us.
They COULD do this. But, don't. They can only contact you by mail so any notification would already be several days delayed (assuming they are WATCHING for leaks continuously and not just "noticing" them when they
read the meter)
And, few customers are aware of the meters' capabilities. I've told some how to remove the iron grating covering the valve/meter (watching for poisonous critters), lift the access panel covering the display and LOOK
for the "leak indicator" icon.
In addition to being able to see just what the flow rate is, then (i.e., do so with no loads turned on and you can gauge the magnitude of your leak before the next water bill arrives).
Our static water pressure is 100+ psi. So, takes extra wear-and-tear on appliances (typically rated for an 80 psi supply) and fittings. Water
lines pass UNDER the slab, here, so you are also at the mercy of pipes becoming corroded and you never know it.
Water here is scarce, the water company is trying to conserve it (a
percent comes from desalinization plants).
Desalinization isn't YET practical, here. But, water is scarce with only
11 inches of precipitation, annually. And the municipalities all trying
to stoke their economies by new residential/commercial developments.
There are suburbs who have skirted the law requiring a 100 year water
supply before construction can be allowed. (they do this by making tiny "developments" that fall below the size requiring certification.
They have suddenly found themselves struggling to GET water as they
rely on the cooperation of other entities to supply them with water.
Bankers aren't keen on extending mortgages to folks who don't have
long term water supplies. Penny saved... <shrug>
I have seen a crew of two people (I think) open the iron lid that
covers the main water valve on the street, at 3 AM, put a tool to it,
and hear carefully the noise on headphones, to detect leaks; they were
doing the same on all houses on the street. And then, days later, I
noticed a crew coming in and opening up the pavement to repair a
single leak.
Most leaks are "after the meter" (i.e., on the consumer's side). So,
the city isn't responsible for those repairs. It is up to the consumer (homeowner) to get the repair fixed -- on their own dime.
For folks who can't do this kind of work, it can be several thousand
dollars to dig up the yard and lay new pipe.
On Fri, 18 Apr 2025 02:26:23 +0200, "Carlos E.R."
<[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was, AFAIK, >>>> that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For instance,
a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter has the
ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service (ampacity) >>> effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed monthly
amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a maximum
of 15A, we pay for that, €/month. If we contract 30A, we pay double
fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we don't
contract 20 and take 21.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
How does some sweet little granny know what to contract for, or how to
limit her peak amps?
Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:[...]
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was, AFAIK, >>>> that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For instance,
a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter has the
ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service (ampacity)
effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed monthly
amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a maximum
of 15A, we pay for that, €/month. If we contract 30A, we pay double
fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we don't
contract 20 and take 21.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
Is there some time-averaging provision for high start-up transients,
such as motors would need?
Is the metering based on wattage or current?
The current draw of a multiple lighting installation in a shop may be capacitive or the motors in a small workshop would be inductive and this would determine the size of cables needed, so current-based netering
would make sense for that purpose. The current wouldn't be
representative of the energy used, so wattage-based metering would make
sense for energy-consumption billing purposes.
On 18/04/2025 01:26, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was,
AFAIK, that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For
instance, a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The
meter has the ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a
time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service
(ampacity)
effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
ISTR Italy and to some extent Japan have similar rules. When I lived in
Japan only the aircon had a really juicy 240v supply. The domestic ring
main 100v could not support for example a 3kW kettle. They had special
slow electric kettles come thermos flasks to have boiling water on tap.
You also had to be careful not to run the aircon at full pelt and the
washing machine at the same time or the circuit breaker would trip.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed
monthly amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a
maximum of 15A, we pay for that, €/month. If we contract 30A, we pay
double fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we
don't contract 20 and take 21.
In the UK it is done by size of fuse into the home. You can overload the circuit a fair bit without blowing the fuse but it is expensive if you
do since the electricity company has to come out and do the bonded
repair. There are lead seals on the fuse connecting to incoming mains.
A few homes last rewired in the 1950's are still on 40A, most are on 60A
or now 100A circuits. You pay for what you use. A few tariffs have a
higher price for going beyond a certain amount for high use premises.
Local mains supply here had to be reinforced a couple of years back to support then PM Rishi Sunak's luxury heated swimming pool (he paid for
the network upgrade himself). Wife is fabulously rich.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/12/rishi-sunak-has- electricity-grid-upgraded-to-heat-his-private-pool
Where I live in a rural backwater the mains is actually more like US
style two phase and neutral rather than normal UK 3 phase. This is a
sore point with businesses that would like to use 3 phase equipment.
Each village is across one pair of the 3 phase distribution line with a transformer ratio to give 240v output.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
Previously, al houses had a limiter switch with a lead seal. People
managed to bypass that switch. By passing the meter is harder, I
have not seen it done.
Traditional way in the UK is a copper nail through the cables on the
wrong side of the meter. A method beloved of illegal cannabis farms.
On 18/04/2025 08:24, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 18/04/2025 1:56 am, john larkin wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:44:15 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 15:59, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 16/04/2025 8:39 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown >>
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
I'm less convinced of that than you are. I think you can pretty well
stop thermal runaway but only if the sensors are done properly.
Perhaps.A tiny dendrite puncturing a separator can start an ignition wave that
propagates in all directions at centimeters per second and ends in a
fireball fast. All a sensor might to is to tell people to RUN.
It depends a lot on the chemistry. The previous generation of NiCoMn
Lithium cells were extremely volatile if they get damaged although have higher energy density. The latest generation of Iron based ones in the
BYD blade implementation seem to be a lot more forgiving. This isn't a
bad demo of the differences (bear in mind they are a battery vendor):
https://www.ufinebattery.com/blog/byd-blade-battery-comprehensive-guide/
In particular part 6 with the consequences of failure for each type.
Moves are afoot to double the energy density in the next generation if
they can overcome the tricky problem of metallic dendrite growth under certain charging conditions.
At the moment lithium batteries are collections of quite small cells -
roughly D-cell size.
Only in toys and a few older cars. You are hopelessly out of date.
Prismatic or latest blade cells are now in vogue for new build.
A tiny dendrite puncturing a separator may start an ignition wave that
can propagate at centimeters per second, but only inside that D-cell -
and that would take a badly designed separator.
They do tend to go completely until it encounters an effective fire
break. The jets of directed intense flame are something of a problem. Particularly in car collisions (tendency to relight also an issue) and vehicle recovery companies are unwilling to remove such fire damaged
electric vehicles because of the risk of reignition.
The propagation between adjacent containers is predicated on windspeed
less than 12mph and 6m spacing which is highly unlikely in the UK. They usually go for 3m here with pairs passive surface back to back.
The one I'm fighting is in a region with mean windspeed ~20mph and they
want to use a 2m spacing based on some "interesting" fire risk analysis.
UK land prices mean they want it as compact as possible.
Fire fighting plan consists of stand well back and let it burn. There is
no water supply on site (actually there is - well pumped water on a 3"
pipe 2 miles long). Fire code calls for multiple 0.6m fire hydrants.
This sounds more like journalistic alarmism than any kind of
peer-reviewed study.
Utility-scale batteries are huge and forklifts move pretty slow.
South Australia has had a grid scale battery for years and now has
several of them. They haven't caught on fire yet. A grid scale battery
in another state did catch on fire during construction, but mechanical
damage seems to have been the root cause, and the fire was pretty
localised - confined to one refrigerator sized block of cells. the
battery got built anyway.
You obviously missed the Victorian Big Battery fire using Tesla modules
where during installation they burnt out two full containers worth
(infant mortality on precharge due to a coolant leak).
Safety systems that fail dangerous are not good. I suspect rough handling poor
installation practices were to blame as root cause.
https://www.energy-storage.news/investigation-confirms-cause-of-fire-at-teslas-victorian-big-battery-in-australia/
Moss Landing did nothing for the safety reputation of these systems.
On 2025-04-18 09:53, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:[...]
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was, AFAIK, >>>> that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For instance, >>>> a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter has the
ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service
(ampacity) effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your
wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed monthly
amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a maximum
of 15A, we pay for that, €/month. If we contract 30A, we pay double >> fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we don't
contract 20 and take 21.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
Is there some time-averaging provision for high start-up transients,
such as motors would need?
Yes. The trigger is slow.
Is the metering based on wattage or current?
Before smart meters, it was certainly current, a slow switch triggered
by heat or a magnetic field. With smart meters I don't actually know.
The meters measure watts.
The current draw of a multiple lighting installation in a shop may be capacitive or the motors in a small workshop would be inductive and this would determine the size of cables needed, so current-based netering
would make sense for that purpose. The current wouldn't be
representative of the energy used, so wattage-based metering would make sense for energy-consumption billing purposes.
I suppose current smart meters can also measure the power factor.
On 2025-04-18 10:19, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/04/2025 01:26, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was,
AFAIK, that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For
instance, a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The
meter has the ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a
time.
Wow!� Now THAT is interesting.� Here, the size of your service
(ampacity)
effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
ISTR Italy and to some extent Japan have similar rules. When I lived in
Japan only the aircon had a really juicy 240v supply. The domestic ring
main 100v could not support for example a 3kW kettle. They had special
slow electric kettles come thermos flasks to have boiling water on tap.
You also had to be careful not to run the aircon at full pelt and the
washing machine at the same time or the circuit breaker would trip.
Yes, same here.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed
monthly amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a
maximum of 15A, we pay for that, �/month. If we contract 30A, we pay
double fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we
don't contract 20 and take 21.
In the UK it is done by size of fuse into the home. You can overload the
circuit a fair bit without blowing the fuse but it is expensive if you
do since the electricity company has to come out and do the bonded
repair. There are lead seals on the fuse connecting to incoming mains.
A few homes last rewired in the 1950's are still on 40A, most are on 60A
or now 100A circuits. You pay for what you use. A few tariffs have a
higher price for going beyond a certain amount for high use premises.
Local mains supply here had to be reinforced a couple of years back to
support then PM Rishi Sunak's luxury heated swimming pool (he paid for
the network upgrade himself). Wife is fabulously rich.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/12/rishi-sunak-has-
electricity-grid-upgraded-to-heat-his-private-pool
Where I live in a rural backwater the mains is actually more like US
style two phase and neutral rather than normal UK 3 phase. This is a
sore point with businesses that would like to use 3 phase equipment.
Each village is across one pair of the 3 phase distribution line with a
transformer ratio to give 240v output.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
Previously, al houses had a limiter switch with a lead seal. People
managed to bypass that switch. By passing the meter is harder, I
have not seen it done.
Traditional way in the UK is a copper nail through the cables on the
wrong side of the meter. A method beloved of illegal cannabis farms.
I don't know if smart meters can sense that :-?
On 18/04/2025 6:55 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/04/2025 08:24, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 18/04/2025 1:56 am, john larkin wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:44:15 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 15:59, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 16/04/2025 8:39 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown >>
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
I'm less convinced of that than you are. I think you can pretty well >>>>> stop thermal runaway but only if the sensors are done properly.
That's presumably testable.
Perhaps.A tiny dendrite puncturing a separator can start an ignition wave that >>>> propagates in all directions at centimeters per second and ends in a
fireball fast. All a sensor might to is to tell people to RUN.
It depends a lot on the chemistry. The previous generation of NiCoMn
Lithium cells were extremely volatile if they get damaged although
have higher energy density. The latest generation of Iron based ones
in the BYD blade implementation seem to be a lot more forgiving. This
isn't a bad demo of the differences (bear in mind they are a battery
vendor):
https://www.ufinebattery.com/blog/byd-blade-battery-comprehensive-guide/
In particular part 6 with the consequences of failure for each type.
Moves are afoot to double the energy density in the next generation if
they can overcome the tricky problem of metallic dendrite growth under
certain charging conditions.
At the moment lithium batteries are collections of quite small cells
- roughly D-cell size.
Only in toys and a few older cars. You are hopelessly out of date.
Prismatic or latest blade cells are now in vogue for new build.
But you haven't bothered to post a link to any kind of example.
South Australia has had a grid scale battery for years and now has
several of them. They haven't caught on fire yet. A grid scale
battery in another state did catch on fire during construction, but
mechanical damage seems to have been the root cause, and the fire was
pretty localised - confined to one refrigerator sized block of cells.
the battery got built anyway.
You obviously missed the Victorian Big Battery fire using Tesla
modules where during installation they burnt out two full containers
worth (infant mortality on precharge due to a coolant leak).
That was the incident I was referring to. The local newspapers didn't
write it up in any detail. The "coolant leak" could have have followed
from the "mechanical damage" that showed up in the newspaper report.
Safety systems that fail dangerous are not good. I suspect rough
handling poor installation practices were to blame as root cause.
That was the way it was written up in my newspaper.
https://victorianbigbattery.com.au/2022/01/31/independent-report-released
The URl offers a link to the report - which is more comprehensive than
the one in Energy storage News to which you provided a link.
https://www.energy-storage.news/investigation-confirms-cause-of-fire-at-teslas-victorian-big-battery-in-australia/
Moss Landing did nothing for the safety reputation of these systems.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/moss-landing-the-worlds-biggest-grid-battery-just-caught-fire-again
It did add to the list of rules of rules about not clustering batteries
too close together.
The South Australian Hornsdale Reserve 100 MW/129 MWh grid-scale battery
was the first anywhere in the world when it was completed in November
2017. It isn't surprising that scaling them up has created problems, but
they are big enough and expensive that each disaster has been analysed
in detail and nobody is going to make that particular mistake again.
There will be others, but not all that many. They aren't Windscales or Chernobyls.
On 18/04/2025 01:26, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was,
AFAIK, that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For
instance, a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter
has the ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a time.
Wow!� Now THAT is interesting.� Here, the size of your service (ampacity) >>> effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
ISTR Italy and to some extent Japan have similar rules. When I lived in
Japan only the aircon had a really juicy 240v supply. The domestic ring
main 100v could not support for example a 3kW kettle. They had special
slow electric kettles come thermos flasks to have boiling water on tap.
You also had to be careful not to run the aircon at full pelt and the
washing machine at the same time or the circuit breaker would trip.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed monthly
amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a maximum
of 15A, we pay for that, �/month. If we contract 30A, we pay double
fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we don't
contract 20 and take 21.
In the UK it is done by size of fuse into the home. You can overload the >circuit a fair bit without blowing the fuse but it is expensive if you
do since the electricity company has to come out and do the bonded
repair. There are lead seals on the fuse connecting to incoming mains.
A few homes last rewired in the 1950's are still on 40A, most are on 60A
or now 100A circuits. You pay for what you use. A few tariffs have a
higher price for going beyond a certain amount for high use premises.
Local mains supply here had to be reinforced a couple of years back to >support then PM Rishi Sunak's luxury heated swimming pool (he paid for
the network upgrade himself). Wife is fabulously rich.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/12/rishi-sunak-has-electricity-grid-upgraded-to-heat-his-private-pool
Where I live in a rural backwater the mains is actually more like US
style two phase and neutral rather than normal UK 3 phase. This is a
sore point with businesses that would like to use 3 phase equipment.
Each village is across one pair of the 3 phase distribution line with a >transformer ratio to give 240v output.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
Previously, al houses had a limiter switch with a lead seal. People
managed to bypass that switch. By passing the meter is harder, I have
not seen it done.
Traditional way in the UK is a copper nail through the cables on the
wrong side of the meter. A method beloved of illegal cannabis farms.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
On Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:19:54 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
Where I live in a rural backwater the mains is actually more like US
style two phase and neutral rather than normal UK 3 phase. This is a
sore point with businesses that would like to use 3 phase equipment.
Each village is across one pair of the 3 phase distribution line with a
transformer ratio to give 240v output.
The "US style two phase and neutral" is not actually two phases (at 90 degrees), it's single phase from a center-tapped transformer, with the
center tap grounded to neutral (white wire in US). This is not the
safety ground (green wire in US).
Traditional way in the UK is a copper nail through the cables on the
wrong side of the meter. A method beloved of illegal cannabis farms.
Yes. There are two reasons. The first is of course to reduce the
electric bill. But far more important is to prevent detection by
looking for unusually high electric bills.
Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer sales are monitored for a similar reason.
On Fri, 18 Apr 2025 14:52:18 +0200, "Carlos E.R."
<[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-04-18 10:19, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/04/2025 01:26, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
Previously, al houses had a limiter switch with a lead seal. People >>>>>> managed to bypass that switch. By passing the meter is harder, I
have not seen it done.
Traditional way in the UK is a copper nail through the cables on the
wrong side of the meter. A method beloved of illegal cannabis farms.
I don't know if smart meters can sense that :-?
The meter that I designed noted the neutral current imbalance, which
at least catches one cheating mode. No meter can tell if people are
stealing power from the pole out on the street, except to note net
power.
In New York city it was common for building owners to punch through a
wall to tap into a neighbor's power wires. It wasn't unusual to find
that being done in both directions.
I know that the classical motor in a fridge has a device, I don't know its name, that thermally triggers if the motor demands an unusual high current for
some seconds, like when starting under load. It then keeps the motor off for a
long time (minutes?), while the compressed gas leaks into the circuit, the pressure drops, and then the motor tries again.
Surely a modern fridge or AC unit with inverter knows how to cope with the situation.
And, few customers are aware of the meters' capabilities. I've told some >> how to remove the iron grating covering the valve/meter (watching for
poisonous critters), lift the access panel covering the display and LOOK
for the "leak indicator" icon.
In addition to being able to see just what the flow rate is, then (i.e., do >> so with no loads turned on and you can gauge the magnitude of your leak
before the next water bill arrives).
I wonder how they are going to power those smart meters. Batteries? The water runs a generator that charges a battery?
With the electricity meter, I can browse to a page at the electricity company that shows a table or a graph of electricity usage per month or maybe a shorter
period. We can see down to the usage per hour, I think. I suppose the water meter will do something similar, so that I can look by myself the water flow at
3 AM. If the meter has a leak detector, it should show in that web page.
Most leaks are "after the meter" (i.e., on the consumer's side). So,
the city isn't responsible for those repairs. It is up to the consumer
(homeowner) to get the repair fixed -- on their own dime.
Yeah, but I hope they tell us. I have not experienced this, but I suspect so.
For folks who can't do this kind of work, it can be several thousand
dollars to dig up the yard and lay new pipe.
Happened to my parents. They didn't bother, and put the new pipe above the floor, attached to the wall. Mostly behind the sitting room furniture, so visitors do not see it :-D
When the pipe arrives at the kitchen, it goes again under the floor tiles. I had to renovate the kitchen, I suspected slow leaks, and the pipe was indeed corroded. I replaced iron with some plastic.
On 2025-04-18 02:45, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 5:26 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was, AFAIK, >>>>> that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For instance, a >>>>> contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The meter has the ability >>>>> to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service (ampacity)
effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed monthly
amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for a maximum of >>> 15A, we pay for that, €/month. If we contract 30A, we pay double fixed >>> amount per month. And the smart meter controls that we don't contract 20 and
take 21.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
There would also be an incentive for you to do your own load balancing as
you are effectively being charged based on peak demand (even if you don't
USE it). Assuming, of course, that the fixed cost is "significant" and
not just a token charge.
Oh, it is indeed significant, can be higher than actual usage.
On 4/18/2025 5:39 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-18 02:45, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 5:26 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-17 23:11, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 1:44 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Probably all of Spain has smart meters now. But the reason was,
AFAIK, that here the contract limits the current you can draw. For >>>>>> instance, a contract can say that you can draw 15A (3450W). The
meter has the ability to switch off when you try to draw 16A for a >>>>>> time.
Wow! Now THAT is interesting. Here, the size of your service
(ampacity)
effectively determines what you can use -- that, and your wallet.
I think that is an Spanish only feature.
They charge us for the watts we actually take, and also a fixed
monthly amount for the size of the pipe. Meaning, if we contract for
a maximum of 15A, we pay for that, €/month. If we contract 30A, we
pay double fixed amount per month. And the smart meter controls that
we don't contract 20 and take 21.
So people try to contract the minimum they actually need.
There would also be an incentive for you to do your own load
balancing as
you are effectively being charged based on peak demand (even if you
don't
USE it). Assuming, of course, that the fixed cost is "significant" and >>> not just a token charge.
Oh, it is indeed significant, can be higher than actual usage.
This is really silly. If they wanted to discourage you from consuming,
then they should give you an incentive to use less to save more; not
ding you as if you WERE using all that!
On 4/18/2025 5:38 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
And, few customers are aware of the meters' capabilities. I've told
some
how to remove the iron grating covering the valve/meter (watching for
poisonous critters), lift the access panel covering the display and LOOK >>> for the "leak indicator" icon.
In addition to being able to see just what the flow rate is, then
(i.e., do
so with no loads turned on and you can gauge the magnitude of your leak
before the next water bill arrives).
I wonder how they are going to power those smart meters. Batteries?
The water runs a generator that charges a battery?
No idea. But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
With the electricity meter, I can browse to a page at the electricity
company that shows a table or a graph of electricity usage per month
or maybe a shorter period. We can see down to the usage per hour, I
think. I suppose the water meter will do something similar, so that I
can look by myself the water flow at 3 AM. If the meter has a leak
detector, it should show in that web page.
I don't know if that is available here -- for water *or* electric
(the gas meter is also electronic, now). I'm not keen on having
to "go somewhere" to see data that is generated dozens of feet
from where I am seated!
I've been researching water meters with the goal of installing one on the indoor loads and another on the outdoor. But, most are very coarse resolution;
suitable for billing (you wouldn't care if you rounded the usage to the nearest hundred cubic feet as any fraction would end up on NEXT month's bill!) but not really for monitoring consumption in real time.
Most leaks are "after the meter" (i.e., on the consumer's side). So,
the city isn't responsible for those repairs. It is up to the consumer >>> (homeowner) to get the repair fixed -- on their own dime.
Yeah, but I hope they tell us. I have not experienced this, but I
suspect so.
What typically happens is the homeowner gets an outrageous bill
(the city's billing computer can't notice this???) and complains.
Then, someone comes out and shows them that they are using water
even when they think they aren't (i.e., a leak).
Sometimes, the city comps the outrageous bill -- charging the
homeowner the same as the month prior.
But, technically, it's YOUR problem if water is leaking on your
side of the meter (maybe you WANTED to use that water? how would
the city know for sure??)
For folks who can't do this kind of work, it can be several thousand
dollars to dig up the yard and lay new pipe.
Happened to my parents. They didn't bother, and put the new pipe above
the floor, attached to the wall. Mostly behind the sitting room
furniture, so visitors do not see it :-D
Most often, it is in the line from meter to house. Things settle (subsidence) which puts a strain on the connections. Even a failure
AT the meter is your problem -- if it is at the OUTLET of the meter!
[We had a neighbor who would routinely park their SUV on top of
the meters. I commented that the meter vaults are meant to protect
against soil ingress, not support vehicles! D'uh...]
When the pipe arrives at the kitchen, it goes again under the floor
tiles. I had to renovate the kitchen, I suspected slow leaks, and the
pipe was indeed corroded. I replaced iron with some plastic.
The high mineral content in our ground water supplies leads to
pitting in the copper pipes. Many people have had to have their
homes replumbed -- at considerable expense as the pipes are not
readily accessible (walls have to be opened, ceilings, etc.)
The current draw of a multiple lighting installation in a shop may be
capacitive or the motors in a small workshop would be inductive and this
would determine the size of cables needed, so current-based netering
would make sense for that purpose. The current wouldn't be
representative of the energy used, so wattage-based metering would make
sense for energy-consumption billing purposes.
I suppose current smart meters can also measure the power factor.
Where I live in a rural backwater the mains is actually more like US style two
phase and neutral rather than normal UK 3 phase.
This is a sore point withEach *village*? How is that balanced? Luck??
businesses that would like to use 3 phase equipment. Each village is across one
pair of the 3 phase distribution line with a transformer ratio to give 240v output.
No idea. But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
Mmm. Dunno. I hope they last 5 years, but it is their problem.
I've been researching water meters with the goal of installing one on the
indoor loads and another on the outdoor. But, most are very coarse resolution;
suitable for billing (you wouldn't care if you rounded the usage to the
nearest hundred cubic feet as any fraction would end up on NEXT month's
bill!) but not really for monitoring consumption in real time.
I think mine (mechanical) while it was installed inside my garden, I looked and
could measure down to litres. But the times I took the reading in a card provided by the company, they did not care for decimals (I think the unit is cubic meters). As you say, it doesn't matter, goes into the next month.
No idea. But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
Mmm. Dunno. I hope they last 5 years, but it is their problem.
Ours is outside so accessing it -- even replacing the meter itself -- can
be done without bothering the occupants.
I've been researching water meters with the goal of installing one on
the
indoor loads and another on the outdoor. But, most are very coarse
resolution;
suitable for billing (you wouldn't care if you rounded the usage to the
nearest hundred cubic feet as any fraction would end up on NEXT month's
bill!) but not really for monitoring consumption in real time.
I think mine (mechanical) while it was installed inside my garden, I
looked and could measure down to litres. But the times I took the
reading in a card provided by the company, they did not care for
decimals (I think the unit is cubic meters). As you say, it doesn't
matter, goes into the next month.
The (electronic) meter directly indicates cubic feet. There's a "....." display that likely allows you to resolve a tenth of a cubic foot, "graphically".
But, at ~7.5 gallons per cubic foot, even the 1/10 resolution
means you're dealing with units of ~3 quarts. Fine if you are billing
for consumption (above) but not much else.
On 4/18/2025 5:38 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:<...>
I wonder how they are going to power those smart meters. Batteries?
The water runs a generator that charges a battery?
No idea. But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
On 4/18/25 2:33 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/18/2025 5:38 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:<...>
I wonder how they are going to power those smart meters. Batteries? The
water runs a generator that charges a battery?
No idea. But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
The smart gas meters around here are powered by batteries with a 10 year life.
They only have a short range wireless link to the smart electric meter in the same house that can then have a much longer range link to the utility transceiver on a nearby utility pole.
Since it has plenty of power, the electric meter provides updates every few minutes to allow time of use metering. The gas meter only provides once per day
updates, presumably to conserve power.
On 18/04/2025 14:32, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 18/04/2025 6:55 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/04/2025 08:24, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 18/04/2025 1:56 am, john larkin wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:44:15 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 15:59, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 16/04/2025 8:39 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown >>
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
I'm less convinced of that than you are. I think you can pretty well >>>>>> stop thermal runaway but only if the sensors are done properly.
That's presumably testable.
Perhaps.A tiny dendrite puncturing a separator can start an ignition wave that >>>>> propagates in all directions at centimeters per second and ends in a >>>>> fireball fast. All a sensor might to is to tell people to RUN.
It depends a lot on the chemistry. The previous generation of NiCoMn
Lithium cells were extremely volatile if they get damaged although
have higher energy density. The latest generation of Iron based ones
in the BYD blade implementation seem to be a lot more forgiving. This
isn't a bad demo of the differences (bear in mind they are a battery
vendor):
https://www.ufinebattery.com/blog/byd-blade-battery-comprehensive-guide/ >>>
In particular part 6 with the consequences of failure for each type.
Moves are afoot to double the energy density in the next generation
if they can overcome the tricky problem of metallic dendrite growth
under certain charging conditions.
At the moment lithium batteries are collections of quite small cells
- roughly D-cell size.
Only in toys and a few older cars. You are hopelessly out of date.
Prismatic or latest blade cells are now in vogue for new build.
But you haven't bothered to post a link to any kind of example.
What do you think the link above points to? Duplicated below:
https://www.ufinebattery.com/blog/byd-blade-battery-comprehensive-guide/?nowprocket=1
First part describes older D cells methods and then prismatic cells
typically 148mm x 79mm x 97mm looking like a brick and the much newer
BYD blade which is much thinner and longer 960mm x 90mm x 13.5mm.
See Part I : What is a blade battery.
Pictures all seem to have broken since I last visited the site.
I did have a link to the actual containerised modules but the entire BYD Energy site is presently inaccessible from the UK. Singapore works but doesn't have the full spec details only glossy sales brochures.
South Australia has had a grid scale battery for years and now has
several of them. They haven't caught on fire yet. A grid scale
battery in another state did catch on fire during construction, but
mechanical damage seems to have been the root cause, and the fire
was pretty localised - confined to one refrigerator sized block of
cells. the battery got built anyway.
You obviously missed the Victorian Big Battery fire using Tesla
modules where during installation they burnt out two full containers
worth (infant mortality on precharge due to a coolant leak).
That was the incident I was referring to. The local newspapers didn't
write it up in any detail. The "coolant leak" could have have followed
from the "mechanical damage" that showed up in the newspaper report.
Safety systems that fail dangerous are not good. I suspect rough
handling poor installation practices were to blame as root cause.
That was the way it was written up in my newspaper.
https://victorianbigbattery.com.au/2022/01/31/independent-report-released
The URl offers a link to the report - which is more comprehensive than
Thanks for that link. It is always useful to have the original accident investigation report as there is a lot of misreporting even in the
technical press - just about everyone has an axe to grind on this topic.
the one in Energy storage News to which you provided a link.
https://www.energy-storage.news/investigation-confirms-cause-of-fire-at-teslas-victorian-big-battery-in-australia/
Moss Landing did nothing for the safety reputation of these systems.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/moss-landing-the-worlds-biggest-grid-battery-just-caught-fire-again
It did add to the list of rules of rules about not clustering
batteries too close together.
Or too many in one place (especially without firebreaks). We are talking 4GWhr packed into the smallest area they think they can get away with.
The South Australian Hornsdale Reserve 100 MW/129 MWh grid-scale
battery was the first anywhere in the world when it was completed in
November 2017. It isn't surprising that scaling them up has created
problems, but they are big enough and expensive that each disaster has
been analysed in detail and nobody is going to make that particular
mistake again.
There will be others, but not all that many. They aren't Windscales or
Chernobyls.
And what odds would you give a startup with no track record at all of building a grid connected 4GWhr BESS with a 1GW substation. That puts it
in the same class for output power as the Hartlepool nuclear plant.
On Sat, 12 Apr 2025 11:16:23 -0700, john larkin <[email protected]>
wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
Civilization runs on energy, and there is a powerful faction that
wants to both control and cut off our energy.
Some want the power, and some are fundamentally anti-human.
Really.
On 4/18/2025 6:43 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/18/25 2:33 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/18/2025 5:38 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:<...>
I wonder how they are going to power those smart meters. Batteries?
The water runs a generator that charges a battery?
No idea. But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
The smart gas meters around here are powered by batteries with a 10
year life. They only have a short range wireless link to the smart
electric meter in the same house that can then have a much longer
range link to the utility transceiver on a nearby utility pole.
How short is short? OUR gas and electric are adjacent. But, many homes have the gas meter in an alley while the electric is on the load center.
So, the gas company has an agreement with the electric utility? When I
was doing this stuff, comms was the big challenge (measuring power
and tracking it -- internally -- is easy. But, getting a tariff with "someone" to haul the data back to the utility was a political/business
issue not easily addressed with technology.
[PLC won't work as there are too many inductors between the customer
and the utility. And, pole-top relays don't save much as there may
only be 2-4 subscribers on a single transformer.]
Since it has plenty of power, the electric meter provides updates
every few minutes to allow time of use metering. The gas meter only
provides once per day updates, presumably to conserve power.
On 4/18/2025 1:19 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
Where I live in a rural backwater the mains is actually more like US
style two phase and neutral rather than normal UK 3 phase.
Our mains is actually a 240V center tapped configuration (thus, single phase).
There are two "hot" leads -- each 180 degrees out of phase with the other. The center tap is considered neutral. It is typically bonded to earth
at the load center.
Ideally, loads in the house are balanced on the two "legs". An open
neutral connection is a recipe for disaster as the loads start to
see unbalanced potentials.
Particularly problematic in homes where the earth connection wasn't
present universally throughout.
This is a sore point with businesses that would like to use 3 phase
equipment. Each village is across one pair of the 3 phase distribution
line with a transformer ratio to give 240v output.
Each *village*? How is that balanced? Luck??
On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:52:46 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 09:20, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 14/04/2025 22:25, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Jim Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:Rishi Sunak was a *perfectly good candidate* for PM.
On 2025-04-14, Liz Tuddenham <[email protected]d> wrote: >>>>>>> Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It was the deranged grass roots activists that voted Liz the Lettuce in.
I don't think so: she was elected by a small group at the top of the >>>>>>> party. The grass-roots Conservatives I have spoken to are appalled by >>>>>>> the things the party elite have been doing in their name.
Meanwhile in the real world ...
The MP's selected Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak...
That was the point I was trying to make: there is a clique at the top of >>>>> the party and ordinary grass-roots members don't get to choose freely. >>>>
If he had won in the first round then things could well have been very >>>> different. It was the Tory grass roots activists that destroyed the Tory >>>> party by electing Liz the Lettuce and resulting in total annihilation.
Thst's not the point I was making: Ordinary members of the party who
Anyone who was a *member* of the Tory party was entitled to vote for
their choice of PM. They chose unwisely and must live with the result.
The choices the members were given were between a vastly pared-down
selection of possible candidates: a short short-list decided by Tory
MPs. If the members had had the choice of picking *any* MP they
wished, I'm certain the result would have been completely different.
Liz the Lettuce was elected by and made PM by all the paid up *members*
of the Conservative Party who voted for her rather than Sunak.
were not 'activists' (whatever that means), or in the elite few at the
top, were only able to choose between candidates who had already been
selected by a self-perpetuating clique. They had no say in who was
offered to them.
One thing about politicians is that anyone who actually wants to do
their job should probably be debarred from doing it.
The major flaw in our current model of democracy as thing stand is the 'career politician' - who 30 or 40 years ago may have got into
politics for the noblest of reasons, but has since had their
principles completely compromised and has amassed considerable wealth
from selling their influence to the highest bidder. We need to make
the 'career politician' an historical curiosity.
On 18/04/2025 22:57, Don Y wrote:
On 4/18/2025 1:19 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
Where I live in a rural backwater the mains is actually more like US style >>> two phase and neutral rather than normal UK 3 phase.
Our mains is actually a 240V center tapped configuration (thus, single phase).
There are two "hot" leads -- each 180 degrees out of phase with the other. >> The center tap is considered neutral. It is typically bonded to earth
at the load center.
That is the same as in small rural villages in the UK except that each house is
only on one of the two phases at 240v. ISTR US and Japan put their aircon across the antiphase pair to get the power handling up.
Ideally, loads in the house are balanced on the two "legs". An open
neutral connection is a recipe for disaster as the loads start to
see unbalanced potentials.
Our village hall has both phases present on 100A circuits 240v. There are warnings and duplicate distribution blocks for each phase.
And also warnings for using mixed old Black/Red/Green and modern Blue/Brown/Yellow-Green mains cabling.
Particularly problematic in homes where the earth connection wasn't
present universally throughout.
Earth is mandatory in UK installations often a local earth copper spike nailed
into ground at the premises and the shield of the underground cable. My electricity actually comes in as two overhead wires. This is now actually quite
rare in the UK and only happens in rural villages.
This is a sore point with businesses that would like to use 3 phase
equipment. Each village is across one pair of the 3 phase distribution line >>> with a transformer ratio to give 240v output.
Each *village*? How is that balanced? Luck??
Quite possibly. It seems to work fine.
It can be fun if the phase that isn't
one of ours drops out completely and ours stay good. So much kit today works fine on 100+ volts that you only notice there is a problem when you try to boil
a kettle or put on an old fashioned filament lamp!
No idea. But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
The smart gas meters around here are powered by batteries with a 10 year >>> life. They only have a short range wireless link to the smart electric meter
in the same house that can then have a much longer range link to the utility
transceiver on a nearby utility pole.
To do that, the electricity meter has to be designed for that usage from the start, maybe a decade before (here).
How short is short? OUR gas and electric are adjacent. But, many homes >> have the gas meter in an alley while the electric is on the load center.
So, the gas company has an agreement with the electric utility? When I
was doing this stuff, comms was the big challenge (measuring power
and tracking it -- internally -- is easy. But, getting a tariff with
"someone" to haul the data back to the utility was a political/business
issue not easily addressed with technology.
At apartment buildings, if the meters are bundled together in an utility room,
maybe they can handle a single transmitter with more power. But at the sites I
have seen the gas meters are not joined in a single room, they are either close
to each apartment, or grouped in a cupboard at each floor.
I am remembering that the water company they said they would use gadgetry with
SIM cards, so some sort of data connection by mobile phone.
[PLC won't work as there are too many inductors between the customer
and the utility. And, pole-top relays don't save much as there may
only be 2-4 subscribers on a single transformer.]
Electricity meters here use some kind of PLC. At the big transformer (several cubic meters) there is hardware to collect the data from each home and either send by another network, or pass somehow to the high voltage side of the transformer. Surely the transformer is remotely controlled, so the data network
is there.
Since it has plenty of power, the electric meter provides updates every few >>> minutes to allow time of use metering. The gas meter only provides once per >>> day updates, presumably to conserve power.
On 2025-04-19 04:39, Don Y wrote:
On 4/18/2025 6:43 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/18/25 2:33 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/18/2025 5:38 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:<...>
I wonder how they are going to power those smart meters. Batteries?
The water runs a generator that charges a battery?
No idea. But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
The smart gas meters around here are powered by batteries with a 10
year life. They only have a short range wireless link to the smart
electric meter in the same house that can then have a much longer
range link to the utility transceiver on a nearby utility pole.
To do that, the electricity meter has to be designed for that usage from
the start, maybe a decade before (here).
How short is short? OUR gas and electric are adjacent. But, many homes >> have the gas meter in an alley while the electric is on the load center.
So, the gas company has an agreement with the electric utility? When I
was doing this stuff, comms was the big challenge (measuring power
and tracking it -- internally -- is easy. But, getting a tariff with
"someone" to haul the data back to the utility was a political/business
issue not easily addressed with technology.
At apartment buildings, if the meters are bundled together in an utility room, maybe they can handle a single transmitter with more power. But at
the sites I have seen the gas meters are not joined in a single room,
they are either close to each apartment, or grouped in a cupboard at
each floor.
I am remembering that the water company they said they would use
gadgetry with SIM cards, so some sort of data connection by mobile phone.
[PLC won't work as there are too many inductors between the customer
and the utility. And, pole-top relays don't save much as there may
only be 2-4 subscribers on a single transformer.]
Electricity meters here use some kind of PLC. At the big transformer
(several cubic meters) there is hardware to collect the data from each
home and either send by another network, or pass somehow to the high
voltage side of the transformer. Surely the transformer is remotely controlled, so the data network is there.
Since it has plenty of power, the electric meter provides updates
every few minutes to allow time of use metering. The gas meter only
provides once per day updates, presumably to conserve power.
On 4/18/2025 6:43 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:
On 4/18/25 2:33 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 4/18/2025 5:38 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:<...>
I wonder how they are going to power those smart meters. Batteries?
The water runs a generator that charges a battery?
No idea. But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
The smart gas meters around here are powered by batteries with a 10
year life. They only have a short range wireless link to the smart
electric meter in the same house that can then have a much longer
range link to the utility transceiver on a nearby utility pole.
How short is short? OUR gas and electric are adjacent. But, many homes have the gas meter in an alley while the electric is on the load center.
So, the gas company has an agreement with the electric utility? When I
was doing this stuff, comms was the big challenge (measuring power
and tracking it -- internally -- is easy. But, getting a tariff with "someone" to haul the data back to the utility was a political/business
issue not easily addressed with technology.
[PLC won't work as there are too many inductors between the customer
and the utility. And, pole-top relays don't save much as there may
only be 2-4 subscribers on a single transformer.]
Since it has plenty of power, the electric meter provides updates
every few minutes to allow time of use metering. The gas meter only
provides once per day updates, presumably to conserve power.
On 4/19/2025 4:58 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
No idea. But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
The smart gas meters around here are powered by batteries with a 10
year life. They only have a short range wireless link to the smart
electric meter in the same house that can then have a much longer
range link to the utility transceiver on a nearby utility pole.
To do that, the electricity meter has to be designed for that usage
from the start, maybe a decade before (here).
Yes. And, the "electric company" (presumably the entity who owns/controls those meters) has to enter into a long-term agreement with the "water company" (or whoever owns/controls the water meters). This covering both the right to access/use that transport medium, the fees for doing so
and the obligation of the electric company to ensure that service is available at a specific level of quality.
How short is short? OUR gas and electric are adjacent. But, many homes >>> have the gas meter in an alley while the electric is on the load center. >>>
So, the gas company has an agreement with the electric utility? When I >>> was doing this stuff, comms was the big challenge (measuring power
and tracking it -- internally -- is easy. But, getting a tariff with
"someone" to haul the data back to the utility was a political/business
issue not easily addressed with technology.
At apartment buildings, if the meters are bundled together in an
utility room, maybe they can handle a single transmitter with more
power. But at the sites I have seen the gas meters are not joined in a
single room, they are either close to each apartment, or grouped in a
cupboard at each floor.
I am remembering that the water company they said they would use
gadgetry with SIM cards, so some sort of data connection by mobile phone.
This is becoming increasingly common. E.g., most new cars include
an embedded "cell phone" for telematics. Many also offer paid services
atop that medium for "roadside assistance".
[PLC won't work as there are too many inductors between the customer
and the utility. And, pole-top relays don't save much as there may
only be 2-4 subscribers on a single transformer.]
Electricity meters here use some kind of PLC. At the big transformer
(several cubic meters) there is hardware to collect the data from each
home and either send by another network, or pass somehow to the high
voltage side of the transformer. Surely the transformer is remotely
controlled, so the data network is there.
Here, there is a "smaller, BIG transformer" between the customer and
the "REALLY big transformer" that serves a street/neighborhood.
E.g., 4 subscribers per transformer is typical, here (as that
transformer would have to serve 400A to its group of subscribers)
Getting "across" these to a REALLY big transformer that exists in
more limited quantities is the issue. I think the high side of these
local "smaller, BIG transformers" is ~13KV but it may be as low as ~5KV
(I think you can deliver ~3MVA on a 5KV branch; that should support ~100 households.)
Since it has plenty of power, the electric meter provides updates
every few minutes to allow time of use metering. The gas meter only
provides once per day updates, presumably to conserve power.
This is becoming increasingly common. E.g., most new cars include
an embedded "cell phone" for telematics. Many also offer paid services
atop that medium for "roadside assistance".
In Spain we now have a new gadget that will be mandatory soon, the V16 beacon.
It replaces the reflective triangles we used to signal a broken or accidented car on the road.
It is a lamp on batteries and a magnet that we put on the roof of the car, without needing to exit the car. It emits a relatively high power orange light,
and communicates the site of the accident to a centralized site a minute after
being powered up. It means it has an internet connection of its own, that will
work for 10 years without having to pay again. Some internal SIM.
I already had to use it once, I had a puncture.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V16_warning_beacon_lights>
[PLC won't work as there are too many inductors between the customer
and the utility. And, pole-top relays don't save much as there may
only be 2-4 subscribers on a single transformer.]
Electricity meters here use some kind of PLC. At the big transformer
(several cubic meters) there is hardware to collect the data from each home >>> and either send by another network, or pass somehow to the high voltage side
of the transformer. Surely the transformer is remotely controlled, so the >>> data network is there.
Here, there is a "smaller, BIG transformer" between the customer and
the "REALLY big transformer" that serves a street/neighborhood.
E.g., 4 subscribers per transformer is typical, here (as that
transformer would have to serve 400A to its group of subscribers)
Getting "across" these to a REALLY big transformer that exists in
more limited quantities is the issue. I think the high side of these
local "smaller, BIG transformers" is ~13KV but it may be as low as ~5KV
(I think you can deliver ~3MVA on a 5KV branch; that should support ~100
households.)
AFAIK, we don't have those smaller transformers.
How short is short? OUR gas and electric are adjacent. But, many homes >> have the gas meter in an alley while the electric is on the load center.
I don't know - I imaging a couple of tens of meters. They use ~450MH for the gas meter link and ~920MHz for the electric meter.
Where the network coverage or location of the meters precludes the usual arrangement PG&E have various RF bridges that can be used.
So, the gas company has an agreement with the electric utility? When I
was doing this stuff, comms was the big challenge (measuring power
and tracking it -- internally -- is easy. But, getting a tariff with
"someone" to haul the data back to the utility was a political/business
issue not easily addressed with technology.
For our local utility and many others in California the same company distributes both gas and electricity.
On 18/04/2025 12:05, Cursitor Doom wrote:
On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:52:46 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 09:20, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 14/04/2025 22:25, Liz Tuddenham wrote:Thst's not the point I was making: Ordinary members of the party who
Jim Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:Rishi Sunak was a *perfectly good candidate* for PM.
On 2025-04-14, Liz Tuddenham <[email protected]d> wrote: >>>>>>>> Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It was the deranged grass roots activists that voted Liz the Lettuce in.
I don't think so: she was elected by a small group at the top of the >>>>>>>> party. The grass-roots Conservatives I have spoken to are appalled by >>>>>>>> the things the party elite have been doing in their name.
Meanwhile in the real world ...
The MP's selected Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak...
That was the point I was trying to make: there is a clique at the top of >>>>>> the party and ordinary grass-roots members don't get to choose freely. >>>>>
If he had won in the first round then things could well have been very >>>>> different. It was the Tory grass roots activists that destroyed the Tory >>>>> party by electing Liz the Lettuce and resulting in total annihilation. >>>>
Anyone who was a *member* of the Tory party was entitled to vote for
their choice of PM. They chose unwisely and must live with the result.
The choices the members were given were between a vastly pared-down
selection of possible candidates: a short short-list decided by Tory
MPs. If the members had had the choice of picking *any* MP they
wished, I'm certain the result would have been completely different.
One of them, Rishi Sunak (my MP) was a perfectly good candidate but the
Tory *membership* voted for Liz the Lettuce and so well deserved the
total annihilation they suffered at the polls for their stupidity.
I don't doubt that the grass roots rabid Tories would have voted for
someone even more deranged than Liz the Lettuce if given the option.
Liz the Lettuce was elected by and made PM by all the paid up *members*
of the Conservative Party who voted for her rather than Sunak.
were not 'activists' (whatever that means), or in the elite few at the >>>> top, were only able to choose between candidates who had already been
selected by a self-perpetuating clique. They had no say in who was
offered to them.
One thing about politicians is that anyone who actually wants to do
their job should probably be debarred from doing it.
The major flaw in our current model of democracy as thing stand is the
'career politician' - who 30 or 40 years ago may have got into
politics for the noblest of reasons, but has since had their
principles completely compromised and has amassed considerable wealth
from selling their influence to the highest bidder. We need to make
the 'career politician' an historical curiosity.
That simply isn't true except for a handful of truly bent ones. Retired >politicians doing lobbying using parliamentary passes is another matter.
All of the serving MP's that I have encountered and on both sides of the >house have been good people trying to do their very best for their >constituency and for the country. The bad apples are few and far between.
The problem is that too many read PPE or are bean counters and lawyers
and not enough scientists or engineers. ISTR about a dozen are on the >innovation science and technology group (almost all that qualify). I was >quite impressed by Chi Onwurah (Labour) Newcastle MP the current chair.
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/135/science-innovation-and-technology-committee/membership/
Paradoxically the House of Lords has a much more interesting and >representative cross section of the community due to life peerages
putting people with great expertise where they can scrutinise government >legislation.
On 4/19/2025 9:20 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/04/2025 22:57, Don Y wrote:
On 4/18/2025 1:19 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
Where I live in a rural backwater the mains is actually more like US
style two phase and neutral rather than normal UK 3 phase.
Our mains is actually a 240V center tapped configuration (thus,
single phase).
There are two "hot" leads -- each 180 degrees out of phase with the
other.
The center tap is considered neutral. It is typically bonded to earth
at the load center.
That is the same as in small rural villages in the UK except that each
house is only on one of the two phases at 240v. ISTR US and Japan put
their aircon across the antiphase pair to get the power handling up.
It's also used for electric stoves/ovens, clothes dryers, etc.
Ideally, loads in the house are balanced on the two "legs". An open
neutral connection is a recipe for disaster as the loads start to
see unbalanced potentials.
Our village hall has both phases present on 100A circuits 240v. There
are warnings and duplicate distribution blocks for each phase.
Ah. So, it's as if it was located in two *different* villages?
What a mess!
Earth is mandatory in UK installations often a local earth copper
spike nailed into ground at the premises and the shield of the
underground cable. My electricity actually comes in as two overhead
wires. This is now actually quite rare in the UK and only happens in
rural villages.
Each subscriber presents a local earth for THEIR load center.
The "nearest upstream" transformer also ties to earth.
But, earth is not required (historically) at all loads. E.g.,
our stove is a three-wire circuit -- two hots and neutral
(no separate earth). This because of changes to the Code,
over time -- with older installations being "grandfathered" in.
This is a sore point with businesses that would like to use 3 phase
equipment. Each village is across one pair of the 3 phase
distribution line with a transformer ratio to give 240v output.
Each *village*? How is that balanced? Luck??
Quite possibly. It seems to work fine.
What happens if a drunk takes down a "power pole" feeding said village?
Earth is mandatory in UK installations often a local earth copper spike
nailed into ground at the premises and the shield of the underground cable. >>> My electricity actually comes in as two overhead wires. This is now actually
quite rare in the UK and only happens in rural villages.
Each subscriber presents a local earth for THEIR load center.
The "nearest upstream" transformer also ties to earth.
But, earth is not required (historically) at all loads. E.g.,
our stove is a three-wire circuit -- two hots and neutral
(no separate earth). This because of changes to the Code,
over time -- with older installations being "grandfathered" in.
Here anything with external metal parts should be earthed by law. Double insulated things or with no metal surfaces to touch do not have to be and can be on two pin plugs. Mains electric razors for instance.
Most UK ring main sockets *require* an earth pin to be present on the mains plug to open the mechanical cover over the live and neutral terminals. It was not always so. Previous round pin plugs you could poke a piece of metal or screwdriver in there and touch live!
What happens if a drunk takes down a "power pole" feeding said village?
Last time it happened was the coldest day of the year and it was the milk tanker hit black ice and took down 2 poles and 30' of hedge. There is no way he
was doing 30mph! Engineers had us back on by nightfall.
On Sat, 19 Apr 2025 17:47:27 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 18/04/2025 12:05, Cursitor Doom wrote:
On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:52:46 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2025 09:20, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:Anyone who was a *member* of the Tory party was entitled to vote for
On 14/04/2025 22:25, Liz Tuddenham wrote:Thst's not the point I was making: Ordinary members of the party who >>>>
Jim Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:Rishi Sunak was a *perfectly good candidate* for PM.
On 2025-04-14, Liz Tuddenham <[email protected]d> wrote: >>>>>>>>> Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
It was the deranged grass roots activists that voted Liz the Lettuce in.
I don't think so: she was elected by a small group at the top of the >>>>>>>>> party. The grass-roots Conservatives I have spoken to are appalled by
the things the party elite have been doing in their name.
Meanwhile in the real world ...
The MP's selected Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak...
That was the point I was trying to make: there is a clique at the top of
the party and ordinary grass-roots members don't get to choose freely. >>>>>>
If he had won in the first round then things could well have been very >>>>>> different. It was the Tory grass roots activists that destroyed the Tory >>>>>> party by electing Liz the Lettuce and resulting in total annihilation. >>>>>
their choice of PM. They chose unwisely and must live with the result.
The choices the members were given were between a vastly pared-down
selection of possible candidates: a short short-list decided by Tory
MPs. If the members had had the choice of picking *any* MP they
wished, I'm certain the result would have been completely different.
One of them, Rishi Sunak (my MP) was a perfectly good candidate but the
Tory *membership* voted for Liz the Lettuce and so well deserved the
total annihilation they suffered at the polls for their stupidity.
I don't doubt that the grass roots rabid Tories would have voted for
someone even more deranged than Liz the Lettuce if given the option.
Liz the Lettuce was elected by and made PM by all the paid up *members* >>>> of the Conservative Party who voted for her rather than Sunak.
were not 'activists' (whatever that means), or in the elite few at the >>>>> top, were only able to choose between candidates who had already been >>>>> selected by a self-perpetuating clique. They had no say in who was
offered to them.
One thing about politicians is that anyone who actually wants to do
their job should probably be debarred from doing it.
The major flaw in our current model of democracy as thing stand is the
'career politician' - who 30 or 40 years ago may have got into
politics for the noblest of reasons, but has since had their
principles completely compromised and has amassed considerable wealth
from selling their influence to the highest bidder. We need to make
the 'career politician' an historical curiosity.
That simply isn't true except for a handful of truly bent ones. Retired
politicians doing lobbying using parliamentary passes is another matter.
All of the serving MP's that I have encountered and on both sides of the
house have been good people trying to do their very best for their
constituency and for the country. The bad apples are few and far between.
The problem is that too many read PPE or are bean counters and lawyers
and not enough scientists or engineers. ISTR about a dozen are on the
innovation science and technology group (almost all that qualify). I was
quite impressed by Chi Onwurah (Labour) Newcastle MP the current chair.
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/135/science-innovation-and-technology-committee/membership/
Paradoxically the House of Lords has a much more interesting and
representative cross section of the community due to life peerages
putting people with great expertise where they can scrutinise government
legislation.
Noblesse oblige went out the window many moons ago. Time to get rid of
such parasitic anachronisms.
On 4/20/2025 1:48 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
Here anything with external metal parts should be earthed by law.
Double insulated things or with no metal surfaces to touch do not have
to be and can be on two pin plugs. Mains electric razors for instance.
Current Code is similar. But, requiring existing homes -- built to the
Code
that was in effect at their time of construction -- to retrofit to come
up to the latest Code is considered intrusive and costly.
E.g., the house I grew up in had two wire (neutral and hot) circuits throughout, using BX cable. So, none of the outlets had earth
connections available.
Most UK ring main sockets *require* an earth pin to be present on the
mains plug to open the mechanical cover over the live and neutral
terminals. It was not always so. Previous round pin plugs you could
poke a piece of metal or screwdriver in there and touch live!
Outlets (here), now have similar shutters to prevent entry of "unintended conductors". But, again, there is no requirement to retrofit them.
Ditto GFCIs, AFCIs, etc.
What happens if a drunk takes down a "power pole" feeding said village?
Last time it happened was the coldest day of the year and it was the
milk tanker hit black ice and took down 2 poles and 30' of hedge.
There is no way he was doing 30mph! Engineers had us back on by
nightfall.
Would he have been financially responsible for the repair (though
likely not the secondary losses)?
On 4/19/2025 12:38 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:
How short is short? OUR gas and electric are adjacent. But, many homes >>> have the gas meter in an alley while the electric is on the load center.
I don't know - I imaging a couple of tens of meters. They use ~450MH
for the gas meter link and ~920MHz for the electric meter.
60-70 feet would likely be pushing it -- depending on what's in the
line of sight, dead spots, etc. E.g., often, the meters are sited
for ease of access /by the utility/. So, may be "outside" any masonary fences that enclose the property so the meter-reader (historically,
a person) doesn't have to do anything to gain entry.
Seeing them, all "exposed" like that, always makes them look vulnerable.
But, I guess no one has found a worthwhile exploit to vandalize them.
Where the network coverage or location of the meters precludes the
usual arrangement PG&E have various RF bridges that can be used.
So, the gas company has an agreement with the electric utility? When I >>> was doing this stuff, comms was the big challenge (measuring power
and tracking it -- internally -- is easy. But, getting a tariff with
"someone" to haul the data back to the utility was a political/business
issue not easily addressed with technology.
For our local utility and many others in California the same company
distributes both gas and electricity.
Ah. That would make is easy, of course, And, architects would take that into account when designing homes.
Here, for example, even two "cookie cutter" homes will often have
different connections for each of the utilities. My neighbor and I
share a common trench for gas supply. But, not electric (which
is located adjacent to gas meters in both our cases).
Here, for example, even two "cookie cutter" homes will often have
different connections for each of the utilities. My neighbor and I
share a common trench for gas supply. But, not electric (which
is located adjacent to gas meters in both our cases).
In general gas lines and electric lines are not allowed to share trenches for safety reasons.
E.g., the house I grew up in had two wire (neutral and hot) circuits
throughout, using BX cable. So, none of the outlets had earth
connections available.
The code requirement for an earthed system goes way back in the UK. I can't
recall how far back but pre-WWII. My second year college room had old 3 pin round sockets in and they were already rare in the 1980's.
BS546 was published in 1934 and quickly adopted. Prior to that every regional electric company had their own random shaped plug & sockets. The odd one even supplied DC! BS1363 was introduced just post war 1947.
That is essentially the same rectangular fused plug that we use today. Modern ones are much less well made with less conductor than the old ones. 13A plugs have been officially derated to 10A now.
Most UK ring main sockets *require* an earth pin to be present on the mains >>> plug to open the mechanical cover over the live and neutral terminals. It >>> was not always so. Previous round pin plugs you could poke a piece of metal >>> or screwdriver in there and touch live!
Outlets (here), now have similar shutters to prevent entry of "unintended
conductors". But, again, there is no requirement to retrofit them.
Ditto GFCIs, AFCIs, etc.
What happens if a drunk takes down a "power pole" feeding said village? >>>Last time it happened was the coldest day of the year and it was the milk >>> tanker hit black ice and took down 2 poles and 30' of hedge. There is no way
he was doing 30mph! Engineers had us back on by nightfall.
Would he have been financially responsible for the repair (though
likely not the secondary losses)?
His insurers would be. Having insurance to drive on public roads is a strict requirement in the UK and relatively well policed by ANPR.
On 4/20/2025 1:48 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
Earth is mandatory in UK installations often a local earth copper spike >>>> nailed into ground at the premises and the shield of the underground cable.
My electricity actually comes in as two overhead wires. This is now actually
quite rare in the UK and only happens in rural villages.
Each subscriber presents a local earth for THEIR load center.
The "nearest upstream" transformer also ties to earth.
But, earth is not required (historically) at all loads.� E.g.,
our stove is a three-wire circuit -- two hots and neutral
(no separate earth).� This because of changes to the Code,
over time -- with older installations being "grandfathered" in.
Here anything with external metal parts should be earthed by law. Double
insulated things or with no metal surfaces to touch do not have to be and can
be on two pin plugs. Mains electric razors for instance.
Current Code is similar. But, requiring existing homes -- built to the Code >that was in effect at their time of construction -- to retrofit to come
up to the latest Code is considered intrusive and costly.
E.g., the house I grew up in had two wire (neutral and hot) circuits >throughout, using BX cable. So, none of the outlets had earth
connections available.
Most UK ring main sockets *require* an earth pin to be present on the mains >> plug to open the mechanical cover over the live and neutral terminals. It was
not always so. Previous round pin plugs you could poke a piece of metal or >> screwdriver in there and touch live!
Outlets (here), now have similar shutters to prevent entry of "unintended >conductors". But, again, there is no requirement to retrofit them.
Ditto GFCIs, AFCIs, etc.
What happens if a drunk takes down a "power pole" feeding said village?
Last time it happened was the coldest day of the year and it was the milk
tanker hit black ice and took down 2 poles and 30' of hedge. There is no way he
was doing 30mph! Engineers had us back on by nightfall.
Would he have been financially responsible for the repair (though
likely not the secondary losses)?
Well, *he* would be named in the lawsuit and his insurer would step in
for his "defense".
But, that's just to "buy the light pole" (a euphemism here for the act of crashing into a utility pole, usually while intoxicated). Would he
also be liable for losses incurred by customers of the utility?
E.g., the local restaurateur suing because he lost a freezer full of food?
On 4/19/2025 12:41 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
This is becoming increasingly common. E.g., most new cars include
an embedded "cell phone" for telematics. Many also offer paid services >>> atop that medium for "roadside assistance".
In Spain we now have a new gadget that will be mandatory soon, the V16
beacon. It replaces the reflective triangles we used to signal a
broken or accidented car on the road.
It is a lamp on batteries and a magnet that we put on the roof of the
car, without needing to exit the car. It emits a relatively high power
orange light, and communicates the site of the accident to a
centralized site a minute after being powered up. It means it has an
internet connection of its own, that will work for 10 years without
having to pay again. Some internal SIM.
I already had to use it once, I had a puncture.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V16_warning_beacon_lights>
So, it alerts other traffic to your presence. But, it doesn't fix
your problem, does it? Or, does it summon "roadside assistance"?
If you have to exit the vehicle to check under the hood or
replace a tire, you are still at risk and a potential distraction ("rubber-neckers" -- gawkers)
[PLC won't work as there are too many inductors between the customer >>>>> and the utility. And, pole-top relays don't save much as there may >>>>> only be 2-4 subscribers on a single transformer.]
Electricity meters here use some kind of PLC. At the big transformer
(several cubic meters) there is hardware to collect the data from
each home and either send by another network, or pass somehow to the
high voltage side of the transformer. Surely the transformer is
remotely controlled, so the data network is there.
Here, there is a "smaller, BIG transformer" between the customer and
the "REALLY big transformer" that serves a street/neighborhood.
E.g., 4 subscribers per transformer is typical, here (as that
transformer would have to serve 400A to its group of subscribers)
Getting "across" these to a REALLY big transformer that exists in
more limited quantities is the issue. I think the high side of these
local "smaller, BIG transformers" is ~13KV but it may be as low as ~5KV
(I think you can deliver ~3MVA on a 5KV branch; that should support ~100 >>> households.)
AFAIK, we don't have those smaller transformers.
Every two residences (on one side of the street), a transformer is sited between properties, on the property line (actually, an easement), on
the ground (our utilities are below grade).
This transformer feeds the two adjacent residences and the two directly opposite. The "medium tension" primary feed is daisy-chained via
individual coaxial cables from this transformer to the next one,
two properties removed.
At either end of a branch, the primary feed is optionally connected to
a larger transformer (the size of a volkswagen beetle) which feeds
multiple such circuits.
Having both ends of the branch adjacent to potential sources
means the branch can be powered from either (or both!) end.
In the event of a segment failing, the "downstream" transformers
are no longer powered. The utility will identify the failed
segment (there are "sqwakers" in the transformer enclosures that
allow the technicians to identify where power is present/absent).
The segment will be isolated at both ends (the fault obviously
between these two points) and the farthest downstream end of that
isolated portion of the branch will be fed from that "other end"
via a cable segment that is already in place but has to be connected
to the "last" transformer.
[Each transformer has two primary connections (upstream and downstream)
so the transformers at the (one or two) ends have a single connection]
On 4/20/2025 11:52 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-20 19:25, Don Y wrote:
Well, *he* would be named in the lawsuit and his insurer would step inA freezer should last two days if you don't open it. Duration depends on size.
for his "defense".
But, that's just to "buy the light pole" (a euphemism here for the act of >>> crashing into a utility pole, usually while intoxicated).� Would he
also be liable for losses incurred by customers of the utility?
E.g., the local restaurateur suing because he lost a freezer full of food? >>
And, what's in it as well as the orientation of the door.
Ours, for example, has ~120 quarts of frozen citrus juices.
Essentially a large block of ice!
On 2025-04-20 19:25, Don Y wrote:
Well, *he* would be named in the lawsuit and his insurer would step in
for his "defense".
But, that's just to "buy the light pole" (a euphemism here for the act of
crashing into a utility pole, usually while intoxicated). Would he
also be liable for losses incurred by customers of the utility?
E.g., the local restaurateur suing because he lost a freezer full of food?
A freezer should last two days if you don't open it. Duration depends on size.
So, it alerts other traffic to your presence. But, it doesn't fix
your problem, does it? Or, does it summon "roadside assistance"?
It is anonymous, that's an important feature so that people don't get paranoid.
But you can register a phone app that talks to it, if you want.
So the authorities get information at somewhere about all active beacons at a given time, and they can dispatch the police to go have a look. There is no promise that they do. But those electronic panels on the roads that tell you "accident ahead" should activate. Also information on car navigators like a TomTom (I did not see it).
I don't know if that emergency room is yet built and active.
If you have to exit the vehicle to check under the hood or
replace a tire, you are still at risk and a potential distraction
("rubber-neckers" -- gawkers)
Certainly. Just my case.
But there have been a bunch of people killed while they were just setting the triangles. The authorities thought that the beacon would help with those.
AFAIK, we don't have those smaller transformers.
Every two residences (on one side of the street), a transformer is sited
between properties, on the property line (actually, an easement), on
the ground (our utilities are below grade).
I have seen them in Canada. But we don't have them. In my block, we had 4 naked
wires on the roof, going from home to home. Now they are no longer naked, they
are 4 thick cables in plastic, braided. At the small pole, they bring a connection down for some houses. No rule.
On modern neighbourhoods, they are subterranean.
On 4/20/2025 11:42 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
So, it alerts other traffic to your presence.� But, it doesn't fix
your problem, does it?� Or, does it summon "roadside assistance"?
It is anonymous, that's an important feature so that people don't get paranoid.
But you can register a phone app that talks to it, if you want.
So, its value to YOU is in making your "disablement" visible to
oncoming traffic -- without having to expose your body to an
assault. If you were NOT inclined to "set out flares" (the original
version of the "triangles"), then you likely wouldn't bother with
this, either.
So the authorities get information at somewhere about all active beacons at a
given time, and they can dispatch the police to go have a look. There is no >> promise that they do. But those electronic panels on the roads that tell you >> "accident ahead" should activate. Also information on car navigators like a >> TomTom (I did not see it).
So, its secondary value to you is in alerting you of traffic problems
before you find yourself "stuck" in them.
I don't know if that emergency room is yet built and active.
If you have to exit the vehicle to check under the hood or
replace a tire, you are still at risk and a potential distraction
("rubber-neckers" -- gawkers)
Certainly. Just my case.
But there have been a bunch of people killed while they were just setting the
triangles. The authorities thought that the beacon would help with those.
Yes. Motorists (and police officers) standing on roadways -- even far
off on the shoulder -- are regularly hit/killed by morons who have their >heads up their ass instead of eyes on the road!
We had a young mother struck and killed while pushing her infant daughter
in a stroller (tram?) on the side of the road. Some young kid who
felt it was more important to adjust the car stereo than drive the car...
AFAIK, we don't have those smaller transformers.
Every two residences (on one side of the street), a transformer is sited >>> between properties, on the property line (actually, an easement), on
the ground (our utilities are below grade).
I have seen them in Canada. But we don't have them. In my block, we had 4 naked
wires on the roof, going from home to home. Now they are no longer naked, they
are 4 thick cables in plastic, braided. At the small pole, they bring a
connection down for some houses. No rule.
In neighborhoods with overhead wiring, the high tension travels atop >"telephone poles" to similar transformers mounted high up. From there,
the secondaries come down a pair of wires supported by a steel cable
to the rooftop "service entrance".
But, the same issue of these small transformers exists to effectively block >high frequency signals from propagating far.
On modern neighbourhoods, they are subterranean.
Ditto, here. Though our neighborhood is almost 50 years old.
Other parts of town have lots of flying services; you'd not want
to fly a kit there!
It is apparently more costly to put them below grade. Though I
wonder how much "damage" is avoided by doing so? Perhaps the
cost (to the utility) is lower for flying services as any
damages to it can be offloaded to the "offender"?
OTOH, each time they widen a roadway, there is considerable
cost in relocating the airborne services that travel along those
roads. Often, very high tension, cross town feeds (which tend to
follow major arteries) on very tall, metallic towers.
OTOH, each time they widen a roadway, there is considerable
cost in relocating the airborne services that travel along those
roads. Often, very high tension, cross town feeds (which tend to
follow major arteries) on very tall, metallic towers.
Buried services are about five times as expensive as aerial services.
On 4/20/2025 7:27 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
E.g., the house I grew up in had two wire (neutral and hot) circuits
throughout, using BX cable. So, none of the outlets had earth
connections available.
The code requirement for an earthed system goes way back in the UK. I
can't
The *system* is earthed but the outlets don't present a separate
earth conductor. House was built in ~1956.
I recall adding branch circuits in the basement "work room" that
added the third conductor (load center was located in the basement
work room so little cost to use new cable, there)
What happens if a drunk takes down a "power pole" feeding said
village?
Last time it happened was the coldest day of the year and it was the
milk tanker hit black ice and took down 2 poles and 30' of hedge.
There is no way he was doing 30mph! Engineers had us back on by
nightfall.
Would he have been financially responsible for the repair (though
likely not the secondary losses)?
His insurers would be. Having insurance to drive on public roads is a
strict requirement in the UK and relatively well policed by ANPR.
Well, *he* would be named in the lawsuit and his insurer would step in
for his "defense".
But, that's just to "buy the light pole" (a euphemism here for the act of crashing into a utility pole, usually while intoxicated). Would he
also be liable for losses incurred by customers of the utility?
E.g., the local restaurateur suing because he lost a freezer full of food? Or, would it be seen as an expected risk (power outage) that the
restaurateur should have protected against?
The *system* is earthed but the outlets don't present a separate
earth conductor. House was built in ~1956.
In the UK the only outlet that isn't earthed (and today is double isolated) is
the 2pin mains shaver socket in the bathroom.
I recall adding branch circuits in the basement "work room" that
added the third conductor (load center was located in the basement
work room so little cost to use new cable, there)
Your house hasn't been rewired since the 1950's? Hasn't the rubber insulation deteriorated almost to the point of no return by now?
Ozone seems to make it quite tacky or cracked when it becomes antique.
What happens if a drunk takes down a "power pole" feeding said village? >>>>>Last time it happened was the coldest day of the year and it was the milk >>>>> tanker hit black ice and took down 2 poles and 30' of hedge. There is no >>>>> way he was doing 30mph! Engineers had us back on by nightfall.
Would he have been financially responsible for the repair (though
likely not the secondary losses)?
His insurers would be. Having insurance to drive on public roads is a strict
requirement in the UK and relatively well policed by ANPR.
Well, *he* would be named in the lawsuit and his insurer would step in
for his "defense".
Not how it works in the UK. Advice is don't admit liability at the scene and call your insurers claims number immediately. They take care of pretty much everything after that unless there is evidence of criminality or serious injuries resulted and a police investigation.
Recent juicy one with a BMW chase in Newcastle that totalled 5 police cars in a
Keystone cops style hard stop incident. They initially only wanted to tell him
that his rear brake light was defective too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g9mezn9ero
Major arterial road was closed for a couple of days while they did the measurements and scraped up all the bits. He wasn't insured and several police
were injured so they will doubtless throw the book at him.
But, that's just to "buy the light pole" (a euphemism here for the act of
crashing into a utility pole, usually while intoxicated). Would he
also be liable for losses incurred by customers of the utility?
E.g., the local restaurateur suing because he lost a freezer full of food? >> Or, would it be seen as an expected risk (power outage) that the
restaurateur should have protected against?
Dunno. The power where I live is flaky enough that farms and cafes have their own emergency generators so that power outages don't catch them out. Cows still
need milking mains electricity or no.
A lot of the crashes round here never officially happened since they typically
take out a chunk of hedge on the exit of a tight bend. Single vehicle incidents
late at night probably drunks.
On 4/20/2025 5:44 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
OTOH, each time they widen a roadway, there is considerable
cost in relocating the airborne services that travel along those
roads. Often, very high tension, cross town feeds (which tend to
follow major arteries) on very tall, metallic towers.
Buried services are about five times as expensive as aerial services.
Including maintenance costs (e.g., from hazzards that take down lines
(think ice storms) or structures (car accidents)?
Or, do they count that in a different "pie"?
The 5-to-1 is installation only, but it's hard for decreased
maintenance and repair to make enough difference to tilt the balance.
In US's New England (where I live), there is enough rock that burying
is often impossible without blasting.
The original US example of burying all services is Columbia Maryland,
which was created from cornfields as a big development, so it was
practical to install the services using very large vibrating-blade
plows before anything else was built.
Joe Gwinn
On 4/21/2025 9:48 AM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
The 5-to-1 is installation only, but it's hard for decreased
maintenance and repair to make enough difference to tilt the balance.
Hmmm, I would have thought damage from storms (branches falling on
overhead lines), "accidents" (drivers skidding in snow; drunks)
and the inevitable "road widening" operations would be very costly.
The service life of our lines was originally stated to be 20 years
though the utility managed to leave them in place for 40 before
they began to fail.
In US's New England (where I live), there is enough rock that burying
is often impossible without blasting.
I recall lots of "stones" in the soil but few residential area
built on "rock" -- noting that every home had a basement which
would have had to be excavated.
I do recall places where natural springs were common near
the surface.
Here, we are plagued with /caliche/ making digging very difficult
(probably one of the reasons that basements are eschewed in favor
of slab construction). Planting a tree requires renting a "jack
hammer" with shovel attachment to get through the caliche. And,
digging a hole as large as you expect the root system of the
tree to become as the caliche is so impermeable.
[E.g., I dug 4 ft diameter holes to a depth of 4 feet for each of
the citrus trees. The soil removed from the holes was *discarded*
and replaced with fresh topsoil. As the arborist said, "you are
basically excavating a FLOWER POT for your tree; consider how large
a pot it will need as it matures".]
After excavation (for utilities), the lines have to be shaded with
sand and other fine materials to prevent "stones" from impinging
on the cables as the ground shifts (subsidence from groundwater
pumping).
Yet, this is the norm for new developments. Hard to imagine it would
be mandated solely for aesthetics...
The original US example of burying all services is Columbia Maryland,
which was created from cornfields as a big development, so it was
practical to install the services using very large vibrating-blade
plows before anything else was built.
On Mon, 21 Apr 2025 14:54:43 -0700, Don Y
<[email protected]d> wrote:
On 4/21/2025 9:48 AM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
The 5-to-1 is installation only, but it's hard for decreased
maintenance and repair to make enough difference to tilt the balance.
Hmmm, I would have thought damage from storms (branches falling on
overhead lines), "accidents" (drivers skidding in snow; drunks)
and the inevitable "road widening" operations would be very costly.
When the business folk do the analysis, if the payback time is longer
than two or three years, it simply isn't worth the investment, so
isn't done.
It varies. In the last house that my parents had built (in the 1960s
if I recall) had an immense boulder (with a spring) in one corner of
the basement. They considered having it removed, which could only be
done by blasting. While this was easily done safely, it proved far
too expensive, so the boulder remained, with its own drainage system
leading to the sea.
A house that my then widowed father bought many years later also had a granite ledge under one part of the first floor, so the basement was a
third the size one would expect.
Here, we are plagued with /caliche/ making digging very difficult
(probably one of the reasons that basements are eschewed in favor
of slab construction). Planting a tree requires renting a "jack
hammer" with shovel attachment to get through the caliche. And,
digging a hole as large as you expect the root system of the
tree to become as the caliche is so impermeable.
[E.g., I dug 4 ft diameter holes to a depth of 4 feet for each of
the citrus trees. The soil removed from the holes was *discarded*
and replaced with fresh topsoil. As the arborist said, "you are
basically excavating a FLOWER POT for your tree; consider how large
a pot it will need as it matures".]
After excavation (for utilities), the lines have to be shaded with
sand and other fine materials to prevent "stones" from impinging
on the cables as the ground shifts (subsidence from groundwater
pumping).
Yet, this is the norm for new developments. Hard to imagine it would
be mandated solely for aesthetics...
Thankfully, in New England we don't have such problems.
Closest was New Jersey, where our back yard was hard-pan clay - it
took a pickaxe to dig that stuff up. Which I did, precisely to make a
flower bed.
The original US example of burying all services is Columbia Maryland,
which was created from cornfields as a big development, so it was
practical to install the services using very large vibrating-blade
plows before anything else was built.
Maryland is mostly mud around there. Very fertile soil.
Joe
On Sun, 20 Apr 2025 16:13:38 -0700, Don Y
<[email protected]d> wrote:
OTOH, each time they widen a roadway, there is considerable
cost in relocating the airborne services that travel along those
roads. Often, very high tension, cross town feeds (which tend to
follow major arteries) on very tall, metallic towers.
Buried services are about five times as expensive as aerial services.
On 4/21/2025 9:48 AM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
The 5-to-1 is installation only, but it's hard for decreased
maintenance and repair to make enough difference to tilt the balance.
Hmmm, I would have thought damage from storms (branches falling on
overhead lines), "accidents" (drivers skidding in snow; drunks)
and the inevitable "road widening" operations would be very costly.
Here, we are plagued with /caliche/ making digging very difficult
On 4/20/2025 11:42 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
So, it alerts other traffic to your presence. But, it doesn't fix
your problem, does it? Or, does it summon "roadside assistance"?
It is anonymous, that's an important feature so that people don't get
paranoid. But you can register a phone app that talks to it, if you want.
So, its value to YOU is in making your "disablement" visible to
oncoming traffic -- without having to expose your body to an
assault. If you were NOT inclined to "set out flares" (the original
version of the "triangles"), then you likely wouldn't bother with
this, either.
So the authorities get information at somewhere about all active
beacons at a given time, and they can dispatch the police to go have a
look. There is no promise that they do. But those electronic panels on
the roads that tell you "accident ahead" should activate. Also
information on car navigators like a TomTom (I did not see it).
So, its secondary value to you is in alerting you of traffic problems
before you find yourself "stuck" in them.
I don't know if that emergency room is yet built and active.
If you have to exit the vehicle to check under the hood or
replace a tire, you are still at risk and a potential distraction
("rubber-neckers" -- gawkers)
Certainly. Just my case.
But there have been a bunch of people killed while they were just
setting the triangles. The authorities thought that the beacon would
help with those.
Yes. Motorists (and police officers) standing on roadways -- even far
off on the shoulder -- are regularly hit/killed by morons who have their heads up their ass instead of eyes on the road!
We had a young mother struck and killed while pushing her infant daughter
in a stroller (tram?) on the side of the road. Some young kid who
felt it was more important to adjust the car stereo than drive the car...
AFAIK, we don't have those smaller transformers.
Every two residences (on one side of the street), a transformer is sited >>> between properties, on the property line (actually, an easement), on
the ground (our utilities are below grade).
I have seen them in Canada. But we don't have them. In my block, we
had 4 naked wires on the roof, going from home to home. Now they are
no longer naked, they are 4 thick cables in plastic, braided. At the
small pole, they bring a connection down for some houses. No rule.
In neighborhoods with overhead wiring, the high tension travels atop "telephone poles" to similar transformers mounted high up. From there,
the secondaries come down a pair of wires supported by a steel cable
to the rooftop "service entrance".
But, the same issue of these small transformers exists to effectively block high frequency signals from propagating far.
On modern neighbourhoods, they are subterranean.
Ditto, here. Though our neighborhood is almost 50 years old.
Other parts of town have lots of flying services; you'd not want
to fly a kit there!
It is apparently more costly to put them below grade. Though I
wonder how much "damage" is avoided by doing so? Perhaps the
cost (to the utility) is lower for flying services as any
damages to it can be offloaded to the "offender"?
OTOH, each time they widen a roadway, there is considerable
cost in relocating the airborne services that travel along those
roads. Often, very high tension, cross town feeds (which tend to
follow major arteries) on very tall, metallic towers.
Triangles became recommended and then mandatory after I got my driving license.
On 2025-04-21 23:54, Don Y wrote:
On 4/21/2025 9:48 AM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
The 5-to-1 is installation only, but it's hard for decreased
maintenance and repair to make enough difference to tilt the balance.
Hmmm, I would have thought damage from storms (branches falling on
overhead lines), "accidents" (drivers skidding in snow; drunks)
and the inevitable "road widening" operations would be very costly.
Floods can kill underground service, too.
Here, we are plagued with /caliche/ making digging very difficult
new word to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliche
Caliche (/kəˈliːtʃiː/) (unrelated to the street-slang "Caliche" spoken in El
Salvador) is a soil accumulation of soluble calcium carbonate at depth, where it precipitates and binds other materials—such as gravel, sand, clay, and silt.
It occurs worldwide, in aridisol and mollisol soil orders—generally in arid or
semiarid regions, including in central and western Australia, in the Kalahari Desert, in the High Plains of the western United States, in the Sonoran Desert,
Chihuahuan Desert and Mojave Desert of North America, and in eastern Saudi Arabia at Al-Hasa. Caliche is also known as calcrete or kankar (in India). It belongs to the duricrusts. The term caliche is borrowed from Spanish and is originally from the Latin word calx, meaning lime.[1]
On 2025-04-21 01:13, Don Y wrote:
On 4/20/2025 11:42 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
So, its value to YOU is in making your "disablement" visible toSo, it alerts other traffic to your presence. But, it doesn't fix
your problem, does it? Or, does it summon "roadside assistance"?
It is anonymous, that's an important feature so that people don't get
paranoid. But you can register a phone app that talks to it, if you want. >>
oncoming traffic -- without having to expose your body to an
assault. If you were NOT inclined to "set out flares" (the original
version of the "triangles"), then you likely wouldn't bother with
this, either.
AFAIK, flares have never been used here.
My father used nothing, nothing was mandatory or recommended. Put on the lights: not the blinkers both left and right, cars did not have that feature. In an accident, it was recommended for another car to park perpendicular to the
scene and illuminate it with his headlights.
Triangles became recommended and then mandatory after I got my driving license.
If you set neither triangles not beacon, and they find you, you get fined.
So the authorities get information at somewhere about all active beacons at >>> a given time, and they can dispatch the police to go have a look. There is >>> no promise that they do. But those electronic panels on the roads that tell >>> you "accident ahead" should activate. Also information on car navigators >>> like a TomTom (I did not see it).
So, its secondary value to you is in alerting you of traffic problems
before you find yourself "stuck" in them.
Yep. But I don't know if this part is working yet.
I don't know if that emergency room is yet built and active.
If you have to exit the vehicle to check under the hood or
replace a tire, you are still at risk and a potential distraction
("rubber-neckers" -- gawkers)
Certainly. Just my case.
But there have been a bunch of people killed while they were just setting >>> the triangles. The authorities thought that the beacon would help with those.
Yes. Motorists (and police officers) standing on roadways -- even far
off on the shoulder -- are regularly hit/killed by morons who have their
heads up their ass instead of eyes on the road!
Indeed.
It seems to happen more in the urban highways of Madrid, not so much on the long distance highways. In the former, traffic is going to/from work/home, and
are mostly city folk, not necessarily used to long distance driving on highways.
Accidents seem to happen mostly near home, people feel safe and less alert.
We had a young mother struck and killed while pushing her infant daughter
in a stroller (tram?) on the side of the road. Some young kid who
felt it was more important to adjust the car stereo than drive the car...
Sigh.
Here people standing on the road have to mandatorily wear reflective vests. Some are hit precisely while putting it on.
In that situation, I keep my eye on incoming traffic.
Carlos E.R. <[email protected]d> wrote:
Triangles became recommended and then mandatory after I got my driving
license.
Was this cause and effect? :-)
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
There
are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
I've noticed that my recent electricity bills have a 'Disconnection
Rota" designator printed on them. I haven't agreed to anything like
that, so I presume it is in anticipation of enforced power cuts.
On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:33:07 +0100, [email protected]d<...>
(Liz Tuddenham) wrote:
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
There
are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
I've noticed that my recent electricity bills have a 'Disconnection
Rota" designator printed on them. I haven't agreed to anything like
that, so I presume it is in anticipation of enforced power cuts.
China is building a big coal-powered power plant a week. Maybe the UK
can run a long cable and buy electricity from them.
On 4/22/25 9:52 AM, john larkin wrote:
On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:33:07 +0100, [email protected]d<...>
(Liz Tuddenham) wrote:
Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
There
are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
I've noticed that my recent electricity bills have a 'Disconnection
Rota" designator printed on them. I haven't agreed to anything like
that, so I presume it is in anticipation of enforced power cuts.
China is building a big coal-powered power plant a week. Maybe the UK
can run a long cable and buy electricity from them.
Many of those are to replace aging, inefficient, highly polluting plants.
The number of new approvals has dropped significantly recently while the amount of coal fired generation has actually gone down even though electricity consumption has increased.
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/20/chinas-coal-generation-dropped-5-yoy-in-q1-as-electricity-demand-increased/
On 2025-04-17 21:59, Don Y wrote:
On 4/17/2025 7:38 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Don Y <[email protected]d> wrote:
Here, there is value in having solid state metering. It allows
different monitoring schemes to be implemented without requiring a
completely different mechanical metering system. Eliminates
the meter reader. Provides dynamic load monitoring at the customer
level. Remote fault detection. etc.
Most of which benefits the supplier, not the consumer.
Of course! Our electronic water meters include the ability to detect
likely leaks (i.e., if water runs continuously then it is likely a sign
of a leaking toilet fixture, etc.).
But, this isn't used to alert the homeowner to a reparable problem.
Rather, you get a "big bill" and start looking to see "Why?"
Our city water contractor said on radio few days ago that they would
start to deploy smart water meters, and he did say that they would try
to detect leaks on our premises, and tell us.
This morning I noticed a water meter visible from the street because there was
no lid or door on the hole on the wall, and it was curious. The plastic lid on
the meter was open, and could not be closed, because on top of the glass or transparent plastic there had been attached another device that occluded the view of the readings completely. I suspect this "backpack" is the radio device
that perhaps takes a photo of the reading and sends that using some variant of
slow GSM.
Or my interpretation could be wrong.
It is only one meter; I will be looking for more in the neighbourhood. My own meter is under a heavy iron lid that I do not know how to lift, so I can not look at it.
It looked similar to this one:
<https://latiendadeljardin.com/contadores-agua/modulo-comunicacion-contadores-agua.html>
On 15/04/2025 01:43, Don Y wrote:
On 4/14/2025 3:58 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the
extent that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
What's "sky high"? And, are residential and commercial/industrial
rates significantly different?
Yes and in complicated ways. Residential tariffs are capped, ordinary businesses are not but a handful of ultimate heavy use load balancing
centres get preferential rates on condition that they can get no
electricity at all. Think aluminium and fertiliser plants and choralkali electrolysis. (I think the last aluminium plant in England has now shut)
Increasingly the winter peak load in the UK is balanced by paying big
heavy industrial users to shut down or go to a standby condition! There
are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
Typical electricity prices in the UK are tightly coupled to the spot
price of natural gas in a totally crazy pricing structure. Electricity
in the UK is 2x the price on mainland Europe and 4x that in the US.
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity prices and UK
Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is insanely expensive (more
so than I had thought). Compares a range of countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
Only a handful of preferred dumpable load balancing industrial users get the tariff that I described most UK heavy power users are robbed blind!
No wonder Tata and now the Chinese want to close Scunthorpre steelworks.
On 4/25/2025 9:41 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity
prices and UK Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is
insanely expensive (more so than I had thought). Compares a range of
countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
I don't understand "The wholesale cost is set by the last unit of
electricity needed to meet demand from consumers".
Surely, this isn't
the ACTUAL cost but, rather, the PRICE. Is there some silly policy
that is creating this misrepresentation?
And, why is there no "Domestic" price for the UK entry? Along with
other "missing" data in the first graph?
It looks like Domestic (residential/consumer?) costs are considerably
higher than Industrial (?)
Only a handful of preferred dumpable load balancing industrial users
get the tariff that I described most UK heavy power users are robbed
blind!
No wonder Tata and now the Chinese want to close Scunthorpre steelworks.
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/04/2025 01:43, Don Y wrote:
On 4/14/2025 3:58 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the
extent that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
What's "sky high"?� And, are residential and commercial/industrial
rates significantly different?
Yes and in complicated ways. Residential tariffs are capped, ordinary
businesses are not but a handful of ultimate heavy use load balancing
centres get preferential rates on condition that they can get no
electricity at all. Think aluminium and fertiliser plants and choralkali
electrolysis. (I think the last aluminium plant in England has now shut)
Increasingly the winter peak load in the UK is balanced by paying big
heavy industrial users to shut down or go to a standby condition! There
are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
Typical electricity prices in the UK are tightly coupled to the spot
price of natural gas in a totally crazy pricing structure. Electricity
in the UK is 2x the price on mainland Europe and 4x that in the US.
I know it is bad form to follow up your own post but my description
above is actually not as bad as it really is. The situation for most UK >business users is in fact considerably worse than I believed to be true.
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity prices
and UK Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is insanely >expensive (more so than I had thought). Compares a range of countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
Only a handful of preferred dumpable load balancing industrial users get
the tariff that I described most UK heavy power users are robbed blind!
No wonder Tata and now the Chinese want to close Scunthorpre steelworks.
On 2025-04-25 19:44, Don Y wrote:
On 4/25/2025 9:41 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity
prices and UK Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is
insanely expensive (more so than I had thought). Compares a range of
countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
I don't understand "The wholesale cost is set by the last unit of
electricity needed to meet demand from consumers".
Same in Spain, if I understood correctly the phrase. No, I can not
explain it.
Surely, this isn't
the ACTUAL cost but, rather, the PRICE.� Is there some silly policy
that is creating this misrepresentation?
And, why is there no "Domestic" price for the UK entry?� Along with
other "missing" data in the first graph?
It looks like Domestic (residential/consumer?) costs are considerably
higher than Industrial (?)
Only a handful of preferred dumpable load balancing industrial users
get the tariff that I described most UK heavy power users are robbed
blind!
No wonder Tata and now the Chinese want to close Scunthorpre steelworks. >>>
For the record, the rate I pay in the Boston area is 16.3 US pennies
per kwh. The UKP is 1.33 USD, so that translates to 12.3 pence per
kwh.
Small industrial users near Boston pay slightly more, 20.14 US pennies
per kwh. Larger users pay less, maybe 10 US pennies.
My most recent domestic electricity bill was 27.644p per kWh plus
57.484p per day standing charge.
On Fri, 25 Apr 2025 17:41:58 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/04/2025 01:43, Don Y wrote:
On 4/14/2025 3:58 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/ >>>>
extent that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
What's "sky high"?� And, are residential and commercial/industrial
rates significantly different?
Yes and in complicated ways. Residential tariffs are capped, ordinary
businesses are not but a handful of ultimate heavy use load balancing
centres get preferential rates on condition that they can get no
electricity at all. Think aluminium and fertiliser plants and choralkali >> electrolysis. (I think the last aluminium plant in England has now shut) >>
Increasingly the winter peak load in the UK is balanced by paying big
heavy industrial users to shut down or go to a standby condition! There
are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
Typical electricity prices in the UK are tightly coupled to the spot
price of natural gas in a totally crazy pricing structure. Electricity
in the UK is 2x the price on mainland Europe and 4x that in the US.
I know it is bad form to follow up your own post but my description
above is actually not as bad as it really is. The situation for most UK >business users is in fact considerably worse than I believed to be true.
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity prices >and UK Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is insanely >expensive (more so than I had thought). Compares a range of countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
Only a handful of preferred dumpable load balancing industrial users get >the tariff that I described most UK heavy power users are robbed blind!
No wonder Tata and now the Chinese want to close Scunthorpre steelworks.
For the record, the rate I pay in the Boston area is 16.3 US pennies
per kwh. The UKP is 1.33 USD, so that translates to 12.3 pence per
kwh.
Small industrial users near Boston pay slightly more, 20.14 US pennies
per kwh. Larger users pay less, maybe 10 US pennies.
Joe Gwinn <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 25 Apr 2025 17:41:58 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/04/2025 01:43, Don Y wrote:
On 4/14/2025 3:58 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 13/04/2025 06:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
On 13/04/2025 4:16 am, john larkin wrote:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/uk_ai_energy_council_meets/
They are on another planet. UK energy prices are sky high to the
extent that making steel profitable here is completely impossible.
What's "sky high"?� And, are residential and commercial/industrial
rates significantly different?
Yes and in complicated ways. Residential tariffs are capped, ordinary
businesses are not but a handful of ultimate heavy use load balancing
centres get preferential rates on condition that they can get no
electricity at all. Think aluminium and fertiliser plants and choralkali >> >> electrolysis. (I think the last aluminium plant in England has now shut) >> >>
Increasingly the winter peak load in the UK is balanced by paying big
heavy industrial users to shut down or go to a standby condition! There >> >> are even schemes to reward home users not to use power at peak times.
Typical electricity prices in the UK are tightly coupled to the spot
price of natural gas in a totally crazy pricing structure. Electricity
in the UK is 2x the price on mainland Europe and 4x that in the US.
I know it is bad form to follow up your own post but my description
above is actually not as bad as it really is. The situation for most UK
business users is in fact considerably worse than I believed to be true.
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity prices
and UK Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is insanely
expensive (more so than I had thought). Compares a range of countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
Only a handful of preferred dumpable load balancing industrial users get
the tariff that I described most UK heavy power users are robbed blind!
No wonder Tata and now the Chinese want to close Scunthorpre steelworks.
For the record, the rate I pay in the Boston area is 16.3 US pennies
per kwh. The UKP is 1.33 USD, so that translates to 12.3 pence per
kwh.
Small industrial users near Boston pay slightly more, 20.14 US pennies
per kwh. Larger users pay less, maybe 10 US pennies.
My most recent domestic electricity bill was 27.644p per kWh plus
57.484p per day standing charge.
On 2025-04-25 19:44, Don Y wrote:
On 4/25/2025 9:41 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity prices and
UK Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is insanely expensive
(more so than I had thought). Compares a range of countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
I don't understand "The wholesale cost is set by the last unit of
electricity needed to meet demand from consumers".
Same in Spain, if I understood correctly the phrase. No, I can not explain it.
On 4/25/2025 11:15 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2025-04-25 19:44, Don Y wrote:
On 4/25/2025 9:41 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity
prices and UK Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is
insanely expensive (more so than I had thought). Compares a range of
countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
I don't understand "The wholesale cost is set by the last unit of
electricity needed to meet demand from consumers".
Same in Spain, if I understood correctly the phrase. No, I can not
explain it.
Do ALL "wholesale" sales get priced thusly (in computing caps, etc.)?
On 4/25/2025 1:20 PM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
For the record, the rate I pay in the Boston area is 16.3 US pennies
per kwh. The UKP is 1.33 USD, so that translates to 12.3 pence per
kwh.
Small industrial users near Boston pay slightly more, 20.14 US pennies
per kwh. Larger users pay less, maybe 10 US pennies.
My most recent domestic electricity bill was 27.644p per kWh plus
57.484p per day standing charge.
It's hard to sort out what the EFFECTIVE rate is, here (desert southwest). >There are *19* line items on each monthly statement.
The closest thing to a "standing charge" (right to consume electricity?) is the
"Meter charge" of $15/month. There's also a fixed "Renewable Energy Standard >Tariff" of $10.37. And, assorted fees and taxes based on consumption.
The line-item rate per KWHr is 8.7p/KWHr -- for the first 500KWHr
per month. The next 500 are billed at 10.6p/KWHr. The "delivery"
charge is about 4p/KWHr (in the winter... amusing that temps of 100F are >still considered "winter"!)
I.e., our usage last billing period mirrors what we typically consume in June. >It will climb to 150% of that as summer sets in.
Neglecting the "fixed" line items on the bill (as I have no idea
if you have similar costs), we pay just about 16p/KWHr inclusive
of generation, delivery charges, taxes (about $15), fees, etc.
On Fri, 25 Apr 2025 14:13:04 -0700, Don Y
<[email protected]d> wrote:
On 4/25/2025 1:20 PM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
For the record, the rate I pay in the Boston area is 16.3 US pennies
per kwh. The UKP is 1.33 USD, so that translates to 12.3 pence per
kwh.
Small industrial users near Boston pay slightly more, 20.14 US pennies >>>> per kwh. Larger users pay less, maybe 10 US pennies.
My most recent domestic electricity bill was 27.644p per kWh plus
57.484p per day standing charge.
It's hard to sort out what the EFFECTIVE rate is, here (desert southwest). >> There are *19* line items on each monthly statement.
The closest thing to a "standing charge" (right to consume electricity?) is the
"Meter charge" of $15/month. There's also a fixed "Renewable Energy Standard
Tariff" of $10.37. And, assorted fees and taxes based on consumption.
The line-item rate per KWHr is 8.7p/KWHr -- for the first 500KWHr
per month. The next 500 are billed at 10.6p/KWHr. The "delivery"
charge is about 4p/KWHr (in the winter... amusing that temps of 100F are
still considered "winter"!)
I.e., our usage last billing period mirrors what we typically consume in June.
It will climb to 150% of that as summer sets in.
Neglecting the "fixed" line items on the bill (as I have no idea
if you have similar costs), we pay just about 16p/KWHr inclusive
of generation, delivery charges, taxes (about $15), fees, etc.
It's easy to tell. Sort the items into two bins, one for all items
that do not vary with consumption, and the other for items that are
per kwh. This will reduce the complication to an A + Bx equation. A
is sum of fixed charges, and B is the sum of varying charges.
On 4/25/2025 3:39 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 25 Apr 2025 14:13:04 -0700, Don Y
<[email protected]d> wrote:
On 4/25/2025 1:20 PM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
For the record, the rate I pay in the Boston area is 16.3 US pennies >>>>> per kwh. The UKP is 1.33 USD, so that translates to 12.3 pence per >>>>> kwh.
Small industrial users near Boston pay slightly more, 20.14 US pennies >>>>> per kwh. Larger users pay less, maybe 10 US pennies.
My most recent domestic electricity bill was 27.644p per kWh plus
57.484p per day standing charge.
It's hard to sort out what the EFFECTIVE rate is, here (desert southwest). >>> There are *19* line items on each monthly statement.
The closest thing to a "standing charge" (right to consume electricity?) is the
"Meter charge" of $15/month. There's also a fixed "Renewable Energy Standard
Tariff" of $10.37. And, assorted fees and taxes based on consumption.
The line-item rate per KWHr is 8.7p/KWHr -- for the first 500KWHr
per month. The next 500 are billed at 10.6p/KWHr. The "delivery"
charge is about 4p/KWHr (in the winter... amusing that temps of 100F are >>> still considered "winter"!)
I.e., our usage last billing period mirrors what we typically consume in June.
It will climb to 150% of that as summer sets in.
Neglecting the "fixed" line items on the bill (as I have no idea
if you have similar costs), we pay just about 16p/KWHr inclusive
of generation, delivery charges, taxes (about $15), fees, etc.
It's easy to tell. Sort the items into two bins, one for all items
that do not vary with consumption, and the other for items that are
per kwh. This will reduce the complication to an A + Bx equation. A
is sum of fixed charges, and B is the sum of varying charges.
That;s what I did. The Meter charge and Renewable Energy tariff I
took off the top of our bill. Then, divided the balance by the
usage to arrive at "per KWHr charges" -- which INCLUDEs taxes and
other "per KWHr fees".
On 4/25/2025 9:41 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity
prices and UK Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is
insanely expensive (more so than I had thought). Compares a range of
countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
I don't understand "The wholesale cost is set by the last unit of
electricity needed to meet demand from consumers". Surely, this isn't
the ACTUAL cost but, rather, the PRICE. Is there some silly policy
that is creating this misrepresentation?
And, why is there no "Domestic" price for the UK entry? Along with
other "missing" data in the first graph?
It looks like Domestic (residential/consumer?) costs are considerably
higher than Industrial (?)
The rendering of the chart on my machine shows no numeric associated with
the "Domestic" entries for Ireland, UK, Italy, Austria, Finland, Sweden and Greece. It shows no numeric for the Industrial entries for Ireland, Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg. Though there are scaled bars
for each of these.
On 25/04/2025 18:44, Don Y wrote:
On 4/25/2025 9:41 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity prices and
UK Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is insanely expensive
(more so than I had thought). Compares a range of countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
I don't understand "The wholesale cost is set by the last unit of
electricity needed to meet demand from consumers". Surely, this isn't
the ACTUAL cost but, rather, the PRICE. Is there some silly policy
that is creating this misrepresentation?
It is the amount you have to pay the last (most expensive) fast gas turbine to
come online to meet demand.
And yes all the other suppliers of electricity get
that final top whack price for their electricity too.
The UK market is rigged in favour of the producers of electricity. It makes green energy Very profitable here since there is no fuel cost once it is installed. Capital investment is huge but running costs low.
And, why is there no "Domestic" price for the UK entry? Along with
other "missing" data in the first graph?
I don't understand your question. UK is fourth line down 31.2p domestic and 29.6 industrial (the latter being a huge outlier cf EU competitors).
Only the UK punishes its industrial base in such a manner.
It looks like Domestic (residential/consumer?) costs are considerably
higher than Industrial (?)
More accurately most sensible countries allow their big industrial users to buy
electricity at a price related to the total cost of production. UK pricing anomaly stems from the dash for gas tightly coupling electricity prices here to
the spot wholesale price on the gas market. It used to be smoothed out by having bulk storage at Rough (but they closed that). It made sense to some bean
counters at the time.
Ukraine war and Russia turning the gas taps off really set the cat among the pigeons see the second price vs time graph. The only reason that it didn't go even higher was government intervention. Obtaining enough gas during the first
winter was touch and go. Lucky it was a very mild winter.
On 4/26/2025 2:51 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 25/04/2025 18:44, Don Y wrote:
On 4/25/2025 9:41 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/04/2025 21:04, Martin Brown wrote:
BBC Verify researchers did a thing recently on global electricity
prices and UK Green Energy. Electricity for most British industry is
insanely expensive (more so than I had thought). Compares a range of
countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
It is titled
"If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren't bills coming down?"
I don't understand "The wholesale cost is set by the last unit of
electricity needed to meet demand from consumers". Surely, this isn't
the ACTUAL cost but, rather, the PRICE. Is there some silly policy
that is creating this misrepresentation?
It is the amount you have to pay the last (most expensive) fast gas
turbine to come online to meet demand.
Yes, but the electricity consumed (sold) prior to that was produced
at a LOWER cost. Does EVERYONE suddenly pay more (for electricity
already made available at a lower cost) when the utility has to draw
on rapid response resources?
And yes all the other suppliers of electricity get that final top
whack price for their electricity too.
The UK market is rigged in favour of the producers of electricity. It
makes green energy Very profitable here since there is no fuel cost
once it is installed. Capital investment is huge but running costs low.
I think that favoring the producer is common in capitalist societies.
One can argue that if they don't make a profit, they won't engage in the activity. Then what?
And, why is there no "Domestic" price for the UK entry? Along with
other "missing" data in the first graph?
I don't understand your question. UK is fourth line down 31.2p
domestic and 29.6 industrial (the latter being a huge outlier cf EU
competitors).
Only the UK punishes its industrial base in such a manner.
The rendering of the chart on my machine shows no numeric associated with
the "Domestic" entries for Ireland, UK, Italy, Austria, Finland, Sweden and Greece. It shows no numeric for the Industrial entries for Ireland, Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg. Though there are scaled bars
for each of these.
Perhaps a browser issue...
It looks like Domestic (residential/consumer?) costs are considerably
higher than Industrial (?)
More accurately most sensible countries allow their big industrial
users to buy electricity at a price related to the total cost of
production. UK pricing anomaly stems from the dash for gas tightly
coupling electricity prices here to the spot wholesale price on the
gas market. It used to be smoothed out by having bulk storage at Rough
(but they closed that). It made sense to some bean counters at the time.
Ukraine war and Russia turning the gas taps off really set the cat
among the pigeons see the second price vs time graph. The only reason
that it didn't go even higher was government intervention. Obtaining
enough gas during the first winter was touch and go. Lucky it was a
very mild winter.
So, is all heat produced by electricity?
I don't understand "The wholesale cost is set by the last unit of
electricity needed to meet demand from consumers". Surely, this isn't >>>> the ACTUAL cost but, rather, the PRICE. Is there some silly policy
that is creating this misrepresentation?
It is the amount you have to pay the last (most expensive) fast gas turbine >>> to come online to meet demand.
Yes, but the electricity consumed (sold) prior to that was produced
at a LOWER cost. Does EVERYONE suddenly pay more (for electricity
already made available at a lower cost) when the utility has to draw
on rapid response resources?
The box shifting middlemen who sit between true electricity producers and the consumers have to pay more. For them to stay in business they have to make a profit and the price they pay for wholesale electricity is determined by the most expensive component at any given time.
Consumers can choose to be on a variable tariff that tracks gas price but most
lock their price in midsummer to a fixed term contract. Likewise for businesses. After Ukraine invasion that became impossible and almost everyone was on spot prices - better deals have come back.
The internal market between electricity "producers" counting battery storage into the mix can actually spike negative! The algorithms used are unstable and
are routinely gamed by the big players.
https://www.nextenergysolarfund.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/NextEnergy-Capital-Insights-Negative-Power-Prices-GB-Wholesale-Energy-Market-Sept-2024.pdf
That is a fairly favourable review. Some of it is justified but a lot of it is
paper profit at the expense of consumers and UK business.
The rendering of the chart on my machine shows no numeric associated with
the "Domestic" entries for Ireland, UK, Italy, Austria, Finland, Sweden and >> Greece. It shows no numeric for the Industrial entries for Ireland, Italy, >> Austria, Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg. Though there are scaled bars
for each of these.
Perhaps a browser issue...
Weird. Old IE wouldn't show any diagrams at all. Opera & Edge was fine.
Ukraine war and Russia turning the gas taps off really set the cat among the
pigeons see the second price vs time graph. The only reason that it didn't >>> go even higher was government intervention. Obtaining enough gas during the >>> first winter was touch and go. Lucky it was a very mild winter.
So, is all heat produced by electricity?
No. Most domestic space and water heating is mains gas (which obviously is also
tightly coupled to the wholesale gas price). The only people using electricity
for heating either have a resistive electric fire to heat a single room they live in (quite rare now) or heat pump based CH.
Our hot water has a resistive immersion heater as backup to oil boiler (mains gas isn't available where I live) even though several of the UK's highest pressure gas pipelines runs nearby.
On 4/26/2025 5:24 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
Our hot water has a resistive immersion heater as backup to oil boiler
(mains gas isn't available where I live) even though several of the
UK's highest pressure gas pipelines runs nearby.
Oil seems a throwback. It was common in New England but I've never encountered it elsewhere.
On 26/04/2025 23:54, Don Y wrote:
On 4/26/2025 5:24 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
Our hot water has a resistive immersion heater as backup to oil boiler
(mains gas isn't available where I live) even though several of the UK's >>> highest pressure gas pipelines runs nearby.
Oil seems a throwback. It was common in New England but I've never
encountered it elsewhere.
It is rare in the UK too. I live in a remote rural area for the UK.
Which in part is why several of the major high pressure pipelines run nearby. Most places do have mains gas supply and that is the UK norm for CH and hot water heating (moves afoot to ban gas & oil boilers though).
https://www.edfenergy.com/heating/advice/uk-boiler-ban
Rules keep changing by the hour so this could be out of date tomorrow.
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