Driving Too Slow...

[Rick C]

On Friday, January 21, 2022 at 9:50:44 AM UTC-5, Ralph Mowery wrote:

In article <8bb80dc1-dffe-44fe...@googlegroups.com>,
gnuarm.del...@gmail.com says...

So storage at night and usage during the day is needed, eh? How much is the current bill for shutting plants? Maybe batteries would be profitable? Or instead of paying them to shut down, maybe change the billing to an increasing kWh rate with higher usage. In my home county the power company gave an aluminum refinery a break
on electric prices (it\'s done by electrolysis, so some electron per atom of aluminum). Some years later the company was looking at a rate hike when the power company ended their price break. The company left for Canada I believe, much better energy costs there. I say good riddance. They used to emit fluorine which would kill
dairy cows when they ate the grass.



In my county in NC there was an aluminum plant that generated its own
power. After about 30 years they shut down the smelting operation and
started selling the power to the grid.

Do they burn coal? Just curious.

--

Rick C.

--+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Cydrome Leader]

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 20:46:49 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 19:30:11 -0500, \"Tom Del Rosso\"
fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

It\'s much worse on a long mountain uphill in a blizzard. You can\'t
even afford to run the heater.

It doesn\'t matter because you won\'t have any type of car when they
finally ban ICE with no intention of building the 200GW of generator
capacity needed to replace them with EV\'s. Hopefully they\'ll establish a
bus route up that mountain.

Once the power grids start to collapse, and people can\'t charge their
Teslas or heat their homes in the winter (which is happening already)
there will be an anti-renewable political reaction.

Of course, experts tell us we\'ll all be dead in nine years.

I had to reming some folks that were excited about electric only homes that
have no gas (some sort of commiefornia and NYC movement) that their
electric probably comes from gas and and mayber 18% coal, but with needing
least 20% more than they\'d need for on-site heating need due to transmission
losses.

It was crickets after that.


Resistive electric heating would be terrible. A heat pump is better.

that\'s what the green retards all want. Resistive heating, or the fantasy of
heat pumps working anywhere in the US.

Thermodynamically, a 1000c or whatever gas flame is inefficiently
coupled to heat house air to 25c. An ideal steam generator and an
ideal heat pump would be far more efficient use of gas.

It\'s perfectly coupled to transfer massive amounts of heat. You sure won\'t
be running any perfect steam boiler off 220F degree \"flames\".

I don\'t know about the real life numbers.

Instead of solar panels, we could have gas fired steam engines, where
the discharge heat warms our domestic air and hot water, and we get
free electricity from the otherwise wasted delta-t. That works when
the sun is down.

I hope you do realize modern gas fired furnaces are something like 95%
efficient. There is no \"waste\" heat to gather, and if you do gather it\'s
going to be of little use. The exhaust is so cool they run it though PVC
pipes which are too flimbsy to even handle drinking water.

I considered adding a heat exchanger from our heater flue gas to the
water heater inlet, but the payoff is small for the effort. In our
climate, we don\'t run the heater a lot.

Bad idea, unless you want corrosion and CO in your living space.

Granted this site is suspiciously professional and vague, but it\'s from the
real emerson electric, so trusty as far as mega conglomerates with little
interest in consumers goes.

https://www.ac-heatingconnect.com/homeowners/hvac-midwest-whats-best-system-home/

so is why we don\'t use heatpumps in the midwest. They\'re useless is the
short story. Nothing produces massive amounts of cheap heat like burning gas
in a furnace. Even if you could partially augment your heating with a
heatpump, I doubt it would be cheaper than gas. Plus, furnaces are cheaper
to replace than central air systems, and a heatpump is basically central
air with some reversing valves to fail. Yeah, there are minisplit systems,
but those are janky to start with, even as a pure AC unit.

If you have the bucks, geothermal heatpumps are fine. I\'ve seen a completely
decked out system of the sort, but it was built by retired engineer, clearly
as a \"project\" more than anything else. The up front costs must have been
immense with something like a mile of buried tubing outside, somewhere.

It\'s 22F outside here right now, so even if I had a heatpump, it would be
frozen over ouside and the gas furnace would still be needed. They just
don\'t make any sense here. Your geography and energy costs will vary. Energy
here is cheap. We have all the electric and all the pipelines.

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, January 21, 2022 at 5:17:38 PM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 20:46:49 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
pres...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 19:30:11 -0500, \"Tom Del Rosso\"
fizzbin...@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

It\'s much worse on a long mountain uphill in a blizzard. You can\'t
even afford to run the heater.

It doesn\'t matter because you won\'t have any type of car when they
finally ban ICE with no intention of building the 200GW of generator
capacity needed to replace them with EV\'s. Hopefully they\'ll establish a
bus route up that mountain.

Once the power grids start to collapse, and people can\'t charge their
Teslas or heat their homes in the winter (which is happening already)
there will be an anti-renewable political reaction.

Of course, experts tell us we\'ll all be dead in nine years.

I had to reming some folks that were excited about electric only homes that
have no gas (some sort of commiefornia and NYC movement) that their
electric probably comes from gas and and mayber 18% coal, but with needing
least 20% more than they\'d need for on-site heating need due to transmission
losses.

It was crickets after that.

Resistive electric heating would be terrible. A heat pump is better.

Thermodynamically, a 1000c or whatever gas flame is inefficiently
coupled to heat house air to 25c. An ideal steam generator and an
ideal heat pump would be far more efficient use of gas.

A gas flame is 100% efficient in heating applications. WTF are you talking about \"coupling\"?

Ideal things tend to be... ideal! Using a gas flame to power a generator which is used to run a heat pump has many inefficiencies. The question is if the heat pump can compensate. I think it is close to a break even, but only at relatively mild temperatures. As the temperature differential increases a heat pump requires more energy to move energy running up the electric bill.


> I don\'t know about the real life numbers.

Exactly.

Instead of solar panels, we could have gas fired steam engines, where
the discharge heat warms our domestic air and hot water, and we get
free electricity from the otherwise wasted delta-t. That works when
the sun is down.

I believe that is called cogeneration and is rather expensive. It is likely also less efficient than the utility. When done at the utility level it is called district heating, but requires some ugly piping to be installed. If not done when the community is built, it is above ground. Very ugly. The University of Maryland used that for many of their buildings. When something broke in the facility they would be down for a week or two. Yeah, 30°F outside and no heat in the dorms!

It might work at night, but only when you the furnace runs or you turn on the hot water tap. I guess if you want to read by a lamp you can run the hot water in the shower. Or maybe you could install a few days worth of batteries to get you through a warm spell? Yeah, big batteries, that\'s much better than being on the grid!

--

Rick C.

--++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, January 21, 2022 at 8:47:22 PM UTC-5, bill....@ieee.org wrote:

On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 9:17:38 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
I considered adding a heat exchanger from our heater flue gas to the
water heater inlet, but the payoff is small for the effort. In our
climate, we don\'t run the heater a lot.
Our central heating system in the Netherlands was gas-fired and produced both our hot water and the hot water that got circulated through our central heating radiators. The gas-fired boiler had a remarkably efficient heat exchange to get the heat from the gas it burned into the hot water that got circulated.

The only restriction on how much heat you can extract from a flame is the temperature required to make the flue gasses flow through the flue and the cost of the enhanced equipment to extract more of the heat. In power plants I\'ve read they use as many as three sets of turbines to get as much energy as possible from the heat source. Each one optimized for a different temperature.

The North Anna nuclear facility has a 1 MW generator on the dam that creates Lake Anna, the cooling pond for the nuclear reactors. Apparently it was required to justify the construction of the dam on that river, I was told. Go figure.

https://www.dominionenergy.com/projects-and-facilities/hydroelectric-power-facilities-and-projects/north-anna-hydro-power-station

I might be in that picture. I can\'t tell for sure, but I might be in the blue kayak behind two other kayaks in front of the dam.

--

Rick C.

-+-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Ralph Mowery]

In article <ce65e413-ee49-4b20-92eb-7d7197ee50c4n@googlegroups.com>,
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com says...

In my county in NC there was an aluminum plant that generated its own
power. After about 30 years they shut down the smelting operation and
started selling the power to the grid.

Do they burn coal? Just curious.

They built a dam and used water power. Found out they could sell
electricity for more than the aluminum profit.

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2022-01-21, John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 20:46:49 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 19:30:11 -0500, \"Tom Del Rosso\"
fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

It\'s much worse on a long mountain uphill in a blizzard. You can\'t
even afford to run the heater.

It doesn\'t matter because you won\'t have any type of car when they
finally ban ICE with no intention of building the 200GW of generator
capacity needed to replace them with EV\'s. Hopefully they\'ll establish a
bus route up that mountain.

Once the power grids start to collapse, and people can\'t charge their
Teslas or heat their homes in the winter (which is happening already)
there will be an anti-renewable political reaction.

Of course, experts tell us we\'ll all be dead in nine years.

I had to reming some folks that were excited about electric only homes that
have no gas (some sort of commiefornia and NYC movement) that their
electric probably comes from gas and and mayber 18% coal, but with needing
least 20% more than they\'d need for on-site heating need due to transmission
losses.

It was crickets after that.


Resistive electric heating would be terrible. A heat pump is better.

Thermodynamically, a 1000c or whatever gas flame is inefficiently
coupled to heat house air to 25c. An ideal steam generator and an
ideal heat pump would be far more efficient use of gas.

I don\'t know about the real life numbers.

A codensing furnace is nearly 100% efficient, so coupling fossil-fuel
heat directly to home air is a solved problem, with off-the-shelf
solutions.

Coefficient of performance for a typical heat pump is 2 to 4.5
thermal power stations are about 30-60% efficient

So it should be possiible to get more heat by burning fuel in a power
station and using a heat pump.

Instead of solar panels, we could have gas fired steam engines, where
the discharge heat warms our domestic air and hot water, and we get
free electricity from the otherwise wasted delta-t. That works when
the sun is down.

This is already a thing called \"district heat\".

Solar molten salt thermal generation also works when the sun is down
and produces waste heat. but unlike photovoltaic, it doesnt collect
energy at all when it\'s cloudy (or when it\'s night obviously)

I considered adding a heat exchanger from our heater flue gas to the
water heater inlet, but the payoff is small for the effort. In our
climate, we don\'t run the heater a lot.

It would probably only a be a win when you\'re running the heat at the
same time as the water. I guess you could use a thermal siphon (or a
more bulky heat exchanger) and pre-heat a tank of water.

--
Jasen.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 1:34:12 PM UTC+11, Cydrome Leader wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 20:46:49 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader <pres...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 19:30:11 -0500, \"Tom Del Rosso\" <fizzbin...@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

<snip>
\'

Resistive electric heating would be terrible. A heat pump is better.
that\'s what the green retards all want. Resistive heating, or the fantasy of
heat pumps working anywhere in the US.

The retard here is Cydrome Leader, who seems to think that here is only one kind of heat pump.

With the right working fluid, and the right design, heat pumps can work anywhere or at least anywhere where anybody lives.

If they are working a across a large temperature difference, you don\'t as many watts of heat per watt of electrical input as you do with a smaller difference, and they aren\'t as attractive, but they still work.

Thermodynamically, a 1000c or whatever gas flame is inefficiently
coupled to heat house air to 25c. An ideal steam generator and an
ideal heat pump would be far more efficient use of gas.

It\'s perfectly coupled to transfer massive amounts of heat. You sure won\'t
be running any perfect steam boiler off 220F degree \"flames\".
I don\'t know about the real life numbers.

Instead of solar panels, we could have gas fired steam engines, where
the discharge heat warms our domestic air and hot water, and we get
free electricity from the otherwise wasted delta-t. That works when
the sun is down.

I hope you do realize modern gas fired furnaces are something like 95%
efficient. There is no \"waste\" heat to gather, and if you do gather it\'s
going to be of little use. The exhaust is so cool they run it though PVC
pipes which are too flimsy to even handle drinking water.

I considered adding a heat exchanger from our heater flue gas to the
water heater inlet, but the payoff is small for the effort. In our
climate, we don\'t run the heater a lot.

Bad idea, unless you want corrosion and CO in your living space.

The heat exchanger won\'t leak carbon monoxide. If you condense out water onto the flue gas side of you heat exchanger you do have to pick construction materials that won\'t corrode. With Cydrome Leader\'s design skills that might not happen, but it should,

Granted this site is suspiciously professional and vague, but it\'s from the
real emerson electric, so trusty as far as mega conglomerates with little
interest in consumers goes.

https://www.ac-heatingconnect.com/homeowners/hvac-midwest-whats-best-system-home/

so is why we don\'t use heatpumps in the midwest. They\'re useless is the
short story. Nothing produces massive amounts of cheap heat like burning gas
in a furnace. Even if you could partially augment your heating with a
heatpump, I doubt it would be cheaper than gas. Plus, furnaces are cheaper
to replace than central air systems, and a heatpump is basically central
air with some reversing valves to fail. Yeah, there are minisplit systems,
but those are janky to start with, even as a pure AC unit.

Or to put it more briefly, Cydrome Leader doesnm\'t know what he is talking about.

If you have the bucks, geothermal heatpumps are fine. I\'ve seen a completely
decked out system of the sort, but it was built by retired engineer, clearly
as a \"project\" more than anything else. The up front costs must have been
immense with something like a mile of buried tubing outside, somewhere.

It\'s 22F outside here right now, so even if I had a heatpump, it would be
frozen over outside and the gas furnace would still be needed.

Why wound it be \"frozen over\"? If it\'s cooler than the outside air it might pick up a layer of frost, but reversing the heat flow briefly to melt the frost for long enough for it to drip off is trivial to implement. As usual Cydrome Leader doesn\'t know enough about what he is talking about.

> They just don\'t make any sense here.

If you haven\'t got much sense to start with

> Your geography and energy costs will vary. Energy here is cheap. We have all the electric and all the pipelines.

But not all that many super-insulated houses. Cydrome Leader isn\'t the only local who hasn\'t got much sense.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, January 21, 2022 at 11:23:01 PM UTC-5, Ralph Mowery wrote:

In article <ce65e413-ee49-4b20...@googlegroups.com>,
gnuarm.del...@gmail.com says...

In my county in NC there was an aluminum plant that generated its own
power. After about 30 years they shut down the smelting operation and
started selling the power to the grid.

Do they burn coal? Just curious.



They built a dam and used water power. Found out they could sell
electricity for more than the aluminum profit.

That would mean the electricity is so expensive if they had to buy it to make the aluminum they would lose money! Does no one in the UK make aluminum now?

--

Rick C.

-+-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 1:01:18 AM UTC-5, Jasen Betts wrote:

On 2022-01-21, John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 20:46:49 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
pres...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 19:30:11 -0500, \"Tom Del Rosso\"
fizzbin...@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

It\'s much worse on a long mountain uphill in a blizzard. You can\'t
even afford to run the heater.

It doesn\'t matter because you won\'t have any type of car when they
finally ban ICE with no intention of building the 200GW of generator
capacity needed to replace them with EV\'s. Hopefully they\'ll establish a
bus route up that mountain.

Once the power grids start to collapse, and people can\'t charge their
Teslas or heat their homes in the winter (which is happening already)
there will be an anti-renewable political reaction.

Of course, experts tell us we\'ll all be dead in nine years.

I had to reming some folks that were excited about electric only homes that
have no gas (some sort of commiefornia and NYC movement) that their
electric probably comes from gas and and mayber 18% coal, but with needing
least 20% more than they\'d need for on-site heating need due to transmission
losses.

It was crickets after that.


Resistive electric heating would be terrible. A heat pump is better.

Thermodynamically, a 1000c or whatever gas flame is inefficiently
coupled to heat house air to 25c. An ideal steam generator and an
ideal heat pump would be far more efficient use of gas.

I don\'t know about the real life numbers.
A codensing furnace is nearly 100% efficient, so coupling fossil-fuel
heat directly to home air is a solved problem, with off-the-shelf
solutions.

Coefficient of performance for a typical heat pump is 2 to 4.5
thermal power stations are about 30-60% efficient

So it should be possiible to get more heat by burning fuel in a power
station and using a heat pump.

You didn\'t factor in the transportation cost of the electricity. The losses are not large, but it starts eating into the CoP margin. The real issue is the cost of the installation. A heat pump requires backup heat for when it\'s not very effective such as low temps but also for removing ice from the coils. To do that they run it in air conditioner mode and run the backup heat to keep the house from cooling off.

Heat pumps are tricky to get a fix on their true effectiveness. The CoP only covers the normal operation of the heat pump basic function. In the US they invented a measure to factor in all inefficiencies called SEER. But there\'s no useful way to turn the SEER number into something technically useful other than just comparing it to the value for other units.

Instead of solar panels, we could have gas fired steam engines, where
the discharge heat warms our domestic air and hot water, and we get
free electricity from the otherwise wasted delta-t. That works when
the sun is down.
This is already a thing called \"district heat\".

Solar molten salt thermal generation also works when the sun is down
and produces waste heat. but unlike photovoltaic, it doesnt collect
energy at all when it\'s cloudy (or when it\'s night obviously)
I considered adding a heat exchanger from our heater flue gas to the
water heater inlet, but the payoff is small for the effort. In our
climate, we don\'t run the heater a lot.
It would probably only a be a win when you\'re running the heat at the
same time as the water. I guess you could use a thermal siphon (or a
more bulky heat exchanger) and pre-heat a tank of water.

Yes, more complexity is great! To heat water in a tank, I would use solar heat to reduce the primary heating source. These can be very inexpensive and very cost effective.

--

Rick C.

-++- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 22/01/22 02:30, Rick C wrote:

On Friday, January 21, 2022 at 6:47:21 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:
So high in fact that some major UK industries shut down production
completely which then caused a nationwide shortage of CO2. They had to
be bribed by the government to restart fertiliser production and have
been charging a massive premium off their customers ever since.

https://www.ft.com/content/991db1b7-ab0e-49fb-999c-3bf5bef2a93a

Can\'t get past the pay wall. But I think this is a joke, right? CO2 production???

No joke. Widely publicised. Wide gaps on supermarket shelves
where carbonated drinks should be displayed.

I don\'t think it quite reached the stage of screwing meat production
where CO2 is used to stun/kill the animals. Brexit and \"reclaiming
control of our borders was sufficient for that.

The very idea of a government \"bribing\" a company to produce material, when
they can gouge on price, is insane. What sort of asylum is the UK again?

Deregulated with the aim of minimising prices (sotto voce: in the
short term), and run by a court jester.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 20/01/22 11:28, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 3:57:27 AM UTC-5, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 20/01/22 02:07, Rick C wrote:
On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 5:06:26 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:

The *big* problem in the UK is that there are plenty of non working
chargers shown as working on the various apps! Many tales of woe even in
the south where they are relatively plentiful. Up north you are stuffed.

The supercharging hubs they have built are unable to get supply so are
nothing more than useless boondoggles. This one near me is useless:

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/19839979.yorks-flagship-electric-vehicle-charging-hub-still-not-open/

It\'s a joke. Opening was cancelled yet again. No electricity!
(which is a bit of a serious problem for a charging station)

The article talks about \"legal agreements\" rather than actual access to the
grid. You make it sound as if they simply don\'t have a grid for them to
connect to. Do you have more details on just what the issue is?
I don\'t have knowledge of this particular case, but \"legal agreement\"
could mean anything. A couple of options are:
- insufficient local capacity in the network to charge 30 cars
at full rate
- arguments about who pays for a network upgrade to allow that
- rights of way problems for upgrading
- etc

Ok, but you are just making this up as you go. No basis for any of it.

No more than you do.

At least _I_ clearly delineate the limits of my knowledge of
the specific facts.

Martin Brown clearly states where /you/ just make things up
out of sheer ignorance. I have done the same in the past,
and /eventually/ you began to concede that your personal
experience does not translate into the rest of the world.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 21/01/22 05:38, Rick C wrote:

Yeah, I\'ve heard. I made the mistake of getting into a discussion about EVs
in a UK ham radio group. There were those who thought EVs are impossible in
the UK for many, many reasons including the impossibility of finding a way to
charge in the sense of \"where do you put all the outlets\"? They sent me
pictures of cars parked half on sidewalks as the norm making curb side
charging impractical as if that was very commonplace

Oh, you have \"forgotten\" the pictures I posted when you
previously claimed charging EVs was easy.

A couple of examples from my local knowledge...

Yesterday I was looking at houses for my daughter in Cardiff,
the capital city of Wales. Here\'s one, where not only is parking
outside the house illegal (see the zig-zag lines), but we had
to park on a different street 100 yards away.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.486144,-3.1470046,3a,75y,39.05h,87.19t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjw4PVbayoLiJXAUEIcjjPg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Here\'s another, in an expensive part of a city with large
conservation areas. Please indicate how a top floor flat
resident would charge their car.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4695176,-2.6173275,3a,75y,9.71h,98.29t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sw-bqPg3m9lsW_d_NOf_AXw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

My parent\'s house there /does/ have a driveway. That\'s a
/major/ selling feature, and is worth a /lot/ of money.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 21/01/22 23:31, Rick C wrote:

LOL!!! All this time and you have learned NOTHING about EVs. Or maybe you
are just a troll. Here, one more time I will explain it to you like you are
a 10 year old.

You can charge an EV from the same outlet you run your kettle on.

You are the one who has learned nothing.

In many parts of the UK your outlet would be hundreds of yards
away on a different street, and often 100ft in the air. In such
places there\'s little possibility of installing a public charging
point due to lack of space on the pavement, number required,
and sheer cost - let alone being in conservation areas.

The same is true in many European cities, and I probably Asian
cities.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 22/01/22 07:32, Rick C wrote:

On Friday, January 21, 2022 at 11:23:01 PM UTC-5, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article <ce65e413-ee49-4b20...@googlegroups.com>,
gnuarm.del...@gmail.com says...

In my county in NC there was an aluminum plant that generated its own
power. After about 30 years they shut down the smelting operation and
started selling the power to the grid.

Do they burn coal? Just curious.



They built a dam and used water power. Found out they could sell
electricity for more than the aluminum profit.

That would mean the electricity is so expensive if they had to buy it to
make the aluminum they would lose money! Does no one in the UK make
aluminum now?

No.

We import it from places with cheap hydro, e.g. Iceland.

Three years ago, Britain’s last major aluminium smelter,
Lynemouth, was closed. This followed the closure of the
Anglesey plant in 2009.

An industry, that used to boast of production figures of
300,000 tonnes a year, is now reduced to the tiny Lochaber
plant, rated at 43000 tonnes.

The reasons for these closures was well documented at the time,
and the major one was high energy costs, largely due to UK
climate policies.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/the-decline-of-the-uk-aluminium-industry/

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 20/01/22 12:37, Arnie Dwyer (ex Jan Frank) wrote:

Martin Brown <\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

Basically in London and the SE there is enough physical infrastructure
for EVs to make sense (but almost zero electricity generating capacity).

In the North I would have to drive around 50 miles (a long way in the
UK) to my nearest public supercharger. The physically nearest private
one is about 5 miles away at a very high end country house hotel. Snag
is they expect you to dine there and stay the night to have use of it.

Rural mains is nowhere near the capacity needed to handle everyone with
a nightly 7kW load. Several larger farms and businesses around me have
their own diesel generator kit because the local network cannot supply
all of the electricity they need to operate at some times of year.

So you have to continue using ICE? How are you going to sustain population
growth, let alone meet your global warming commitments?

That would require joined-up thinking and forward planning
from politicians that believe free markets will solve all
problems.

Hence it is highly unlikely

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 6:41:48 PM UTC+11, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:

On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 1:01:18 AM UTC-5, Jasen Betts wrote:
On 2022-01-21, John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 20:46:49 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader <pres...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:
John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 19:30:11 -0500, \"Tom Del Rosso\" <fizzbin...@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

<snip>

> You didn\'t factor in the transportation cost of the electricity. The losses are not large, but it starts eating into the CoP margin. The real issue is the cost of the installation. A heat pump requires backup heat for when it\'s not very effective such as low temps but also for removing ice from the coils. To do that they run it in air conditioner mode and run the backup heat to keep the house from cooling off.

Actually, they don\'t or at least they don\'t have to. In Australia most air-conditioning systems as touted as \"reverse cycle systems\". You can run the compressor in reverse so it while it can cool the house in summer, it can also be used to warm it in winter. This doesn\'t require any mechanical reconfiguration (or at least nothing that asks me to do more than select the right option on the controller). If you want to de-ice the coils you reverse-cycle it briefly. Cools the house a little in the process, but not for long enough for you to notice.

<snip>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 22/01/2022 07:32, Rick C wrote:

On Friday, January 21, 2022 at 11:23:01 PM UTC-5, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article <ce65e413-ee49-4b20...@googlegroups.com>,
gnuarm.del...@gmail.com says...

In my county in NC there was an aluminum plant that generated its own
power. After about 30 years they shut down the smelting operation and
started selling the power to the grid.

Do they burn coal? Just curious.

They built a dam and used water power. Found out they could sell
electricity for more than the aluminum profit.

That would mean the electricity is so expensive if they had to buy it to make the aluminum they would lose money! Does no one in the UK make aluminum now?

I think there may still be one plant operating in Scotland still limping
along but they would be better off shutting it down and just selling the
electricity right now!

https://miningglobal.com/smart-mining/pound330m-purchase-sole-aluminium-smelter-uk-opens-door-industry

It seems to be still operating according to Scotland info:

https://www.scottish-places.info/features/featurefirst10539.html

The last really big Alcan one in England closed down a decade ago. Not
economic to make aluminium with UK electricity. They were a victim of
the 2008 financial crisis recession backwash (orders down >80%).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-17545827

RTZ pulled the plug (literally). Steel making largely gone the same way.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[David Brown]

On 21/01/2022 23:15, John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 20:46:49 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 19:30:11 -0500, \"Tom Del Rosso\"
fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

It\'s much worse on a long mountain uphill in a blizzard. You can\'t
even afford to run the heater.

It doesn\'t matter because you won\'t have any type of car when they
finally ban ICE with no intention of building the 200GW of generator
capacity needed to replace them with EV\'s. Hopefully they\'ll establish a
bus route up that mountain.

Once the power grids start to collapse, and people can\'t charge their
Teslas or heat their homes in the winter (which is happening already)
there will be an anti-renewable political reaction.

Of course, experts tell us we\'ll all be dead in nine years.

I had to reming some folks that were excited about electric only homes that
have no gas (some sort of commiefornia and NYC movement) that their
electric probably comes from gas and and mayber 18% coal, but with needing
least 20% more than they\'d need for on-site heating need due to transmission
losses.

It was crickets after that.


Resistive electric heating would be terrible. A heat pump is better.

Resistive heating is the baseline - it is 100% efficient, with all the
electrical energy being turned into heat. Heat pumps do better -
providing more heat energy where you want it (in the house) than the
electrical energy in.

Resistive heating is used all the time, all over the world, for all
kinds of heating applications.

Thermodynamically, a 1000c or whatever gas flame is inefficiently
coupled to heat house air to 25c.

That makes no sense. You can go from high temperature to low
temperature with pretty close to perfect efficiency - it\'s the opposite
direction that is inefficient.

An ideal steam generator and an
ideal heat pump would be far more efficient use of gas.

There are no such things. (Have a little read-up on Carnot\'s law.)

I don\'t know about the real life numbers.

Instead of solar panels, we could have gas fired steam engines, where
the discharge heat warms our domestic air and hot water, and we get
free electricity from the otherwise wasted delta-t. That works when
the sun is down.

You can certainly use waste heat from thermoelectric generation for
domestic heating. There are limits to the efficiency, but you would get
more total useful energy from the same source fuel. Whether that is
worth the costs involved in making the infrastructure and transporting
the heat from source to homes is another matter. In most places the
power stations are far from where that water could be used, and by the
time you have got the useful energy out of the water it is no longer
that hot. Remember, you have to physically transport the water. How do
you intend to get the waste water at, say, 80°C a distance of 10 km
without losing more than about 15°C along the way?

I considered adding a heat exchanger from our heater flue gas to the
water heater inlet, but the payoff is small for the effort. In our
climate, we don\'t run the heater a lot.

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 4:36:03 AM UTC-5, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 22/01/22 02:30, Rick C wrote:
On Friday, January 21, 2022 at 6:47:21 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:
So high in fact that some major UK industries shut down production
completely which then caused a nationwide shortage of CO2. They had to
be bribed by the government to restart fertiliser production and have
been charging a massive premium off their customers ever since.

https://www.ft.com/content/991db1b7-ab0e-49fb-999c-3bf5bef2a93a

Can\'t get past the pay wall. But I think this is a joke, right? CO2 production???
No joke. Widely publicised. Wide gaps on supermarket shelves
where carbonated drinks should be displayed.

I don\'t think it quite reached the stage of screwing meat production
where CO2 is used to stun/kill the animals. Brexit and \"reclaiming
control of our borders was sufficient for that.

Why would it ever have any impact on anything? Is the UK incapable of changing gears and buying CO2 from other countries? Maybe you need a channel pipeline to transport it? LOL

The very idea of a government \"bribing\" a company to produce material, when
they can gouge on price, is insane. What sort of asylum is the UK again?
Deregulated with the aim of minimising prices (sotto voce: in the
short term), and run by a court jester.

If it is deregulated no one is \"running\" it. Deregulation is fine as long as it\'s not a monopoly and there\'s no reason CF should have a monopoly. Didn\'t the UK travel the world establishing colonies? Now they are being mugged by a CO2 producer because the UK can\'t figure out how the ship in CO2? The world is laughing at this one!

Ah, it all makes sense now. CF is a US company. Most likely the groundwork for this started when Trmp was in office setting the tone of ripping off everyone and anyone.

Actually, I found an article about it and CF shut down production because the feedstock became expensive enough to make CO2 production unprofitable. I suppose CO2 prices had not risen. But if that is so, it means there are other sources of CO2 for the UK that are keeping the price down. Now this makes no sense at all. But here is the explanation, \"The agreement with the company will last for three weeks whilst the CO2 market adapts to the global gas prices\". So it is just a stop gap measure.

Who coined the phrase, \"Much Ado About Nothing\"? I should have known.

--

Rick C.

-+++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 4:48:46 AM UTC-5, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 20/01/22 11:28, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 3:57:27 AM UTC-5, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 20/01/22 02:07, Rick C wrote:
On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 5:06:26 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:

The *big* problem in the UK is that there are plenty of non working
chargers shown as working on the various apps! Many tales of woe even in
the south where they are relatively plentiful. Up north you are stuffed.

The supercharging hubs they have built are unable to get supply so are
nothing more than useless boondoggles. This one near me is useless:

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/19839979.yorks-flagship-electric-vehicle-charging-hub-still-not-open/

It\'s a joke. Opening was cancelled yet again. No electricity!
(which is a bit of a serious problem for a charging station)

The article talks about \"legal agreements\" rather than actual access to the
grid. You make it sound as if they simply don\'t have a grid for them to
connect to. Do you have more details on just what the issue is?
I don\'t have knowledge of this particular case, but \"legal agreement\"
could mean anything. A couple of options are:
- insufficient local capacity in the network to charge 30 cars
at full rate
- arguments about who pays for a network upgrade to allow that
- rights of way problems for upgrading
- etc

Ok, but you are just making this up as you go. No basis for any of it.

No more than you do.

At least _I_ clearly delineate the limits of my knowledge of
the specific facts.

Except you didn\'t. You talked about \"tariffs\" and other nonsense which you simply made up.

Stop the BS now!

--

Rick C.

+--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209