Electricity rates in Texas skyrocket amid statewide heat wave...

[Ricky]

On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 4:43:18 PM UTC-4, jeroen wrote:

On 2023-08-10 22:29, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 4:12:45 PM UTC-4, jeroen wrote:
On 2023-08-10 16:00, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Thu, 10 Aug 2023 06:07:28 -0700 (PDT)) it
happened Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote in
8eccedc6-e749-4220...@googlegroups.com>:

On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 5:10:56 AM UTC-4, Martin
Brown wrot= e:
On 09/08/2023 23:15, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at 3:39:12 PM UTC-4, Ricky
wrote:=

On Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at 12:20:40 PM UTC-4, Fred
Bloggs=
wrote:
That\'s not hyperbole, it\'s almost understatement.

\"Texans were paying about $275 per megawatt-hour for
power on Saturda=
y then the cost rose more than 800% to a whopping $2,500 per
megawatt-hour = on Sunday, Bloomberg reported, citing data from
the Electric Reliability Co= uncil of Texas (ERCOT). Prices so
far on Monday have topped off at $915 per= megawatt-hour. \"

$2500 per Mwh is $2.50/kWh which is a LOT, and
ridiculous. It goes be=
yond getting people to conserve, it kills them. And since when
can Texas po= wer even change the rates on the fly like that?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ercot-prices-texas-heat-wave-electricity=


/
I\'m pretty sure these rates are not unusual at the
wholesale level. In=
a discussion here a few years ago, someone posted a link that
allowed acce= ss to wholesale rates by the minute. Peak rates
reached some very high numb= ers. Of course, those rates would
only apply to the additional power requir= ed at peak times, so
not to all the power being used.

I would hate to pay even $275 per MWh. That\'s almost
enough to make me=
charge my car at a public charger.

Those are retail rates.
Boggle!

Texas must have the world\'s most complicated electricity
billing system=

if it can vary consumer prices dynamically by the hour to
reflect local=

demand vs power availability in realtime.

There are moves afoot in the UK with smart meters to do
dynamic pricing=

but so far it has been mainly used as inverse. Providing an
incentive to=

people to not use power at peak times of day when the margin
between electricity generation and load is very tight.

Typically on cold windless grey dismal winter\'s days.

Exactly. How could it possibly be an incentive to conserve when
people don\'= t even know what the rate is. And I wonder if they
will even accept a homeo= wners time stamped energy use record
to adjust what would be a huge bill. T= hey\'re talking about a
normally monthly $500 bill going to about $2500 in a= single
month!

They have to be doing a blanket effective rate calculation for
the billing:

T is total billing cycle hours, R is $/kWh, R1 is temporary
rate for T1 hou= rs, R2 for T2 etc... Then the effective rate
for all the billing is Reff

Reff= (R1 x T1 + R2 x T2 +....+Rn x Tn)/ (T1 + T2 + ... + Tn
=T)

Meter reading for consumer is E kWh, $= Reff X E

Actually that should work out pretty well except for people on
solar during= peak demand periods.

If it was any place other than Texas, the power company would
be on the car= pet explaining in great and auditable detail the
justification for horrendo= us cost increase to the state
corporation commission.

We had, in the sixties, a big tank with oil in the garden for the
central heating system. These days maybe a portable diesel
generator would be a good idea in Texas. And solar panels with
some storage of course.

I think that heating oil is so dirty it would kill a diesel in no
time flat and fuel fit for diesels is taxed to death, so there is
no bliss that way.

\"Dirty\"??? The different grades of petroleum differ in their boiling
point. They are all separated in fractional distillation. The only
grade that would be \"dirty\" (if any) would be the bunker fuel oil
that is essentially the stuff that never boils off at all. I think
this is the bit that fuels ships and the distillation itself.

That\'s simplistic. Heating oil is made unsuitable for use in engines
*on purpose* for the same reason that most of the world\'s ethanol is
made unsuitable for drinking: taxes.

Heating oil is not unsuitable for use in diesel engines. It will work just fine. The only issue you might have is the fuel gelling at a higher temperature. Otherwise, it\'s the same stuff! The only thing that makes it \"unsuitable\" for use in diesel engines is the red coloring they add.

Very few people actually understand much about how fuel is produced from crude oil, in spite of the fact that it\'s just distillation.

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Don Y]

On 8/10/2023 1:12 PM, jeroen wrote:

I think that heating oil is so dirty it would kill a diesel in no time
flat and fuel fit for diesels is taxed to death, so there is no bliss
that way.

Heating oil is full of crud because of how it is treated AFTER manufacture.
I don\'t know many people who purchase their \"virgin\" fuels AT refineries! :>

There are national chains that will sell gasoline, diesel, E85, etc.
They have standards that they can impose on their outlets. They
have a reputation to protect so customers will be assured that
the product purchased by their Oregon outlet will be of the same
quality as that purchased in West Virginia.

But, heating oil is most often sold by small operators whose
suppliers may vary from week to week. Additionally, the effort
that they put into ensuring the quality of their DELIVERED
product only adds to their costs (heating oil is DELIVERED
meaning the vendor has to operate a fleet of trucks and drivers
to bring the product TO the customer; diesel is purchased
by the consumer coming *to* the distribution site. When was
the last time you drove *up* to a vendor and asked for 150
gallons of heating oil?)

And, as the vendor (the guy YOU purchase from) may have some
uncertainty in his market (people tend to be really conscious
of heating oil prices because they are buying it in large
volumes... not just a few gallons at a time), he may be as
much a \"victim\" as his customers: \"Wow, that was a shitty
batch! We\'ll never buy from them again!\" -- which is likely
what his customers are saying about *him*!

There is a reason you have an annual furnace cleaning and routinely
inspect the sediment cup/filter on your tank. If the fuel was
pristine, neither of these would be AS necessary.

Folks are often laughably naive in expecting two products to be
identical just because they carry the same generic name. Milk
is milk? Gasoline is gasoline? (do you really think they can
have different prices/costs if EVERYTHING about them is identical?)

I\'ve a friend who pays almost a dollar more, per gallon, to
buy his gasoline from a national brand instead of the local
discount suppliers (like Costco). In addition to the added
cost, there is the inconvenience of having to drive to that
vendor, passing several other opportunities along the way.

He had *one* bad experience with clogged injectors that he
blamed on his use of Costco gas and made the switch. He\'s
not had a repeat problem and figures the added cost of the
fuel is more than offset by having use of his vehicle without
extra shop visits (and costs).

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Thu, 10 Aug 2023 22:12:36 +0200, jeroen <jeroen@nospam.please>
wrote:

On 2023-08-10 16:00, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Thu, 10 Aug 2023 06:07:28 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote in
8eccedc6-e749-4220-8334-588e263140e6n@googlegroups.com>:

On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 5:10:56 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrot=
e:
On 09/08/2023 23:15, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at 3:39:12 PM UTC-4, Ricky wrote:=

On Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at 12:20:40 PM UTC-4, Fred Bloggs=
wrote:
That\'s not hyperbole, it\'s almost understatement.

\"Texans were paying about $275 per megawatt-hour for power on Saturda=
y then the cost rose more than 800% to a whopping $2,500 per megawatt-hour =
on Sunday, Bloomberg reported, citing data from the Electric Reliability Co=
uncil of Texas (ERCOT). Prices so far on Monday have topped off at $915 per=
megawatt-hour. \"

$2500 per Mwh is $2.50/kWh which is a LOT, and ridiculous. It goes be=
yond getting people to conserve, it kills them. And since when can Texas po=
wer even change the rates on the fly like that?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ercot-prices-texas-heat-wave-electricity=
/
I\'m pretty sure these rates are not unusual at the wholesale level. In=
a discussion here a few years ago, someone posted a link that allowed acce=
ss to wholesale rates by the minute. Peak rates reached some very high numb=
ers. Of course, those rates would only apply to the additional power requir=
ed at peak times, so not to all the power being used.

I would hate to pay even $275 per MWh. That\'s almost enough to make me=
charge my car at a public charger.

Those are retail rates.
Boggle!

Texas must have the world\'s most complicated electricity billing system=

if it can vary consumer prices dynamically by the hour to reflect local=

demand vs power availability in realtime.

There are moves afoot in the UK with smart meters to do dynamic pricing=

but so far it has been mainly used as inverse. Providing an incentive to=

people to not use power at peak times of day when the margin between
electricity generation and load is very tight.

Typically on cold windless grey dismal winter\'s days.

Exactly. How could it possibly be an incentive to conserve when people don\'=
t even know what the rate is. And I wonder if they will even accept a homeo=
wners time stamped energy use record to adjust what would be a huge bill. T=
hey\'re talking about a normally monthly $500 bill going to about $2500 in a=
single month!

They have to be doing a blanket effective rate calculation for the billing:

T is total billing cycle hours, R is $/kWh, R1 is temporary rate for T1 hou=
rs, R2 for T2 etc... Then the effective rate for all the billing is Reff

Reff= (R1 x T1 + R2 x T2 +....+Rn x Tn)/ (T1 + T2 + ... + Tn =T)

Meter reading for consumer is E kWh, $= Reff X E

Actually that should work out pretty well except for people on solar during=
peak demand periods.

If it was any place other than Texas, the power company would be on the car=
pet explaining in great and auditable detail the justification for horrendo=
us cost increase to the state corporation commission.

We had, in the sixties, a big tank with oil in the garden for the central heating system.
These days maybe a portable diesel generator would be a good idea in Texas.
And solar panels with some storage of course.



I think that heating oil is so dirty it would kill a diesel in no time
flat and fuel fit for diesels is taxed to death, so there is no bliss
that way.

In the US, domestic heating oil and diesel fuel are essentially
identical, and there are all manner of rules and laws preventing
people from using heating oil in cars and trucks. I gather from
Martin Brown that the UK has a similar scheme.

Joe Gwinn

 

[jeroen]

On 2023-08-10 23:51, Ricky wrote:

On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 4:43:18 PM UTC-4, jeroen wrote:
On 2023-08-10 22:29, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 4:12:45 PM UTC-4, jeroen wrote:
On 2023-08-10 16:00, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Thu, 10 Aug 2023 06:07:28 -0700 (PDT)) it
happened Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote in
8eccedc6-e749-4220...@googlegroups.com>:

On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 5:10:56 AM UTC-4, Martin
Brown wrot= e:
On 09/08/2023 23:15, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at 3:39:12 PM UTC-4,
Ricky wrote:=

On Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at 12:20:40 PM UTC-4,
Fred Bloggs=
wrote:
That\'s not hyperbole, it\'s almost understatement.

\"Texans were paying about $275 per megawatt-hour
for power on Saturda=
y then the cost rose more than 800% to a whopping $2,500
per megawatt-hour = on Sunday, Bloomberg reported, citing
data from the Electric Reliability Co= uncil of Texas
(ERCOT). Prices so far on Monday have topped off at $915
per= megawatt-hour. \"

$2500 per Mwh is $2.50/kWh which is a LOT, and
ridiculous. It goes be=
yond getting people to conserve, it kills them. And since
when can Texas po= wer even change the rates on the fly
like that?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ercot-prices-texas-heat-wave-electricity=




/
I\'m pretty sure these rates are not unusual at the
wholesale level. In=
a discussion here a few years ago, someone posted a link
that allowed acce= ss to wholesale rates by the minute.
Peak rates reached some very high numb= ers. Of course,
those rates would only apply to the additional power
requir= ed at peak times, so not to all the power being
used.

I would hate to pay even $275 per MWh. That\'s almost
enough to make me=
charge my car at a public charger.

Those are retail rates.
Boggle!

Texas must have the world\'s most complicated electricity
billing system=

if it can vary consumer prices dynamically by the hour
to reflect local=

demand vs power availability in realtime.

There are moves afoot in the UK with smart meters to do
dynamic pricing=

but so far it has been mainly used as inverse. Providing
an incentive to=

people to not use power at peak times of day when the
margin between electricity generation and load is very
tight.

Typically on cold windless grey dismal winter\'s days.

Exactly. How could it possibly be an incentive to conserve
when people don\'= t even know what the rate is. And I
wonder if they will even accept a homeo= wners time stamped
energy use record to adjust what would be a huge bill. T=
hey\'re talking about a normally monthly $500 bill going to
about $2500 in a= single month!

They have to be doing a blanket effective rate calculation
for the billing:

T is total billing cycle hours, R is $/kWh, R1 is
temporary rate for T1 hou= rs, R2 for T2 etc... Then the
effective rate for all the billing is Reff

Reff= (R1 x T1 + R2 x T2 +....+Rn x Tn)/ (T1 + T2 + ... +
Tn =T)

Meter reading for consumer is E kWh, $= Reff X E

Actually that should work out pretty well except for people
on solar during= peak demand periods.

If it was any place other than Texas, the power company
would be on the car= pet explaining in great and auditable
detail the justification for horrendo= us cost increase to
the state corporation commission.

We had, in the sixties, a big tank with oil in the garden for
the central heating system. These days maybe a portable
diesel generator would be a good idea in Texas. And solar
panels with some storage of course.

I think that heating oil is so dirty it would kill a diesel in
no time flat and fuel fit for diesels is taxed to death, so
there is no bliss that way.

\"Dirty\"??? The different grades of petroleum differ in their
boiling point. They are all separated in fractional distillation.
The only grade that would be \"dirty\" (if any) would be the bunker
fuel oil that is essentially the stuff that never boils off at
all. I think this is the bit that fuels ships and the
distillation itself.

That\'s simplistic. Heating oil is made unsuitable for use in
engines *on purpose* for the same reason that most of the world\'s
ethanol is made unsuitable for drinking: taxes.

Heating oil is not unsuitable for use in diesel engines. It will
work just fine. The only issue you might have is the fuel gelling at
a higher temperature. Otherwise, it\'s the same stuff! The only
thing that makes it \"unsuitable\" for use in diesel engines is the red
coloring they add.

Very few people actually understand much about how fuel is produced
from crude oil, in spite of the fact that it\'s just distillation.

There\'s far more than \'just distillation\'. There\'s cracking, blending,
additives, and probably lots of other things going on that I haven\'t
the motivation of finding out for you.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2023-08-10, jeroen <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

On 2023-08-10 16:00, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Thu, 10 Aug 2023 06:07:28 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote in
8eccedc6-e749-4220-8334-588e263140e6n@googlegroups.com>:

On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 5:10:56 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrot=
e:
On 09/08/2023 23:15, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at 3:39:12 PM UTC-4, Ricky wrote:=

On Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at 12:20:40 PM UTC-4, Fred Bloggs=
wrote:
That\'s not hyperbole, it\'s almost understatement.

\"Texans were paying about $275 per megawatt-hour for power on Saturda=
y then the cost rose more than 800% to a whopping $2,500 per megawatt-hour =
on Sunday, Bloomberg reported, citing data from the Electric Reliability Co=
uncil of Texas (ERCOT). Prices so far on Monday have topped off at $915 per=
megawatt-hour. \"

$2500 per Mwh is $2.50/kWh which is a LOT, and ridiculous. It goes be=
yond getting people to conserve, it kills them. And since when can Texas po=
wer even change the rates on the fly like that?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ercot-prices-texas-heat-wave-electricity=
/
I\'m pretty sure these rates are not unusual at the wholesale level. In=
a discussion here a few years ago, someone posted a link that allowed acce=
ss to wholesale rates by the minute. Peak rates reached some very high numb=
ers. Of course, those rates would only apply to the additional power requir=
ed at peak times, so not to all the power being used.

I would hate to pay even $275 per MWh. That\'s almost enough to make me=
charge my car at a public charger.

Those are retail rates.
Boggle!

Texas must have the world\'s most complicated electricity billing system=

if it can vary consumer prices dynamically by the hour to reflect local=

demand vs power availability in realtime.

There are moves afoot in the UK with smart meters to do dynamic pricing=

but so far it has been mainly used as inverse. Providing an incentive to=

people to not use power at peak times of day when the margin between
electricity generation and load is very tight.

Typically on cold windless grey dismal winter\'s days.

Exactly. How could it possibly be an incentive to conserve when people don\'=
t even know what the rate is. And I wonder if they will even accept a homeo=
wners time stamped energy use record to adjust what would be a huge bill. T=
hey\'re talking about a normally monthly $500 bill going to about $2500 in a=
single month!

They have to be doing a blanket effective rate calculation for the billing:

T is total billing cycle hours, R is $/kWh, R1 is temporary rate for T1 hou=
rs, R2 for T2 etc... Then the effective rate for all the billing is Reff

Reff= (R1 x T1 + R2 x T2 +....+Rn x Tn)/ (T1 + T2 + ... + Tn =T)

Meter reading for consumer is E kWh, $= Reff X E

Actually that should work out pretty well except for people on solar during=
peak demand periods.

If it was any place other than Texas, the power company would be on the car=
pet explaining in great and auditable detail the justification for horrendo=
us cost increase to the state corporation commission.

We had, in the sixties, a big tank with oil in the garden for the central heating system.
These days maybe a portable diesel generator would be a good idea in Texas.
And solar panels with some storage of course.

I think that heating oil is so dirty it would kill a diesel in no time
flat and fuel fit for diesels is taxed to death, so there is no bliss
that way.

Number two fuel oil is the same stuff, (possibly with a different tax rate and
some harmless dye added), the only risk from using it in a diesel road vehicle
is from the tax man.

--
Jasen.
🇺🇦 Слава Україні

 

[Martin Brown]

On 10/08/2023 21:37, Don Y wrote:

On 8/10/2023 1:22 PM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 10/08/2023 21:12, jeroen wrote:
I think that heating oil is so dirty it would kill a diesel in no time
flat and fuel fit for diesels is taxed to death, so there is no bliss
that way.

I don\'t think heating oil would do the engine management sensors much
good but it probably would run on it once the engine was warmed up on
real diesel. More likely to work with a generating set than a car.

Having grown up with oil-fired heat, I can say that the \"quality\" of
the fuel delivered would vary greatly.  More than once having to clean the
jets in the furnace due to the \"crud\" in the fuel.

But most of that crud comes from the part filled domestic storage tank
rusting away and biofilms forming on the condensate of moisture in the
tank. A surprising amount of stuff can grow in damp kerosene vapour.

Plus, regular cleaning of the sediment bowl/filter at the outlet of the
tank.

Mine had a filter but I was careful never to run the heating system
until the tank had time to settle again after a fill. No point in making
the filter work any harder than is absolutely necessary. You don\'t have
to change it so often if you let it settle for 12 hours or so.

The peculiar oil lifter configuration of my system meant that there was
a second small settlement tank close to the boiler in addition so that I
almost never got any crud reaching the burner jets.

And, an oil-fired furnace (of that era) isn\'t particularly \"picky\"
about what it will burn!  If it can be atomized and ignite to
sustain a flame, that\'s all that mattered!

Indeed and neither is a diesel engine once it has warmed up.

The sensors are the first to suffer if someone gets the vehicle fuel
additive package wrong. UK had an incident where bulk petrol was
dispatched to supermarkets that would destroy petrol engines or at least
render them inoperative after ~5 miles. They put the diesel package into
a huge batch of petrol and trace silicon damages engine lambda sensors.
The result was chaos and lots of broken down cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_petrol_contamination

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/1/hi/uk/6409025.stm

Dumb as a rock mechanical carburettors are unaffected by such things.

[My folks\' employer would accept used *motor* oil to burn in the
heat-treating
forges.  I\'m sure that would run afoul of regulations nowadays!]

There is also red diesel for agricultural use which contains a dye and
chemical markers to show that it is low tax and not for on road use.

Yes.  But, if you have farm vehicles, you likely have on-site storage
for that fuel.  Who\'s going to prevent you from using it for \"other\"
purposes?  Police don\'t regularly examine the fuel in diesel vehicles
just to verify that it\'s \"street legal\".  (i.e., a neighbor would
have to tip someone off to this sort of violation... and, that someone
would have to care enough about it to actually pursue it!)

They do in the UK at least in areas where they expect it might be used.
The IRA had an interesting and profitable sideline in removing the
chemical marker and dye from red diesel back in the day.

--
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 10/08/2023 22:36, Ricky wrote:

On Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 4:37:37 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 8/10/2023 1:22 PM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 10/08/2023 21:12, jeroen wrote:
I think that heating oil is so dirty it would kill a diesel in no time
flat and fuel fit for diesels is taxed to death, so there is no bliss
that way.

I don\'t think heating oil would do the engine management sensors much good but
it probably would run on it once the engine was warmed up on real diesel. More
likely to work with a generating set than a car.
Having grown up with oil-fired heat, I can say that the \"quality\" of
the fuel delivered would vary greatly. More than once having to clean the
jets in the furnace due to the \"crud\" in the fuel.

Plus, regular cleaning of the sediment bowl/filter at the outlet of the
tank.

And, an oil-fired furnace (of that era) isn\'t particularly \"picky\"
about what it will burn! If it can be atomized and ignite to
sustain a flame, that\'s all that mattered!

What do you think is in heating oil that would be \"crud\", depositing on the jet, that would pass the filter but not be in diesel fuel?

Mostly it is biofilm and rust from inside the domestic heating oil tank.
They spend too much time part full. Domestic heating oil also lacks the
additive pack that is included in motor fuel so it isn\'t quite the same.

Very bad things happen when the refiners mix up the fuel additive packs.
UK had a refinery that put the diesel additives into supermarket petrol
in 2007 and the result was a very large number of dead petrol engines.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6414905.stm

It was an incredibly expensive mistake for what is a trace amount of
silicon additive which is good for diesel but lethal for petrol engines.
Most cars conked out less than 5 miles after refuelling. Shortage of
spare parts made the situation even more difficult for those affected.

> You have to clean the jet, because the furnace is not designed to burn it all off. The furnace is not a diesel engine.

No fine jet or mister is happy with crud in the line. His point is that
domestic heating oil tanks are dirty compared to fuel depot tanks. I\'m
pretty sure an generator set would run OK on the right grade of heating
kerosene without suffering too much harm. Not so for a high performance
car engine though. Some can\'t even use certain biodiesel formulations.

https://dieselnet.com/tech/fuel_biodiesel_comp.php

It weakens and/or destroys various flexible components and seals.

I will repeat, that the only difference in petroleum portions is the boiling point. Diesel fuel and heating oil have significant overlap in the fractions used, so it\'s hard to imagine how they could be much different.

That is astonishingly naive even for you. US petrol has insanely high
oxygenate additives in it - especially in California. The reasoning
seems to be that if some additives are good then more must be better.

Californian petrol is a weird cocktail of stuff. A lot of it is mainly
marketing bullshit but there is a small amount of truth in it too. eg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Tier_Detergent_Gasoline

The trace additive packs make all the difference if the fuel is to be
used in high performance car engines or aerospace jet turbines.

IN the US its composition also varies on a seasonal and regional basis.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gasoline/

--
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 10/08/2023 21:43, jeroen wrote:

On 2023-08-10 22:29, Ricky wrote:

\"Dirty\"???  The different grades of petroleum differ in their boiling
point.  They are all separated in fractional distillation.  The only
grade that would be \"dirty\" (if any) would be the bunker fuel oil
that is essentially the stuff that never boils off at all.  I think
this is the bit that fuels ships and the distillation itself.

That\'s simplistic. Heating oil is made unsuitable for use in engines
*on purpose* for the same reason that most of the world\'s ethanol is
made unsuitable for drinking: taxes.

In the UK at least it is more chemically marked and dye added so that it
can be detected by Customs & Excise if used in a motor vehicle. Get
caught and you get a bill for a couple of years worth of fuel tax.

The motor fuel additives that aid smooth running of a mechanical engine
with moving parts will be missing and there may be higher content of
compounds that make flexible seals in motor cars fail more rapidly too.

I suspect they don\'t try quite so hard to make domestic heating oil as
low sulphur as the motor fuel either so exhaust catalyst poisoning may
also be an issue if you use it in a vehicle.

--
Martin Brown

 

[Don Y]

On 8/12/2023 1:07 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 10/08/2023 21:37, Don Y wrote:
On 8/10/2023 1:22 PM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 10/08/2023 21:12, jeroen wrote:
I think that heating oil is so dirty it would kill a diesel in no time
flat and fuel fit for diesels is taxed to death, so there is no bliss
that way.

I don\'t think heating oil would do the engine management sensors much good
but it probably would run on it once the engine was warmed up on real
diesel. More likely to work with a generating set than a car.

Having grown up with oil-fired heat, I can say that the \"quality\" of
the fuel delivered would vary greatly.  More than once having to clean the
jets in the furnace due to the \"crud\" in the fuel.

But most of that crud comes from the part filled domestic storage tank rusting
away and biofilms forming on the condensate of moisture in the tank. A
surprising amount of stuff can grow in damp kerosene vapour.

If that were the problem, then the only remedy would be to clean the tank.
Instead, we would encounter problems with a \"batch\" of fuel that would
resolve when the NEXT batch was purchased (almost always from some other
vendor as there is no commitment to buy from the same vendor -- just like
you can buy your gasoline from a different vendor each week.

The problem seemed to be on the vendor\'s end; not having good practices
for their main storage tank and/or the delivery vehicles to ensure the
product was delivered \"as received\" (by them).

Plus, regular cleaning of the sediment bowl/filter at the outlet of the
tank.

Mine had a filter but I was careful never to run the heating system until the
tank had time to settle again after a fill. No point in making the filter work
any harder than is absolutely necessary. You don\'t have to change it so often
if you let it settle for 12 hours or so.

12 hours without heat or hot water? Shirley you jest! :>
The furnace may be running *while* the oil man is filling the tank
as he shows up unannounced and the furnace can call for heat
without any knowledge of his presence.

The peculiar oil lifter configuration of my system meant that there was a
second small settlement tank close to the boiler in addition so that I almost
never got any crud reaching the burner jets.

How often do you replace the fuel filter in your *vehicle*?
The supplier takes steps to ensure the fuel is delivered
to your tank \"clean\" (there are filters for each of the
flexible hoses that deliver fuel to vehicles).

And, an oil-fired furnace (of that era) isn\'t particularly \"picky\"
about what it will burn!  If it can be atomized and ignite to
sustain a flame, that\'s all that mattered!

Indeed and neither is a diesel engine once it has warmed up.

But, atomizing the fuel is an issue. Clogged jets are what
eventually leads the furnace to not deliver heat. The
same sort of crud that fouls the furnaces jets is bad for
the jets in the diesel.

The sensors are the first to suffer if someone gets the vehicle fuel additive
package wrong. UK had an incident where bulk petrol was dispatched to
supermarkets that would destroy petrol engines or at least render them
inoperative after ~5 miles. They put the diesel package into a huge batch of
petrol and trace silicon damages engine lambda sensors. The result was chaos
and lots of broken down cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_petrol_contamination

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/1/hi/uk/6409025.stm

Dumb as a rock mechanical carburettors are unaffected by such things.

As are furnaces.

[Well, I can\'t speak to modern furnaces as I\'ve not been around oil-fired
heat for ~50 years and assume there have been changes to the technology
to increase burn efficiency, reduce emissions, etc. All suggest
additional sensors beyond just knowing that you have flame!]

[My folks\' employer would accept used *motor* oil to burn in the heat-treating
forges.  I\'m sure that would run afoul of regulations nowadays!]

There is also red diesel for agricultural use which contains a dye and
chemical markers to show that it is low tax and not for on road use.

Yes.  But, if you have farm vehicles, you likely have on-site storage
for that fuel.  Who\'s going to prevent you from using it for \"other\"
purposes?  Police don\'t regularly examine the fuel in diesel vehicles
just to verify that it\'s \"street legal\".  (i.e., a neighbor would
have to tip someone off to this sort of violation... and, that someone
would have to care enough about it to actually pursue it!)

They do in the UK at least in areas where they expect it might be used. The IRA
had an interesting and profitable sideline in removing the chemical marker and
dye from red diesel back in the day.

I\'ve never heard of a car being stopped and checked to see if it was
burning agricultural product (I grew up among dairy and corn farms).
I would think that someone would have to \"snitch\" on you to bring it
to anyone\'s attention. And, then you\'d have to find some authority
who actually cared about the violation!

[I.e., don\'t set up your own neighborhood filling station and you\'re
likely OK]

Or, leaded gas (a friend runs it in some of his classics). Or, avgas!
(a colleague used to run it in his Shelby)

And, running \"no ethanol\" is reasonably common (as small engines tend
to fail when run on fuel with ethanol)

 

[Martin Brown]

On 12/08/2023 12:22, Don Y wrote:

On 8/12/2023 1:07 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 10/08/2023 21:37, Don Y wrote:
On 8/10/2023 1:22 PM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 10/08/2023 21:12, jeroen wrote:
I think that heating oil is so dirty it would kill a diesel in no time
flat and fuel fit for diesels is taxed to death, so there is no bliss
that way.

I don\'t think heating oil would do the engine management sensors
much good but it probably would run on it once the engine was warmed
up on real diesel. More likely to work with a generating set than a
car.

Having grown up with oil-fired heat, I can say that the \"quality\" of
the fuel delivered would vary greatly.  More than once having to
clean the
jets in the furnace due to the \"crud\" in the fuel.

But most of that crud comes from the part filled domestic storage tank
rusting away and biofilms forming on the condensate of moisture in the
tank. A surprising amount of stuff can grow in damp kerosene vapour.

If that were the problem, then the only remedy would be to clean the tank.
Instead, we would encounter problems with a \"batch\" of fuel that would
resolve when the NEXT batch was purchased (almost always from some other
vendor as there is no commitment to buy from the same vendor -- just like
you can buy your gasoline from a different vendor each week.

The problem seemed to be on the vendor\'s end; not having good practices
for their main storage tank and/or the delivery vehicles to ensure the
product was delivered \"as received\" (by them).

There may be additional problems in the US then. A heating oil dealer in
the UK who delivered dirty fuel would not last for long before they went
out of business. My house is on fuel oil but I only buy the stuff near
midsummer when it is cheap if I can get away with it.

Just after Covid lockdown the price crashed to an unbelievably low level
because there were no commercial aircraft flying and they needed to turn
the aviation fuel stocks back into cash somehow.

Plus, regular cleaning of the sediment bowl/filter at the outlet of the
tank.

Mine had a filter but I was careful never to run the heating system
until the tank had time to settle again after a fill. No point in
making the filter work any harder than is absolutely necessary. You
don\'t have to change it so often if you let it settle for 12 hours or so.

12 hours without heat or hot water?  Shirley you jest!  :

Refuelling in summer. Hot water stays hot plenty long enough. There are
other ways of heating the house. My CH is dual fuel it is just a bit
more manual handling to run the entire thing off the wood burning stove.

The furnace may be running *while* the oil man is filling the tank
as he shows up unannounced and the furnace can call for heat
without any knowledge of his presence.

We get advanced notice of the visit (except once when one spuriously
delivered to the right house name but in the wrong village).

The peculiar oil lifter configuration of my system meant that there
was a second small settlement tank close to the boiler in addition so
that I almost never got any crud reaching the burner jets.

How often do you replace the fuel filter in your *vehicle*?
The supplier takes steps to ensure the fuel is delivered
to your tank \"clean\" (there are filters for each of the
flexible hoses that deliver fuel to vehicles).

I did have one fail once on a rust bucket decades ago ~100k miles.

And, an oil-fired furnace (of that era) isn\'t particularly \"picky\"
about what it will burn!  If it can be atomized and ignite to
sustain a flame, that\'s all that mattered!

Indeed and neither is a diesel engine once it has warmed up.

But, atomizing the fuel is an issue.  Clogged jets are what
eventually leads the furnace to not deliver heat.  The
same sort of crud that fouls the furnaces jets is bad for
the jets in the diesel.

Indeed but the fuel we get seems to be OK in that respect. I can\'t ever
recall having blocked jets on my oil burner. OK my configuration is
strangely different to the standard tiger loop or gravity feed but I
wouldn\'t have thought it made all that much difference.

The sensors are the first to suffer if someone gets the vehicle fuel
additive package wrong. UK had an incident where bulk petrol was
dispatched to supermarkets that would destroy petrol engines or at
least render them inoperative after ~5 miles. They put the diesel
package into a huge batch of petrol and trace silicon damages engine
lambda sensors. The result was chaos and lots of broken down cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_petrol_contamination

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/1/hi/uk/6409025.stm

Dumb as a rock mechanical carburettors are unaffected by such things.

As are furnaces.

[Well, I can\'t speak to modern furnaces as I\'ve not been around oil-fired
heat for ~50 years and assume there have been changes to the technology
to increase burn efficiency, reduce emissions, etc.  All suggest
additional sensors beyond just knowing that you have flame!]

Main change is that they are now more efficient condensing boilers
instead of hot flue gas. The electronics don\'t seem to have changed all
that much but they are made of much thinner material these days and
don\'t last anything like as long as the solid old ones did.

[My folks\' employer would accept used *motor* oil to burn in the
heat-treating
forges.  I\'m sure that would run afoul of regulations nowadays!]

There is also red diesel for agricultural use which contains a dye
and chemical markers to show that it is low tax and not for on road
use.

Yes.  But, if you have farm vehicles, you likely have on-site storage
for that fuel.  Who\'s going to prevent you from using it for \"other\"
purposes?  Police don\'t regularly examine the fuel in diesel vehicles
just to verify that it\'s \"street legal\".  (i.e., a neighbor would
have to tip someone off to this sort of violation... and, that someone
would have to care enough about it to actually pursue it!)

They do in the UK at least in areas where they expect it might be
used. The IRA had an interesting and profitable sideline in removing
the chemical marker and dye from red diesel back in the day.

I\'ve never heard of a car being stopped and checked to see if it was
burning agricultural product (I grew up among dairy and corn farms).
I would think that someone would have to \"snitch\" on you to bring it
to anyone\'s attention.  And, then you\'d have to find some authority
who actually cared about the violation!

I have seen the odd one in carparks where people who might be doing it
could be found. I was surprised by that. Only seen them a couple of
times but they were definitely dipped peoples diesel fuel tanks.

[I.e., don\'t set up your own neighborhood filling station and you\'re
likely OK]

Or, leaded gas (a friend runs it in some of his classics).  Or, avgas!
(a colleague used to run it in his Shelby)

And, running \"no ethanol\" is reasonably common (as small engines tend
to fail when run on fuel with ethanol)

Unleaded fuel has a bad effect on my strimmer. The plastic fuel tubing
swells up after a few years and has to be replaced.

--
Martin Brown

 

[Don Y]

On 8/12/2023 5:17 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

But most of that crud comes from the part filled domestic storage tank
rusting away and biofilms forming on the condensate of moisture in the tank.
A surprising amount of stuff can grow in damp kerosene vapour.

If that were the problem, then the only remedy would be to clean the tank.
Instead, we would encounter problems with a \"batch\" of fuel that would
resolve when the NEXT batch was purchased (almost always from some other
vendor as there is no commitment to buy from the same vendor -- just like
you can buy your gasoline from a different vendor each week.

The problem seemed to be on the vendor\'s end; not having good practices
for their main storage tank and/or the delivery vehicles to ensure the
product was delivered \"as received\" (by them).

There may be additional problems in the US then. A heating oil dealer in the UK
who delivered dirty fuel would not last for long before they went out of
business. My house is on fuel oil but I only buy the stuff near midsummer when
it is cheap if I can get away with it.

It would not be uncommon to see the oil man several times during
the winter. Summer visits less often but the furnace still ran
(to heat the DHW).

Just after Covid lockdown the price crashed to an unbelievably low level
because there were no commercial aircraft flying and they needed to turn the
aviation fuel stocks back into cash somehow.

People were often very sensitive to price. So, would shop-around for
\"better\" prices. The guy who delivered your fuel LAST month may not
see your business THIS month.

And, the guy delivering to your neighbor may not be the same firm
that *you* are using.

Plus, regular cleaning of the sediment bowl/filter at the outlet of the
tank.

Mine had a filter but I was careful never to run the heating system until
the tank had time to settle again after a fill. No point in making the
filter work any harder than is absolutely necessary. You don\'t have to
change it so often if you let it settle for 12 hours or so.

12 hours without heat or hot water?  Shirley you jest!  :

Refuelling in summer. Hot water stays hot plenty long enough. There are other
ways of heating the house. My CH is dual fuel it is just a bit more manual
handling to run the entire thing off the wood burning stove.

It was relatively easy to use all of the available hot water
(lengthy shower, washing dishes, etc.). There was no storage tank
for the DHW. Instead, a heat exchanger intruded into the water jacket
of the furnace (the water there for the baseboard heat). Running the
hot water thus cooled the furnace until the furnace demanded more heat
(for itself). Likewise, running the circulating pump for the baseboard
heat (under the control of the household thermostat) would cool the
furnace and result in the furnace calling for more heat.

The furnace may be running *while* the oil man is filling the tank
as he shows up unannounced and the furnace can call for heat
without any knowledge of his presence.

We get advanced notice of the visit (except once when one spuriously delivered
to the right house name but in the wrong village).

If you had a standing arrangement with *a* supplier, they would
deliver when THEY thought you needed more. Likely just by keeping
track of how much you needed \"last time\".

[Amusing to think of how they would \"manually\" manage their supply,
demand and delivery routes!]

If *you* noticed your tank getting low, you would (be wise to!)
call for a delivery -- which would happen at their convenience.

The oil man would leave a \"ticket\" (an imprint from the mechanical
meter on the truck) that indicated how much he had delivered.
Sometimes, it would be slipped in your door. Or in your mailbox.
Or... Unless you happened to notice his presence, you had no
OTHER way of knowing that he\'d been there (inspecting the level
on the tank would mean a trip into the basement, etc.)

No idea how it is done in other places (here) as it seemed unique
to the northeast (most other places seemed to use GFA or *gasp*
electric!)

The peculiar oil lifter configuration of my system meant that there was a
second small settlement tank close to the boiler in addition so that I
almost never got any crud reaching the burner jets.

How often do you replace the fuel filter in your *vehicle*?
The supplier takes steps to ensure the fuel is delivered
to your tank \"clean\" (there are filters for each of the
flexible hoses that deliver fuel to vehicles).

I did have one fail once on a rust bucket decades ago ~100k miles.

During the \"oil embargo\", gas prices (and availability) got outrageous
(laughable, in hindsight). So, supplies were \"whatever and wherever\"
you could get them.

More than once, we\'d get a batch of gas with some water in it
which would foul the tank and require a replacement of the fuel
filter (easier than letting it dry out).

[We had this neat \"putty-like\" substance that you could mold onto
the end of a long wire (typ an unformed coat-hanger) and dip
into the bottom of your gas tank. It would change color in
the presence of water.]

And, an oil-fired furnace (of that era) isn\'t particularly \"picky\"
about what it will burn!  If it can be atomized and ignite to
sustain a flame, that\'s all that mattered!

Indeed and neither is a diesel engine once it has warmed up.

But, atomizing the fuel is an issue.  Clogged jets are what
eventually leads the furnace to not deliver heat.  The
same sort of crud that fouls the furnaces jets is bad for
the jets in the diesel.

Indeed but the fuel we get seems to be OK in that respect. I can\'t ever recall
having blocked jets on my oil burner. OK my configuration is strangely
different to the standard tiger loop or gravity feed but I wouldn\'t have
thought it made all that much difference.

A \"bad batch\" of oil would leave the furnace needing cleaning often
(like every few days). Dad would come home and mom would greet him
with \"the furnace is out (again)\".

There wasn\'t much else you could do until you\'d burned off all of
the most recently delivered fuel.

And, made a point not to call that vendor for the NEXT tankful!

[Well, I can\'t speak to modern furnaces as I\'ve not been around oil-fired
heat for ~50 years and assume there have been changes to the technology
to increase burn efficiency, reduce emissions, etc.  All suggest
additional sensors beyond just knowing that you have flame!]

Main change is that they are now more efficient condensing boilers instead of
hot flue gas. The electronics don\'t seem to have changed all that much but they
are made of much thinner material these days and don\'t last anything like as
long as the solid old ones did.

We had no \"electronics\". The circulating pump was controlled (through a relay)
directly from the household thermostat. When the house called for heat,
the pump would move the water in the water jacket through the furnace and
baseboard \"radiators\" until the house achieved the desired temperature.

Hot water was just cold water routed through the heat exchanger (as above).

A thermostat on the furnace monitored its internal temperature and
would run the fuel pump/atomizer when the furnace temperature fell
below a setpoint; and shut it down at some level above.

One would manually adjust the \"altitude\" (amount of water in the
closed loop) with a valve from the municipal supply into that loop
(an expansion tank overhead accommodated changes in volume)

They do in the UK at least in areas where they expect it might be used. The
IRA had an interesting and profitable sideline in removing the chemical
marker and dye from red diesel back in the day.

I\'ve never heard of a car being stopped and checked to see if it was
burning agricultural product (I grew up among dairy and corn farms).
I would think that someone would have to \"snitch\" on you to bring it
to anyone\'s attention.  And, then you\'d have to find some authority
who actually cared about the violation!

I have seen the odd one in carparks where people who might be doing it could be
found. I was surprised by that. Only seen them a couple of times but they were
definitely dipped peoples diesel fuel tanks.

What if the vehicle has a locking fuel cap? Do they present a warrant
demanding access to its contents?

[I.e., don\'t set up your own neighborhood filling station and you\'re
likely OK]

Or, leaded gas (a friend runs it in some of his classics).  Or, avgas!
(a colleague used to run it in his Shelby)

And, running \"no ethanol\" is reasonably common (as small engines tend
to fail when run on fuel with ethanol)

Unleaded fuel has a bad effect on my strimmer. The plastic fuel tubing swells
up after a few years and has to be replaced.

Yes. And plastic floats in the carburetor often suffer.
But, usually from the ethanol in the fuel.

[I keep a 5G container of \"regular\" on hand for those things]