Driving Too Slow

[Ed Lee]

For Maximum EV Efficiency, Stick to 25 Miles an Hour, Ignore Angry Drivers and POLICE.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ev-electric-car-battery-charge-hypermiler-11642517385

I was driving around 40 MPH on right lane of a highway (speed limit unknown) and got pull over for driving too slow. I told him that i was running low on charges and won't make it to the charger any faster. He escort me for a little while and left.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 08:25:06 -0800 (PST), Ed Lee
<edward....@gmail.com> wrote:

>For Maximum EV Efficiency, Stick to 25 Miles an Hour, Ignore Angry Drivers and POLICE.
>
>https://www.wsj.com/articles/ev-electric-car-battery-charge-hypermiler-11642517385

That is an obsession. A rude and dangerous one on a public highway. I
think that some fraction of electric vehicles serve cheapness
obsessions.

>
>I was driving around 40 MPH on right lane of a highway (speed limit unknown) and got pull over for driving too slow. I told him that i was running low on charges and won't make it to the charger any faster. He escort me for a little while and left.

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

Driving 40 mph, and waiting around for a car to recharge, suggests
that your time isn't worth much.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

[Ed Lee]

People are driving and rushing to die too fast. The explosive covid cases are partly due to people moving too fast and too mobile.

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

and you want to make that worse by driving slow causing an unexpected and much more dangerous speed difference?

[bitrex]

On 1/18/2022 11:54 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 08:25:06 -0800 (PST), Ed Lee
> <edward....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> For Maximum EV Efficiency, Stick to 25 Miles an Hour, Ignore Angry Drivers and POLICE.
>>
>> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ev-electric-car-battery-charge-hypermiler-11642517385
>
> That is an obsession. A rude and dangerous one on a public highway. I
> think that some fraction of electric vehicles serve cheapness
> obsessions.

The WSJ found one pathological person who does this, and now we have
confirmed two.

>>
>> I was driving around 40 MPH on right lane of a highway (speed limit unknown) and got pull over for driving too slow. I told him that i was running low on charges and won't make it to the charger any faster. He escort me for a little while and left.
>
> It's much worse on a long mountain uphill in a blizzard. You can't
> even afford to run the heater.
>
> Driving 40 mph, and waiting around for a car to recharge, suggests
> that your time isn't worth much.

I never see anyone doing anything but hauling ass in their Bolts or
Teslas or Mach Es around here, same as everyone else. I saw a Mitsubishi
Mirage doing almost 90 the other day, it has three cylinders.

Anyway, the average sale price of a new EV is about 55 grand and prices
lately, like most other types of vehicle, only seem to go upwards.

Owning and driving a personal car in general isn't what you do to "save
money" it's a money-sink to a greater or lesser degree, any way you
slice it.

[Ed Lee]

If they want to go fast, they can always take the left. The right lane should always be slower.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

Depends on what one's time is worth. I save about 2 hours a day by
driving to work.

[bitrex]

I couldn't read the article but I guarantee 95% of the people pissing
the rest of humanity off trying to see how many miles they can pull with
their toy on public roads are retired engineers, ham radio operators,
and other miscreants.

[Tom Gardner]

On 18/01/22 16:54, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022 08:25:06 -0800 (PST), Ed Lee <edward....@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> For Maximum EV Efficiency, Stick to 25 Miles an Hour, Ignore Angry Drivers
>> and POLICE.
>>
>> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ev-electric-car-battery-charge-hypermiler-11642517385
>
>>
> That is an obsession. A rude and dangerous one on a public highway. I think
> that some fraction of electric vehicles serve cheapness obsessions.
>
>>
>> I was driving around 40 MPH on right lane of a highway (speed limit
>> unknown) and got pull over for driving too slow. I told him that i was
>> running low on charges and won't make it to the charger any faster. He
>> escort me for a little while and left.
>
> It's much worse on a long mountain uphill in a blizzard. You can't even
> afford to run the heater.

... if the heaters even work!
https://canada.autonews.com/electric-vehicles/tesla-heating-system-being-probed-canada-following-cold-weather-complaints

and unpleasant anecdotes
https://teslanorth.com/2022/01/06/tesla-heat-pumps-keep-failing-in-extreme-cold-weather/

[Ralph Mowery]

In article <ss70ir$m0s$2...@dont-email.me>, spam...@blueyonder.co.uk
says...

>
> ... if the heaters even work!
> https://canada.autonews.com/electric-vehicles/tesla-heating-system-being-probed-canada-following-cold-weather-complaints
>
> and unpleasant anecdotes
> https://teslanorth.com/2022/01/06/tesla-heat-pumps-keep-failing-in-extreme-cold-weather/
>
>

Seems they are using heat pumps. I don't know about the ones in the
cars,but the ones in the homes do not work well at all when it is much
below 20 deg F. They are trying to operate the cars at zero and below.

[John S]

If a cop pulls you over for driving too slow, it's because he thought
you were a hazard to other motorists. Proof was his escort service. If
you can't keep up with traffic either get off the road or get a car
which will.

[bitrex]

My Volt has a convenient inline-four battery charger & space heater for
when it gets down into the single digits.

For whatever reason maybe due to the high compression ratio and
relatively high RPM it runs at when used this way when the engine is
cold it blows enormous clouds of condensation when it starts up at those
temperatures, almost like laying a smokescreen. Sort of amusing coming
from an "electric vehicle"

[Dave Platt]

In article <5ffdd3aa-a770-4fde...@googlegroups.com>,

At the very least, if you're driving significantly slower than the
general flow of traffic, you should have your hazard flashers on.
Otherwise, you're at a higher risk of being rear-ended by a
less-than-attentive driver.

Even that may not be legal. Here in California, the Vehicle Code says
"No person shall drive or operate on a highway at such a slow speed as
to impede or block the normal reasonable movement of traffic, unless
the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation because of a grade,
or compliance in the law."

So, driving slowly (and impeding other drivers), because you don't
want to run down your battery, is a violation, and you can be ticketed
for it. If you ignore the angry drivers and the police, you may end up
needing to explain the case to a judge, in court.

[Rick C]

I think this is a problem that is hugely overstated. I see people driving whatever speed they want in whatever sort of car they want to drive. This is not a problem unique to EVs in any way. In Puerto Rico the problem is even worse. The right lane on many highways can run out without warning. Lane ending signs are so rare that when I saw one I wanted to stop and take a picture of it to show people what it means. The left lane can run out as well... again without warning. The result is the middle lane is often the default lane for drivers of all speeds. It's not unusual to see someone driving 40 MPH in the middle lane of a 60 MPH highway with cars passing on both sides. lol

Maybe Ed should move to Puerto Rico where he would feel more in the right place... oh, except there are very few chargers. But then you can live in the middle of the island and nowhere is more than 60 miles away, well, as the crow flies anyhow. I think you can take a ferry to one of the nearby islands, but you can save your battery while the ferry paddles.

--

Rick C.

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

[Rick C]

That's actually not quite correct. The issue is in cold temps the output of a heat pump is less while the demand for heat is greater. So at some point the heat pump is simply not large enough to supply the required heat. If you install a larger heat pump (what was done in my father's house) it will work well down to zero Fahrenheit. I know because it had an outdoor thermostat and I tried tweaking it down. I never found a condition where it would not keep the house warm and our temps were down to low twenties at least. This winter we are seeing a lot of low teens at night here. Brrrr... Time to head back to Puerto Rico.

--

Rick C.

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

[Rick C]

Ed is pretty silly with his car. He is conducting social experiments to see how much abuse he can tolerate when he heaps it on himself. He takes trips where he doesn't know where he will charge and ends up using 120V outlets charging every 40 miles or so. It is nothing other than what most people would call insane. So driving 40 in a highway is nothing out of character for him. Sooner or later he is guaranteed to cause some sort of accident doing that. People simply are not expect anyone to be driving that slow and aren't paying close enough attention to avoid hitting him. I wonder if he turns on his flashers?

--

Rick C.

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

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 1:46:40 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
> >
> My Volt has a convenient inline-four battery charger & space heater for
> when it gets down into the single digits.
>
> For whatever reason maybe due to the high compression ratio and
> relatively high RPM it runs at when used this way when the engine is
> cold it blows enormous clouds of condensation when it starts up at those
> temperatures, almost like laying a smokescreen. Sort of amusing coming
> from an "electric vehicle"

What was the weirdness you described for controlling the regeneration braking you talked about once? I recall a "paddle" you flipped repeatedly or something.

--

Rick C.

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

[Ed Lee]

Sometimes, but flasher makes it hard to signal turns. Of course, it can be fixed if i design the flasher/signal system. If i signal turns, it should automatically stop the other light.

[Rick C]

If you are on a road where you need flashers, no one is going to notice if you don't signal a turn. They are going to be dodging you already. Put the turn signal on and a cop can't complain that the turn signal was also flashing with the 4 way flashers. You followed the letter of the law.

--

Rick C.

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

[bitrex]

On 1/18/2022 4:21 PM, Rick C wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 1:46:40 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
>>>
>> My Volt has a convenient inline-four battery charger & space heater for
>> when it gets down into the single digits.
>>
>> For whatever reason maybe due to the high compression ratio and
>> relatively high RPM it runs at when used this way when the engine is
>> cold it blows enormous clouds of condensation when it starts up at those
>> temperatures, almost like laying a smokescreen. Sort of amusing coming
>> from an "electric vehicle"
>
> What was the weirdness you described for controlling the regeneration braking you talked about once? I recall a "paddle" you flipped repeatedly or something.
>

Ya it has a paddle under the cruise control button-area, on the back of
the steering wheel for "regeneration on demand", if your foot's off the
accelerator you press that and it'll engage regeneration only and not
the wheel brakes. The Bolt has it also. It's not pressure-sensitive it
just seems to ramp in intensity over a about a second or two, to full-on
if you hold it down.

Or you can just leave the car in "L" and do the one-pedal driving-thing
but I've never liked that style, it feels weird to have to push the
"gas" to go down a hill, and my foot gets tired after a while. I'm on
the highway on cruise control about 75% of the time, anyway.

But it's not a complete substitute for the foot-brake and can behave in
ways you wouldn't expect from the foot-brake sometimes, like if you
momentarily lose traction from a pothole or patch of ice it seems to
instantly disengage and you lunge forwards which can be pretty jarring
when it happens.

[John S]

Do you have cruise control?

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 6:14:17 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
> On 1/18/2022 4:21 PM, Rick C wrote:
> > On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 1:46:40 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
> >>>
> >> My Volt has a convenient inline-four battery charger & space heater for
> >> when it gets down into the single digits.
> >>
> >> For whatever reason maybe due to the high compression ratio and
> >> relatively high RPM it runs at when used this way when the engine is
> >> cold it blows enormous clouds of condensation when it starts up at those
> >> temperatures, almost like laying a smokescreen. Sort of amusing coming
> >> from an "electric vehicle"
> >
> > What was the weirdness you described for controlling the regeneration braking you talked about once? I recall a "paddle" you flipped repeatedly or something.
> >
> Ya it has a paddle under the cruise control button-area, on the back of
> the steering wheel for "regeneration on demand", if your foot's off the
> accelerator you press that and it'll engage regeneration only and not
> the wheel brakes. The Bolt has it also. It's not pressure-sensitive it
> just seems to ramp in intensity over a about a second or two, to full-on
> if you hold it down.
>
> Or you can just leave the car in "L" and do the one-pedal driving-thing

What is "L"? What else does it do other than make the regen work from the gas pedal?

> but I've never liked that style, it feels weird to have to push the
> "gas" to go down a hill, and my foot gets tired after a while. I'm on
> the highway on cruise control about 75% of the time, anyway.

Your foot gets tired from stepping on the accelerator pedal?

> But it's not a complete substitute for the foot-brake and can behave in
> ways you wouldn't expect from the foot-brake sometimes, like if you
> momentarily lose traction from a pothole or patch of ice it seems to
> instantly disengage and you lunge forwards which can be pretty jarring
> when it happens.

I've never seen that happen in my car. When you say it disengages, you mean momentarily, just for an instant? Yeah, that would be a little disturbing until you get used to it. That reminds me of the leaf spring rollup my brother's MG would do on a fast takeoff. It just lasts for a moment so if you ignore it everything straightens out. I think the Tesla simply prevents the wheels from rotating too much so once over the the slick spot it resumes normally as if nothing happened. I don't know how the traction control actually works, I just know I've never been able to make the car go squirrelly, even if I want to. I'm accustomed to being able to put a car or truck into a four wheel drift on ramps. I think I did that once with the Tesla, but it was very hard to do and I won't be trying it again. You really have to hit the ramp fast and hard. With the very low center of gravity it is amazingly well behaved on the road. Body roll is essentially gone.

--

Rick C.

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

[bitrex]

On 1/18/2022 7:31 PM, Rick C wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 6:14:17 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
>> On 1/18/2022 4:21 PM, Rick C wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 1:46:40 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
>>>>>
>>>> My Volt has a convenient inline-four battery charger & space heater for
>>>> when it gets down into the single digits.
>>>>
>>>> For whatever reason maybe due to the high compression ratio and
>>>> relatively high RPM it runs at when used this way when the engine is
>>>> cold it blows enormous clouds of condensation when it starts up at those
>>>> temperatures, almost like laying a smokescreen. Sort of amusing coming
>>>> from an "electric vehicle"
>>>
>>> What was the weirdness you described for controlling the regeneration braking you talked about once? I recall a "paddle" you flipped repeatedly or something.
>>>
>> Ya it has a paddle under the cruise control button-area, on the back of
>> the steering wheel for "regeneration on demand", if your foot's off the
>> accelerator you press that and it'll engage regeneration only and not
>> the wheel brakes. The Bolt has it also. It's not pressure-sensitive it
>> just seems to ramp in intensity over a about a second or two, to full-on
>> if you hold it down.
>>
>> Or you can just leave the car in "L" and do the one-pedal driving-thing
>
> What is "L"? What else does it do other than make the regen work from the gas pedal?

Putting it in "L" makes it apply full regeneration every time you lift
off the accelerator.

>> but I've never liked that style, it feels weird to have to push the
>> "gas" to go down a hill, and my foot gets tired after a while. I'm on
>> the highway on cruise control about 75% of the time, anyway.
>
> Your foot gets tired from stepping on the accelerator pedal?

I definitely find the car rapidly slowing down every time I lift off it
an irritating and fatiguing way to drive around, yeah.

>> But it's not a complete substitute for the foot-brake and can behave in
>> ways you wouldn't expect from the foot-brake sometimes, like if you
>> momentarily lose traction from a pothole or patch of ice it seems to
>> instantly disengage and you lunge forwards which can be pretty jarring
>> when it happens.
>
> I've never seen that happen in my car. When you say it disengages, you mean momentarily, just for an instant? Yeah, that would be a little disturbing until you get used to it. That reminds me of the leaf spring rollup my brother's MG would do on a fast takeoff. It just lasts for a moment so if you ignore it everything straightens out. I think the Tesla simply prevents the wheels from rotating too much so once over the the slick spot it resumes normally as if nothing happened. I don't know how the traction control actually works, I just know I've never been able to make the car go squirrelly, even if I want to. I'm accustomed to being able to put a car or truck into a four wheel drift on ramps. I think I did that once with the Tesla, but it was very hard to do and I won't be trying it again. You really have to hit the ramp fast and hard. With the very low center of gravity it is amazingly well behaved on the road. Body roll is essentially gone.
>

Yeah the times it's occurred it's so fast I don't even notice if the TC
is engaging or not when it happens, the car is decelerating as normal by
regeneration, hit a big bump a certain way and you can tell the regen is
just gone and you're flying free, and then it re-asserts itself about a
half-second later.

No I can't make the Volt get out from under me or do anything very
unpredictable with the TC on doing tests reasonable to do on public
thoroughfares like trying to make it drift into an empty parking lot on
packed snow at reasonable speed, where there's no great hazard if it
doesn't recover well, the TC is like "no you can't do that" and the car
stays pointed more-or-less where I point it.

I don't do unreasonable tests because I don't have a track membership or
anywhere to really fling it around in private. The TC and ABS have saved
my butt in real-world driving on a couple occasions but the TC lamp
almost never comes on when I'm not trying to make it do so like above on
packed snow, if it does it usually means I done fucked up.

On some older GM cars when you turned the TC off it was really off. On
newer cars in general the Volt included it's never really off when it's
"off" it just switches to some less-aggressive control law.

The first gen was apparently more like the old days with the TC off but
the second gen is tuned by Bosch, zee Germans don't do do zis it is
alvays in zee control.

[bitrex]

Judges in traffic court in the US tend to give you like 15 seconds to
explain yourself there's 75 other people there the one morning a week
they do it in even a small city like e.g. Providence RI.

"So you received a ticket for driving too slow and impeding traffic why
were you doing that?"

"Well you see I was driving that way to get better fuel economy in my
hybrid vehicle but I dispute the claim that I was in any way impeding
traffic by d..."

"So you admit you were doing that"

"Yes bu..."

"Thank you for coming you have a 30 day extension to remit payment, you
may also pay cash or credit at the window outside today. Next!"

Last time I was there of the 50 people ahead of me I think one guy got
off and maybe 4 including myself got reduced fines for various reasons.
You have to show up with something better than just an explanation to
get off if a police officer says you were in the wrong, here.

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 10:36:57 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
> On 1/18/2022 7:31 PM, Rick C wrote:
> > On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 6:14:17 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
> >> On 1/18/2022 4:21 PM, Rick C wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 1:46:40 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>> My Volt has a convenient inline-four battery charger & space heater for
> >>>> when it gets down into the single digits.
> >>>>
> >>>> For whatever reason maybe due to the high compression ratio and
> >>>> relatively high RPM it runs at when used this way when the engine is
> >>>> cold it blows enormous clouds of condensation when it starts up at those
> >>>> temperatures, almost like laying a smokescreen. Sort of amusing coming
> >>>> from an "electric vehicle"
> >>>
> >>> What was the weirdness you described for controlling the regeneration braking you talked about once? I recall a "paddle" you flipped repeatedly or something.
> >>>
> >> Ya it has a paddle under the cruise control button-area, on the back of
> >> the steering wheel for "regeneration on demand", if your foot's off the
> >> accelerator you press that and it'll engage regeneration only and not
> >> the wheel brakes. The Bolt has it also. It's not pressure-sensitive it
> >> just seems to ramp in intensity over a about a second or two, to full-on
> >> if you hold it down.
> >>
> >> Or you can just leave the car in "L" and do the one-pedal driving-thing
> >
> > What is "L"? What else does it do other than make the regen work from the gas pedal?
> Putting it in "L" makes it apply full regeneration every time you lift
> off the accelerator.

So it doesn't vary the engine braking with the position of the accelerator? Does "L" do anything else? I can't figure what "L" is supposed to stand for.

> >> but I've never liked that style, it feels weird to have to push the
> >> "gas" to go down a hill, and my foot gets tired after a while. I'm on
> >> the highway on cruise control about 75% of the time, anyway.
> >
> > Your foot gets tired from stepping on the accelerator pedal?
> I definitely find the car rapidly slowing down every time I lift off it
> an irritating and fatiguing way to drive around, yeah.

Well, yeah, if it is only full engine braking with no control, that would suck. The Tesla gives you continuous control over engine braking and engine acceleration with the same movement of the accelerator, one continuous control. It's actually excellent and is one of the things that make driving the car so pleasurable. That and the autopilot.

> >> But it's not a complete substitute for the foot-brake and can behave in
> >> ways you wouldn't expect from the foot-brake sometimes, like if you
> >> momentarily lose traction from a pothole or patch of ice it seems to
> >> instantly disengage and you lunge forwards which can be pretty jarring
> >> when it happens.
> >
> > I've never seen that happen in my car. When you say it disengages, you mean momentarily, just for an instant? Yeah, that would be a little disturbing until you get used to it. That reminds me of the leaf spring rollup my brother's MG would do on a fast takeoff. It just lasts for a moment so if you ignore it everything straightens out. I think the Tesla simply prevents the wheels from rotating too much so once over the the slick spot it resumes normally as if nothing happened. I don't know how the traction control actually works, I just know I've never been able to make the car go squirrelly, even if I want to. I'm accustomed to being able to put a car or truck into a four wheel drift on ramps. I think I did that once with the Tesla, but it was very hard to do and I won't be trying it again. You really have to hit the ramp fast and hard. With the very low center of gravity it is amazingly well behaved on the road. Body roll is essentially gone.
> >
> Yeah the times it's occurred it's so fast I don't even notice if the TC
> is engaging or not when it happens, the car is decelerating as normal by
> regeneration, hit a big bump a certain way and you can tell the regen is
> just gone and you're flying free, and then it re-asserts itself about a
> half-second later.

I think you have to expect that. If the wheels lose grip on the road any braking isn't going to work smoothly. I've noticed that in ICE vehicles.

> No I can't make the Volt get out from under me or do anything very
> unpredictable with the TC on doing tests reasonable to do on public
> thoroughfares like trying to make it drift into an empty parking lot on
> packed snow at reasonable speed, where there's no great hazard if it
> doesn't recover well, the TC is like "no you can't do that" and the car
> stays pointed more-or-less where I point it.
>
> I don't do unreasonable tests because I don't have a track membership or
> anywhere to really fling it around in private. The TC and ABS have saved
> my butt in real-world driving on a couple occasions but the TC lamp
> almost never comes on when I'm not trying to make it do so like above on
> packed snow, if it does it usually means I done fucked up.
>
> On some older GM cars when you turned the TC off it was really off. On
> newer cars in general the Volt included it's never really off when it's
> "off" it just switches to some less-aggressive control law.
>
> The first gen was apparently more like the old days with the TC off but
> the second gen is tuned by Bosch, zee Germans don't do do zis it is
> alvays in zee control.

I don't even know how to turn TC off in the Tesla, but I'm sure there's a setting for it. I've never wanted to do that although I used to take my pickup into snowed parking lots to do donuts and would not mind trying it with the Tesla.

--

Rick C.

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

[bitrex]

On 1/18/2022 11:07 PM, Rick C wrote:

>>> What is "L"? What else does it do other than make the regen work from the gas pedal?
>> Putting it in "L" makes it apply full regeneration every time you lift
>> off the accelerator.
>
> So it doesn't vary the engine braking with the position of the accelerator? Does "L" do anything else? I can't figure what "L" is supposed to stand for.

It does vary with accelerator position but I haven't driven a Tesla so I
can't say how or if it feels different. Probably. "L" is a throwback to
the "Low" gear in a gas car and I do use it on steep hills where it
functions about like that. Other people drive it in "L" all the time and
like it that way and they can drive it with one pedal successfully, I've
never gotten accustomed to it though.

e and you're flying free, and then it re-asserts itself about a
>> half-second later.
>
> I think you have to expect that. If the wheels lose grip on the road any braking isn't going to work smoothly. I've noticed that in ICE vehicles.

Regeneration-only braking using the paddle seems to instantly disengage
if one of the two drive wheels slips badly or goes airborne off a bump
for a moment which is definitely disconcerting compared to having four
wheels with mechanical brakes engaged, never had a car fully disengage
all four disc brakes cuz one wheel bounced off a bump, lol.

It has something to do with the particulars of the Voltec series-hybrid
FWD gearset and how it links to the motor-generators I expect, it can't
regenerate when only one drive wheel is making contact.

> I don't even know how to turn TC off in the Tesla, but I'm sure there's a setting for it. I've never wanted to do that although I used to take my pickup into snowed parking lots to do donuts and would not mind trying it with the Tesla.
>

Nobody reads the manuals no mo...:-(

[bitrex]

On 1/18/2022 11:42 PM, bitrex wrote:

> Regeneration-only braking using the paddle seems to instantly disengage
> if one of the two drive wheels slips badly or goes airborne off a bump
> for a moment which is definitely disconcerting compared to having four
> wheels with mechanical brakes engaged, never had a car fully disengage
> all four disc brakes cuz one wheel bounced off a bump, lol.
>
> It has something to do with the particulars of the Voltec series-hybrid
> FWD gearset and how it links to the motor-generators I expect, it can't
> regenerate when only one drive wheel is making contact.

FWIW I've never had it do this when using the pedal-brake lightly
instead, I expect the computer is like "uh oh!" and engages the
mechanical brakes momentarily to compensate.

I don't think it lights the traction control indicator either, you
really have to abuse the car to get it to light up IME, when engaged
it's always doing stuff silently I expect.

[Martin Brown]

On 18/01/2022 20:10, Dave Platt wrote:
> In article <5ffdd3aa-a770-4fde...@googlegroups.com>,
> Ed Lee <edward....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> For Maximum EV Efficiency, Stick to 25 Miles an Hour, Ignore Angry Drivers and POLICE.
>>
>> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ev-electric-car-battery-charge-hypermiler-11642517385
>>
>> I was driving around 40 MPH on right lane of a highway (speed limit unknown) and got pull over for driving too slow. I told him that i was running low on
>> charges and won't make it to the charger any faster. He escort me for a little while and left.

Why didn't you know the speed limit?
Sounds like you shouldn't even be allowed on the road.

> At the very least, if you're driving significantly slower than the
> general flow of traffic, you should have your hazard flashers on.
> Otherwise, you're at a higher risk of being rear-ended by a
> less-than-attentive driver.

Moving traffic offence in the UK to drive with your hazard warning
lights on although plenty of people do it :( Not enough traffic police.

I have had to limp along at 50mph (runflat after a blowout) on a UK
motorway nominal speed limit 70mph and typical average speed 80mph.
50mph is slower than HGVs speed limit in the inside lane and so really
quite dangerous. I got off the motorway at the earliest opportunity and
then limped home on slower old roads where 50mph is adequate most times.

Where I live farm tractors regularly get rear ended by HGVs on fast dual
carriageways despite having many yellow flashing lights on them.

> Even that may not be legal. Here in California, the Vehicle Code says
> "No person shall drive or operate on a highway at such a slow speed as
> to impede or block the normal reasonable movement of traffic, unless
> the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation because of a grade,
> or compliance in the law."

How do they move large cranes and great chunks of wind turbine about
then? In the UK it isn't that uncommon to see whole railway carriages
being moved slowly by road and on the motorway (utter madness).

They are usually accompanied by "wide load" warning vehicles front and
rear. But not all wide loads are these days. Those that take a lane and
a half cause absolute chaos around them on busy motorways.

> So, driving slowly (and impeding other drivers), because you don't
> want to run down your battery, is a violation, and you can be ticketed
> for it. If you ignore the angry drivers and the police, you may end up
> needing to explain the case to a judge, in court.

Near the range limit of the vehicle you may not have any choice if you
are to reach the next working charger.

However, the vehicle must have the aerodynamics of a brick if there is a
noticeable range difference between 40mph and 50mph. I only see
significant drag affecting fuel economy at 55+. I guess resistive losses
hurt an EV more but I'm surprised that it is quite so bad!

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)

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Ed Lee]

On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 2:06:26 AM UTC-8, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 18/01/2022 20:10, Dave Platt wrote:
> > In article <5ffdd3aa-a770-4fde...@googlegroups.com>,
> > Ed Lee <edward....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> For Maximum EV Efficiency, Stick to 25 Miles an Hour, Ignore Angry Drivers and POLICE.
> >>
> >> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ev-electric-car-battery-charge-hypermiler-11642517385
> >>
> >> I was driving around 40 MPH on right lane of a highway (speed limit unknown) and got pull over for driving too slow. I told him that i was running low on
> >> charges and won't make it to the charger any faster. He escort me for a little while and left.
> Why didn't you know the speed limit?
> Sounds like you shouldn't even be allowed on the road.

It was dark and I didn't have night vision goggle on. It was a rural highway, may be 45MPH or 50MPH.

My car drops into 25MPH turtle mode when the battery is very low. I guess the manufacturer knows something about efficiency at low speed.

>
> 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)

Yes, i had to redirect from a non-working charger.

[Martin Brown]

On 19/01/2022 14:44, Ed Lee wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 2:06:26 AM UTC-8, Martin Brown wrote:
>> On 18/01/2022 20:10, Dave Platt wrote:
>>> In article <5ffdd3aa-a770-4fde...@googlegroups.com>,
>>> Ed Lee <edward....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> For Maximum EV Efficiency, Stick to 25 Miles an Hour, Ignore Angry Drivers and POLICE.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ev-electric-car-battery-charge-hypermiler-11642517385
>>>>
>>>> I was driving around 40 MPH on right lane of a highway (speed limit unknown) and got pull over for driving too slow. I told him that i was running low on
>>>> charges and won't make it to the charger any faster. He escort me for a little while and left.
>> Why didn't you know the speed limit?
>> Sounds like you shouldn't even be allowed on the road.
>
> It was dark and I didn't have night vision goggle on. It was a rural highway, may be 45MPH or 50MPH.

But surely you could remember which sign you went past last?

Don't US signs have glass beads in the matrix so that you get to see
road signs in headlights as you approach? Or do EV's not have them?

UK you need to know the rules as "derestricted" is a white disk with a
diagonal black line across it. ISTR US speed limits are all numbers.

>> However, the vehicle must have the aerodynamics of a brick if there is a
>> noticeable range difference between 40mph and 50mph. I only see
>> significant drag affecting fuel economy at 55+. I guess resistive losses
>> hurt an EV more but I'm surprised that it is quite so bad!
>
> My car drops into 25MPH turtle mode when the battery is very low. I guess the manufacturer knows something about efficiency at low speed.

I can see that the lower the battery discharge rate the longer it will
last but the drag coefficient of the vehicle must be insanely high for
that to matter at such low speeds. It makes very good sense to limit
acceleration when the battery is on its last legs but the vehicle should
be able to do a bit more than 25mph without taking too much of a hit.

Once it is rolling you merely have to replace the energy lost to
friction and drag to maintain a given speed. Drag forces scale with
velocity squared so it seems very conservative to limit to 25mph.

I don't doubt that <25mph absolutely maximises the remaining vehicle
range on low battery if you live long enough to actually get there.

>> 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)
>
> Yes, i had to redirect from a non-working charger.

So non-functional public chargers is an issue in the US too?

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Tom Gardner]

On 19/01/22 10:06, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 18/01/2022 20:10, Dave Platt wrote:
>> In article <5ffdd3aa-a770-4fde...@googlegroups.com>,
>> Ed Lee  <edward....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> For Maximum EV Efficiency, Stick to 25 Miles an Hour, Ignore Angry Drivers
>>> and POLICE.
>>>
>>> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ev-electric-car-battery-charge-hypermiler-11642517385
>>>
>>>
>>> I was driving around 40 MPH on right lane of a highway (speed limit unknown)
>>> and got pull over for driving too slow.  I told him that i was running low on
>>> charges and won't make it to the charger any faster.  He escort me for a
>>> little while and left.
>
> Why didn't you know the speed limit?
> Sounds like you shouldn't even be allowed on the road.
>
>> At the very least, if you're driving significantly slower than the
>> general flow of traffic, you should have your hazard flashers on.
>> Otherwise, you're at a higher risk of being rear-ended by a
>> less-than-attentive driver.
>
> Moving traffic offence in the UK to drive with your hazard warning lights on
> although plenty of people do it :( Not enough traffic police.

With the "new" exception, because everybody does it and it is sendible...

Rule 116
Hazard warning lights. These may be used when your vehicle is stationary, to
warn that it is temporarily obstructing traffic. Never use them as an excuse for
dangerous or illegal parking. You MUST NOT use hazard warning lights while
driving or being towed unless you are on a motorway or unrestricted dual
carriageway and you need to warn drivers behind you of a hazard or obstruction
ahead. Only use them for long enough to ensure that your warning has been observed.

> However, the vehicle must have the aerodynamics of a brick if there is a
> noticeable range difference between 40mph and 50mph. I only see significant drag
> affecting fuel economy at 55+. I guess resistive losses hurt an EV more but I'm
> surprised that it is quite so bad!

For a first order approximation ignoring rolling resistance,
I would expect the difference to be proportional to v²,
i.e. 64%.

Measurements for a Prius show 31kW/100km at (64km/h) and
36kW/100km at (64km/h), i.e. 86% From Fig A12
https://withouthotair.com/cA/page_260.shtml

>
> 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)

For comparison, ISTR petrol pumps "charge" cars at 500kW :)
If we ever get batteries that can accept charge at that rate,
it will be 2000cars for every GW of generation.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

Some of our local governments (Berkeley, of course) have outlawed any
new natural gas installations. They want all electric, all renewable
power.

[Tom Del Rosso]

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.


--
Defund the Thought Police

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 11:42:08 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
> On 1/18/2022 11:07 PM, Rick C wrote:
>
> >>> What is "L"? What else does it do other than make the regen work from the gas pedal?
> >> Putting it in "L" makes it apply full regeneration every time you lift
> >> off the accelerator.
> >
> > So it doesn't vary the engine braking with the position of the accelerator? Does "L" do anything else? I can't figure what "L" is supposed to stand for.
> It does vary with accelerator position but I haven't driven a Tesla so I
> can't say how or if it feels different. Probably. "L" is a throwback to
> the "Low" gear in a gas car and I do use it on steep hills where it
> functions about like that. Other people drive it in "L" all the time and
> like it that way and they can drive it with one pedal successfully, I've
> never gotten accustomed to it though.

It can't possibly work like the Tesla where there is nearly nothing to get used to. It is such a natural feeling it took me maybe two days to adjust my expectations and not dump my foot off the accelerator when I want to slow down. I move between the Tesla and conventional cars just fine although I do miss the smoothly controllable engine braking. I think the strength of the braking is limited by the amount you can charge the battery which varies. That's another reason to not charge up to 100% because much above 90% the regen is very weak.

I was driving the Kia today and while I don't dislike it, it does make me miss the feel of the Tesla. I certainly hope other EV makers are able to provide that same aspect of the Tesla experience. It's like no other car I've ever driven, although I've not driven other EVs.

> e and you're flying free, and then it re-asserts itself about a
> >> half-second later.
> >
> > I think you have to expect that. If the wheels lose grip on the road any braking isn't going to work smoothly. I've noticed that in ICE vehicles.
> Regeneration-only braking using the paddle seems to instantly disengage
> if one of the two drive wheels slips badly or goes airborne off a bump
> for a moment which is definitely disconcerting compared to having four
> wheels with mechanical brakes engaged, never had a car fully disengage
> all four disc brakes cuz one wheel bounced off a bump, lol.
>
> It has something to do with the particulars of the Voltec series-hybrid
> FWD gearset and how it links to the motor-generators I expect, it can't
> regenerate when only one drive wheel is making contact.
> > I don't even know how to turn TC off in the Tesla, but I'm sure there's a setting for it. I've never wanted to do that although I used to take my pickup into snowed parking lots to do donuts and would not mind trying it with the Tesla.
> >
> Nobody reads the manuals no mo...:-(

I literally don't have the time as every update would require a reread.

--

Rick C.

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

[Rick C]

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've seen no small number of Tesla Superchargers held up after all the work is done because new requirements were added by the inspectors. In one case that had dragged on for months the last issue pointed out after everything else had been failed and fixed... one at a time... was about stickers that explained the emergency disconnect was on a different level of the parking deck.

--

Rick C.

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

[Rick C]

It's not a matter of efficiency, it's an issue of damage to the battery. They have to monitor each cell to make sure they are not being discharged below zero. This is at the very end of the battery capacity. I think in the Tesla this happens when you are below a couple of percent. One guy took his car down to I think it was 13 mile range trying to reach the charger and pulled over for some reason. He was videoing the dash and while sitting it went from 13 miles to 0 miles. I think the guy had an inkling this would happen as he doesn't video the dash by default and had no reason to pull over as I recall. Most likely this was the car renormalizing at the low end. It also needs to do this on occasion on the high end to have an accurate range estimate.

As to the non-working chargers, I've only ever seen an individual failed charger at Tesla sites. Never seen a site down.

--

Rick C.

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

[DecadentLinux...@decadence.org]

Ed Lee <edward....@gmail.com> wrote in
news:5ffdd3aa-a770-4fde...@googlegroups.com:

> For Maximum EV Efficiency, Stick to 25 Miles an Hour, Ignore Angry
> Drivers and POLICE.
>
> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ev-electric-car-battery-charge-hypermi
> ler-11642517385
>
> I was driving around 40 MPH on right lane of a highway (speed
> limit unknown) and got pull over for driving too slow. I told him
> that i was running low on charges and won't make it to the charger
> any faster. He escort me for a little while and left.
>

Up to about 40 mph the only thing the car has to overcome is rolling
resistance, especially if it has a low cd / sleek design body. Up
above that wind resistance plays a bigger factor even on the sleek
models. It does not matter what the drivetrain power source is.

[DecadentLinux...@decadence.org]

dpl...@coop.radagast.org (Dave Platt) wrote in
news:7ejjbi-l...@coop.radagast.org:

>
> Even that may not be legal. Here in California, the Vehicle Code
> says "No person shall drive or operate on a highway at such a slow
> speed as to impede or block the normal reasonable movement of
> traffic, unless the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation
> because of a grade, or compliance in the law."
>

Cali is friggin weird. They don't write a speeding ticket. They
write you up for "too fast for conditions" and that way it matters not
what the posted speed is. And if it is too fast you could eat a
reckless operation criminal charge.

The speed limit represents an UPPER limit in most places. In many if
not most. In today's 'idiots in a hurry' world, even traveling at the
speed limit you end up with idiots crawling up your ass, acting like
you are holding them up. Driving in town like they are on a highway.

[Tom Gardner]

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

It wouldn't surprise me if it had been constructed where space
is available, and guessing there weren't other problems.

[Martin Brown]

On 20/01/2022 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?

Who pays for connecting it up and the supply tariffs when they do.

>
> I've seen no small number of Tesla Superchargers held up after all the work is done because new requirements were added by the inspectors. In one case that had dragged on for months the last issue pointed out after everything else had been failed and fixed... one at a time... was about stickers that explained the emergency disconnect was on a different level of the parking deck.
>

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.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Rick C]

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.

> It wouldn't surprise me if it had been constructed where space
> is available, and guessing there weren't other problems.

What surprises you if of little relevance.

--

Rick C.

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

[Rick C]

On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 3:59:11 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 20/01/2022 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?
> Who pays for connecting it up and the supply tariffs when they do.

Why are you asking me???

> > I've seen no small number of Tesla Superchargers held up after all the work is done because new requirements were added by the inspectors. In one case that had dragged on for months the last issue pointed out after everything else had been failed and fixed... one at a time... was about stickers that explained the emergency disconnect was on a different level of the parking deck.
> >
> 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.

There are a lot of people who want to be experts on why EVs are not possible in their area. I think the UK may be a place where this is partly true, just not for the reasons you seem to think. In many ways the UK seems like a third world country with a power grid that is more fragile than what we have in Puerto Rico. But mostly this is not relevant. Here are some facts.

The "grid" doesn't need to support a "nightly 7 kW load" for every EV. In the US, drivers average 30 miles a day. I think the UK is about the same. That is a grand total of less than 8 kWh or less than a single space heater for around 6 hours (in the US they are 1.44 kW). In the US you could charge this on a 120V outlet. No, if every home in the US added this nightly load, it would have zero impact on the grid other than to help amortize the fixed costs of maintaining the "grid" lowering everyone's bills a bit. I don't think I've heard as much resistance to EVs from anywhere as I do from the UK. Instead of spouting absurd numbers, why don't people in the UK *think* about the issue instead of blabbing how hard it will be to use EVs or to power them from renewable sources? Is the UK as resistant to every technological advance?

--

Rick C.

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

[Arnie Dwyer (ex Jan Frank)]

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?

Quote:

"The government has a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the
United Kingdom by 50% on 1990 levels by 2025 and to net zero by 2050. In
May 2019, Parliament declared a 'climate change emergency', however this
does not legally compel the government to act."

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

Sounds like someone needs to start looking at Molten Salt Reactors. These
run at atmospheric pressure and don't need the huge containment vessels of
conventional nuclear reactors, so they are much faster and cheaper to build
and operate:

Thorium Lifters Could Power Civilization for BILLIONS of Years!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74iiaXIVtZI

Molten-Salt Reactor Choices - Kirk Sorensen of Flibe Energy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz49CB8XGQo

[John Larkin]

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.

--

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts,
but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon

[Jim Jackson]

On 2022-01-20, John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:
>
> Of course, experts tell us we'll all be dead in nine years.

I've missed that one. Which experts and references please?

[Martin Brown]

On 20/01/2022 11:41, Rick C wrote:
> On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 3:59:11 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:
>> On 20/01/2022 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?
>> Who pays for connecting it up and the supply tariffs when they do.
>
> Why are you asking me???

That is the answer to the question of "why they are still not
operational?". They cannot agree commercial contract terms between the
energy supplier and the owner of the site with the chargers on!

UK electricity supply is a mess with zillions of electricity "suppliers"
who do nothing but bill consumers. They are going bust at the moment
left, right and centre since they have no generation capacity and by a
peculiar price cap law are forced to sell electricity at a lower price
than they are paying for it. I know this sounds like something from
"Alice in Wonderland" but I assure you it is true. More than 30 UK
"electricity suppliers" have gone bust in the last 3 months.

https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/energy/failed-uk-energy-suppliers-update/

It is complete madness - they are merely clueless book keepers not
electricity suppliers. Electricity generation is a separate business.

>>> I've seen no small number of Tesla Superchargers held up after all the work is done because new requirements were added by the inspectors. In one case that had dragged on for months the last issue pointed out after everything else had been failed and fixed... one at a time... was about stickers that explained the emergency disconnect was on a different level of the parking deck.
>>>
>> 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.
>
> There are a lot of people who want to be experts on why EVs are not possible in their area. I think the UK may be a place where this is partly true, just not for the reasons you seem to think. In many ways the UK seems like a third world country with a power grid that is more fragile than what we have in Puerto Rico. But mostly this is not relevant. Here are some facts.
>
> The "grid" doesn't need to support a "nightly 7 kW load" for every EV. In the US, drivers average 30 miles a day. I think the UK is about the same. That is a grand total of less than 8 kWh or less than a single space heater for around 6 hours (in the US they are 1.44 kW). In the US you could charge this on a 120V outlet. No, if every home in the US added this nightly load, it would have zero impact on the grid other than to help amortize the fixed costs of maintaining the "grid" lowering everyone's bills a bit. I don't think I've heard as much resistance to EVs from anywhere as I do from the UK. Instead of spouting absurd numbers, why don't people in the UK *think* about the issue instead of blabbing how hard it will be to use EVs or to power them from renewable sources? Is the UK as resistant to every technological advance?

UK can barely make enough electricity to stay warm at this time of year.
We are pretty much reliant on French nuclear generation and continental
interconnectors if it is a grey windless day. Too bad if it is cold in
France at the same time - they will serve their own needs first.

Successive governments have prevaricated on new nuclear and now the shit
is about to hit the fan. I have to agree that the UK infrastructure is
at near third world levels with the recent large scale outage in the
North of England as classic demonstration of just how low we have sunk.

Today's news is they have just refused planning permission for another
badly needed interconnector. You couldn't make it up!

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kwarteng-turns-down-aquind-channel-energy-cable-at-centre-of-donor-row-jtbn3xtmv

They have been paying large users to shutdown heavily energy intensive
production during winter months for a few years now. The rot really set
in when Centrica closed the gas storage buffer in Yorkshire in 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-storage-prices-rough-british-gas-centrica

That leaves UK electricity generation after the dash for gas incredibly
exposed to the spot market price for natural gas (now extortionate).

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

torsdag den 20. januar 2022 kl. 19.38.44 UTC+1 skrev John Larkin:
> 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.

kinda started already, on one hand people complaint politician don't take
global warming serious and are not ambitious enough pushing for green energy
and at the same time people complain that the politicians don't reduce the tax
on energy now that energy has had a large increase in price

[Rick C]

On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 3:03:14 PM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 20/01/2022 11:41, Rick C wrote:
> > On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 3:59:11 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:
> >> On 20/01/2022 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?
> >> Who pays for connecting it up and the supply tariffs when they do.
> >
> > Why are you asking me???
> That is the answer to the question of "why they are still not
> operational?". They cannot agree commercial contract terms between the
> energy supplier and the owner of the site with the chargers on!

I'm sorry, you are just being silly about all this. "Tariffs" and the rest of the contracts were signed before any construction was begun. Why do you make up such things rather than just saying you don't know any more details?

> UK electricity supply is a mess with zillions of electricity "suppliers"
> who do nothing but bill consumers. They are going bust at the moment
> left, right and centre since they have no generation capacity and by a
> peculiar price cap law are forced to sell electricity at a lower price
> than they are paying for it. I know this sounds like something from
> "Alice in Wonderland" but I assure you it is true. More than 30 UK
> "electricity suppliers" have gone bust in the last 3 months.

I don't really care. Nothing to do with me or EVs.

> It is complete madness - they are merely clueless book keepers not
> electricity suppliers. Electricity generation is a separate business.
> >>> I've seen no small number of Tesla Superchargers held up after all the work is done because new requirements were added by the inspectors. In one case that had dragged on for months the last issue pointed out after everything else had been failed and fixed... one at a time... was about stickers that explained the emergency disconnect was on a different level of the parking deck.
> >>>
> >> 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.
> >
> > There are a lot of people who want to be experts on why EVs are not possible in their area. I think the UK may be a place where this is partly true, just not for the reasons you seem to think. In many ways the UK seems like a third world country with a power grid that is more fragile than what we have in Puerto Rico. But mostly this is not relevant. Here are some facts.
> >
> > The "grid" doesn't need to support a "nightly 7 kW load" for every EV. In the US, drivers average 30 miles a day. I think the UK is about the same. That is a grand total of less than 8 kWh or less than a single space heater for around 6 hours (in the US they are 1.44 kW). In the US you could charge this on a 120V outlet. No, if every home in the US added this nightly load, it would have zero impact on the grid other than to help amortize the fixed costs of maintaining the "grid" lowering everyone's bills a bit. I don't think I've heard as much resistance to EVs from anywhere as I do from the UK. Instead of spouting absurd numbers, why don't people in the UK *think* about the issue instead of blabbing how hard it will be to use EVs or to power them from renewable sources? Is the UK as resistant to every technological advance?
> UK can barely make enough electricity to stay warm at this time of year.

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. Then of course some calculated every kW EVs would need as adding to the peak use times all the while acknowledging there are many who, for better rates, heat bricks off peak for heating, all the while claiming this was terrible for some reason. It was hugely emotional and many were clearly angry that a Yank was telling them it was possible. Ok, so I agree, the UK is so backward that EVs are not practical.

> We are pretty much reliant on French nuclear generation and continental
> interconnectors if it is a grey windless day. Too bad if it is cold in
> France at the same time - they will serve their own needs first.

I thought the cross channel electric connections were rather limited.

> Successive governments have prevaricated on new nuclear and now the shit
> is about to hit the fan. I have to agree that the UK infrastructure is
> at near third world levels with the recent large scale outage in the
> North of England as classic demonstration of just how low we have sunk.

I've read quite a bit about UK nuclear construction, 1 very overrun project coming to fruition soon (for varying values of "soon") and talk of allowing construction overruns to be passed onto the consumer for future projects (no incentive to control overruns then). I prefer the US approach, let them either succeed or fail on their own. If nuclear can't compete, why subsidize it? It's not a nascent industry, just a money sink.

> Today's news is they have just refused planning permission for another
> badly needed interconnector. You couldn't make it up!
>
> https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kwarteng-turns-down-aquind-channel-energy-cable-at-centre-of-donor-row-jtbn3xtmv

Paywall...

> They have been paying large users to shutdown heavily energy intensive
> production during winter months for a few years now. The rot really set
> in when Centrica closed the gas storage buffer in Yorkshire in 2017
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-storage-prices-rough-british-gas-centrica
>
> That leaves UK electricity generation after the dash for gas incredibly
> exposed to the spot market price for natural gas (now extortionate).

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.

--

Rick C.

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

[Rick C]

Probably not the same people. What energy prices have increased? Seems to me pretty much all fuels and energies have been stable for some time now, no? Maybe that's just the US?

--

Rick C.

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

[Martin Brown]

begun. Why do you make up such things?

Why don't you read the articles I linked to.

This one from an earlier cancellation of opening last September spells
it out in the first paragraph!

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/19555455.vehicle-charging-hub-york-still-shut---no-power/

First three sentences quoted verbatim below in case it is paywalled from
outside the UK:

"A FLAGSHIP charging centre for electric vehicles - originally due to
open on York’s outskirts in July - is still fenced off and closed
following delays in connecting it to the electricity grid.

Council officials said yesterday that they were still finalising
commercial and contractual arrangements before the York HyperHub at
Monks Cross could open later this year.

The complex, situated at the entrance to the Monks Cross Park&Ride car
park, will be one of the largest charging hubs in Northern England and
will aim to act as a demonstration of best practice for the design of EV
charging facilities."

I find the last paragraph particularly ironic. It still *isn't* open and
had another high profile *not*opening date pass very recently.

>> UK electricity supply is a mess with zillions of electricity
>> "suppliers" who do nothing but bill consumers. They are going bust
>> at the moment left, right and centre since they have no generation
>> capacity and by a peculiar price cap law are forced to sell
>> electricity at a lower price than they are paying for it. I know
>> this sounds like something from "Alice in Wonderland" but I assure
>> you it is true. More than 30 UK "electricity suppliers" have gone
>> bust in the last 3 months.
>
> I don't really care. Nothing to do with me or EVs.

It has everything to do with EVs. If there isn't enough electricity to
go around then there is no prospect of running all these EVs.

>> UK can barely make enough electricity to stay warm at this time of
>> year.
>
> 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.

It is commonplace in most of the larger cities with terraced housing.
Suburban streets with wider pavements (sidewalks) have been converted to
carparking. Remember that a lot of UK housing was built long before
owning a car was something the ordinary person could ever hope to do.

Many smaller houses come with nowhere to park a car. Mid size houses
don't come with enough space to park the number of cars a family might
own. Paving over the entire front garden for parking is common. This
causes interesting problems of flash flooding from runoff. We don't have
separate fresh water storm drains so it makes sewage plants overflow.

I hesitate to put a figure on it but perhaps as high as 25% terraced
housing in many inner cities. Where I live there is a lot of space.

Have you ever been to the UK? It is quite a crowded little island.

> Then of course some calculated every kW
> EVs would need as adding to the peak use times all the while
> acknowledging there are many who, for better rates, heat bricks off
> peak for heating, all the while claiming this was terrible for some
> reason. It was hugely emotional and many were clearly angry that a
> Yank was telling them it was possible. Ok, so I agree, the UK is so
> backward that EVs are not practical.

UK electricity distribution is so backwards and now becoming unreliable
due to them cutting back on maintenance and overheads (ie staff who
actually know what they are doing). How else do you explain the recent
nearly two week outage in parts of Northern England after storm Arwen
(which really wasn't all that extreme). The network infrastructure has
been allowed to decay by penny pinching bean counters in London.

After our local 2 day outage we have been around and found several
electricity poles on the edge of failing. They are either visibly loose
in the ground, rotten or thinned down at shoulder height by beast
rubbing against them so that a once 10" diameter pole is under 4".

>> We are pretty much reliant on French nuclear generation and
>> continental interconnectors if it is a grey windless day. Too bad
>> if it is cold in France at the same time - they will serve their
>> own needs first.
>
> I thought the cross channel electric connections were rather
> limited.

They are relatively limited. More so at the moment one is down!
But they are essential to UK supply integrity now.

>> Successive governments have prevaricated on new nuclear and now the
>> shit is about to hit the fan. I have to agree that the UK
>> infrastructure is at near third world levels with the recent large
>> scale outage in the North of England as classic demonstration of
>> just how low we have sunk.
>
> I've read quite a bit about UK nuclear construction, 1 very overrun
> project coming to fruition soon (for varying values of "soon") and
> talk of allowing construction overruns to be passed onto the consumer
> for future projects (no incentive to control overruns then). I
> prefer the US approach, let them either succeed or fail on their own.
> If nuclear can't compete, why subsidize it? It's not a nascent
> industry, just a money sink.

It is low carbon electricity if you can make it work.

>
>> They have been paying large users to shutdown heavily energy
>> intensive production during winter months for a few years now. The
>> rot really set in when Centrica closed the gas storage buffer in
>> Yorkshire in 2017
>>
>> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-storage-prices-rough-british-gas-centrica
>>
>>
>>
That leaves UK electricity generation after the dash for gas incredibly
>> exposed to the spot market price for natural gas (now
>> extortionate).
>
> 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

There is a pumped storage plant in Wales - one of the biggest in the
world but it is still miniscule compared to total UK power usage.

Australia has a battery farm somewhere that buffers peak load and is
profitable. The only one I know of in the UK is a toy near Oxford.

https://www.energy-storage.news/huge-achievement-as-50mw-battery-system-is-first-to-export-to-uk-grid-from-tertiary-connection/

> 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

UK has chloralkaline and aluminium (not sure if it is still there) as
the consumers of last resort. The former can absorb vast amounts of
power and isn't too upset if they get none at all. Makes them very
favourable as a load balancing tool for the national grid. I think they
get exceptionally good rates for accepting a very intermittent supply.

We used to have a steel industry but there is almost nothing left.

> good riddance. They used to emit fluorine which would kill dairy
> cows when they ate the grass.

Shouldn't they have been scrubbing their exhaust gasses through lime?
CaF2 is about the most insoluble thing known.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Martin Brown]

On 21/01/2022 05:40, Rick C wrote:
> On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 3:09:12 PM UTC-5, lang...@fonz.dk wrote:
>> torsdag den 20. januar 2022 kl. 19.38.44 UTC+1 skrev John Larkin:
>>> 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.
>> kinda started already, on one hand people complaint politician don't take
>> global warming serious and are not ambitious enough pushing for green energy
>> and at the same time people complain that the politicians don't reduce the tax
>> on energy now that energy has had a large increase in price
>
> Probably not the same people. What energy prices have increased?

Natural gas prices have gone through the roof!
Nearly an order of magnitude higher prices on the spot market.
That is what is driving all the UK energy box shifters into bankruptcy.

> Seems to me pretty much all fuels and energies have been stable for some time now, no? Maybe that's just the US?

This graph from a US source says otherwise:

https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/weekly/

Natural gas prices have spiked this winter at between 7-10x what they
were earlier last year and show every sign of going higher as users
compete for the relatively small amounts available to buy for import.

It could get a hell of a lot worse if Russia invades Ukraine and the
West imposes trade sanctions. Then in a tit-for-tat measure Russia cuts
off supply to the European gas pipeline(s). Mid-winter is not a good
time to be without gas. So far the price is just incredibly high.

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

UK electricity production would fail within a week under that scenario.
Most other European countries have larger natural gas buffer stocks.
(a month or more)

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Ralph Mowery]

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.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On some days, California pays Arizona to take our excess solar power.
On other days, we buy their coal-generated power.

[John Larkin]

https://news.yahoo.com/leonardo-dicaprio-puts-nine-ticking-184911367.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJVqMhL5Spg2rXfNM-OJb6H2Ioh6lUxQfzhtrW4YEqiUP1wCkBlQ_qUVET3Nc1VIekV64L1eHcfN3NOh1qu5yfKCXMg6Noigr8DijOTil-ud7PmzQRXm1wKqKxSn8HeuStxEQRDA2XLPO6QG2ZD35RiKxzxWldQFqKA60ulX0yfu

[Cydrome Leader]

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.

[wmartin]

Yeah, great business intellects run this state!

[John Larkin]

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.

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 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]

Where does that say anything about "tariffs"???

Do you read what you write???

They don't actually "spell out" anything. "were still finalizing commercial and contractual arrangements" is as close as they come. That could mean anything.

In the US local utility rates are regulated by local boards, usually at the state level. Generation is a competitive matter with the freedom to buy from whom you want. I don't know exactly how they do things in the UK, but if they didn't have electrical supply lined up prior to constructing the facility, that is simply incompetent program management.

If you read back though this discussion you have made unsupported statements several times and never followed through on demonstrating they are true. Now you cite an article that says what I said it said, they are finalizing "legal agreements", which you somehow interpret is setting tariffs, otherwise known as rates. This started with you claiming chargers were "unable to get supply". That's not the same thing as they were too incompetent to line up the electrical source before they started construction.

> >> UK electricity supply is a mess with zillions of electricity
> >> "suppliers" who do nothing but bill consumers. They are going bust
> >> at the moment left, right and centre since they have no generation
> >> capacity and by a peculiar price cap law are forced to sell
> >> electricity at a lower price than they are paying for it. I know
> >> this sounds like something from "Alice in Wonderland" but I assure
> >> you it is true. More than 30 UK "electricity suppliers" have gone
> >> bust in the last 3 months.
> >
> > I don't really care. Nothing to do with me or EVs.
> It has everything to do with EVs. If there isn't enough electricity to
> go around then there is no prospect of running all these EVs.

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. Yup, I believe that is 3 kW which would allow you to add 120 miles in a 10 hour overnight charge which would come from excess capacity. I believe it would be no problem at all to add a higher current outlet if this doesn't suit you, but the average daily drive is only 30 miles. I expect a 120 mile overnight charge would suit the 99.9th percentile with no added generation, transmission or distribution.

> >> UK can barely make enough electricity to stay warm at this time of
> >> year.
> >
> > 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.
> It is commonplace in most of the larger cities with terraced housing.
> Suburban streets with wider pavements (sidewalks) have been converted to
> carparking. Remember that a lot of UK housing was built long before
> owning a car was something the ordinary person could ever hope to do.
>
> Many smaller houses come with nowhere to park a car. Mid size houses
> don't come with enough space to park the number of cars a family might
> own. Paving over the entire front garden for parking is common. This
> causes interesting problems of flash flooding from runoff. We don't have
> separate fresh water storm drains so it makes sewage plants overflow.
>
> I hesitate to put a figure on it but perhaps as high as 25% terraced
> housing in many inner cities. Where I live there is a lot of space.

Ok, then no EVs for you. You can be the last customer of OPEC.

> Have you ever been to the UK? It is quite a crowded little island.
> > Then of course some calculated every kW
> > EVs would need as adding to the peak use times all the while
> > acknowledging there are many who, for better rates, heat bricks off
> > peak for heating, all the while claiming this was terrible for some
> > reason. It was hugely emotional and many were clearly angry that a
> > Yank was telling them it was possible. Ok, so I agree, the UK is so
> > backward that EVs are not practical.
> UK electricity distribution is so backwards and now becoming unreliable
> due to them cutting back on maintenance and overheads (ie staff who
> actually know what they are doing). How else do you explain the recent
> nearly two week outage in parts of Northern England after storm Arwen
> (which really wasn't all that extreme). The network infrastructure has
> been allowed to decay by penny pinching bean counters in London.

Yeah, I heard no shortage of stories about degrading cables with aluminum sheathing and many other problems.

> After our local 2 day outage we have been around and found several
> electricity poles on the edge of failing. They are either visibly loose
> in the ground, rotten or thinned down at shoulder height by beast
> rubbing against them so that a once 10" diameter pole is under 4".

Yeah, it's pretty clear that the UK would totally fail if they had to fight the Battle of Brittan again.

> >> We are pretty much reliant on French nuclear generation and
> >> continental interconnectors if it is a grey windless day. Too bad
> >> if it is cold in France at the same time - they will serve their
> >> own needs first.
> >
> > I thought the cross channel electric connections were rather
> > limited.
> They are relatively limited. More so at the moment one is down!
> But they are essential to UK supply integrity now.

The UK seems hell bent on nuclear even though the current project is years late and billions over budget. I guess that's what you get when you turn to the French for technology. Maybe you should check in with the Chinese? Maybe they can help you?

> >> Successive governments have prevaricated on new nuclear and now the
> >> shit is about to hit the fan. I have to agree that the UK
> >> infrastructure is at near third world levels with the recent large
> >> scale outage in the North of England as classic demonstration of
> >> just how low we have sunk.
> >
> > I've read quite a bit about UK nuclear construction, 1 very overrun
> > project coming to fruition soon (for varying values of "soon") and
> > talk of allowing construction overruns to be passed onto the consumer
> > for future projects (no incentive to control overruns then). I
> > prefer the US approach, let them either succeed or fail on their own.
> > If nuclear can't compete, why subsidize it? It's not a nascent
> > industry, just a money sink.
> It is low carbon electricity if you can make it work.

Hmmm... Yes, but that's the sticky wicket, innit? Can you tell I watch too much British TV? Doc Martin lately.

> >> They have been paying large users to shutdown heavily energy
> >> intensive production during winter months for a few years now. The
> >> rot really set in when Centrica closed the gas storage buffer in
> >> Yorkshire in 2017
> >>
> >> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-storage-prices-rough-british-gas-centrica
> >>
> >>
> >>
> That leaves UK electricity generation after the dash for gas incredibly
> >> exposed to the spot market price for natural gas (now
> >> extortionate).
> >
> > 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
> There is a pumped storage plant in Wales - one of the biggest in the
> world but it is still miniscule compared to total UK power usage.

It doesn't have to compare to the total generation or usage, just the amount you are saving by shutting down factories. Do you not understand what I'm saying? If you don't have enough, you need to build more. If you can add storage at a cost that is less than paying people to shut down, that saves money. Isn't that a very simple concept?

> Australia has a battery farm somewhere that buffers peak load and is
> profitable. The only one I know of in the UK is a toy near Oxford.
>
> https://www.energy-storage.news/huge-achievement-as-50mw-battery-system-is-first-to-export-to-uk-grid-from-tertiary-connection/

The one in Australia has worked very well and I believe it was enlarged. I think other companies have also built them, but it's been a while, I maybe confusing this with other countries or even other continents.

> > 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
> UK has chloralkaline and aluminium (not sure if it is still there) as
> the consumers of last resort. The former can absorb vast amounts of
> power and isn't too upset if they get none at all. Makes them very
> favourable as a load balancing tool for the national grid. I think they
> get exceptionally good rates for accepting a very intermittent supply.
>
> We used to have a steel industry but there is almost nothing left.
> > good riddance. They used to emit fluorine which would kill dairy
> > cows when they ate the grass.
> Shouldn't they have been scrubbing their exhaust gasses through lime?
> CaF2 is about the most insoluble thing known.

We have an expression the US, "stuff happens".

--

Rick C.

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

[Tom Del Rosso]

The reason you see steam rising from manholes, and sometimes cracks in
the sidewalk, in Manhattan, is the island's central steam heat.
Manhattan uses so much electricity that it needs several power plants
around the perimeter of the island, which used to be oil fired but I
think they're all gas now. The steam exits the turbines and is piped
through the streets to heat buildings, clean dishes in retaurants, and I
hear cheese makers use it somehow. I have no idea what they bill for it.

--
Defund the Thought Police

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 9:17:38 AM UTC+11, 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:

<snip>

> >> 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.

There might be an anti-in competence political reaction. There's no reason why renewable resources couldn't be exploited to generate all the power that he grid might be expected to need. You might need a fairly extensive grid with a lot of grid storage (batteries, pumped hydro and the like) to cope with the intermittent nature of most renewable resources

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

They don't, unless he means the kind of "expert" invented by climate change denial propagandists.

> >I had to remind 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 maybe 18% coal, but with needing

> >least 20% more than they'd need for on-site heating need due to transmission
> >losses.

That is currently true, to some extent. It's unlike to remain true. Recently South Australia ran for a week on renewable sources only - which is to say that renewable source supplied about 104% of the electricity used. Some of it got exported to adjacent states, and some of the time power was imported from place that generated it by burning gas. South Australia famously bought a Tesla grid battery a few years ago

https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/

and they have bought another one since then.

They are also buying a grid-scale vanadium flow battery (which ought to be a better technology, but isn't yet produced in volume - unlike Tesla's car batteries).

https://arena.gov.au/news/first-grid-scale-flow-battery-to-be-built-in-south-australia/

> >It was crickets after that.

They knew that they were being lectured at by an ignorant halfwit?

> 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.
>
> 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.

It's called district heating, and is popular in Europe. It only works for the area close to the power station. In Nijmegen they coupled the garbage incinerator into that network.

> 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.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Rick C]

I guess you are not familiar with pricing. "Spot" prices are always the highest prices you can find. If you look at electrical prices you will find the utilities pay *huge* prices at peak times. This means nothing on my bill because it is already factored into the price of electricity. I think you don't pay spot market prices either. Your claim about a ten fold increase in spot market prices means nothing other than what is reflected in your energy rates. You know better, but you do tend to be a Henny Penny alarmist at times.

> Natural gas prices have spiked this winter at between 7-10x what they
> were earlier last year and show every sign of going higher as users
> compete for the relatively small amounts available to buy for import.

I guess this is another way the UK is a third world country, not able to foresee their future and manage their way around problems. I thought Brittan had a tonne of wells in the North Sea pumping natural gas through the island? I guess the North sea isn't big enough.

> It could get a hell of a lot worse if Russia invades Ukraine and the
> West imposes trade sanctions. Then in a tit-for-tat measure Russia cuts
> off supply to the European gas pipeline(s). Mid-winter is not a good
> time to be without gas. So far the price is just incredibly high.

Ah, yes. The spot market responds severely to such issues. Temporary though until the issues are resolved.

> 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???

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? Try that over here and we can use a law to require a company to operate. Why is there only one company? Why can't CO2 be imported? How about getting it from the air? It's presently 400 ppm and rising.

> UK electricity production would fail within a week under that scenario.
> Most other European countries have larger natural gas buffer stocks.
> (a month or more)

I think it is time for everyone to leave the UK and have the last person turn out the lights.

--

Rick C.

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

[Rick C]

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
> <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.

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]

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]

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...@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.

[Jasen Betts]

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]

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]

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]

I am well familiar with pricing. I know that spot market prices are
insanely high and *that* is what our government has committed us to for
gas supply for electricity generation. They shut down the last decent
sized UK gas storage facility about 5 years ago. They are quite
literally buying on the spot market and paying over the odds to divert
LNG tankers to the UK *right now*. I agree that it is insane, but it is
exactly what you get by deregulating and short term profit motives.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/household-bills-almost-certain-to-double-ovo-energy-boss-warns-vkcsblwb2

>
>> Natural gas prices have spiked this winter at between 7-10x what
>> they were earlier last year and show every sign of going higher as
>> users compete for the relatively small amounts available to buy for
>> import.
>
> I guess this is another way the UK is a third world country, not able
> to foresee their future and manage their way around problems. I
> thought Brittan had a tonne of wells in the North Sea pumping natural
> gas through the island? I guess the North sea isn't big enough.

Nowhere near. They are buying LNG in tankers at *huge* expense.
Buying on the spot market and having a JIT system for gas with virtually
no buffer stock means they are absolutely at the mercy of price gougers.
Strictly it isn't price gouging so much as what the market will stand!

To many countries decarbonised in the dash for gas. Now that Russia has
throttled back the gas supply to Europe there is insanely high demand
for gas to keep the lights on at *any* price.

>> It could get a hell of a lot worse if Russia invades Ukraine and
>> the West imposes trade sanctions. Then in a tit-for-tat measure
>> Russia cuts off supply to the European gas pipeline(s). Mid-winter
>> is not a good time to be without gas. So far the price is just
>> incredibly high.
>
> Ah, yes. The spot market responds severely to such issues.
> Temporary though until the issues are resolved.

This doesn't look temporary. The whole of Europe will lose electricity
if the shit hits the fan.

France still has worthwhile nuclear capacity but the rest will be toast.

>> 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???

Not at all - it threatened food supplies for Xmas. They *had* to do
something - the company wasn't prepared to run at a loss. It is yet
another side effect of the insanely high gas prices.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-58626935

This one shouldn't be paywalled. BTW you can sometimes get around the
paywalls by putting the appropriate search term into Google and reading
it from their cache.

Google "CO2 producer restart operations UK minister strikes deal"
and the first link should be the article with a paywall free token
appended although it might ask you a question first.

> 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? Try that over here and we can use a law to
> require a company to operate. Why is there only one company? Why
> can't CO2 be imported? How about getting it from the air? It's
> presently 400 ppm and rising.

They get the food grade CO2 as a byproduct of fertiliser manufacture.
Then the CO2 is used for production of fizzy pop and stunning animals
for slaughter.

>> UK electricity production would fail within a week under that
>> scenario. Most other European countries have larger natural gas
>> buffer stocks. (a month or more)
>
> I think it is time for everyone to leave the UK and have the last
> person turn out the lights.

It hasn't failed yet but there is every reason to expect a spectacular
and catastrophic failure of UK infrastructure before too much longer.

We are stuck with a very dodgy conman as a Prime Minister who doesn't
think any rules apply to him. His cabinet consists mostly of B-ark
material so that his "Genius" may appear to shine all the brighter.

Think Trump light and you get the general idea. His position is now in
danger over the No 10 Partygate affair with garden parties held during
the first lockdown (no one told him it was against the rules!).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59577129

Even some Tory MPs have said that he should go. Government whips appear
to have been blackmailing Tory MPs to back The Boris. That is now the
subject of a police enquiry. (They are not called whips for nothing)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60093893

The government is retaliating by trying to defund the BBC. We live in
interesting times. Electing a populist demagogue is a very bad idea!

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[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
> <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.

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?

[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]

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

[Rick C]

Sorry, I meant Martin Brown mentioned "tariffs", but you also created pure speculation which is nonsense.
--

Rick C.

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

[Rick C]

You must keep the heat low in Australia then. Deicing does very much blow cool air through the home unless you aren't using forced air heat. No one likes cold air from their heating system, so they use auxiliary heat (usually straight resistance heating) to prevent this. I suppose Australians are tougher material or just can't afford the heating coils.

--

Rick C.

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

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 19:48:30 -0500, "Tom Del Rosso"
<fizzbin...@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

>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.
>>

>> 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 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.
>

>The reason you see steam rising from manholes, and sometimes cracks in
>the sidewalk, in Manhattan, is the island's central steam heat.
>Manhattan uses so much electricity that it needs several power plants
>around the perimeter of the island, which used to be oil fired but I
>think they're all gas now. The steam exits the turbines and is piped
>through the streets to heat buildings, clean dishes in retaurants, and I
>hear cheese makers use it somehow. I have no idea what they bill for it.

I did some work on Moscow's hot water system, measuring the thermal
energy in/out of a big site.

Moscow was interesting. Most apartment buildings were overheated and
unmeasured. When it got too hot, people would open their windows.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

[Tom Gardner]

And hence my statements are correct, and you read faster than you
are able to comprehend.

[Rick C]

Sounds like the third world to me where you are at the mercy of the wealthy countries for your existence.

> >> Natural gas prices have spiked this winter at between 7-10x what
> >> they were earlier last year and show every sign of going higher as
> >> users compete for the relatively small amounts available to buy for
> >> import.
> >
> > I guess this is another way the UK is a third world country, not able
> > to foresee their future and manage their way around problems. I
> > thought Brittan had a tonne of wells in the North Sea pumping natural
> > gas through the island? I guess the North sea isn't big enough.
> Nowhere near. They are buying LNG in tankers at *huge* expense.
> Buying on the spot market and having a JIT system for gas with virtually
> no buffer stock means they are absolutely at the mercy of price gougers.
> Strictly it isn't price gouging so much as what the market will stand!
>
> To many countries decarbonised in the dash for gas. Now that Russia has
> throttled back the gas supply to Europe there is insanely high demand
> for gas to keep the lights on at *any* price.

Yup, so Russia doesn't need an army anymore. They have pipelines! Glad we don't have that problem. I suppose we have to stay friendly with Canada or they might cut us off from Alaskan fuels.

> >> It could get a hell of a lot worse if Russia invades Ukraine and
> >> the West imposes trade sanctions. Then in a tit-for-tat measure
> >> Russia cuts off supply to the European gas pipeline(s). Mid-winter
> >> is not a good time to be without gas. So far the price is just
> >> incredibly high.
> >
> > Ah, yes. The spot market responds severely to such issues.
> > Temporary though until the issues are resolved.
> This doesn't look temporary. The whole of Europe will lose electricity
> if the shit hits the fan.

Not good for Russia either. The more they pull on that chain, the more the dependent countries find other sources. I recall the threat of cutting supply was real on several occasions. Maybe you need to invade Russia?

> France still has worthwhile nuclear capacity but the rest will be toast.

You mean yesterday's left over, cold toast?

> >> 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???
> Not at all - it threatened food supplies for Xmas. They *had* to do
> something - the company wasn't prepared to run at a loss. It is yet
> another side effect of the insanely high gas prices.
>
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-58626935

This is silly. Why can't anyone in the UK pick up a phone and call for CO2 home delivery from CO2 is us? WTF!!!??? IMPORT IT FFS!

> This one shouldn't be paywalled. BTW you can sometimes get around the
> paywalls by putting the appropriate search term into Google and reading
> it from their cache.

Fug it.

> Google "CO2 producer restart operations UK minister strikes deal"
> and the first link should be the article with a paywall free token
> appended although it might ask you a question first.
> > 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? Try that over here and we can use a law to
> > require a company to operate. Why is there only one company? Why
> > can't CO2 be imported? How about getting it from the air? It's
> > presently 400 ppm and rising.
> They get the food grade CO2 as a byproduct of fertiliser manufacture.
> Then the CO2 is used for production of fizzy pop and stunning animals
> for slaughter.

If you can't import CO2, then import the fizzy pop and dead cows! Even Puerto Rico can figure that out! They import much of what they eat (lots of dead cows and dead pigs). Not a problem, but then I suppose the UK is more third world than Puerto Rico.

> >> UK electricity production would fail within a week under that
> >> scenario. Most other European countries have larger natural gas
> >> buffer stocks. (a month or more)
> >
> > I think it is time for everyone to leave the UK and have the last
> > person turn out the lights.
> It hasn't failed yet but there is every reason to expect a spectacular
> and catastrophic failure of UK infrastructure before too much longer.

I bet no one told Hitler your weak point was CO2 production.

> We are stuck with a very dodgy conman as a Prime Minister who doesn't
> think any rules apply to him. His cabinet consists mostly of B-ark
> material so that his "Genius" may appear to shine all the brighter.
>
> Think Trump light and you get the general idea. His position is now in
> danger over the No 10 Partygate affair with garden parties held during
> the first lockdown (no one told him it was against the rules!).
>
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59577129
>
> Even some Tory MPs have said that he should go. Government whips appear
> to have been blackmailing Tory MPs to back The Boris. That is now the
> subject of a police enquiry. (They are not called whips for nothing)
>
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60093893
>
> The government is retaliating by trying to defund the BBC. We live in
> interesting times. Electing a populist demagogue is a very bad idea!

Do you want us to share Biden with you? We might be better off with Harris anyway. But we are keeping Sen. Joe Manchin. That guy is a real pip!

[David Brown]

On 22/01/2022 15:57, Rick C wrote:
> 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 clown in charge in the UK has disconnected the country from the rest
of the world. Yes, it should surely be possible to import CO₂ from
other countries. But it would take them months to figure out the red
tape involved and who should pay which tolls, tariffs or taxes. No
European drivers will drive their trucks into the UK, and the UK doesn't
have enough drivers to spare. And European suppliers would mostly be
quite happy to let the UK suffer after the shitty way the UK government
has treated the rest of Europe.

The current government in the UK couldn't organise a piss-up in a
brewery, and seem determined to screw up the country as much as possible
while partying against the rules.

[Tom Gardner]

On 22/01/22 16:07, David Brown wrote:
> The current government in the UK couldn't organise a piss-up in a
> brewery, and seem determined to screw up the country as much as possible
> while partying against the rules.

They can organise a piss up in Downing St, as their illegal
parties demonstrate :(

[Rick C]

Maybe we should lend them Trmp? Would that be an improvement? We certainly have no use for him, spare parts for an obsolete machine, eh?

--

Rick C.

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

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 2:06:19 AM UTC+11, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 5:38:03 AM UTC-5, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
> > 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.
>
> You must keep the heat low in Australia then. Deicing does very much blow cool air through the home unless you aren't using forced air heat.

You don't have to do it for long - just long enough to turn the bulky frost into water. If it then freezes to clear ice it doesn't insulate the outside heat exchange to any perceptible extent.

> No one likes cold air from their heating system,

They don't get enough of it to notice.

> so they use auxiliary heat (usually straight resistance heating) to prevent this. I suppose Australians are tougher material or just can't afford the heating coils.

I was making the point that heat pumps can work both ways. There are bits of Australia that get below freezing in winter, mostly skiing resorts, but I've not lived there.

It has snowed three times in the town where I grew up - once in the eighteen years that I lived there and twice since then, and I did get to hear about it (though I was living in England when the second snow fall happened - an Australian post-doc I played hockey with told me about it).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Rick C]

On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 8:48:26 PM UTC-5, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
> On Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 2:06:19 AM UTC+11, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 5:38:03 AM UTC-5, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
> > > 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.
> >
> > You must keep the heat low in Australia then. Deicing does very much blow cool air through the home unless you aren't using forced air heat.
> You don't have to do it for long - just long enough to turn the bulky frost into water. If it then freezes to clear ice it doesn't insulate the outside heat exchange to any perceptible extent.

You are being silly now. You don't remove the ice in a few seconds. It takes a bit of time. Even so, no one likes having cold air blown on them in the winter time. You are talking as if this has to do with bringing down the temperature of the house, it doesn't. It has to do with the furnace blowing cold air rather than hot air. Cold drafts are something you try to prevent in cold weather.

> > No one likes cold air from their heating system,
> They don't get enough of it to notice.

In this country that is not the case. Maybe the temps never get cold enough downunder for this to matter. The original objection to heat pumps when they first started to be used much in the 70s or 80s was the fact that they don't blow warm air. An oil burner blows warm air that feels good. The heat pumps produced air that was barely above room temperature and felt cold because it was below body temp. They eventually reduced that so the air from the vents actually feel warm now. But when it first comes on it blows cold air until the system warms up. Better heat systems use a two speed fan that blows slowly at first to minimize this as well as continuing to blow after the pump is turned off to remove residual coil heat... without blowing air that feels cold.

Suggesting that no one cares about the cold air that is *actually* cold, below room temperature cold is pure BS. Why else would they go to so much trouble to prevent blowing room temperature air from a heat pump much less colder air?

> > so they use auxiliary heat (usually straight resistance heating) to prevent this. I suppose Australians are tougher material or just can't afford the heating coils.
> I was making the point that heat pumps can work both ways. There are bits of Australia that get below freezing in winter, mostly skiing resorts, but I've not lived there.

Doesn't matter if the outside temps are below freezing. The heat pump coils have to be well colder than the outside air to work. The worst case is in a light rain, just above freezing. You can get a large build up of ice before the defrost cycle kicks in which takes time to remove.

> It has snowed three times in the town where I grew up - once in the eighteen years that I lived there and twice since then, and I did get to hear about it (though I was living in England when the second snow fall happened - an Australian post-doc I played hockey with told me about it).

I'm glad you got to see snow. It's nice as long as you can stay home and not drive to work. Ice is much worse, but they usually close businesses when that happens. My CM in NC was closed Friday because of it.

--

Rick C.

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

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 2:39:38 PM UTC+11, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 8:48:26 PM UTC-5, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
> > On Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 2:06:19 AM UTC+11, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 5:38:03 AM UTC-5, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
> > > > 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.
> > >
> > > You must keep the heat low in Australia then. Deicing does very much blow cool air through the home unless you aren't using forced air heat.
> > You don't have to do it for long - just long enough to turn the bulky frost into water. If it then freezes to clear ice it doesn't insulate the outside heat exchange to any perceptible extent.
> You are being silly now. You don't remove the ice in a few seconds.

Clear ice isn't a problem - it's not a good insulator compared with the static boundary layer of air just above it. Fluffy frost is, because it reduces air circulation. There's not much water involved, so it doesn't take long to melt it down to liquid water which can run off.

> It takes a bit of time. Even so, no one likes having cold air blown on them in the winter time. You are talking as if this has to do with bringing down the temperature of the house, it doesn't. It has to do with the furnace blowing cold air rather than hot air.

Heat pumps aren't furnaces. You've got to pump the gaseous working fluid out to the heat exchanger in the indoor room where it can condense and release heat into the room. If you don't want to use one of the room heat exchangers to boil off the refrigerant that has heated up the outside radiator, use one in a more isolated indoor space which you can let cool off a bit without worrying anybody, or maybe even a electric heater. Wittering on as if heat pumps work the same way as furnaces is a bit silly.

> Cold drafts are something you try to prevent in cold weather.
>
> > > No one likes cold air from their heating system,
>
> > They don't get enough of it to notice.
> In this country that is not the case. Maybe the temps never get cold enough downunder for this to matter. The original objection to heat pumps when they first started to be used much in the 70s or 80s was the fact that they don't blow warm air. An oil burner blows warm air that feels good. The heat pumps produced air that was barely above room temperature and felt cold because it was below body temp.

Wanting a heat pump to work the same way as a furnace is pretty silly.

> They eventually reduced that so the air from the vents actually feels warm now. But when it first comes on it blows cold air until the system warms up.

Why would it need to blow air before the surface it was blowing the air over was condensing enough refrigerant to emit heat? That sounds like incompetent design (or somebody cheap-skating on temperature sensors).

> Better heat systems use a two speed fan that blows slowly at first to minimize this as well as continuing to blow after the pump is turned off to remove residual coil heat... without blowing air that feels cold.

Even better systems would have an infinitely variable fan speed. You do seem to be talking about the limitations of cheap/incompetent design rather than anything fundamental

> Suggesting that no one cares about the cold air that is *actually* cold, below room temperature cold is pure BS. Why else would they go to so much trouble to prevent blowing room temperature air from a heat pump much less colder air?

Because they hadn't thought about what they were doing ?

> > > so they use auxiliary heat (usually straight resistance heating) to prevent this. I suppose Australians are tougher material or just can't afford the heating coils.
> >
> > I was making the point that heat pumps can work both ways. There are bits of Australia that get below freezing in winter, mostly skiing resorts, but I've not lived there.
>
> Doesn't matter if the outside temps are below freezing. The heat pump coils have to be well colder than the outside air to work. The worst case is in a light rain, just above freezing. You can get a large build up of ice before the defrost cycle kicks in which takes time to remove.

You might, if your system had been designed by an idiot.

> > It has snowed three times in the town where I grew up - once in the eighteen years that I lived there and twice since then, and I did get to hear about it (though I was living in England when the second snow fall happened - an Australian post-doc I played hockey with told me about it).
>
> I'm glad you got to see snow. It's nice as long as you can stay home and not drive to work.

I lived in the Netherlands for nineteen years. We typically got a snow cover for a week or so at least once every winter. I lived in the UK for 22 years, where snow falls are rarer, and more disruptive when they do happen

> Ice is much worse, but they usually close businesses when that happens. My CM in NC was closed Friday because of it.

Snow cover has nasty habit of turning into sheet ice after people have driven across it. Main roads tend to be kept ice free, but it takes work and specialised equipment.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Cydrome Leader]

Anthony William Sloman <bill....@ieee.org> wrote:

> 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.

Dear Dumbass, go ahead and name two brands of heatpumps that provide at least
100kBTU of heating capacity with outdoor temps of negative F. Be sure to hand
over the name of the authorized installers within say 25 miles of or zip code
60601. Thanks. I'll give them a call and get some quotes.


>
> 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.

Start with my challenge #1 and we'll work from there.

>> 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.

I'd wager this old clown can't even describe the refrigeration cycle without
help from ask jeeves or a trip to the library.

>> 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.

Cleary the mold in your super-insulated house has rotted your brain.

[Cydrome Leader]

Anthony William Sloman <bill....@ieee.org> wrote:
> 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

Oh really? How do they run the compressor in reverse? flip the leads? Let's
all take notes as the guru of heat pumps enlightens us once again.

[Cydrome Leader]

That's standard fare for any large steam heat setup- let everyone roast and
open the windows.

District heating is one this the commies have figured out. The mega heating
plants in large Polish cities are fascinating.

In Chicago there are still some interesting district heating and cooling
plants in downtown. The large schools and hospitals maintain their own and
some still do cogeneration as well. Once the operation is large enough there's
no reason to not extract ALL the energy in any form you can.

The difference between us and NYC is we have qualified engineers and
maintenance people. The norm of steam blowing out of parking cones bolted to
the streets in NYC is some third world nonsense only animals who can't figure
out how to use dumpsters tolerate or accept.

[Anthony William Sloman]

It's a bit silly. Thermostatic radiator valves have been around since the 1980's at least - I had one in the mid-1980's from Honeywell that was electronic (battery operated) with an internal clock that could change the set point once or twice a day - so the bedroom was cool enough for sleeping at night, and not too chilly to get dressed in in the morning.

> District heating is one this the commies have figured out. The mega heating
> plants in large Polish cities are fascinating.

Not just the commies. The West Germans and the Dutch do it too

> In Chicago there are still some interesting district heating and cooling
> plants in downtown. The large schools and hospitals maintain their own and

> some still do co-generation as well. Once the operation is large enough there's

> no reason to not extract ALL the energy in any form you can.
>
> The difference between us and NYC is we have qualified engineers and
> maintenance people. The norm of steam blowing out of parking cones bolted to
> the streets in NYC is some third world nonsense only animals who can't figure
> out how to use dumpsters tolerate or accept.

There's probably not a shortage of qualified engineers or maintenance people in New York either. There may be a shortage of politicians willing to spend tax money on hiring them - the US isn't short of third world politicians, and Cydrome Leader sounds just like an example of the breed.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 6:20:38 PM UTC+11, Cydrome Leader wrote:
> Anthony William Sloman <bill....@ieee.org> wrote:
> > 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.

>
> Oh really? How do they run the compressor in reverse? flip the leads? Let's
> all take notes as the guru of heat pumps enlightens us once again.

There are all sort of options. Using a pair of valves to flip the intakes and outlets would work. If the compressor is being spun by a synchronous motor you could use electronics to make it spin in the opposite direction. I haven't dismanted my Mitsubishi reverse cycle air-conditioner to find out how they do it - it would invalidate my guarantee if I did, and I don't really need to know. Cydrome Leader does - he's advanced enough fatuous misconceptions to make it clear that he hasn't got a clue.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[David Brown]

Trump and Bojo have significant similarities. They are both
narcissistic, have a complete disregard for the truth (it's not just
that they lie - they really don't care if what they say is true or not),
care nothing for their country or the people in it, view themselves as
above the law, reward loyalty richly and punish (perceived) disloyalty
harshly, and surround themselves with sycophants. They both consider
themselves to be experts in all they do, and to know better than the
/real/ experts. Both are evil bullies. Trump has a carefully managed
hairdo designed to look like a dead squirrel lives on his head. Bojo
has a carefully managed hairdo that would embarrass any self-respecting
scarecrow. I could go on.

But there are also differences - Bojo is actually quite intelligent,
while Trump is a complete moron.

You managed to get rid of Trump (though not his memory, legacy or
groupies), the UK has still got Bojo. And Trump was more of a one-man
catastrophe, while many of the UK's current problems stretch much
further back - Brexit in particular was not of Bojo's creation. The
Brexit referendum was before he was prime minister, and he was
originally against it, until he figured out that he could gain political
power by supporting it. (That's not to say that the USA does not also
suffer from long-term social and political problems with roots far
deeper than just the last presidency or two. If we try to dig up all
the major troubles the USA and the UK have, we'll be here all day!)

Overall, I don't think Trump would make the UK situation much worse -
but he would not be capable of helping it either. Anyway, we have
enough of his lying, cheating, tax-dodging and environmentally damaging
golf courses already.

[Rick C]

On Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 1:42:21 AM UTC-5, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
> On Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 2:39:38 PM UTC+11, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 8:48:26 PM UTC-5, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
> > > On Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 2:06:19 AM UTC+11, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 5:38:03 AM UTC-5, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
> > > > > 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.
> > > >
> > > > You must keep the heat low in Australia then. Deicing does very much blow cool air through the home unless you aren't using forced air heat.
> > > You don't have to do it for long - just long enough to turn the bulky frost into water. If it then freezes to clear ice it doesn't insulate the outside heat exchange to any perceptible extent.
> > You are being silly now. You don't remove the ice in a few seconds.
> Clear ice isn't a problem - it's not a good insulator compared with the static boundary layer of air just above it. Fluffy frost is, because it reduces air circulation. There's not much water involved, so it doesn't take long to melt it down to liquid water which can run off.
> > It takes a bit of time. Even so, no one likes having cold air blown on them in the winter time. You are talking as if this has to do with bringing down the temperature of the house, it doesn't. It has to do with the furnace blowing cold air rather than hot air.
> Heat pumps aren't furnaces. You've got to pump the gaseous working fluid out to the heat exchanger in the indoor room where it can condense and release heat into the room. If you don't want to use one of the room heat exchangers to boil off the refrigerant that has heated up the outside radiator, use one in a more isolated indoor space which you can let cool off a bit without worrying anybody, or maybe even a electric heater. Wittering on as if heat pumps work the same way as furnaces is a bit silly.

You need to look up the definition of "furnace". A heat pump is a furnace. Either way, you are being silly about this, digging in your heels rather than discussing the issue. The point is a heat pump system is going to use the same air space for drawing heat for defrosting as it heats. Anything else would be prohibitively expensive to run the ductwork or dampers or other silly notions. Maybe they do such things downunder, but not in the civilized world. You mention electric heater... yes, that is what I said they do, they run the auxiliary heat (often electric resistance heating) to prevent blowing cold air on the occupants. I'm glad you finally understand and can now stop wittering on.

> > Cold drafts are something you try to prevent in cold weather.
> >
> > > > No one likes cold air from their heating system,
> >
> > > They don't get enough of it to notice.
> > In this country that is not the case. Maybe the temps never get cold enough downunder for this to matter. The original objection to heat pumps when they first started to be used much in the 70s or 80s was the fact that they don't blow warm air. An oil burner blows warm air that feels good. The heat pumps produced air that was barely above room temperature and felt cold because it was below body temp.
> Wanting a heat pump to work the same way as a furnace is pretty silly.
>
> > They eventually reduced that so the air from the vents actually feels warm now. But when it first comes on it blows cold air until the system warms up.
>
> Why would it need to blow air before the surface it was blowing the air over was condensing enough refrigerant to emit heat? That sounds like incompetent design (or somebody cheap-skating on temperature sensors).

Because they try to meet price points, yes, being cheap because people buy on price, not obscure technical details. Besides we are talking about defrosting where the coils start cold and get colder.

> > Better heat systems use a two speed fan that blows slowly at first to minimize this as well as continuing to blow after the pump is turned off to remove residual coil heat... without blowing air that feels cold.
> Even better systems would have an infinitely variable fan speed. You do seem to be talking about the limitations of cheap/incompetent design rather than anything fundamental

Lol! You actually don't know much about this do you? This is not one of your millikelvin devices. They actually have to sell these systems. I am talking about what is used in homes, not research experiments.

> > Suggesting that no one cares about the cold air that is *actually* cold, below room temperature cold is pure BS. Why else would they go to so much trouble to prevent blowing room temperature air from a heat pump much less colder air?
> Because they hadn't thought about what they were doing ?
> > > > so they use auxiliary heat (usually straight resistance heating) to prevent this. I suppose Australians are tougher material or just can't afford the heating coils.
> > >
> > > I was making the point that heat pumps can work both ways. There are bits of Australia that get below freezing in winter, mostly skiing resorts, but I've not lived there.
> >
> > Doesn't matter if the outside temps are below freezing. The heat pump coils have to be well colder than the outside air to work. The worst case is in a light rain, just above freezing. You can get a large build up of ice before the defrost cycle kicks in which takes time to remove.
> You might, if your system had been designed by an idiot.

Ok, you have stopped talking about the issues and now are insulting anyone and everyone involved without addressing any of the technical issues.

Sometimes I wonder if this is about mental decline as you age. You do seem to have a regular pattern of discussing facts, followed by entrenchment and restating the same facts (rather than a better discussion of new facts others have pointed out), followed by insults. What is going on that you can't just discuss the issues rationally rather than getting defensive and lashing out?

--

Rick C.

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