CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

[Stanley]

John Burlison sent me this 1912 clipping from an NZ paper...... I think the word is prescient.

[Stanley]

I see Trump has relaxed regulations on coal firing, he days he's putting the coal miners to work again. Great!
At the same time..... See THIS CNN report fresh to the web. If they are right, Trump is now in severe trouble which could possibly lead to impeachment....

[Tizer]

John Burlison sent me this 1912 clipping from an NZ paper...... I think the word is prescient.

I think Bodger beat him to it last week:
LINK

[Pluggy]

If its any consolation, pure economics are driving the demise of coal. Renewables are already the cheapest form of elecricity generation in much of the world. Its only a matter of time before that becomes all of the world. Solar panels are now economically viable in the UK without subsidy which isn't noted for the amount of sunlight it gets.. They can't be touched for cost in places like India. Storage is becoming economically viable. There are numerous largish battery installations in the UK now, often where a load of new housing is going up and its cheaper to supplement peak demand with batteries rather than run larger cables to a remote location to be able to supply the extra peak load. You could power a typical house with bell wire sized cabling if there was enough batteries to supplement the peaks.

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Pluggy, a voice of sanity. Thanks Tiz... Sorry Bodge, I must have missed opening that clip. Still an impressive forecast!

[Stanley]

See THIS US report on the imminent hurricane Florence expected on the Eastern seaboard of the US, N Carolina seems to be most at risk. The one thing that many agree on is that it it seems worse then a 'normal' storm in the hurricane season.
I heard a report yesterday that a large El Nino event is expected this year and next......

[Tizer]

And El Nino and El Nina events used to occur about every 7 years.
-----------------------------------------
In separate news...
`'Climate change moving faster than we are,' says UN Secretary General' LINK

[Stanley]

We are all sleepwalking.......

[Stanley]

I am watching Hurricane Florence. It could make landfall later today. The first and most obvious danger is the storm surge. This isn't caused by the wind but the fact that the extremely low atmospheric pressure associated with the system causes the sea to bulge upwards and flood inland. Next is the damage from the wind itself but none of these is seen as the major danger. As the system hits land it will stall and start to lose vigour, helped by the fact that a high pressure system over the Great Lakes area is blocking its progress, but in the process it will wander about a bit and linger dumping enormous amounts of rain which will cause inland flooding. 30 inches of rain is expected.
All I can say is that we may not have the advantages of a beach in Barlick but we don't have to worry about extreme events like this!

[Stanley]

SeeTHIS Guardian update on Florence. Down to category 1 as it hits land but this only mitigates the wind speed while increasing the forecast rain and unpredictability as it wanders about. Up to 40" now being forecast.

[Stanley]

See THIS CBS report on the progress of hurricane Florence.

[chinatyke]

Coming my way, super typhoon Mangkhut, bigger and stronger than Florence. Luckily by the time these storms get to us they have lost a lot of their strength and are downgraded to tropical storms, we just get a bit of wind and a few inches of torrential rain. Expected to arrive early Monday morning.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/12/asia ... index.html

[Stanley]

Yes, I forgot about that, wind speeds of 200mph! Incredible.

[Tizer]

The Met Office here in UK has a warning:
YELLOW WARNING OF WIND for 'North West England', 'Northern Ireland', 'South West England', 'Strathclyde', 'SW Scotland, Lothian Borders', 'Wales'. Updated 14 September at 1045 BST. Valid from 1800 BST on Mon 17 September to 1200 BST on Tue 18 September
Storm Helene is expected to bring a period of very strong winds to western parts of the UK late Monday and for a time on Tuesday. Injuries and danger to life from flying debris are possible. Road, rail, air and ferry services may be affected, with longer journey times and cancellations possible. Some roads and bridges may close. Fallen trees may be an additional hazard. There is a small chance that injuries could occur from large waves and beach material being thrown onto sea fronts. There is a chance that power cuts may occur, with the potential to affect other services, such as mobile phone coverage.

Typically the Daily Express online has a headline: `Britain to be RAVAGED by rain as DEADLY Hurricane Helene NEARS' (their caps). LINK

[PostmanPete]

The Met Office here in UK has a warning:
YELLOW WARNING OF WIND for 'North West England'

I must get the 'Rennies' out of the cupboard..!

[Stanley]

Pete, if the Express says we are all doomed this is a serious matter! All their readers will be boarding their windows up.....

[Whyperion]

You could power a typical house with bell wire sized cabling if there was enough batteries to supplement the peaks.

Given that modern tech wise half the 'brown goods' in the house all have step downs from the 240v to 6v 12v to 20v and fairly minimal amps (and mostly DC) should new developments have two feeds - as you as Bell Wire would do the job, but dont forget newer houses can be smaller so is extra space going to be made avalible for storage systems ?

[Pluggy]

It isn't really feasible to wire low voltages any distance because of the voltage drop in the cables especially with the increased currents needed to tranfer any kind of power at low voltages. Theres a reason the national grid use 400,000 volts to transfer power across the country. My battery system can produce about 1200 watts (1.2 kW) of mains from the inverters. Its 24 volts ish and the cables are 10mm2 (read thick heavy cable) to transfer it a couple of metres. You could put 1200 watts down bell wire at 240 volts. 5 amps atr 240V, 50amps at 24V. The average useage of a typical British house is around 400 watts. which is easily bell wire territory. As it is They need cabling to carry ~20kW for the few minutes when the electric oven, Washing machine, electric shower etc are on together. cable as thick as your finger. As batteries get cheaper and copper gets dearer......

There would probably be a case for a household power supply to feed say 12v DC around the house to feed the myriad of stuff that uses low power low voltage DC. But you couldn't really run 12 volts down a street for example. Say a given length of cable loses 2 volts at a given current, 2 volts loss from 12 volts is significant, its neither here or there at 240 volts. And as the current will only be 5% at 240V for a given power transfer anyway.

You could put sufficient batteries and the inverters etc to run a house for 24 hours in a typical broom cupboard sized room. My 2kWh battery is about the size and weight of a largish car battery. Typical house uses say 10kWh in a day so 5 of 'em.

[Stanley]

When I was running portable welders on extension leads I found out how much even 240v could drop in a few feet. I had a special heavy short cable made up and that cured it. Better to get the length from the heavy wires to the welding head.

[Pluggy]

Ah welding, my dad had a 'stick' welding transformer for mending agricultural machinery and the farm only had single phase electric. His exploits sticking six inch nails in fuse boxes to stop it blowing fuses are better consigned to the history books. One day he was welding something heavy and he smelt burning plastic. He'ed left his thick extension lead he had connected to the welder in a coil and the extra impedance from the coil acting as an inductor set fire to its plastic insulation. The lights in the building would always dim when he was using it.

[Tripps]

Before turning in, I take a quick look (of course) at the current power supply situation. The load is about 22 Gw, and the largest contributor is Wind at 34.32 %, just leading Nuclear at 31.9 %. Coal is showing a pleasing 0%. I think Pluggy's roof supplies the rest.

Nothing on mainstream media yet - they will catch up with this news eventually. The perils of late night posting. . . .

[Stanley]

Nice one David.... and we're spending gazillions on Hinkley Point..... The 'experts' never saw wind power coming did they..... Still blowing hard this morning.
Single phase for stick welding is OK if you have it on a heavy service like a cooker. I have a 40amp supply to the shed just for that reason and can go to 180Amps with no drama. Surprising how many people don't know about uncoiling the extension Pluggy...

[Tizer]

This is our latest solar generation graph update...

[Stanley]

That's the story of summer on a graph!

[Tizer]

Quite right, all ups and downs. It's been an interesting exercise to see how the curve would be shaped. I wasn't sure whether our split of panels between the east and west roofs my give a flat-topped curve or even a double peak. It looks like a simple curve now.