Scrutable

Matatouille wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 9:58 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 9:44 pm

... opening the blinds at takeoff and landing is also in case the emergency services need to see in?

I've not heard of that, but am likely wrong. I can't think of any situations where they couldn't use the doors & only want to peek inside rather than reach for the saws.

Knowing whether the inside was full of smoke or not would likely change the procedures a bit.

And every open shade is an extra opportunity to see what's going on.

Matatouille wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 9:58 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 9:44 pm

... opening the blinds at takeoff and landing is also in case the emergency services need to see in?

I've not heard of that, but am likely wrong. I can't think of any situations where they couldn't use the doors & only want to peek inside rather than reach for the saws.

I heard that closing and opening different combinations of blinds allows the flight crew to send coded messages to observers outside the plane. Is that an urban myth?

Well, I thought railway electrification was interesting, anyway

dyqik wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 10:06 pm

Matatouille wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 9:58 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 9:44 pm

... opening the blinds at takeoff and landing is also in case the emergency services need to see in?

I've not heard of that, but am likely wrong. I can't think of any situations where they couldn't use the doors & only want to peek inside rather than reach for the saws.

Knowing whether the inside was full of smoke or not would likely change the procedures a bit.

And every open shade is an extra opportunity to see what's going on.

Maybe, this is waaay outside of my area so your guess is probably equally valid!

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 11:19 pm

I heard that closing and opening different combinations of blinds allows the flight crew to send coded messages to observers outside the plane. Is that an urban myth?

I've heard this also but don't know of the veracity. I'd guess myth by the sheer variety of numbers of windows, configurations, some windows being blanked by placement of lavetories etc. Would make it difficult to have a universal code that is intuitive and could pass a useful selection of messages.

Anyway, I think I've started a derail that isn't interesting enough for a thread of its own so will cease

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 04, 2020 6:44 am

Well, I thought railway electrification was interesting, anyway

I did read the summary and skim the rest. The electrification of the lines seems to be the sensible way to go. I was curious about the unelectrifiable sections of the lines for goods trains and what the specific problem was. Separately, there didn’t seem to be consideration of “hybrid” electrification for difficult sections of the lines. Pantographs/powered rails for most sections, but with a battery in the train for difficult sections of the lines. Peeps are considering trolley busses with overhead power lines in such a configuration, as you can skip the junctions, which are the most fiddly expensive bits to put up.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 04, 2020 6:44 am

Well, I thought railway electrification was interesting, anyway

It’s a lot to read through. I was interested to see that they think it’s worth using hydrogen fuel cell trains in Norfolk, but I haven’t managed to find the reason why. Is it so hard to electrify that part of track? Surely if there are only a few trains they’re going to be very expensive.

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 04, 2020 10:18 am

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 04, 2020 6:44 am

Well, I thought railway electrification was interesting, anyway

It’s a lot to read through.

Yes, likewise…

I was interested to see that they think it’s worth using hydrogen fuel cell trains in Norfolk, but I haven’t managed to find the reason why. Is it so hard to electrify that part of track? Surely if there are only a few trains they’re going to be very expensive.

As I understand it electrification is very capital-intensive with the benefit of lower operating costs, so it's more suitable for higher-traffic routes, but if you have less traffic it's more economical to buy trains that can run on the existing track. Again as I understand it, building a hydrogen-powered train basically (aside from the fuel tank side of things) involves swapping out the diesel-electric generator set for a fuel cell module, and fuel cells are commercially available if not yet in volume production, so I'm not sure how much difference economies of scale make at this stage.

Looks like Johnson is a convert to charms wind power. He’s going to give a speech on Tuesday at the Tory conference bigging it up. Wants 40GW of offshore generation by 2030, up from 30GW.

He’s still a tw.t mind.

bjn wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 05, 2020 9:53 pm

Looks like Johnson is a convert to charms wind power. He’s going to give a speech on Tuesday at the Tory conference bigging it up. Wants 40GW of offshore generation by 2030, up from 30GW.

He’s still a tw.t mind.

All you have to do is get to the point where renewables are cheaper than other forms of power and suddenly everyone is all for it.

Grumble wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 05, 2020 10:04 pm

bjn wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 05, 2020 9:53 pm

Looks like Johnson is a convert to charms wind power. He’s going to give a speech on Tuesday at the Tory conference bigging it up. Wants 40GW of offshore generation by 2030, up from 30GW.

He’s still a tw.t mind.

All you have to do is get to the point where renewables are cheaper than other forms of power and suddenly everyone is all for it.

Which is a good thing regardless of what our PM thinks. Virtuous feedback loops are now kicking in, prices are dropping, tech is improving and to only going to accelerate so we are still on the lower slopes of the S-curve. In other news, Texas deployed 4GW of storage over the last two months.

Interesting paper in Nature Energy. I’ve only read the press release and the summary as it’s behind a paywall. Would be interesting to read the actual paper (hint hint).

Empirically, deployment of nuclear power does not lead to significantly reduced carbon emissions, unlike deployment of renewables. Renewables are something like 7x better at lowering emissions. Also, nukes and renewables anti correlate, they don’t play well together and tend to crowd each other out. This was seen consistently across all countries. They analysed 123 countries over 25 years to come to those conclusions.

“The evidence clearly points to nuclear being the least effective of the two broad carbon emissions abatement strategies, and coupled with its tendency not to co-exist well with its renewable alternative, this raises serious doubts about the wisdom of prioritising investment in nuclear over renewable energy. Countries planning large-scale investments in new nuclear power are risking suppression of greater climate benefits from alternative renewable energy investments.”

Not only uneconomic, but not very good either.

bjn wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 05, 2020 10:38 pm

In other news, Texas deployed 4GW of storage over the last two months.

How many GW-hours?

bmforre wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 05, 2020 11:49 pm

bjn wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 05, 2020 10:38 pm

In other news, Texas deployed 4GW of storage over the last two months.

How many GW-hours?

Sadly my source did not say. I can’t access the ERCOT data sets directly as I get blocked from a U.K. address, so I have asked. It will be used for grid stability and diurnal shifting of energy.

Quoting my source, from an ars technica forum....

ERCOT doesn't care about GWh (as long as you fulfil your supply contracts) - but since projects tend to be 2-4h of storage - you can multiply GW by 3 and be in the right ballpark.

So very much grid stability and short term time shifting.

bjn wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 05, 2020 9:53 pm

Looks like Johnson is a convert to charms wind power. He’s going to give a speech on Tuesday at the Tory conference bigging it up. Wants 40GW of offshore generation by 2030, up from 30GW.

He’s still a tw.t mind.

Good to see Johnson promoting wind. Nelson! Drake! Sir Walter ooh what a big ship I've got Raleigh!

And boy, does he lay into that idiot who said a few years ago wind can't pull the skin off a rice pudding. What a fool that guy was, huh?



https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/ ... 0603371521

He really is a f.cking pony isn't he?

Why is wind only going to be used for household power?

Boris Johnson will say, according to what the BBC already wrote: ...offshore wind will be powering every home in the country...
Your kettle, your washing machine, your cooker, your heating, your plug-in electric vehicle - the whole lot of them will get their juice cleanly and without guilt from the breezes that blow around these islands.

So if the wind stops we can't do any of that stuff. Crap idea, Boris, as usual.

That's just a way of bullshitting. Johnson is trying to make morons think all UK energy will be from wind. It's not even enough for all UK electricity, just household electricity which is a minority of total electricity (I forget the percentage). Can't be bothered to work out if he factored in extra household use for cars.

TimW wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 06, 2020 9:32 am

Why is wind only going to be used for household power?

Boris Johnson will say, according to what the BBC already wrote: ...offshore wind will be powering every home in the country...
Your kettle, your washing machine, your cooker, your heating, your plug-in electric vehicle - the whole lot of them will get their juice cleanly and without guilt from the breezes that blow around these islands.

So if the wind stops we can't do any of that stuff. Crap idea, Boris, as usual.

Storage is the other side of the equation, clearly. Some of the storage will happen in eg Norway when we supply them wind power, then they will supply us with hydro when the wind stops. Also big batteries and liquid air storage and sh.t.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea ... prov=sfti1

Thankfully it’s not actually Boris who’s coming up with the ideas.

Grumble wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 06, 2020 9:44 am

Some of the storage will happen in eg Norway when we supply them wind power, then they will supply us with hydro when the wind stops.

That sounds a good idea, just as long as nobody does anything stupid like rip all our trade agreements with the EEA and then crash out without any sort of deal just to appease a load of racists halfwits or something.

Why should the Norwegians benefit from *our* wind power? I expect they want to carry on stealing our fish too.

Little waster wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 06, 2020 10:02 am

Grumble wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 06, 2020 9:44 am

Some of the storage will happen in eg Norway when we supply them wind power, then they will supply us with hydro when the wind stops.

That sounds a good idea, just as long as nobody does anything stupid like rip all our trade agreements with the EEA and then crash out without any sort of deal just to appease a load of racists halfwits or something.

Typical project fear, what a far fetched scenario

lpm wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 06, 2020 8:09 am

bjn wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 05, 2020 9:53 pm

Looks like Johnson is a convert to charms wind power. He’s going to give a speech on Tuesday at the Tory conference bigging it up. Wants 40GW of offshore generation by 2030, up from 30GW.

He’s still a tw.t mind.

Good to see Johnson promoting wind. Nelson! Drake! Sir Walter ooh what a big ship I've got Raleigh!

And boy, does he lay into that idiot who said a few years ago wind can't pull the skin off a rice pudding. What a fool that guy was, huh?



https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/ ... 0603371521

See my point re Johnson being a tw.t. The good thing is that remnant Tory obstructionism is falling away.

lpm wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 06, 2020 8:09 am

bjn wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 05, 2020 9:53 pm

Looks like Johnson is a convert to charms wind power. He’s going to give a speech on Tuesday at the Tory conference bigging it up. Wants 40GW of offshore generation by 2030, up from 30GW.

He’s still a tw.t mind.

Good to see Johnson promoting wind. Nelson! Drake! Sir Walter ooh what a big ship I've got Raleigh!

And boy, does he lay into that idiot who said a few years ago wind can't pull the skin off a rice pudding. What a fool that guy was, huh?



https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/ ... 0603371521

Drake and Raleigh were slave traders in their commercial lives.

And Nelson was an anti-abolitionist.