Cycling UK Forum

PDQ Mobile wrote: ↑11 Jan 2025, 10:17am I fail to see the advantages over older paper based stuff.

That in itself is a whole thread of interesting discussion!

Parking, for one, used to be so easy before everything was connected to the internet. It's not always possible for me to dump a car on the outskirts of a city and cycle in.

I'm more interested in where my continual advocacy for free trade reduction can be found!

A research manager for Age UK once asked why excess deaths due to cold in the UK were not a national scandal. At the time (2013), energy prices were a fraction of what they were but green levies had added considerably to them, most affecting those least able to pay, with the extra revenues funding feed in tariffs for those who could spend many thousands on renewable energy installations.

I'm left wondering how many of the hospital beds taken this winter are in part due to people living in damper, colder properties than should be acceptable in a nation where there is so much comfortable living.

roubaixtuesday wrote: ↑12 Jan 2025, 8:26am In which case, why you continually advocate for said reduction is a mystery

The mystery is how you've convinced yourself to believe this.

sjs wrote: ↑10 Jan 2025, 6:51pm These things can get a bit too clever sometimes though. I had an issue today where the car (VW ID.3) somehow lost its internet connection. So the charger (Ohme Home Pro) couldn't update its knowledge of the car's charge state, and insisted on using the last known value, which was 80%, therefore refusing to charge any further, even though the real remaining mileage was rather low. Having spent some time googling and thinking I had a few workarounds to experiment with, but then the car decided to reconnect, so I never got to try them out. This stuff is still pretty far from seamless.

A mechanical timer linked to a switch to take advantage of low overnight prices would seem sensible, but is it possible? Relying on the internet for absolutely everything, with no simple and ready-waiting backup could all but collapse an entire nation.

roubaixtuesday wrote: ↑9 Jan 2025, 9:43am You do realise that we are reliant on trade for both of these things? And that reducing trade would make both more expensive?

It's not about reducing trade, more a rebalancing of our economy so that we're not over-reliant on the tertiary sector.

The current high prices for energy are the result of decades of having little long term strategy for our energy supplies.

[XAP]Bob wrote: ↑9 Jan 2025, 9:47am A few weeks? The longest we've had in a decade was 11 days.

Such events continue as unpredictably as is usual, Britain experienced them in 91/92, 95/96 and March 96, Jan-March 2006, Dec 2010 - Jan 2011 and less severely in Feb-March 2018. Others suggest that as with other climatic events, they're growing (or expected to grow) more frequent due to AGW. I don't see the evidence, but it's possible.

Even my high usage (and I am a heavy user, well above the national average) I can do 4-5 days on the batteries at my house (or would be able to if I could use all of one of them). And I'm not even using battery technologies suited to long term storage (flow batteries, or metal/air batteries).

That's a useful setup - please remind us of your typical daily demand. Batteries continue to improve, but perhaps the single greatest positive of having a hand in your own energy management is that many realise how reducing demand is such a virtuous circle.

To me V2H/V2G is a key technology in this process, because it will unlock an enormous store of energy.

It cannot arrive soon enough - together with a Smart Grid.

For those very rare events where there is a longer DF than that can handle we might even (shock horror) need to keep a few gas plants around - though that's a pretty expensive step for a once every several decades usage.
Indeed it might be better to cover some of the load by over-provisioning wind and solar, so that even in relatively calm weather we are still generating a substantial amount of energy.

It'd be useful were more upfront about how our environment could potentially be harmed more (initially) through trying to cover a once in ten year DF or dunkelflaute event with just sun and wind energy and a nuclear baseload, even with good interconnection to other Grids. Eventually I'd expect some synthesised fuel from excess RE, but over the coming decades as the Grid moves to mostly renewables, having a store of FF on hand to burn for emergency use will make sense.

We've got decades of investment to make after ignoring it for years. The tories basically blocked the cheapest energy supply that we have (onshore wind)... One key thing to make happen now is a massive increase in grid connections: that, along with regionalising energy pricing, will incentivise the building of generation where it's needed, and *much* more of it (because at the moment there are people wanting to build but waiting a decade for a grid connection...

No one party can exactly hold its head high, although we have moved remarkably quickly from the mindset of the 1990s and early 2000s to a reality of lots of wind energy with loads in the pipeline. More interconnections and a revolution in pricing mechanisms should see matters improve in the second half of the century.

Simple classic tools and their proper use are severely underrated.

The Chinese wheelbarrow was around for a very long time, including versions with sails to power their movement. I added a brake when using a conventional modern one intensively a few years ago, it made life much easier up and down a steepish ramp.

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/ ... eelbarrow/
And I see someone has re-invented it as it were, with electric assistance: https://vimeo.com/170123529

roubaixtuesday wrote: ↑9 Jan 2025, 8:57am The irony of simultaneously rejecting cheaper goods and decrying the lot of the poor won't be lost on your readers.

As to zealotry, the last paragraph certainly smacks of it, complete with a barely known climate scientist(!) cast as the antichrist.

The cash poor spend most of their money on food and energy.

I very much doubt a better value BEV when new will be much, if at all cheaper than a more expensive European equivalent, once third hand. Would you suggest high EU tariffs on Chinese motor cars are a folly?

mjr wrote: ↑8 Jan 2025, 6:03pm

Biospace wrote: ↑8 Jan 2025, 3:11pm How are we anticipating providing electricity for a nation of homes heated and powered by electricity, of cars and other transport moved by electricity and pretty much every business and heavy industry powered by electricity, when we have little or no wind and little solar input to the Grid?

Heavy industry has always shut down when electric gets too expensive.

Most home heating and vehicle charging can be advanced or deferred to avoid short periods of low generation, as it is being today, for people with appropriate equipment and tariffs. Local batteries and vehicle to home/grid may also help but the grid should be planning how to support it, if that's what they will rely on.

The Smart Grid should transform the way our Grid works from day to day, but that is only short term load shifting.

There's a vast amount of storage required into which to pour excess renewable energy, if we're to survive a few weeks in Winter when there's little solar or wind input, without burning fossil fuels.

It appears we've decades of high energy prices ahead due to the complete balls of a job our politicians have made of Britain's energy supplies. Given the chart at the very top of the page, business will have a struggle to compete with goods made where energy is so much cheaper.

[XAP]Bob wrote: ↑8 Jan 2025, 6:10pm And that's why it's important that we have grants available. Of course those very same people are quite happy to pay thousands for a new boiler when the current one breaks, and many more thousands to pipe dangerous chemicals into their house every year.

It's not "the world's problem" it's "our" problem - every one of us.

Of course it's important that the move away from fossil fuels is supported by Government for those without sufficient spare money, it's also enlightening to read what those who live in Sweden can tell us about the costs of heat pumps. The UK economy is so topsy-turvy in so many ways as the comfortably off grow ever more so, and ever less bothered about the lives of those left to struggle.

Some of us have been pointing out the problems with the ways we've been living for a very long time, while those who more recently become disciples of Mike Mann's approach behave more like zealous religious types from the 19th century with heretics treated as sub-human, such is their single-mindedness about The Climate. All the while arguing that "free trade" - buying everything from wherever is cheapest (usually China, with their vast coal fired economy) - is best for everyone.

[XAP]Bob wrote: ↑8 Jan 2025, 3:15pm The cost of *not* doing it is far higher.

There are some households which for whatever reason will not be spending many thousands in order for our Government to move closer towards its "Net Zero" target. The case of an elderly person living in a property which would need significant amounts of work which they cannot afford for example, someone who prefers to see out their days without the distress of being forced to move house purely to help the world's problem with fossil fuel consumption.

People seem to have become fixated on such things, all the while encouraging yet more war in Ukraine. Reducing our red meat consumption by a perfectly manageable amount would have more effect than moving from an economical car with an engine to one powered only by a battery - yet this isn't being legislated for. Why not?

[XAP]Bob wrote: ↑8 Jan 2025, 3:12pm Have you read the national grid's published planning documents?

I've scanned them. There is less talk of storage than I'd have expected.

I agree everything you mention is perfectly possible, but it's the cost which means tens of thousands of people are living in fear.

How are we anticipating providing electricity for a nation of homes heated and powered by electricity, of cars and other transport moved by electricity and pretty much every business and heavy industry powered by electricity, when we have little or no wind and little solar input to the Grid? The five fold increase in nuclear energy will not even satisfy half of our needs.

Are we waiting for a breakthrough in storage, and tidal energy before starting their construction?

Only with an energy policy run by 21st century politicians is it possible for an island with some of the world's best engineers, the world's largest tides and a surfeit of wind to be suffering from an extended energy crisis.

[XAP]Bob wrote: ↑6 Jan 2025, 5:22pm

djnotts wrote: ↑6 Jan 2025, 2:39pm

[XAP]Bob wrote: ↑6 Jan 2025, 1:07pm £30k?
What are you installing for that?

For heat pump to be worthwhile, external/internal (mix) wall cladding, double glazing, some form of solid floor insulation, modern standard loft insulation. Upgrade/increase capacity of hot water piping. Guess there's lots of pre-1930s would need same.

All that would as far as I can calculate might save approx £1,000 p.a. max on fuel costs.

That's not actually how physics works.

You don't *need* that to make a heat pump worthwhile. It does reduce the heat load of the building, but whatever the heat load is then it's significantly better to use a heat pump to supply that load than it is to burn stuff.

We know many homes in Nordic countries use heat pumps successfully in low temperatures, leading many to question why there are people in Britain questioning their suitability. What is often left out is that unlike homes in cold climates, British homes have been built to very low thermal efficiency standards, because of cheap and plentiful coal then gas - and our generally mild, damp climate.

While more roofspace insulation may be added and better windows fitted, if the walls are leaking a lot of heat in a home designed for radiant heating, the costs and complexities of insulating well enough to make convection heating by heat pump suitable may be very high.