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Post by aubrey on Jan 30, 2011 12:17:37 GMT
He met his wife at a communist meeting in the 40s (I think it was then). She died a few years back. She used to pep him up by saying, "remember, Jim, you're a communist!" They were a nice couple. I go and try to fix his computer sometimes.
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Post by Weyland on Feb 14, 2011 20:40:03 GMT
I was looking at this link that someone pointed out to me. The main message seems to be "ignorance is bliss". This "wind turbine with giant blades to power 10,000 British homes" is rated at 10MW (megawatts). That's 1kW per home. Your average kettle uses 1.8kW. Washing machine, 0.7kW. Microwave, 1kW. Dishwasher, 1kW. Toaster, 1kW. And so on. Conservative estimates. A single steam turbine at Drax Power Station generates 800MW. There are six of them. So by the site's logic, Drax powers 4,800,000 homes. Ferrybridge -- which I built with my bare hands -- has four 500MW steam turbines. So that's another 2,000,000 homes. They both have quick-start backup gas turbines (jet engines) to supply about 100MW more should the load demand it. They can all run at full load all the time if necessary. There are dozens of power stations like that in Britain. (Drax is the biggest.) A wind turbine only runs when the wind blows, and even then may not reach full load. And, by the way, they are much bigger than any steam turbine. That site, and many more "green energy" sites are not just spreading disinformation, they are lying. [/rant] It gets worse. Just now, on Radio-4, there was an expert telling us that they're building a wind farm in Scotland which can produce 1.2 GigaWatts, which he said, and I quote, "is enough to supply 750,000 homes". That works out at 1.6 kiloWatts per home, about what your average kettle consumes. See above for other appliances. If you wanted to boil a kettle you couldn't have any lights on. And that's only at peak output, when the wind is really blowing. If the wind doesn't blow, it's zero Watts per home, so we'd have to pay the French or the Germans to please build us some steam turbines as well. I've emailed Feedback more than once about this incessant pointless lying, which the BBC producers presumably are unable to detect (being Firsts in Classics or PPE or some such), to no avail.
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Post by everso on Feb 15, 2011 0:21:53 GMT
I really do feel that we at Stub Crouch should be put in charge of things.
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Post by Weyland on Mar 25, 2011 15:16:06 GMT
Talking of nuclear power generation, I came across this. See Circulator Hall and Turbine Hall. That circulator was the very first machine I worked on after leaving the Apprentice School. And I worked on the alternators later (the big blue machines in the turbine hall). They're still running, 46 years later. 434MW. Cooling water from the River Severn. I may be boring, but I'm very proud. (Oldbury Power Station has been used in both Blake's Seven and Doctor Who.)
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Post by swl on Mar 28, 2011 14:41:23 GMT
Interesting. So the 10MW tidal generating system costing £40m due to be installed off Islay and trumpeted as providing power for "more than 5000 homes" would supply less than 2kw to each then?
What's a reasonable supply level? I seem to recall a figure of 30kw per household being bandied about, which would mean the Islay system would power 333 houses at a cost of over £120k each.
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Post by Weyland on Mar 28, 2011 16:19:56 GMT
Interesting. So the 10MW tidal generating system costing £40m due to be installed off Islay and trumpeted as providing power for "more than 5000 homes" would supply less than 2kw to each then? Right — 10,000,000 ÷ 5000 = 2000W each. 2kW. Not even enough to power a kettle and a microwave at the same time. I don't know what a practical level would be, but I know a fancy electric cooker can easily use in excess of 6kW. I'd guess 8 to 10kW per house might be enough. Just. And if it's tidal, there'll be dead periods twice a day as the tide turns, different times every day. Unless they're storing the energy somehow, which would reduce efficiency. Anyone know more about tidal generation and load balancing? (With steam turbines you can throttle the steam supply, and if necessary start up backup gas-turbines at short notice for unusually high loads. You can't start up a steam turbine at short notice.)
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