Beelbeebub

This always happens, when I was a kid "made in Taiwan" was code for cheap plastic crap. About 20 years ago I was working with Hong Kong tool makers (injection moulding tools) for clients. We were the interface and "prime contractor" pulling different disciplines into the process. At first they would make stuff to the drawings you sent them. We had to do all the jar calculations about shrinkage, ejector pin placement, demoulding, split lines. But each time they would offer more services, they could sort the split lines, they would handle the shrinkage allowances etc. About 10 years later and thwy were bidding direct to the clients for the full services and starting to offer design of the actual part as a service.... That said, the UK is still a pretty good (albeit niche) manufacturer. The thing is we can't be anything other than that now. Not every country can be the "workshop of the world". We don't have the population size to sustain it. Even all of Europe will struggle against China and India and Africa. With their much bigger populations. I did see an interesting thought. Low cost energy is an important economic advantage. Solar power is the cheapest power you can get, even more so in places with more reliable day to day and season to season sun.... Like the equator. Africa is poised to be able to offer the cheapest energy possible and, u like oil where we can nick it from the locals and bring it home, it's a hell of a lot harder for us to steal it or compete at home. Africa also has huge resources and massive population. Once (or if) they get going it's going to make China look lackluster. Maybe 100 years or will be poor Northern Europeans floating across the med to get to Africa....

Isn't one of the advantages of the new generation of mega turbines that the windspeed becomes stronger and more consistent as you move up out of the boundary layer above the land/sea

I don't thing the air pressure/density makes much difference over 200m. May r if we were sticking our wind turbines at 4,000m we'd have to account for that but the difference over 200m is about 1%

Are they? They are obviously cheap enough that the strike prices of £91/Mwh (offshore wind) £72/Mwh (onshore wind) £65/Mwh (solar) Attracted over 14Gw of bids. CfDs are sort of a subsidy but only in the sense that any fixed price deal can be a subsidy if your costs are low enough. Unlike a guarenteed price, the CfD also allows payback when the price rises above the strike price, so it's a two way bet. The supplier know they will never get less than the strike and the buyer knows they will never pay more than the strike price. This massively derisks the investment.

Re: fracking as a solution to UK oil production falls... Quote : "... when we fly over some of these pump jacks and stuff like that, you'll be able to smell it... your eyes may burn just a little bit...."

German talking about plug in solar (4m installs) for the UK. One interesting titbit... The plug in soecs/limits are designed for the likely worst case German home electrical system - he mentions "pre war" and "East German with aluminum wires and worn contacts". So the Germans have designed the systems to be safe for those scenarios. Are uk electricans, who argue that plug in solar is dangerous, arguing that uk homes are likely to have worse wiring than pre war and east German wiring? Plug in solar is going to be a useful thing for tenants. Uk rental properties choukd all have been inspected at least twice now so any really shocking (ha) working should be rooted out of that market segment.

Yes, although the problem might be that to achive 207 during a winters night with all the electric heaters on at the hypothetical remote farm, the output at the substation might need to be cranked up 249v Obviously the farmer's near neighbour's solar isn't going to help then. It would help the farmer if he had low voltage when the sun was shining (say a big air con load) but the transformers are not automatic. They are mainly set and forget. An engineer needs to visit and physically move some contacts to change the voltage If the houses near the substation are all cranking out loads of power on a sunny day that is what will push the voltage over. All that said, some batteries at the farm would help as they would be able to reduce the load on the wires, thus reducing the current and voltage drop. So whilst a 90a draw from the grid onky might drag the voltage down to 207, the 45a from grid and 45a from batteries wouldn't, so the transformer voltage could be set lower. As an aside, this "solar reduces load on wires" principle is why I think some of the panic over plug in solar is overblown. I did some basic calculations and I think, for any correctly functioning socket circuit the 4a/800w plug in solar can produce isn't able to overload the cables and might even allow higher loads than the circuit breaker is set to without overloading the cables. Of course if there is a faulty or out of spec socket circuit, plug in solar might cause a problem, but at that point normal use would also cause the problem.

The pressure was probably more indirect eg. the CEO of the building company having a word with someone in the council over a few drinks in the golf club bar as they discuss donations and upcoming non-executive directorships. 😁

Yes, if the can widen the window by lowering the bottom it will help. Current UK is 240 +10/-6 ie 216 to 253 Europe is 230 +/-10 which is 207 to 253 I think our asymetric limit was fudge when we standardised with Europe and everyone actually stayed the same. Bu as you say - all modern equipment will function absolutely fine at lower voltage. There might be an issue with higher currents for constant power devices at the lower voltage. I noticed my inverter (solax) has a power based export limit. Eg 3.6kw whilst my DNO specified a current limit (16a). The lower minimum voltage could mean those of us with power based limits will have to assume 207v ie 3.3kw rather than being able to set 3.6 or even 3.9kw.

Isn't the issue that a local grid may be very spread out so the voltage at the transformer needs to be (say) 249v to ensure thr person at the farm miles away gets at least 220 (or whatever the lower limit is) in the worst. Which was fine when everybody consumed. The local voltage could be set high at the transformer and would never go higher as everyone consumed. But if the people next to the transformer are exporting, they need to push the voltage above 249 to export, and if there are too many people too close the voltage could go above 253v. If the grid lower the transformer voltage to 245 to give headroom, they endup only supply 216 to the poor sod at the end of the line. The solution is to reduce the voltage drop between transformer and the end of local network ie new cables.

That makes sense😁

AAV could have failed - in which case the smell should be worse there. The other thing we had with a waste disposal unit was the flow rate was too high for the (old and clogged) pipework so we ended up displacing air back up via the overflow, which was pretty stinky.

The bigger issue is that private building control, at least in the context of commercial builders, have the wrong incentive structure. A guy who will sign off anything and never insist on rework will get hired repeatedly. The inspector who insists all the houses on a development need to be reworked because the brickies didn't bother with wall ties isn't going to get the next contract.

What is the difference between "new electricity demand" and "demand growth"? The thread title seems accurate and the same as your description. "Renewables met demand growth...while fossil generation stalls, i.e doesn't grow. "

You are correct but if you read the post carefully you'll see I said half hour block (the standard time slice for the grid). If your export limit is 3.6kwh and you export any more than 1.8kwh (eg 2.5kwh) in a half hour block you have breached your export limit. The half hour time slice means it is much harder to hide any over export with any inevitable lower export periods eg clouds going over sun for 10 minutes and the system is already working at that resolution. If you do this for every half hour slice you can discourage over exporting because there will be no financial benefit and you might get a visit from the DNO.