So, first of all apologies that we haven’t so far done a “Where’s…” this week, although maybe we will manage later in the week.
I’m having problems with my phone, Panda Paws is having trouble with her emails… and Bongo didn’t go out because he thought Panda Paws was going.
It’s just one of these weeks…
So here are a few Random Thoughts I’ve collected over the last few weeks.
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Winston needs to be more British
Didn’t Suella Braverman say that the Charter of Human Rights was a very un-British thing? Obviously Winston wasn’t British enough for her. She really is a daft old bat.
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I wonder if there is a day goes by that Murty or her dad don’t profit from being in the family of the PM
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So, really, what is all this “change” they keep talking about?
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Well, there you have it
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Imagine your kids getting that from lunch...Fantastico
Here…Vomito
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Interesting information
There is only one rich place in the UK. It’s London, of course, and it is richer than even Luxembourg, Brussels, Vienna and the Paris Region.
(A suggestion from a chartered accountant friend of mine who has worked in several of these places and is now in Glasgow, says that of the ones he’s worked in London is by far and away the most corrupt.)
The poorest areas in Western Europe are, all but one, in England, Wales and the north of Ireland. Hainaut in Belgium is the only one on the list outside of Britain.
Also interesting to see that Scotland has none in either catagory.
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Renfrew WHAT?
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That must be a bit of a boon to the coffers of the Republic
I’m sorry, I promised an extra Therapeutic Thursday this week, but Dave was kind enough to write an article on the power situation (of which there is a third section to follow after the weekend). I hope you will forgive me… or rather Munguin, for I was acting upon his orders.
Here’s a little film that I came across that I thought you would enjoy.
The old AGRs , 8 of them, will be unlicensed by 2028, that’s 5GW of base load gone. They are already getting past it, trouble with the graphite core bricks cracking and last month 4 were offline due to a steam valve rupture on the eldest, caused all to be inspected. Of course we all know about it as it was all over the media, aye right.
Electric vehicles
Vehicular traffic is back to pre pandemic levels and we were seeing more battery powered cars in traffic, lately range restrictions and lack of charging points have seen a downturn. Not helped by the chancer introducing vehicle excise duties to luxury cars, backdated.
The batteries are around the 60kW capacity and require a 30amp source to charge them, the charger is in the car. That’s an over night charge if at home at 35p a unit, motorway charging is double that, a kW will take you about a couple of miles, depending on the vehicle.
The Tesla heavy truck has a 1000kW battery and has a range of 500 miles , it is said.
Currently there are around 500,000 on the road.
I live in a street of 60 homes, everyone has a least one car, some have more. There are about 6 electric vehicle sources, not nosy but they stand out.
Each house is at present heated by gas, their pump consumes around 500W when running the circulation pump, each house has a 100 amp mains connection and the grid can handle the load as not all houses will be consuming maximum demand, diversity allows for the load.
If we moved to 60 electric cars in the street, charging overnight, the whole street will require rewiring , new meters, larger diameter cables, new protection and an upgraded grid transformer.
Just one street of a small city.
Heat pumps
The use of natural gas , a fossil fuel, is to be phased out and heat pumps installed in each home, currently priced at £15k with a £7k grant, so around £1m to upgrade the whole street and a time scale of 2 to 3 years.
Companies and staff to complete the work? Have you seen any courses being pushed from your local college?
Now the good news. Heat pumps work really well at heating houses…in the summer, not so well in the winter. Pity we live in a cold climate. Global warming will help.
Remember the hot water tank we used to have for washing, that was thrown out with the gas combi boilers, well you will need to install an immersion heater and tank again, heat pumps aren’t good at heating homes and water to 40 degrees C. at the same time. Pity.
They use electricity to run them, essentially a refrigerator working in reverse so more electrical load on your grid transformer.
The heat pumps come in two forms, air sourced and ground source.
The air source type look like an air conditioning unit with air fans that are said to be carefully positioned due to the noise.
The ground source type have a long pipe that gets buried in your garden to pick up the heat. They need a hefty 4kW supply to heat a small house , that will give about 8-30kW of heat into your new radiators.
Electrical power is currently four times the price of a unit of gas, gas boilers are about 70% efficient.
I’m sure your government will level up the pricing. Energy is a Reserved Matter.
Fossil fuels
We will still be using diesel fuel for transport, aircraft , busses, rural trains and ferries.
The two new ones being completed at Port Glasgow are to use natural gas or diesel, for the next 25 years.
The container ships that deliver our requirements from the far east will be still using fossil fuels, possibly back to wind in the future.
So from the title ‘What is the Plan?
Our politicians have been busy with Brexit, asylum seekers, water companies, PPE, far too busy to plan ahead.
Busy blowing Syria up.
Running down the NHS for privatisation.
Selling off utilities.
Cutting services.
Global warming is spun as a scam.
What’s the plan? Seems they do nothing, that’s the midget’s plan, same as his buddy Johnson’s, keep stirring the pot as they play out their pantomime at Westmonster.
I’ve missed lots, feel free to add your own experiences, maybe we can get Scotland to a more sensible place.
The planet will be fine when the humans render the atmosphere unfit to support mammals , it will continue to wend its way around the local star. What life will survive and remain alive is hard to predict, plants and insects I suppose may continue in areas much like some reptilians survived the great extinction of the dinosaur.
We are committed to fossil fuels at present, large quantities of natural gas, coal, wood and oil. Add in the nuclear, wind, solar, hydro and so far little tidal.
That is the energy supply methodology used on the electric grid.
We import electrical energy from Europe to supplement the grid through DC cable systems , I’ll include the Irish connectors as European although one is the north of Ireland. The DC conversion system is used due to the frequencies used, 50hz in Britain and 60hz in most European countries.it is not very efficient but reduced losses through leakage are a plus.
Uk grid
The grid at present can supply a maximum load of 55GW, made up from
30GW of combined cycle gas turbines, efficiencies of 60+%can be achieved.
7GW of nuclear
20GW of wind
3GW of pumped storage
2GW of conventional hydro
3GW of bio fuel, cat litter from trees imported from the Americas. Coal is burnt with it.
1.5GW of coal, still in use, cleverly decommissioned the rest.
1.5GW of open cycle gas turbines. Old plant about 20%efficient
A couple of GW of mixed sourced plants, burning rubbish, small hydro.
That’s a total of around 70GW so, on paper, we have plenty of plant. Just last month the AGRs were offline due to a throttle valve problem, not reported by your media, that was 2.5GW lost.
Problems
Wind is variable, virtually none over the last weekend as the high pressure area was centered over the British isles.
Solar of course works during daylight, less in winter than summer.
Hydro relies on rainfall.
Biomass is imported in vlcc tanker from Canada, using bunker oil.
Pumped storage is really a battery, needs recharged overnight, using nuclear stations.
There are 10 off DC cable systems
4 from France utilising their nuclear, 4GW
1 from Netherlands 1GW
1 from Belgium 1GW
1 from Denmark 1.4GW
1 from Norway 1.4GW
That’s 8 GW, they’re bidirectional but mainly supply.
The two Irish ones are 500MW each, one to Eire and the other the north of Ireland, both mainly take energy from Wales and Scotland.
These feed into the super grid that surrounds the uk, mainly from the central belt southwards, the highlands are not connected as yet., a mix of high voltage overhead lines.
Your home will be fed from a transformer local to you at 450v , 3 phase, a single phase of 240v is your supply, now harmonised at 230v over Europe. Local transmission supplied from 11kv, 33kv or 120kv if industry near. The trains are supplied at 25kv, trams and underground have their own.
Certainly gas turbine stations can be commissioned reasonably quickly, 2 to 3 years, getting longer as worldwide other countries are installing, they burn natural gas, imported to the UK, large quantities from west of Shetland, transferred by gas tanker.
We are already said to have reached peak oil and gas, only Antarctica to be surveyed, bit tricky as there’s frozen water, pretty thick just now. No doubt there will be further discoveries, big oil will have the easy ones already.
The big oil areas are Russia and Saudi, with smaller reservoirs in Australia, gulf, South America and North Sea. The North Sea is moving to total extraction using water injection to get some more out, eventually the recovery takes more energy than you get out but reducing levels of supply will increase the selling price.
Scottish Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh in the London parliament, Chris Murray, says:
“Great to be out chatting to people in Meadowbank today.
“Like me, many people are angry about the Scottish Government ditching our climate targets.
“Climate change is the most pressing issue facing the planet – we need serious, realistic, achievable policy to get to net zero.”
So, I’m not best pleased about it either. But I can’t help but think that it’s a tad hypocritical of Labour to make a big thing of it, given what their London bosses are doing.
Maybe want to have a word with Rachel, Chris. At least she was paid to do it.
And, while I have little doubt that some people may be concerned about this, I also doubt that it is the most pressing thing on their minds when they meet politicians.
Although I have a green agenda, there are more pressing matters that I’d be mentioning should I have the misfortune to bang into a candidate for the English parliament… feeding kids, making sure electricity and gas bills are payable, trying t attract more NHS staff, filling in potholes… and on and on.
It might be fair to mention to those who put it first on the agenda, that the Scottish government has approved a massive wind farm, the biggest in Europe.
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Anas put in his place
My respect for Anas Sarwar would increase dramatically if he had the nerve to tell Starmer where to get off. But I doubt if he does. He will find, like other branch foremen/women before him, that decisions about Scotland and “Scottish” Labour, are made in London by their betters.
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Does anyone know what an ‘advacado’ is?
And, can you get them for 30p?
Sweetheart, absolutely NOTHING with your face on it is for my consumption, you money grubbing lowlife.
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I wonder if Rwanda is the victory that the far right thinks it is
From YouGov:
Not maybe what the British peoples want quite as much as you keep telling us, Sunak.
It will be interesting to see how it develops. I read that he has managed to get hold of an airline that will transport the refugees. AirTanker is reported to have been booked, going back on what they said when it was first suggested.
I imagine the flights will be worth a lot of money to them. But I’m not sure what it will do for their reputation. Still, it’s only taxpayers’ money and Sunak will pay out whatever it takes to get the job done before the election.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 