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Given the comments on piping I indulged my curiosity about the advantages and disadvantages of copper and plastic plumbing.
https://tmhughesandson.uk/copper-vs-plastic-pipes/
I’ve looked at a few links this one is a good overall summary.
I guess if copper is needed more for other things then plastic piping is a good substitute.For you Michael, Radical electric motor runs without metal coils. Still in a lab and with all sorts of downsides but maybe someday we’ll have alternatives to copper (or metal) conductors.
For you Fat John DARPA sets new records for sending power wirelessly.
Very inefficient but that’s where we’re at.ET, the company you just linked to is right next to my nearest railway station! Come to Chelmsford for good, clear technical advice; we’re a load of geeks here.
Though we can’t get apostrophe’s right :-/
Lol.Clark, I was gonna apologise to you that I didn’t have a specific link for you. I’m a kind of (drunk right now) geek, I might fit in.
ET, your link is quite specific enough. I had noticed your geekery, and I congratulate you on it.
Adam: “What’s the difference between a geek and a nerd?”
Bill: “I don’t know; what is the difference between a geek and a nerd?”
Adam: “Ah, a geek would know.”A woman friend of mine, purchased a new small semi-detached house,the electricity came up from the ground adjacent to the wall between the two properties, we assume this was the cheapest was to do it for the joined two properties.
She then bought a second hand EV.
She had a terminal put on the front of her house, so she could charge her electric car.
They had to use very heavy cable, going from the party wall, along the wall of her living room, across the outside of the rear, then down the outside, of the side, then on to the front of her house.
So, four years ago, this cost her almost four thousand pounds.
Quite a lot of Copper.
I think she said there were three types of installations, depending how much current you draw.
She chose the middle priced one.
I guess 100 amps.
I might be wrong.
Probably a more expensive new house, might already be fitted with with a car charger/
Another woman friend of mine, just had solar fitted to her two bed semi, with a battery pack and electrical/electronic stuff, again not cheap.
If the New Labour Government want us to go all electric, I am assuming a modern house will have a lot more Copper than an older house.
If you build a whole new estate and each house was to be fitted with heat pump, solar roof and batteries and fast EV charger point, that estate will need much heavier wiring than an estate first fitted with electricity in the 1920’s – 1930’s.
What I am getting at, is that we will need more Copper not less Copper.
The rest of the globe who barely use electricity now, will expect electricity in the near future.
As the resourse of Copper becomes harder to obtain, the price of Copper will rise.When the British Electricity Grid was being installed one hundred years ago the population of the United Kingdom was half of what it is today.
One hundred/75 years ago, most people had very few electrical devices, now people have a lot of electrical devices.
I only see the demand for Copper – rising.Ok Michael, so your current (pun not intended) obsession is now Copper rather than Lithium; but Aluminium is a decent conductor of electricity.
Not as good as Copper, admittedly; but Aluminium has the added benefit of being one of the most common elements on the planet.
@Fat Jon, quite so.
My neighbour tells me that they are gradually replacing the National Grid steel cables, with new, larger diameter Aluminium alloy cables. He claims that the original zinc coated pylons are still good, if not messed about with, too much.
Aluminium is about three times lighter than steel.
They want to quadruple the current carried.
The massive sub station behind my daughter’s house has just had the steel cables replaced.
Four instead of two, from each hanger.You need an awful lot of cheap electricity to turn ore into Aluminium product.
In the U.K. we do not have enough electricity.
Our electricity is phenomenally expensive.U..last remaining aluminium smelter Lochaber fears extinction under Government scrutiny
@ Fat Jon, you are correct, that if we are to have an all electric future in the United Kingdom, then we will need to develope a substitute for Copper.
I wonder if Clark knows much about
HTLS
“high-temperature low-sag”Michael, sorry, HTLS is not something I know about.
I do know that the East Coast High Voltage DC interconnector is ten years behind schedule and hasn’t even been started on yet. I wonder a lot about “leaving it to the market”. The market is making a fortune from high electricity prices, and from non-generation from wind farms when the grid is inadequate to distribute or export their output. So there is certainly a monetary incentive not to upgrade the grid. I wonder if money is changing hands behind the scenes; we know corruption is rife these days.
It might be an idea to place aluminium smelting works near the wind farms. I expect aluminium can be smelted in start-stop fashion in electric arc furnaces, so this would be a way of using the wind farm output that the (as yet) inadequate grid can’t handle.
The price of electricity actually goes negative at times; they actually pay big customers to use it when they can’t get rid of it any other way. Intermittency does work both ways. But I have no understanding of the bidding system, and I’m not intending to learn. The problem simply shouldn’t exist as far as I’m concerned, so I’m not going to waste my time or brainpower on it. Screw the politicians; they’re corrupt and incompetent.
@ Clark
Quote
“It might be an idea to place aluminium smelting works near the wind farms. I expect aluminium can be smelted in start-stop fashion in electric arc furnaces, so this would be a way of using the wind farm output that the (as yet) inadequate grid can’t handle.”That is an astoundingly good idea.
Probably more suited to very high value stuff.
A few years ago the aluminium smelter at Lochaber was planning on making car wheels for the European Market.Thanks michael but it’s not really my idea; it’s not a new idea at all. I had friends in Kinlochleven, in Lochaber. One of the aluminium smelting works you mentioned was built there over a century ago, because of the surplus of hydro electric generation. My suggestion is merely an adaptation of the same idea.
It seems that obvious, simple solutions have gone out of fashion, and the quality of political decision-making has plummeted.
Such simple solutions don’t allow for manipulation of market spot pricing. They would require long term contract pricing and no middle man to skim payments. I wonder if payment to wind farm companies to not produce power are made directly or via some third party who skims a percentage.
Failing left wing government of Spain, says the recent Black Out, was not their fault.
Quote BBC
“In the immediate aftermath, the left-wing coalition government did not provide an explanation, instead calling for patience as it investigated.
Nearly two months after the unprecedented outage, the minister for ecological transition, Sara Aagesen, has presented a report on its causes.
She said the partly state-owned grid operator, Red Eléctrica, had miscalculated the power capacity needs for that day, explaining that the “system did not have enough dynamic voltage capacity”.
Pedro
Sánchez voiced support for the European Green Deal and the green transition.
He advocates for a federal European Union.Sánchez supports replacement migration to combat the decline and aging of Spain’s population.
Following the 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout, Sanchez and his government have expressed their staunch opposition to nuclear energy, citing that much of the world’s uranium comes from Russia and their focus on other sources of renewable energies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_S%C3%A1nchez
Spanish PM sorry for corruption scandal as opposition demands resignation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r1l2x1jgvoLooks like another European government will soon slide into oblivion.
Pedro Sánchez may face pressure from within his coalition, after deputy prime minister Yolanda Díaz from left-wing coalition partner Sumar said she also wanted explanations.
The opposition Popular Party has been buoyed by a weekend rally in the centre of Madrid that attracted tens of thousands of supporters, calling for Sánchez to go under a slogan
“mafia or democracy”.
Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo appealed to other coalition parties to abandon the prime minister. There was no possible firewall, he told reporters on Thursday: “Corruption is already the hallmark of this government and it must end.”
Pedro Sanchez claimed the government would continue its “political project”, insisting that no new elections would take place until 2027.Sounds rather like The Political Project being carried out by the U.K. Labour Party,
that’s also not going well.Michael, I strongly get the impression that your main motivation is to slag off “left wing” governments, mainly because of immigration, and wind and solar electricity generation are mostly just sticks to beat them with. Is that about right? Being up front about things can save a lot of time.
@ Clark,
well you might have picked up that I am not a fan of Ed Milliband.
I do not think Electrical Net Zero, a stated 95% by Green methods, by 2030
is feasible, this nonsense obsession will kill heavy industry in the U.K.
We are being deindustrialised. The stated reason being to save the planet.
I have heard that the U.K. gives off less than one percent of the human induced Carbon dioxide.
Something like 0.85 %.
Recently the South Wales steel works were wound down, these were the largest blast works in all of Europe.
Recently the 101 year old refinery of Grangemouth has shut.
Quote
“The Grangemouth refinery, formerly Scotland’s only crude oil refinery, has ceased processing crude oil and is scheduled to close this summer. The refinery, owned by Petroineos, a joint venture between Ineos and PetroChina, was a significant part of the UK’s refining capacity, accounting for about 14%. While the refinery is closing, the wider Grangemouth site, which includes petrochemical plants and the Forties pipeline, will continue to operate”I can not comprehend how the British Labour Party is so quickly destroying Britain.
A recent poll came out showing that after 300 days of the Labour Party being in power, they only poll third, behind Reform and the Conservative Party.
I believe that Sir Keir wants to take us in to a war with Russia.
I believe that Sir Keir wants to return us to the control;l of the E.U.
I believe he hates this country and is trying to bring this country to its knees.@ Clark, I have told you that I do not fear Global Warming.
I think there is an agenda.
That agenda is almost total control.
Some people have worked out that by making the Industrialised nations reliant on electricity, they could use electricity as a very powerful tool to control the population.
Frighten people with talk of pandemic, frighten people with talk of World War Three, make people use language that restricts thinking.
Censor/imprison people for wrong think.
That wrong think being any Right think.
Call people Right Wing if they do no slavishly follow the twaddle spouted by their leaders.
Make them believe that that is not true.
Stop them believing that that is true.
Force them the have heat pumps, that do not work but tie them to the Government controlled Electricity Network.
“encourage” them to buy unsustainable battery cars, that can only be charged from the Government controlled Electricity Network.
Make it no longer possible to buy stuff using cash.
Make people have smart water meters. Make people have smart electric meters.
Make people only able to vote by pushing a button from their own home. Scrap in person voting using pencil and paper.
Make it illegal to harass your member of .
Make it almost impossible to see an actual G.P.
In short to degrade the self worth of the individual, to make the people reliant on the state for their living.
I strongly believe, this is what Net Zero is really about.
Do you see government ministers being modest, do you see Sir Keir or Tulip living in a single property.
Do you see them not taking multiple air flights each year?
They shower themselves in luxury, yet tell the pensioners to turn their gas down and use less of everything, while they themselves piss the wealth of the nation down the drain, at an ever quicker speed.Sir Keir Starmer is fast becoming the most despised prime minister of the United Kingdom, ever.
He can not answer a question in Parliament, unless it is a Labour stooge asking him a softball question.
He is fearful of the unwashed, the people who physically earn a modest living. He only likes to converse with others of his class and predilections.
He does not want to talk with actual normal, working class people.I’d suggest to you Michael that a home with independent means of electricity generation, such as solar panels, is more independent of the government controlled grid than one without.
I’d further suggest that a country with electricity generation capacity not reliant on the importing of fossil fuels from outside is also more independent. In fairness, solar is better suited to Spain than the UK.
